Hunters And Foxes

Chapter One

Sweat drips across my forehead as I battle the punching bag that hangs down from the ceiling of our garage. Upbeat music fills my ears through my headphones. I should probably stop I've been exercising since I got home from school and that was two hours ago. I bend down to retrieve my towel and water bottle from the ground. I probably shouldn't shower just yet, because I haven't cooled down. I pull my headphones out taking a sip of the chilly water.

I am suddenly brought back to the reality of my house. I can hear my four old brother Luca screaming about not wanting to eat his broccoli and Mum struggling to win the battle.

"C'mon Luca after this you can have ice cream," Mum says as I walk into the kitchen,

"Yay! Can we have Cookies and Cream?" Kyra my blonde messy haired seven year old sister pipes up from the other end of the table. They have this conversation almost every day.

"Ooh sounds too good," I tell her waving the chocolate sauce around in the air startling them all.

"Oh hey love. We'll just get the little ones into bed and then we can make our dinner," Mum says sneakily eating the last of Luca's broccoli. While his attention is focused on the digger working at the new house being built across the road.

"Perfect plan. I'll go get the ice cream while you shower the kids," I blow her a kiss.

I really look up to my mum. Every day she wakes up early to go for a run, comes home, gets the kids ready for school and preschool then drops us all at our form of education, goes to work at her fashion boutique, comes home, makes the kids dinner while they make a mess of the lounge and their bedrooms, feeds and bathes them, makes me and her dinner and only at 8:30ish each night does she get to breathe easy. Ever since my dad died two years ago, she has had to be a solo parent to 6 children. People still look at us with pity in our large forest suburb. He died in a hunting accident, someone mistook him and his friends for an animal and shot him.

We have to walk to the granny flat outside to get to the freezer. Because Mum has turned the garage into a gym. The granny flat holds so many memories for me like sleepovers with my old best friends- now lost to the popular crowd, and renovating it with Dad and painting the walls. I can hear the kids singing with Mum in the bathroom as I grab two bowls from the just finished dishwasher. I scoop two big balls of ice cream each, then cover them in chocolate sauce.

"Thank you 'nelope," Luca says when he walks back into the room dressed in a racing car onesie and a towel wrapped around his shaggy chocolate brown hair. It is so cute that he almost always doesn't say the "Pe" in Penelope. He is the only one who calls me " 'nelope" and it's his own name for me. Everyone just says my name how it is. Dad used to call me "loopy" or "Peneloopy" and it had always annoyed me especially when I was in my snotty teenager phase- sadly enough it was right before he died. I look back at that silly sixteen year old and cringe. I lost my last moments with Dad because I was so caught up in myself.

"You're welcome," I say kissing his and Kyra's cheeks before heading upstairs to my bathroom to shower.

It feels good to wash away all the sweat and grime of the day. I laugh to myself thinking about Storm- my best friend's mishap today when she accidentally walked into the boys' bathroom today in the newly built art block. She saw Hue (the head jock) and Eva (my old best friend and Queen Bee) having a quickie.

Eva and I don't hate each other we just have different definitions of high school success. For me I just want to do well academically and be recognised enough socially to be invited to things. I used to want, just like her to be head of the social ladder and get all the hot boys. But after Dad died and Eva, Darcy, Opal and Lexi distanced themselves because they had no clue how to comfort me. For months I only went to school once every two weeks to get my school work. Life did a complete turnaround for me. Then one day I was walking home from the supermarket and Storm came up to me. She had been in many of my classes and we spoke regularly before Dad died. After he died, the Penelope who everyone knew as the smiley, happy, friendly girl just disappeared. But Storm made an effort talking to me. She didn't pity me or look at me like a broken china doll. She told me how much she missed my funny skits in drama and how even though I wasn't at school most of the time that I was top in history class. We exchanged numbers and she slowly helped me out of the trench I had dug for myself and eventually cheerful Penelope returned.