The morning sun was shining brightly as it's light found it's way through the windowpane, creating little rainbows on the hardwood floors. Elayna could easily hear birds chirping outside of her window as she stood up from the queen sized bed and stretched. Today marked the eleventh day of her arrival in Sydney and she had been enjoying almost every aspect of visiting New South Wales.
"Elayna, are you awake, dear?" Mary called up the stairs. "I've made breakfast!"
"Coming, Nan!" She replied, putting her blonde hair in a messy ponytail before racing down the stairs.
If there was one thing Elayna loved most about staying at her Nan's, it was the breakfast food she made every Saturday. Mary went all out; bacon, toast, eggs, french toast, chocolate chip pancakes with peanut butter and practically every other breakfast foods.
Michael, as Elayna suspected he would be, was leaning on the kitchen counter. His fading pink hair was ruffled and his eyes looked tired, but he still smiled happily, like usual. For the past few days, he had been trying to get on Elayna nerves, and he succeeded easily most of the time. They made eye contact with one another before Elayna quickly looked away.
Like a normal family, which they certainly weren't, the three of them sat around the circle dining table and began eating the breakfast feast. Near the end of her meal, Elayna stopped eating to watch Michael devour a Vegemite sandwich. When she was ten, her older brother had convinced her to try a piece of toast with a large dollop of Vegemite smeared onto the buttery bread, and then she got physically sick. It was foul tasting- as if the world's most ill-tasting foods had come together as one. She wouldn't feed Vegemite to her dog let alone a human being- even Michael, so it was odd to see him eating the disgusting paste passed off as edible vegetable mush voluntarily. Apparently she stared at Michael with her face subconsciously slightly scrunched up for a little too long.
"What's wrong?"
"You're eating Vegemite," She frowned, squinting at the disgusting brown paste on the toast. "Why would you ever want to do that to yourself?"
He shrugged, "I like it,"
She made a face. "Vegemite isn't made of mushed vegetables like the label says, you know."
Mary looked down at her Vegemite sandwich suspiciously. "What's it made of, then?"
"The tears of small children, homophobia, sexism, famine, racism, poverty and people who put the milk in the bowl before the cereal and every other bad thing in the world."
Michael raised his eyebrow. "What's wrong with people who put milk before cereal?"
"Are you kidding me?" Elayna scoffed. "They challenge the very arrangement of life that humankind has spent countless years fabricating, which is already fragile enough as it is."
Michael stared. "It's just cereal."
"Today it's just cereal," She replied, "Tomorrow it's drug use and murders."
Michael chuckled, like she had amused him before he took another bite of the Vegemite sandwich, making sure the crunch of the toast was audible and gave her a smirk. She glared at him before excusing herself from the table to put her dishes in the sink and went upstairs to listen to music.
Silently jogging up the stairs, Elayna found her way to the bedroom effortlessly and threw herself onto the bed, lamely reaching for her iPhone and headphones. She closed her eyes whilst humming along to the instruments that filled her ears peacefully. Until, that is, her shoulder was nudged and an ear bud was ripped out of her ear. She scowled at Michael.
"Mary wants you to come with me to meet my band. She says you need more friends."
"Tell her I can't go. Make something up," Elayna told him, laying back down. "Feel free to be creative."
He sighed. "Just come on,"
There was something in his tone that warned her that if she refused to go voluntarily, he wouldn't hesitate to lug her to wherever his friends were. As she didn't want to get manhandled by the boy with coloured hair, she gave him the dirtiest look she could manage before grabbing her phone from the side table, walking down the stairs and stomping out the door. He followed behind.
They got into his car and he stabbed the ignition with a key, turning it and then letting it go. The engine roared as he pulled out of the driveway.
"So," Michael said after driving for a few minutes. "What's living in England like?"
"No, no, no. We are not making small talk, Michael. I hate it enough with people I actually like, let alone somebody I can't stand." She replied, then he gave her a look. She groaned to show her discontentment before answering. "It could be better, I guess. The people I know suck and the weather is crap. Are you happy now?"
"You're such a pessimist," He frowned. "And I thought British people were cheery,"
"And I thought Australians weren't such fucking wankers, but here you are." Elayna sang. "Guess we're both disappointed,"
"What about your life, though?" He continued as if Elayna hadn't said anything. "Mary said you were a perfect student, and a manager at a small restaurant with the sweetest boyfriend and you treat your little brothers like they're your own. She described you as a parent's dream child. Doesn't seem all that bad to me,"
"Well, apparently she's over-exaggerated," Elayna said nonchalantly as she scrolled through Twitter on her phone. "I'm far from my parent's dream, but they settle. Besides, I think they'd be more devastated if I was their dream child, like my brother. They get a kick out of going straight out and telling me I'm not good enough for their white picket fence family,"
"Oh," He said after a while. "I'm sorry to hear that."
Elayna glanced over at him as he concentrated on the road, his pink hair falling into his eyes as he drove. She noticed how inconveniently attractive he was, not that she had forgotten, and how his lips were pursed as if he was about to say something else but couldn't figure how to word it properly. He took a hand off of the steering wheel to push his hair out of his eyes and Elayna noted how he looked quite worried, as if he thought he had actually insulted her by bringing her life up.
"It isn't a sensitive subject, Michael. I know I'm not reaching their standards, it isn't really something that hurts my feelings. I wouldn't have told you if it was," She said to him slowly. "I know I could be good enough for all of them, I just don't try hard enough."
"Nobody should have to try hard, Elayna."
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Hiya, lovelies! So I just wanted to get it out there that I understand my writing can be confusing at times because I tend to interchange between using Canadian words and English words. The reason I do this is because I was born and raised in Canada, so I'm 100% Canadian, but my dad is an English citizen, so seeing as my dad taught me a good part of my vocabulary as I was growing up, it was inevitable that I learnt lingo of his country. This is particularly helpful in this book because Elayna is an English girl, but I know readers may not know what the words mean at all times and that could be frustrating to you guys. If you don't understand something I write, (like I know that fellow North Americans refer to pants as trousers whereas I was taught pants mean underwear like it does in the United Kingdom) please don't hesitate to message me, I'll be happy to explain. Thanks for understanding! xx
