Faster Than Your Bullets

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"You really should eat more." Mrs. Duncan says, attempting to place another sausage on my plate. I quickly withdraw my plate and politely refuse.

"Thank you, but I'm really full." I send her an apologetic smile. This is how every breakfast feels like. Mrs. Duncan can become very enthusiastic when it comes to food. And like a package deal, coming along with enthusiasm are criticism and maybe even aggressiveness.

Mrs. Duncan shakes her head disapprovingly.

"You're just like my niece. She's fifteen and I tell you, the last time I saw her, she was starving herself. Fifteen and survive on nothing but cucumber and blackberry yogurt! Yogurt!" She emphasizes, clearly irritated. "Distasteful!"

I laugh. "Calm down, Ellen." Ellen is her first name. "You can be assured that won't survive on just vegetables." I can't promise on yogurt, though - I think to myself. And to show her my point, I take the sausage from the pan she's holding and shove it in my mouth. Lucky for me, it's just a small one, or else I'll probably choke and die.

"I can't understand why girls nowadays want to be skeleton skinny." She continues, washing the greasy pan more forcefully than necessary, her head still shaking with such force of disapproval that her tight hair bun is becoming undone.

"Not 'skeleton skinny'", I bite an apple. "We just want to be thin enough to be, you know" Smoking hot? No, I can't say that to her "attractive."

Big mistake. She snorts. "I find thinness not one bit attractive. Not one bit. Back in my village, the beauty–"

Oh no. She's talking about her home village again. I'm not trying to be mean but seriously, that place is pure boredom. But it seems unbelievably, impossibly interesting to her, and every time she gets the chance to tell stories about her village, it will, one way or another, come across the famous banyan tree that was brought from India by her great-great-grandpa about, I don't know, a squillion years ago? Anyways, it was okay hearing it once or twice, but when the times I've heard the stories has caught up with the damn tree's age, it's really unbearable. And unbearable it has been for about five years.

"I remember out fantastic Great Tree. We used to call it The Greatness." Oh no. "You may not know this, but my great-great-grandfather, being a brave adventurer, brought it to us when it was just a tiny plant. All the way from–"

"India, I guess?" I interrupt her, standing up and start backing to the stairs. "It sounds like a cool story, but look, it's almost late!" I exclaim dramatically, pointing at the clock. "Peter's picking me up this morning. I better get dressed."

But Mrs. Duncan has sunk too deep in her story to hear me. So I just run upstairs, leaving her with her boring flashbacks. A banyan tree is the last thing I need today, or any day.

I take a quick shower and dry my hair. Opening my closet, I select a pair of skin tight jeans a white plain T-shirt then put them on. It shouldn't be too chilly today, I hope.

"When you're rich, you can buy the whole world." I hum and wiggle to the crappy music that comes from my mouth. I can't sing for the sake of my life, but I enjoy my efforts. And it seems like I'm the only one who enjoy it. Peter, being a person who can actually make a proper musical sound, often looks down on my singing and Pamela, being Pamela, just told me straight off that I sound like a cow in labor, to which I replied "With friends like you, I don't need an enemy." She just winked and said that was what friends were for.

After putting on my makeup, I hurry downstairs and watch TV in the living room while waiting for Peter. By means of "watching TV", I actually refer to "watching SpongeBob Square Pants". I'm not a fan of the series but find it pretty cool.