Our Bittersweet Lives

[two]

This morning I actually woke up on time, so I don't have to run like a madwoman to catch my train, and I can eat breakfast in my house.
Normally, I'm definitely a morning person (once I get out of bed). But lately I've been waking up super tired. I'm just exhausted all the time, I have no energy for anything. Which isn't good, because I have my Drama production of Pocahontas coming up, and also a cross country meet later this week. I just hope I find my energy by then.

At school, I sit down at my desk in form. Mrs Wilkes walks in 10 minutes later, yells at us, takes the register, yells at us, reads the notices, yells at us, then yells at us to leave for lessons.

First thing on a Wednesday - English. I actually like my English teacher, he's nice and sympathetic, and lets you get away with pretty much anything. So I walk into my English classroom and slip into my seat at the back, next to Regina.

We're doing Romeo and Juliet at the moment. I hate it because I get so confused with the language, and with my dyslexia, I get the letters and words mixed up which is so embarrassing!

Anyway, the English lesson draws to a close as Mr Drow tells us our homework is an essay on how Shakespeare uses rhyme and structure to make his work flow and create drama and atmosphere. It has to be at lease two sides of A4. How am I supposed to write that much about nothing!?

Moving on, now I have P.E., at the moment we are doing athletics and it's great, I love it, except for the fact that my chest pains came back right at the end, and my games teacher sent me to the nurse. I was really tired still, too. Uh my life is going to pot.

At the nurse's block, I am asked what is wrong, and to describe the pains. I do so, and then Nurse Bellwether tells me to just lie down and rest on the nice comfy beds. Which means I miss Art.

Oh no. What a tragedy. It's not like I hate Art. Noooooo. Not at all! Nope! Don't hate it. At all.

Well maybe a little. Or a lot. Perhaps.

I lay in the bed, reading my book for a while, until Nurse Bellwether tells me it's time to go back to lessons now that my pains have subsided. I get up, feeling a little faint as the blood rushes to my head, but manage to walk back to class safely, and arrive to Spanish just 10 minutes late. I sit next to Kate for Spanish, and she's always copying my work. She's very smart, but most of the time she can't be bothered, and so we joke about for the whole lesson. I just happen to be better at multitasking that Kate is, so I can joke and write at the same time, but Kate can't. So she ends up copying. It's cool.

After Spanish, and our teacher springing yet another assessment on us, I walk to lunch with Kate, and the twins, who are also in Spanish with me. Regina's at tennis training and May is at debate club with her friend there called Isabel.

Lunch is Chicken Kiev, peas and sautéed potatoes, my favourite. Now for the afternoon of school - French.

Once the bell finally rings, I head out of French and down to Room 16 for my detention. Yay. I sit in the quiet room for half an hour, twiddling my thumbs, before Mrs Wilkes lets me, and the other six kids, out. I walk to the station and catch the next train that stops at my station. As I sit down, I cough. My eyebrows raise in surprise. I never get colds. Ever. Or coughs, or common viruses in general. So why am I coughing?

I disembark from the train at my station, walk home and then let myself in, grab an apple from the fruit bowl and head up to my room. Running a hand over my desk, I sit down in front of the clean, empty white surface and get my books out for homework.

An hour later, my mum arrives home. By now, my cough is so bad I'm coughing in every sentence, at least. I'd tell Cameron, but I don't know where he is. Probably at a mate's house while he's back from France.

My mum makes risotto for dinner, and I eat quickly, then rush back up to my room to keep going with homework. I hate having homework due in the next day, so I try to do as much as I can the day I get it. Most of the time it doesn't work out, but hey, I try.

Just before I'm about to slip into bed, May texts me.

theres a new boy in debate. i think you should check him out - he's hot!!!!! ;)

I smile. It's a joke within our friendship group, that I'm the only one who doesn't, or hasn't ever been in a relationship. Both the twins, who, might I add, are stunningly beautiful, are currently in a relationship (with different boys, of course). May had a boyfriend a few years ago, as did Regina, while Kate has had two girlfriends in the past. So it's just hardworking, studious little me who hasn't.

I text her back -

Sure! point him out 2 me in scl tomoz xxxxxxx night Mayday

Then I smile again, plug my phone into charge, and lay my head on my pillow.

I wake up more than three times in the night, coughing, and in the end just go downstairs and get a glass of water and some cough sweets to suck on. It helps a little, and I'm able to sleep until morning after that. But when I wake up to the sound of ducks quacking coming from my phone, my cough hasn't gone away at all. It's still just as bad. I'm starting to get seriously worried now, as I've noticed the pains come back anytime I do and sort of exercise more taxing than a walk. What could it be?

I ask the girls over lunch today, and they still say I should get it checked out. I'm starting to agree, though I don't know when I would.

After yet another boring, long day at school, I head home, popping into the photo printing shop on the way. I want to print off a photo of me and and the girls from when we went to the beach last summer. I bough a frame a few weeks ago, and really want to have a photo of the girls on my bedside table. If my parents let me. My mum's a neat freak, so "every single surface in the whole house has to be spotless and empty, Taegan!"

Yeah. It's a pain, but dem be the rules. So I just hope mum lets me put my picture up.

As its a Thursday, I start making dinner once I get home. My parents won't be home until late tonight because it's the weekly dinner with their office. So, of course, it makes sense for the youngest person in the house to make dinner. Yep. Please note the sarcasm.

With the spaghetti made, I sit at the table and start eating. Samantha has dance on Thursdays, and Judy was staying after school again. I swear, she may as well live in that place with the amount of time she spends there. Honestly. I'm sure it's not healthy for one girl to spend so much time in a closed, empty room, in neon lights, sculpting or drawing or sewing or something of the sort. She should get out more. But of course, if I suggested that, mum and dad would have my head, because they love that Judy stays after school and works so hard. They're "so, so proud!" of her. And they would tell me I was just jealous, so to stop being spiteful.

When I've finished eating, I retreat to my room to do some homework and text the girls, because I'm lonely. A while later, I hear the door bang shut, and then again. Mantha and Judy can warm up their own dinner. I can't be bothered.

I change into my pyjamas early, get into bed and read for a while. Eventually, I drop into a light sleep, only to be awakened when my parents storm into the house at some ungodly hour of the evening, giggling and talking obnoxiously loudly.

Of course. They're drunk again. Fantastic. I'm hoping they got a lift home.

As they walk past my room to get to theirs, I hear mum say,
"We should really send Taegan to boarding school! Then she would stop being the annoying youngest wannabe of the house, and, as a bonus, we might be able to leave her there when we go on our trip to THE GREAT BARRIER REEF!!!!" She shouts the last part.
My eyes open wide. a) boarding school?! Really?! And b) they're going to the Great Barrier Reef!!!??? Possibly without me?!

My eyes fill with tears but I don't let them fall. I always knew they didn't really want me, but to hear it from their mouths, albeit drunk mouths, was a shock. But if that's how they want to play, then fine. I can be distant. I can stop caring and be in my own little world if that's what they'd like.

Eventually, the tears do slip from my eyes, but silently. I fall asleep with my pillow and cheeks damp with salty water.