Chapter 4
When I turned around and headed towards my house it felt like it weren't my legs that were moving.
I was in big trouble—huge troubling trouble!
The we've got a dangerous package in front of us and we have no fraking idea what it is but we know it's probably going to end with something like BOOM! We're all dead! kind of trouble.
You did not want to owe anything to Blake Eaton, ever!
Alright breathe Lexi, just breathe, maybe he was just joking, or maybe he just wants something simple like your sister's phone number... Yeah that's probably it... Now stop worrying.
I walked in the kitchen heading straight to the fridge since I hadn't had dinner, breathing in and out slowly, not letting myself think too much. A butt was popping out of the fridge, the person's head in it, cursing.
"Why is it so damn hard to buy groceries," I heard my little brother Tyler mumble.
I ignored the remark. "Who won," I asked him.
Tyler didn't turn around but I had a good view of his soccer uniform and grass still stained it.
"They kicked our ass, but James kicked their all-star player in his all-star family jewel and send him to the hospital so I think it's a fair draw," he replied, chuckling.
Then he turned around, with a can of soda in his hand, and gasped when he saw me.
Oh yes, right the dress that might get me smitten if I walked into a Church wearing it...
"So you had a nice time tonight, working on the street? Made some money? Wouldn't mind lending me some for a new PS3 game," he teased and drank from his soda.
"Actually, I went to see mom," I informed him casually and he spit out the soda everywhere.
"What," he choked, coughing his bubbly beverage out.
I smirked. "You heard me."
"You went to see mom looking like that?" I nodded even though I had kind of been repeating that already. It seemed to really sink in though. "Oh my god! What did she say? Oh how much I would pay to have seen her face," Tyler rambled almost gleefully.
"I'll bet you my Jezebel dress that you can't guess what happened," I countered.
"She jumped at your throat..." He shook his head and hands with energy. "No wait she would never humiliate herself in public." My little brother pondered for a second. "Alright, I know she said something like, Excuse me miss could you please move away from this table and not let your genital diseases spread all over this nice chair," Ty mimicked out mother's voice and I had to admit that it fitted her perfectly.
"You're not even close..." I sighed.
"Oh my god. Did she? No she couldn't do that?" my brother said and his eyes widened in acknowledgment.
"She did," I answered and sat on the counter.
Ty made a face. "Wow! That must have been awkward," he trailed and sat beside me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders comfortingly.
"Let's just say I'm in big, big trouble now," I sighed and rested my head on his shoulder.
His shoulder shook with his soft laugh. "What? Her boyfriend gave you his number?"
"If only," I mumbled, my cheek still pressed against him. And that wasn't true. My mom would have quite literally killed me if something like that had happened.
"We'll work it out. We always do," Ty assured me and kissed the top of my head. It was in time like these that he felt more like an older brother than an annoying little one that like to hang his sister's underwear at the most embarrassing places possible.
We sat there for a little while in silence, just listening to the sound of our breathing.
After a few peaceful seconds, I broke the silence. "You should go take a shower Ty, you stink," I teased him and pushed him aside playfully.
"Oh, I stink?" he asked in a challenging voice and grabbed me around the waist too quickly for me to react and tried rubbing me against his chest.
"Ew, Ty! Gross!" I yelled wiggling away from the idiot.
Tyler was only two years younger than me but he had grown so much in the last three years. He was taller than my five feet eight inches now. He was almost six feet tall and in a really good shape considering he was a sport craving boy.
I really liked my brother, when he didn't wipe his sweat on me. We were just so alike—even our look. We both had the same brown hair, though his didn't have the small reddish complexion in the sun as mine had, and we had the same brown eyes, the same nose...
I looked a lot like my sister too, though she would always brag about the fact she was the sexiest. And it was true.
It was like that in our family. Annabelle was the beautiful one. I was the smart one and Tyler was the sporty one... Well, it used to be like that, before Annabelle abandoned the ship to its wreckage.
It wasn't like I hadn't seen it coming, though. Anna was bound to leave. She had always wanted to leave. Even when we were just small kids, she would drag us with her, saying we had to run away from the house because mom or dad had punished her for something she thought was unfair.
She was the rebellious one.
Tyler and I weren't like that. Of course, we weren't angels, but we weren't overly eager to abandon our family either. Ty and I, we would never abandon dad, and never abandon each other, that much I was sure of.
Ever since we were little we had always spent a lot of time together. I might have been the smart one but I liked playing sports too, and when we were younger, I would always play with Ty. It was nice because even though he was a boy, I was older so I used to be better than him. Now I wasn't so much. I mean, I still ran just a little bit faster, but I had no chance anymore on tackling him. He knew all of my weaknesses.
Ty ruffled my hair before letting go of me to grab his sport's bag off the floor.
"Oh yeah by the way, your pimp called. Said you needed to wear the Tuesday outfit tonight," Ty shot back while walking away, and laughed.
"Ha, ha! Real funny," I yelled after him, rolling my eyes.
Sighing heavily, I opened the freezer, grabbed the chocolate ice cream pot, a spoon out of the cupboard and dragged my feet all the way up to my room.
After closing the door behind me, I quickly stripped out of the my dress and threw it in the farthest corner of my closet. I washed my make-up off and got comfortable, putting on loose shorts and one of Ty's old shirts, too small for him now.
I sighed again. Alright, I had to call Alex, give him a full report of my short evening.
I took a spoonful of ice cream to stop the tears from escaping my eyes.
Yeah, I was the kind of person that ate her emotions. Whatever. It wasn't like I could gain a pound. I had tried to become fat, once because my grandparents kept telling me I was too skinny for my own good, and I wanted to shut them up by showing to their place with a double chin. But even after a month of oversized junk food plates and candy and chocolate and all of Good Mother Nature gifts for our stomach, I hadn't gained a pound.
I might have sound like I was complaining about being skinny but truth be told, it wasn't always fun. Especially, when I looked at my boobs. And yes, I knew I talked a lot about them, but that was only because I hated them. They were too fracking small. On a good day there would never be a full handful of them. Whoever believed that skinny girls could have boobs the size of basket balls could kiss my little ass!
I picked up my phone and hit speed dial.
It rang two times. "You already want me to pick you up," Alex asked, not bothering with greetings.
"I'm already home," I answered and lied back in my bed, ice cream in my hands.
"Oh, oh! Tell me what happened," he urged, his voice filled with concern.
I ran my fingers furiously through my hair. "She showed up with her boyfriend! Can you believe that? That shrew of a mother showed up with her teenage boyfriend," I yelled in the phone, and took another mouthful of ice cream.
"Teenage?"
"Well, he was probably twenty or something, but, whatever. Blake said he looked fifteen," I shouted again.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back up your horse little missy! Blake," Alex all but gasped.
"Yeah! I'm in deep shit! Oh and by the way, what the hell Alex! How come you never told me, that that conniving bastard's name wasn't Drake," I groaned and shoved the ice cream in my mouth.
"Thought it was funnier to let you call him Drake," Alex trailed and chuckled lightly. "Anyway, what happened exactly?"
I took a deep breath, getting ready to rant. "Well, I was waiting for my mom, and then out of nowhere Blake shows up—annoying as always—and he sits right in front of me and is the jerk he usually is, but then I see my mom and I see her boyfriend and I freak out! I mean, who wouldn't? That wasn't in my plan!" I sighed. "Whatever, for some reason Blake started to say his brother got into a car crash and we had to go to the hospital and he couldn't drive himself so he needed me. As you might guess, mom didn't like that. Anyway, Blake dragged me outside and then he said he would drive me home too. Hey!" Complete change of subject. "Did you know that bastard has a Lamborghini Murciélago?"
"Yeah I heard...Wait, wait, wait? You got in that car," Alex yelled.
"YES," I all but beamed. "Sure I hate that bastard, but that was one sweet ride..." I shook my head clearing my thoughts. "Anyway, when I got out of the car he said I... owe him..." I gulped.
"Shit... You're in big trouble," Alex stated.
"Do you think I don't know that?"
"You don't want to owe anything to Blake Eaton...ever!"
"I know," I whined.
"Did you know the last girl who owed him something ended up in a seminar with him?"
"I KNOW," I whined even louder.
"Did you know another girl that owed him ended up running in the school halls naked with only whip cream on herself? And that she got expelled for that, and Blake got nothing?" Alex continued.
"I KNOW! I KNOW! I KNOW," I chanted, on the verge of covering my ears and going into fetal position.
I didn't need Alex to tell me those things, I was quite aware of them.
"You're a dead girl, Grayson..."
"Shut up," I shouted.
"It was really nice knowing you," he trailed, ignoring my last outburst.
"What am I going to do," I asked desperate, ignoring him too.
"You could move to a foreign country. Change your name. Get a face surgery. Become a man..."
I pulled at my hair. "I'm sure he could still track me down..."
"Yes, probably," Alex agreed.
"I'm a dead girl..." I stated.
"Yope," Alex happily answered.
That was when I felt something cold on my stomach. Crap! My ice cream! "Oh god! Alex I have to go now. I've got ice cream all over myself," I groaned.
"What? Is Blake already making you pay?"
I narrowed my eyes and didn't answer that. I just hung up on him. So much for being my best friend! Idiot.
I got up from my bed—careful not to let ice cream spill on it—and headed downstairs. I threw the remaining in the garbage.
The kitchen wasn't empty.
My father greeted me with his usual, "Hey kid," while sitting at the edge of the counter.
I smiled faintly. "Hey dad."
"What's up with your shirt," he asked, casually, before continuing to eat his cereals—like seeing me covered with ice cream wasn't something abnormal and it really wouldn't affect his day.
"Spilled ice cream on it," I replied gesturing between the shirt and the remnant of the ice cream now in the garbage.
He nodded, smiling faintly, but then a veil of sadness clouded his eyes. "So, how was your night?"
Poor daddy. He might have been out of it most of the time, but he had a heart and my mother had crushed it.
But what was I supposed to say? I saw her boyfriend? That would kill him.
"I got tired of waiting for her..." I simply replied.
And in a way it was the truth. I was tired of waiting for my real mom to come back. She was not coming back. That was it. End of story. Move on.
"That wasn't Alex's car I saw you getting out of," my father trailed, frowning.
Hmm...wow. My father had noticed that. Well, I should give him credits for that... Anyway, he had probably only been waiting by a window in case it had been mom who had driven me home, so he could have seen her...
Poor dad...
"Yes. Did you see what kind of car?" I asked him trying to be cheerful, trying to change the place where this conversation was going.
It earned me a half-smile. "Hard to miss with those doors."
I smiled more. "It's a nice car."
"And who's the guy it belongs to?"
My eyes widened. Frack! I sort of had shot myself in the foot there.
I tried to recompose myself quickly. "No one really. Some guy at school," I brushed it off, like it was nothing.
"It always starts with a some guy at school," my father pointed out, and chuckled.
"Whatever," I groaned and headed back to my room. Like that was going to happen. Like anything was going to happen with Drake-who-really-is-Blake-Stinking-Eaton. If things were entirely up to me, I'd make sure to never cross path with him again. Sure, he had helped me in time of need, but now I didn't want to owe anything to the guy.
When I was at the top of the stairs, instead of going in my room right away, I turned and poked my head in through the door of my brother's room. "Night Ty."
My brother's attention was concentrated on the screen in front of me, but he still managed to answer me. "Hey... You don't want to play," Ty inquired, his eyes never leaving his Blu-ray TV. He was playing Resistance: Fall of Man.
As much as I wanted to kill a few Chimeran Hybrid, I was surprisingly tired even though it was only nine thirty and I had barely done anything straining—unless almost-going-out-to-dinner-with-your-adulterous-mother counted as a straining activity.
"I'll pass. Maybe tomorrow," I offered.
"Alright. Good night," Ty answered his head in the game.
"You too. Kill the monsters for me," I smiled at him and made my way to my room.
"I will," Ty shouted back.
The second, I stepped in the comfort of my own private space, I headed for my bathroom, took off my shirt, and threw it in the laundry basket. I looked at myself in my bathroom mirror and sighed. "What are we going to do now?" I asked my reflection.
Wouldn't it be fun if I got an answer? Something like go heal the sick or some shit like that, you know something that would make me worth being remember other than being the next girl running in the school all naked and covered with whip cream...
I sighed again.
I followed my usual night routine—I took a shower, brushed my hair and my teeth and fell on my bed.
Then, like every other night since the last two months, I curled up in a ball in the middle of my bed and cried until I fell asleep.