Greed, paranoia, and peace signs

Chapter 3

A haze settled over the morning, so I wiped the crust out of my eyes and my hand flicked across something very peculiar...A flower? no,

no no no no no no no, I refuse to believe I went outside my comfy little- okay- big van. And with the tree hugger? no. I commenced my morning with the usual struggle to the bathroom. In a way I felt like Daedalus trapped in the labyrinth even if it was just being trapped with a curfew and the maze was actually the mess that somehow is still called a room. Oh, do you know who Daedalus is? I'm sorry I- sorry. You don't need to know I have a brain, no one does. not even the h-

"HEY," I shrieked. Ryan looked up from under my bed with the look of a cat...an evil, keniving, little, pudgy.....cat .

"hey yourself," he replied as i stared and studying. That scoundrel was under my microscope.

"get. out." I said, the threat so blatant that it was almost visible. he scrambled up from the floor and thumped his fore head on the bed frame biting back an ouch. I slammed the door behind him, I woke up confused, I had arisen to a maggot under my bed (which is much worse than a monster) and yet my heart had not caught up to me. the world was moving slow but my mind was moving fast. Its an odd sensation but its what I'm used to which means the words will start bubbling up. I'll stop them though, and them I'm off to the bathroom.

The sticky smell of girls fills my nostrils insantly. Sticky, the mix between body spray, alchohol, vomit, perfume, glitter, all from a night of dropping girls off at parties. You may recognize the scent in your average girl's bathroom at your local high school....uh maybe even gentlemen's club'

I rolled my eyes into quite a sight, "Nat?" no response from the limp figure of 9-year-old-shimmering-stain-of-glitz "Natalie?" I sang it this time. I was really beginning to worry until she flinched when I reached to her foot. I don't think you understand where her foot exactly was....it was deep sea diving in the muggy toilet bowl as she sat atop it's tank in a jumbled mess of arms, one stretched high, her wrist teetering on the battered towel rack, and the other in a chicken wing position behind her head as if the arm pillow was comforting. Her green tu tu was hiked up over her shoulder which donned a hot pink sweater that was probably a medium in women's. With a sigh I stuck a hand into the belly of the beast and pulled the wrinkled foot out along with her. Her hand that lay on the towel rack slid from it's tricky spot and found a new one very quickly. With a smack it landed on Nat's face, startling her.

"no no no!" a volatile child Nat was. Shaking her head she smeared the splat called makeup all over my shoulder and neck where she was slung over.

"honey, why on earth..."

" put me back! Trixiieeee" she whined banging on my shoulder.

"no hon, you'll hurt yourself"

"the other girls wake up like that!"

"I don't," shining her best pout she said,

" You're not cool enough!" yanking of my shoulder ended in her escape and skittered swivel away from me. What has gotten into this house?

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Lunchtime. No sign of the hippie, as usual. I didn't even know if I wanted to see him but something was holding my feet at gunpoint getting them to follow the carpet to the attic's stairway. It was kind of sad then, the realization that the carpet felt so nice here because no one touched it. No one out of the 26 kids in this damned house ever came near him. And yet I reached a hand for the string that opened the stairs that belonged to the tree hugger that lives in the attic. The stairs shot out and I climbed them daintily as if I would awaken a snoozing monster. I reached for the final step and CRACK

"shhh!" my yelp was silenced by his shush and my fall was avoided by the swift yank upwards into the attic. He was surprisingly strong for his scrawny limbs. "are you alright?" he said, inches from my face but yards into my comfort zone.

"yeah, the flight here had some annoying attendants but hey," and so started the ascend into a habitat.