River of Dreams

River of Dreams: Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“I'm just saying it's not all sand castles and ninjas.”—Libba Bray, Going Bovine

"How was school, Amy?" Mom called as I walked into the house.

"I'll tell you after I take a bath," I murmured. I sounded exhausted and defeated and I knew, with her supersonic Mom hearing, that she could detect it.

"Okay, honey. I'll be in the kitchen when you're done."

I trudged upstairs, being careful not to touch the walls. I felt filthy. I couldn't wait to strip down and melt into the warm bath water, washing all my troubles away.

Sigh.

When I entered my room, my desktop computer was beeping off the hook and I just couldn't refrain from going to it and checking my messages. I pushed the monitor button and the screen flicked on, illuminating the dark room. On my screen was IM after IM from my favorite Hazelbrookes ditching twins: Liz and Bell.

Hypertwin: We know you're there if your mom hasn't abducted you to take on one of her crazy shopping sprees. ANSWER!!! I command you!

Smarttwin: Please A, we've gotta talk.

And so on and so forth. Although I was seriously ticked at them, I couldn't just ignore them. We've been best friends since second grade. To a fourteen year old, that was an epically long time. Not like Spike, who had somehow got it into his head at the end of the day that he was my boyfriend and if anyone of the male species laid eyes on me he was going to rip their throat out and feed it to his pit bulls. 

Amybaby: Give me 30 minutes and we'll talk.

Hypertwin: yay! :)

Smarttwin: ditto :)

I grabbed some clean shorts, under garments, and an old summer camp T-shirt and padded to the bathroom, down the hall from my room. My bathroom (it used to be Kim's and mine, but since she's gone, I have it all to myself) was a small room that needed a serious cleaning. Dirty clothes from summer break were thrown about, on the floor, in the sink, covering the soap in the tub, anywhere but the hamper which was completely empty. I was supposed to clean up last week, but as a result of extreme procrastination, it never happened.

I shoved a mountain of dirty clothes into the hamper. Something made a loud clump! sound and I searched the contents of the hamper for it. It was my old hair brush!

"I've been looking for you all summer!" I exclaimed, holding the brush like a prized poodle.

Biting my lip with indecision, I looked around the messy room. I might as well tidy up a bit as long as I'm in here, I thought.

I scooped up piles of malodorous clothes and dumped them in their rightful place. Under one pile I found my Fall Out Boy CD and in the middle of another, the left-foot sneaker to the right-foot sneaker I was missing. This was like a game of scavenger hunt, cool things in the strangest places.

Finally, when the room was remotely clean, I undressed and hopped in the tub. The water from the nozzle squirted out ice cold water at first, but it quickly warmed up and I was able to relax as the heat leaked into my bones. A content sigh escaped my lips.

I pulled my hair back into a limp pony-tail and opened the blinds, letting the natural light of the sun enter my bedroom.

Curling up on the bed, I rested my chin on one of my pillows. Although the house was small, I actually really loved my room. The walls were soothing sea foam green with posters of the Hollywood golden boy, Matt Linkley from Bare Cannon Movie (my favorite teen flick movie ever) along the wall above my bed. My full size bed rested in an intricately carved cherry wood bed frame. The bedding was striped white, hot pink, and lime green. A plush pillow, the one I was curled up with, was a vivid shade of yellow, and several pink, green, and blue smaller pillows slumped along the head of the bed. My bookcase was filled with CD's all from my favorite bands and solo artists. The desk had a stereo on it and a tray to organize my papers and stuff from school along with my old desktop computer. I had bean bag chairs next to my window.