Isolation (Book #1 of the Taylor Series)

Twenty-Three

The weekend before Thanksgiving and my inevitable doom didn't take as long as I would've liked. With my parents and all of my siblings being able to pack their clothes and rushing to put them in the car, it seemed to go by in a blur. I tried to put my brain in a good mental position to take care of a child, I even read some baby entries in some fashion magazines but it didn't show me much help. 

The worst part about the entire situation was that Amelia and Adam tried to make my life a living hell up until they left. Adam woke me up on Saturday morning by pouring ice water on me, and when I tried to get up to chase after him, Amelia slammed shaving cream in my face and even played an air horn right by my ear. You'd think that that would've been the worst of it, but obviously, it wasn't. Whenever I went to work on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, they both came with me to make sure that I didn't speak to Blake.

If I'm being honest, they did a very good job and were extremely effective. That's a given though because someone as normal as Blake wouldn't want to approach a girl on her lunch break when she's sitting with two loud kids who are throwing their food at each other. It wouldn't have been too bad, maybe Blake could've ignored that aspect, but then they started acting far worse.

 With Adam and Amelia, there's always something worse. There's never an end to their antics. Never.

Every time Blake started walking towards our table-- I suppose he worked up the nerve-- they kept yelling weird things at him. I don't mean weird like "Oh dude, that's kind of weird", I mean weird as in, "Are these two thirteen-year-olds actually human?" The answer is no. They aren't human. They turn fourteen in January and they still act like a bunch of wild five-year-olds. Scratch that, even Nathan is more mature than them, and he actually is five.

They began to shout things along the lines of, "That sack is freaking huge dude, even bigger than your actual sack." I suppose in referral to the bag containing his laptop and of course... The other sack... 

After only a few minutes of this going on, Blake gave me an apologetic yet curious look before he walked out of the store. Thankfully, he did invest in a coffee before he left so Peterson didn't yell at me for the loss of a customer due to my siblings. If I had gotten fired, I definitely would have been way more mad than I already was.

Now, I'm here. In the kitchen, staring Gavin down as he relaxes in his high chair, and I wonder what ten-month-old babies are supposed to eat. This could be easier to determine if Ellie had left a list as to what I'm supposed to feed her son. A list of any kind could've helped honestly. But she didn't. 

She left in a hurry, locking all of the technology in their room, not even leaving me my phone. I'll bet she didn't think this far ahead. Now, as the most intellectual person in the family, I'm supposed to somehow determine what my baby brother is supposed to eat. How? It would've been smart of me to observe Dad whenever he fed Gavin before they left, but I was too busy thinking about how Blake and I had a near kiss.

A kiss that could have been very well discussed if Amelia and Adam weren't such extraterrestrial monsters. If they knew how it important it was for me to see Blake, they would have allowed me to see him. To speak to him. All I needed was a minute alone with him. A literal minute, not a Mom minute. 

 But no. Now I'm here, and nothing has been solved. I don't know what Gavin eats, and I don't know if Blake is interested in me. Interested interested. I don't mean the "I sorta like you, but I don't know." I mean the "I like you and I think we could potentially have a successful romantic relationship that won't be a complete waste of time or last a maximum of two weeks." interested. 

I needed to know this. It was vital information.

I'm lost and boys are an unwinding sea full of changing currents and storms. How am I supposed to figure this out? There's no boy dictionary or boy encyclopedia. If there was, I'd gladly invest-- oh my god. I wouldn't even be able to invest in that stupid book because I'm broke trying to pay for Julie's tuition. To a summer school. Not even a college class. A summer school. A thousand dollars for two months when one entire school year at Desert Sands costs  five thousand!