Going Nowhere

Waiting for Wonderland - 1

Cracks spread across my ceiling like spider webs.

For the past twenty minutes since I’d woken up, I’d just been laying on my back in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. This happened almost every morning, especially in the winter, since I never wanted to get up and face the world. My bed was just too comfy.

After another moment, I let out a sigh, and I rolled to the edge of my bed and stood up. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and shoved my hands in the pockets of my sweatpants, and I padded out of my bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. As I turned on the coffee maker, I heard the sound of footsteps behind me, and I turned around to see Phoebe standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Morning,” she grumbled, and she walked into the kitchen and plopped down at the kitchen table.

“Well aren’t you full of sunshine?” I replied with a chuckled, and I pulled a mug out of one of the small cabinets.

“Is there coffee?” Phoebe asked, perking up as the smell of fresh coffee wafted through the kitchen. “Can you pour me some?”

“Since when do you drink coffee?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You’re thirteen. Doesn’t caffeine, like, stunt your growth?”

“You’re one to talk,” Phoebe scoffed, and she pushed away from the table and grabbed herself a mug.

The girl had a point. Even though she was five years younger than me, Phoebe was a good four inches taller than me, and she wasn’t even close to stopping. Height ran in our family, and I seemed to have gotten the short end of the stick, literally.

That wasn’t the only difference between my family’s genetic pool and me. Phoebe was the perfect blend of my parents; she had my dad’s dark, chocolate brown hair and my mom’s light hazel eyes. The only way you could tell I was related to my family was that I had my father’s dark gray eyes.

“Pheebs,” I said, leaning against the kitchen counter with the steaming mug clutched n my hands, “Do you know if dad came home last night?”

“I dunno,” she replied with a shrug, “Maybe. I went to bed early, so I wasn’t even awake when you got home.” I bit my lip as Phoebe fixed herself some coffee, and after a moment, I sighed and started out of the kitchen, grabbing an apple on the way.

I slipped down the hallway and quietly opened my dad’s bedroom door. Instead of finding him passed out in his bad, my dad’s bedroom was vacant. “Fantastic,” I muttered sarcastically, and I walked out of his room and down the hall to mine.  I would be late to school, yet again, because I’d be too busy searching dumpy bars for my dad.

I stripped out of my pajamas and pulled my school uniform out of my pile of unfolded clothes. I pulled on a pair of black leggings and my red and blue plaid skirt. I shrugged on a white button-down shirt, and I didn’t bother tucking it into the skirt. I pulled on a pair of worn combat boots, which were definitely against the dress code of my school, and I wrapped a red tie around my neck. After fixing it into a sloppy knot, I grabbed my hurriedly completed homework and shoved it into my backpack.

I took one bite of my apple and winced, and I tossed it in my trash can. I picked up all my school things and walked down the hall to the living room, where I dumped it on the couch. “Phoebe!” I called as I placed my used mug in the kitchen sink, “We need to get going or you’ll be late to school.”

“Coming!” she replied, and I pulled my jacket out of the closet and tugged it on. Just as I wrapped a thin scarf around my neck, Phoebe walked into the living room. Her uniform was perfectly neat, and every dark hair on her head was in place. We were complete opposites when it came to our school uniforms.