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Monkey Airplane Soldier
Be kind, please rewind.
In which they are late to school
I don't really need to prologue my sections anymore, do I? Y'all know the drill. Don't forget to give me feedback!

Alice swore as she caught sight of her alarm clock. She had twenty minutes to be on the bus!
She jumped up, hopped out of her pajama bottoms and grabbed some pants, running for the door to her bedroom.
She flung open Ada’s door. “Ada, get the hell up, we’ve got twenty minutes to get on the bus!”
Ada’s sleepy ahead appeared from under her piles of blankets. “Huh?”
Alice grabbed a pillow and threw it at her sister. “UP!” As she was reaching for Edgar’s door, it opened.
“What’re you yelling about?” He frowned at her, his eyes all screwed up, the brightness of the hallway light obviously impairing his vision.
“We’re late, idiot, get UP!” Alice shimmied into her pants and ran back into her bedroom to get ready, swearing at the button on her jeans that wouldn’t close.
This is what happens when Rachel’s not here, she thought. There’s no such thing as organization in this place… Alice would have sighed if she’d had the time to, but instead ran down the stairs to grab a food bar for herself. On second thought, she reached for two more and left them on the counter for her siblings.
She checked the clock. Ten minutes to be at the bus stop. She hadn’t brushed her hair, her contacts weren’t in, she hadn’t taken her allergy pills, she had no lunch for the day, and her teeth were still not brushed. “s**t!” she mumbled to herself and she leaped up the stairs two at a time.
She popped her head in Edgar’s doorway. He was still ambling around in his room, putting his shirt on. “Edgar, you dipshit, get UP!”
“I’m getting up, Jesus! Leemee the heck alone…” He was already grumpy in the morning, and Alice regretfully acknowledged that a morning like this one wasn’t going to help his mood.
Ada had raced downstairs to eat already, Alice presumed, because she wasn’t on the upper level. Suddenly Alice heard a shriek of laughter from her mother’s room. Who could possibly find anything funny this early in the morning?
Alice looked at her clock, then in the direction of her mom’s room. Then back at her clock, then back down the hall. She wavered for a minute, then groaned as she gave in to curiosity and responsibility and ran into her mother’s bedroom.
She entered to find Josephine Keegan sitting on her room floor, surrounded by plates of food. Sausage, bacon, cinnamon rolls, cereal and cereal boxes, milk, orange juice, eggs. But none of it was cooked; the cinnamon rolls were still only dough. The eggs were a goopy mess on one of the plates, and were beginning to drip onto the wooden floor. The sausage sat, cold and raw, out of its package on a plate. Her mother was sitting in the middle of it all, surrounded, with a crossword puzzle book in front of her. As her daughter entered, she smiled.
“I got seventeen across, finally! It’s a really difficult puzzle, you know, but I got seventeen across! Come, sit down, honey, I made breakfast.”
Alice stared at the assortment, at her mother, at all the problems encompassed in this room that she not only didn’t have time for but also just really, really wished she didn’t have to deal with. She stared, and closed her eyes slowly. She took a deep breath.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” She heard her mother say.
Alice opened her eyes. She clenched her jaw. She wanted, more than anything, to step outside of this room, to go back in time, to decide to get ready for school rather than walk in here, to leave the responsibility for this to somebody else. Her feet almost led her, running, out of the room, and maybe even out the door, but her mind kept her grounded. She checked her watch. Seven minutes before the bus came.
“Sweetie?” her mom asked, her head turned over her shoulder so she could see her daughter.
Alice pushed a smile onto her face. “Nothing’s wrong, Mom. But I have school today, remember?” Her mother’s smile faded. “I’m sorry, it’s just…we’re going to have to make breakfast another day, okay?”
Josephine’s wrinkles seemed to show more, then, and she nodded slowly. “Oh, yes. Of course, I forgot.”
Alice breathed. “Okay, so, why don’t you clean some of this up and put it in the refrigerator. Just save it for the weekend or something.”
Josephine nodded reluctantly. “Yes. I just wanted to have a family breakfast, that’s all…”
Alice smiled at her mother and nodded again. “I know, Mom, and we will, but not right now.” She looked at her mother, who was looking around at the food so sadly. “So you’ll clean this stuff up?”
Her mother nodded.
Alice nodded, more to herself than to her mom, and turned to leave. But she paused. She turned around, leaned forward, and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you after school,” she said softly, and left the room.
She’d missed the bus, though. She didn’t have the strength to swear, really, so she just walked into her sister’s bedroom. “Ada?”
Ada glanced up from the backpack she was cramming her books into. “Ya?”
“We missed the bus. If the car’s here, which it should be, I guess I’ll have to drive you and Edgar. Can you be ready in ten minutes?”
Ada sighed. “Yeah, sure.”
Alice nodded and went to leave.
“Hey, Alice?”
“Hm?” She turned around.
“Is Mom…okay?” Ada’s eyes were full of worry.
Alice tried very hard to keep from sighing and rubbing her forehead. Her poor little sister. “Yes, she’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Just tell Edgar to be in the car in ten minutes.”
Alice left Ada’s room, rubbing her face distractedly and grinding her teeth. She had to get out of that habit. She knew that her mom either wouldn’t put the food away, but Alice didn’t have the strength to put it all away herself, and then be late to school and have to have an excuse for it, and have Alice and Edgar be late also…she stood up after putting her contacts in on her bedside table. This craziness has got to end, she thought.
They ended up leaving ten minutes later than she’d hoped, but that was no surprise. She dropped Ada at her middle school, then showed up at her high school with Edgar twenty minutes late. Alice did her makeup in the car quickly just before running in to her first class, where she swore loudly as she entered the room and realized she’d forgotten her English paper. A few kids and the teacher looked up at her as she cursed and she swallowed uncomfortably and walked to her desk. This day was not going well.






User Comments: [2] [add]
Kookie Monsda
Community Member
avatar
commentCommented on: Fri Nov 23, 2007 @ 02:37pm
The chaos! Ooo it's so great!!!


commentCommented on: Wed Nov 28, 2007 @ 02:59am
Well, see....I already told you over the phone how totally-amazingly-freakingly-fantastically-spazztastically (Emmy-Weezer's word)-magnificently amazing it was...so, yeah.

**SUPER EXCITED MEGA SPAZZTASTICAL GRACKLE TACKLE POUNCE GLOMP**



Zayah
Community Member
User Comments: [2] [add]
 
 
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