My cellphone blares at some ungodly hour of the morning, waking me out of my blissful slumber. I roll over and slap a hand on my nightstand till it finds my phone. It takes me some seconds to figure out how to answer the stupid call, then I bring it to my ears and grunt out an hello.
"I can't sleep."
"Excuse me?" I take a peek at the caller ID and see Mabel's name boldly written there. "Have you tried closing your eyes?"
"Sometimes I wonder how we're related. Anyway, I've got big news."
"Can't it wait till when every normal human being is awake?"
"Zach asked me out."
I sit upright on my bed, suddenly very awake now. "ZACH DID WHAT?!"
There's going to be a funeral when I get back home to Florida.
"Calm your tits, I didn't give him an answer yet. What do you think?"
A sharp pain jabs at the walls of my stomach and I wince, scurrying out of bed into the bathroom as I flicker on the lights. I groan when I see my pajamas pants in the mirror, completely soaked at my butt area with red liquid.
Not today.
It's wild that girls can walk around having blood squeezed out of their vaginas and when we make any kind of complain, we get called hysterical and emotional and we have to carry on like nothing's happening.
I place the phone between my left shoulder and ear as I search for tampons in the cupboards. "Trust me when I say it's a bad idea. He's just going to waste your time. Ditch him, find someone else your age. How about Dennis? He helps with your Chemistry assignments."
"He picks his nose, and chews off the boogers from his fingers."
I cringe a little when I remember her geeky red-haired friend with an extremely large nose. I can remember screaming in shock at the size of his nose when I first met him and then apologized afterwards because of how rude I seemed. Puberty really hit him hard and he just might be a ladies man when he hits the 20's, after all, nobody nose tomorrow.
See what I did there?... Never mind.
"I think you're about to go down the worst route of heartbreak." I finally find a tampon in Lacey's things and yank off my pajamas pants, throwing it into the washing machine. "Zach is a man whore. He changes girls like he does his underwear... that's if he even ever changes his underwear."
"But he seems sweet and also makes the best muffins. Mom and I had some of them when he baked for us and brought them over." Mabel says.
"Now that's the biggest fraud of all time. Zachary Dunlop never bakes, he probably bought that at McDonalds to win you guys over and guess what?"
"What?"
"YOU FELL FOR IT! I thought you were smarter than this."
"I don't care, I'm going to give him a chance," She adamantly says over the phone.
"You're too young for this." I press a hand to my forehead.
"Oh shut it. You were only a year older than me when you dated Clarke."
"You will not bring my personal life into this." The words leave my mouth in a grit. My eyelids closes shut, trying to calm the anger now boiling rapidly in my veins.
"I only needed Mom's approval of this and she says it's fine."
"Genius of you to seek relationship advice from a woman with a failed one," That sarcastically leaves my mouth before I realize how wrong that sounded.
"Mom is only trying to be optimistic, and maybe you should too! The fact that you had a terrible experience as a teenager doesn't mean I would. Everyone has their own story and it's not my fault yours was shitty."
The weight in my heart becomes ten times heavier. It's hard to admit, but everything Mabel said was right and it hurts more finally hearing it out in the open. I didn't expect someone would tell me this soon, especially not from my kid sister.
"I'm sorry about earlier," I break the silence. "I didn't mean what I said."
"I did."
That's the last thing I hear before the line goes dead.
Sometimes, I love my sister, and there are other times I feel the need to exchange her for free coupons. This situation right here is where I'm stuck between the love-hate feeling.
Why I'm I being made to look like the bad guy when I'm only trying to protect her? A picture of Mabel and Zach together pops up in my head and I shook it off. He might be my best friend's brother and a close friend, but I don't like this one bit.
"Miss Brooke?! Miss Brooke!" I hear the familiar heels click their way into the room where I'm seated on the toilet.
"I'm in here," I grumble as the bathroom door bursts open. Standing before me is the hotel manager, a young lady who in her early 20's, is still a little bit of a bonehead. Miss Renee eyes me on the toilet seat before adjusting her suit.
"Did I come at the wrong time?" She asks.
"As long as you're okay watching me take a shit."
"I see," she says, irritation evident in her tone. "We have a couple getting married today at the hotel premises."
"Happy married life to them in advance," I wryly say, uninterested with that piece of information.
"As a worker in the kitchen department, you're expected to be downstairs helping the chefs out in the kitchen. It's a huge party and we need you guys to help with a lot of supplies from the storage room."
"But it's Saturday. My day off."
"Well unfortunately, no one's getting a day off today. Miss Stratham is up and downstairs already. Wake Simone up from bed, and get Cory too, you know I can't handle being around so many boys."
Renee doesn't let me reply before she closes the door behind her, the bundle of toilet paper I throw at her hitting the door instead.
A loud groan erupts from my throat.
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