I Know What Rhymes With Orange

Chapter 6 | The Bittersweet Truth

I Know What Rhymes With Orange

Chapter 6

The Bittersweet Truth

   I don’t know much about Charlotte Bareto. I know that she’s been around ever since I was born. Know that she and father met at a group therapy session. I also know that she started raising me full time by the time that I was about four years old. Other than that she’s basically a stranger to me. I don’t think she’s American, nor do I think she’s ever spoken a drop of the English language before she lost her hearing. She doesn’t enjoy animals, especially the small kind. She’s a lazy bum who doesn’t want to do anything on her own. Oh yeah, and she tried to kill me.

    Charlotte and I don’t communicate with each other when we do not have to, and I quite like it that way. She’s the kind of woman, men fall for in an instant, marry, then regret that decision almost immediately. Charlotte’s such a nagging Nancy, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why my father has decided to keep her around. I actually suggested that we sold her on the blackmarket one time, but he of course declined. If you could love that woman, you could just about love any other creature on this godforsaken planet.

This afternoon Emery and I finally decide to stop procrastinating and actually start working on our winter break group project. Ms. Civil had assigned groups of threes, and unfortunately our third member was currently in Canada, riding moose and eating turkey bacon.

“Hello-o? Can you hear me?” The only reply we get is the static shuffles from the speakers of the laptop. I look over at Emery as if he would have all the answers, but all he does is pulls a face as he shrugs. I groan, right as I hear the chat sound go off. I click over to the message bar and read the message sent by Rooney. “She wants us to hang up and call her again.”

“Okay, well do it then.”

I scrunch my face in disapproval of his tone of voice. “I’m just going to ignore your attitude.” And again all I get is a shrug.

With a sigh of somewhat frustration I send the call again. The ringing starts again, and almost immediately it is stopped and replaced with the voice of my best friend. “Skype is such poop!”, is her greeting to us.

I shake my head at her first words. “Well who told you to go to Canada?”

Her video camera is turned on and her face suddenly appears on the illuminated screen. “Oh come on, you know I had to come here eventually.” The pixelated video of Rooney made her look orange and fat and so I made sure to tell her my observations. “Oh, gee thanks. I actually am orange though, probably a little fat, too.” We watch as we see her look down at some mystery area not visible to the camera. “Anyway, what’s up?”

“You’re pretty calm for a Rooney,” Emery says as he scoots uncomfortably close to me.

“ ‘A Rooney’ ?” I question. My hand accidently touches Emery’s as I attempt to move my body a bit away from him. Both our eyes shift down to our hands, before quickly snapping towards each other.

“Yeah, ‘a Rooney’? What do you take me for, brother?”

His eyebrows drew together. He glance back down at our hands, bronze on white, before pulling his away. “I take you for ‘a Rooney’.” His words came out with a hint of sarcasm shading over them. His smirk was directed towards the laptop with his sister’s face plastered on it.