BEEP BEEEP BEEEEEP BEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEEP Roxy flopped over in her bed and stared accusingly at the alarm clock, currently having a temper tantrum with her. That stupid alarm clock, Roxy thought. She had just come back from The Corner Store a few hours ago, a little after Jack had left.
Poor Jack. Her parents tended to be more suspicious of her than Roxy’s parents. It was always harder for Jack to sneak out. Roxy, however, could sneak out easily. Her parents didn’t pay much attention to her.
Roxy lay on her back for a while, staring up at the white ceiling. She kept telling herself she really ought to paint it someday, maybe a peaceful blue mural of the sky or an exotic depiction of a faraway island or the many faces of her favorite band members. But she never got the chance too. Roxy had so much on her plate; she barely had enough time to breathe.
“GET UP!” Her mom screamed through Roxy’s door obnoxiously loud as she did every. Single. Morning.
Roxy jumped. “Okay,” She yawned, stretching out her heavy limbs like a cat. Roxy ran her hands through her long, bright red hair, knotted and wound together in a messy bun piled on top of her hair.
Roxy swung her feet on the white carpet of her bedroom, still trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes. Suddenly the door to her room flung open with a massive bang. “RACHEL BLAKE!” Roxy’s Mom sat in the doorway, short and angry and tense, baring a long wooden spoon like an instrument of torture. “If you don’t get up right now I swear to God-“
Good morning to you too, Mom. Roxy thought. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, I’m up Mom I’m up I swear.” Roxy stood up with her hands above her head. “Please don’t release the wrath of your spoon on me, I’m innocent I swear.”
Mom didn’t find Roxy’s sarcasm funny. Then again, Mom never found anything about Roxy funny. She mostly found everything about Roxy weird or irritating.
“Stop lollygagging around young lady I haven’t got all day to wait, Rachel.” Roxy winced as Mom used her real name. She had always hated the name Rachel. The normality of it bothered her. And of course, there was the fact that her parents named her that. Her parents, who were less then excited for their second daughter. Chloe, their beautiful, fabulous, perfect first born. And then Roxy, a pure mistake, came along and they simply slapped the name Rachel onto her and went along pretending she didn’t exist. Chloe’s shadow was a tough thing to live in. Especially since it was huge and giant and in-your-face and, of course, perfect.
Roxy stared at herself in the mirror, like she did every morning. Evaluating every little piece of her, every little piece. Her round brown eyes, the color of wet dirt. So original. Her ears were, well, very intimidating, covered in various piercings, bars, and cuffs. Most of the stuff on her ears needed a tool of some sort to remove. Not that Roxy would ever imagine taking out her piercings. They were the one thing she felt genuinely belonged to her and nobody else.
Her hair was another thing. A long time ago, around seventh or eighth grade, Roxy’s Mom went off on her about failing an algebra test (which was so not her fault BTW). So Roxy decided to pay one of her sort of friends ten bucks to dye her hair bright red. Roxy would always cherish the image of her family’s faces when she came home that night. She ended up liking her bright hair and continued to dye it.
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Shadow Kids
Teen Fiction"It wasn’t just any old corner store. It was their corner store: all the broken kids, the misfits, the ones who hadn’t gotten so lucky.The kids who no one at home notices, the kids who don’t always belong. It was The Corner Store, the place that wa...
