Whenever my brother's friends come to hang out at our place, my cheeks burn and I run up to hide in my room until they leave. It has been a year since that horrible incident happened but every single minute detail is still vividly emblazoned in my mind.
It was a blazing Saturday afternoon and I had just returned from cheerleading practice in school. The intense heat was unbearable so I decided to take a long bath, I sighed blissfully as I stepped into the bathtub and soaked in the foamy dewberry-scented bath. Closing my eyes, I started to relax and all the day's worries melted away.
As I was drifting off to sleep, the annoyingly shrill ringing of the phone broke the silence. Choosing to ignore it, I shut my eyelids and tried to relax. Soon the ringing ceased and the voice of my domineering, meddling and egoistical older brother called my name. " Raaaachel... you've got a call from Blake! " he shouted, stressing on Blake's name on purpose. Immediately my ears perked up! Did I hear wrongly? Blake is the hottest, most popular senior in school and I have a crush on him for half a year now. Hastily, I jumped out of the bathtub, wrapped a towel around myself and bounded down the stairs like a madman.
I was almost reaching the bottom, going down two steps at a time when suddenly I missed a step and lost my footing. Before I even knew it, I was flying down the stairs and landed at the bottom in a crumpled heap. Suddenly, laughter burst in my ears. My brother and his friends had witnessed the whole thing! Massaging the bruise on my hip, I wondered what cause their lack of sympathy when I suddenly realised I was touching my bare skin instead of the towel!
Somehow my towel has unravelled itself during the fall and had ended up on the other side of the room. Boy, I was mortified! To make things worse, one of my brother's nicer friends come over and helped me up, with his eyes gazing embarrassingly in another direction to avoid staring at my bare body and his hands scarcely touching my skin. He helped me get my towel and I hurriedly covered myself in record time. My cheeks burned flaming red, partly from the embarrassment and partly from the seething anger I was trying to control as I watched my dumb brother roll ridiculously on the ground, roaring with laughter. Thankfully his friends were polite to hide their laughter and only let out little snorts every now and then.
How I wished that I could melt into the ground and disappear that very moment. I got up and spun my heels ready to run back into the safety of my room when an object caught my eyes, the telephone was still off its hook. I suddenly remembered, Blake! Could he still be on the line? Well, at least one good thing happened today. I thought as I rushed over to pick up the phone. " Hello, Blake? " I said breathlessly into the phone, trying to sound as sweet as possible.
" Hello, Rach.... 'Blake' here! Ha! Ha! Just kidding, this is Nicky here. I thought it would be funny to pretend to be Blake! Ha! Ha! Ha! Did you fall for my trick? "
Yeah, I fell hard all right !
