The white rabbit club

Chapter 2 - Sloane, friday

Authors note: Hey Guys! Thank you so much for the reads! Hope you enjoy this chapter!
TW: Implied SH and SA

My alarm sounded at 6. I got up on instinct and walked down the stairs. It took me a while to realise despite the fact that it's Friday, I wasn’t not going to school. Ugh. I sat at the kitchen table and flicked through my phone. The door opened after a few minutes. It’s Edie. No one else would be up at 6 unless they had to be. “Pancakes?” I asked her, slipping off the bar stool and helping her onto it. She nods immediately. The kitchen’s nice. A mixture of oak wood and white plastic, that you’d think looks cheap, but the constructors did a good job at making it look elegantly bohemian. I found what I was looking for in the 3rd cupboard I looked in, doing a great job at looking incompetent in my own house. I opened the pancake mix into a bowl, added in the stuff it needed and started to let the first one cook. Edie talked about her new toy, she propped up in the seat next to her while I was doing this. When she fell silent I took advantage of it and asked her to pick out what she wanted as a topping, gesturing to the fridge and the cupboard where we kept the spreads and jams. She asks if I can flip it.

“Let's see!” I laughed, she put her toppings on the counter and turned to me. I used to do this when I was younger. When we lived in a 2 bedroom flat in the middle of town, we worried about the price of milk and gas, instead of the next new fad, or our reputation. Simpler times, for everyone. I remember that. Turns out I also remembered how to flip pancakes. Edie squealed in a mixture of delight and horror as it flipped in the air and landed in the pan. I left it to finish cooking, and Edie talked animatedly about her school. I smiled, I was genuinely glad at least one of us was happy. She mixed peanut butter, marmalade, maple syrup, marshmallows and hundreds and thousands on one pancake and I let her, despite my own disgust, because why shouldn’t she?* She ate it up claiming ‘it's the tastiest thing she's ever eaten’.

We made pancake after pancake. She ate 9 and I ate one - the misshapen one I flipped too soon, and that suited us both just fine. She went off to watch early-morning cartoons while I cleared up the kitchen. I finished just before Mummy comes down. She asked if I’ve already eaten. I told her I made pancakes for me and Edie. She nodded, and I was dismissed.

I changed into a light blouse and short denim shorts I brought when out shopping with my friends, because according to Romilly, ‘every girl needs a slutty pair of shorts’; before I hunted what I needed for ‘lessons’. I took 4 notebooks down, A5 and virtually identical. I learnt to avoid fights where you can. I took down 8 pens. The fancy kind you buy on Tottenham court road, but I have to keep a vast supply of it because no pen of mine has lasted me more than 3 months before I lose it apart from an incredibly old biro which I still have despite deliberately trying to lose it. I brought down the fat quarters, wool, and thread from a guest room that also served as a craft room along with my laptop and my guitar too. I picked up a half finished E. Lockhart book and took that down with the vast amounts of paper from last night's planning session.
*Several reasons: Type 2 diabetes to start.
The dining room table was busy with flannel pyjamas and eyes crusted from sleeping-pill-induced unconsciousness. My grandparents had arrived in casual summer clothes, when I emerged at 7:30, but I only popped by the kitchen for my coffee. Edie was still watching cartoons. I set schools up in the playroom. We kept the old dining table in there and all manner of other stuff. It was one of the only rooms that wasn’t a bedroom but it was a bit of everything else though. Office, cinema, gym, storage, lounge, and of course playroom. I could barely believe it still manages to grasp an air of dignity and elegance when it was essentially a dumping ground for things we need, but not things deemed worthy of display - guess a team of cleaners do that. I pulled out the table, possibly the only thing my family still owned from Ikea, though long ago, another house was almost entirely flat pack. I set stuff up. Connected my laptop to the projector, laid the table with notebooks, pencils and rubbers, not plates, crockery and drinking glasses. I made powerpoint presentations with gifs and photos and fancy fonts for vain attempts to maintain their attention. I printed off instructions, worksheets and schedules. I fished out multicoloured pieces of card and sparkly gel pens because the others are still blissfully naive, even Astor, and I knew I wanted to be keeping it that way. I will fill their heads with useless skills they will never need again, and keep their heads full of rock cakes, fresh lemonade and unicorn party dresses. Use their happiness as an excuse for my cowardice. I’m finished. Amazing what a caffeine-induced, self loathing, energy burst can do.