Saturday the 14th of February (Julie's arrival)
We were all forced to wake up early to great her at the door. I remember watching her stupid face climb out of the cab and my mother running to her and and practically bowing at her feet like she was a god.
"Mom! I can't believe you still live here, this place is so revolting," Julie shad said the same exact thing every time she came home for the holidays. "And David and Katy! I missed you guys." Her sentiment was unconvincing. Time for the sucky hostess game to take off.
"Katy, are you still wearing that hoodie?" She moved her eyebrows in that condescending way that makes you want to punch her.
Mom and dad carried her luggage into the store, as she stared disgusted at the old brick building that made up our house and drop off shop. People gave us their old stuff and we sold, traded and sometimes just gave them away so we didn't have to look at them any more. We had 60 different clocks in the store, my job was to keep the ticking all in unison otherwise it drove us completely insane.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock! That was the noise Julie had worked through since she was 7 years old, now that she was in her third year of college, she dreaded that annoying click.
"something wrong there, Julie?" Smugly, I moved my tongue around my teeth. Julie smiled nervously trying to ignore the ticking. I hated it, too, but she certainly didn't need to know that and besides, I never hated as much as she did.
Suddenly, a terrible, mischievous, perfect idea. A clock across the room was about to lose time with the other clocks, when it started to drag it would wind Julie up so much that she'd leave that second. But the rest of my family hated it, too, including me, but people always have to make sacrifices or at least avoid irritating clocks.
After laying around the abandoned rec centre for an hour I finally figured out how to keep myself busy while the psychotic ticking made my families brains explode. Outside, in the backyard of the kids club, was an enormous canyon where the older kids slid down the sides of it and built forts in the hole.
A memory boomed in my head.
"So this new Ms has got keys to all of the rooms in this place..."
I had entirely forgotten about it until then. The keys!
The big boys were just down in the hole, completely accessible, I could've gone down there and made them a deal that would make me happy and might have made them happy but if it didn't I would not have cared. Instead, I lost my balance and I tumbled down the sides of the canyon right to where the 6th grades were playing around. They burst out laughing as I stumbled to an upright position. I shook me head to get the dirt out of my ears, wiped the blood off of my knee and looked at them as if I were their superior even though I had just made a fool of myself I front of the most powerful people on the playground.
They continued to laugh.
"I'm fine, thanks for asking." I was annoyed.
"We never asked!" One of the members of the entourage chuckled. "Beat it, kid before we beat you."
"Oh, we're already threatening, are we? That was 4 minutes earlier than I expected , one step ahead of me, very nice, boys."
"What do you want, Katy, we all know when you want somethin'."
"Fine, I want the master keys from that new ms, I can make you a good deal for them"
"Talk"
"You give me the master keys, I give you the keys to the teachers lounge, the kitchen and the science rooms so you can cook meth."
"Very tempting, Katy. But we're gonna need the keys to the art rooms as well, We've been told that the paint in there gets ya higher than any drug you could find in the science room."
"Fine, those, too. So will you do it?"
"You've got a deal, Katy." we spit on our hands and shook. The deal was done
