How not to die-50 tips or so

Chapter 1-cartwheeling

1-Cartwheeling from bed to bed is a nice way to break your neck. And die. So what on earth else would I be doing?

As one would expect, I end up in a very uncomfortable position. I am, however, alive. I have one leg under my chin and the other sticking straight up in the air. My head is thrust backward (See! Broken neck is a possibility!) and my arms are pinned down-one folded under my head and the other glued to my side. My thick brown hair is ALL OVER. Meaning my vision is currently at about 2/200. Luckily, my goal has been accomplished.

From the creaking of the bed and the little I can see, I can assume that Meggie, my older sister, is now awake. A few seconds later, she speaks, confirming my assumptions.

"My god, Shia, what did you do?!" (AN: Unfortunately, there is no interrobang key, so I have to make do.)

"Um, I tried to kidnap the country of Russia. What does it look like I did?"

"I'm just getting the impression that you fail at life," Meggie replies.

"Hey, it's not my fault that my hand just magically went into the six inch gap between our beds and dragged me with it," I reply tartly.

"Six inch? That gap is at least two feet," Meggie says.

"Well excuse me for not being able to fit all of this sexy amazingness into a six inch gap! Hotness expands, remember?" I say.

"Isn't that an interesting way of calling yourself fat," Meggie says drily.

"It may or may not be. Now let's focus on the more important matter of getting me out of here. My neck is going to start cramping up if we don't hurry," I say with a bit of urgency.

Meggie kicks my side to tip me over and I land with an oomph. I spring to my feet and flip my hair off of my face.

"Time to get up," I say. "Breakfast is in fifteen minutes and we leave in thirty."

"Thirty minutes! Why didn't you wake me up earlier?" Meggie says, panicked.

"I forgot," I say with a shrug.

I walk into the bathroom to brush my hair, having already gotten ready, but my hair is full of knots again. This time I put it in a simple low ponytail that I'll probably pull out the second I get to school. For hair that only goes a few inches past my shoulders, it gets in my way a lot.

Meggie rushes into the bathroom while pulling on her jeans. As soon as she gets them up, she starts digging into her makeup bag to "make herself pretty," as she explains it to my little brother.

"So, you prepping for clown college?" I mock, peering at all the overly-bright colors inside her makeup bag. "Why do you even have a neon purple? You complain all the time about how horrible the color is."

"Not now Shia!" she says, brushing her hair so she can pin it back.

"Woah, are you done with your makeup already? It looks nice," I say, impressed.

"Shia! I haven't put any on yet! I have to do my hair first!"

"Right," I slowly back out of the bathroom. "I'm gonna get some, uh, socks."

As it turns out, I do have to grab socks because I manage to step in a random puddle of water that I cannot find when trying to clean it up. Twice. I walk over the beds to avoid the chance of stepping in the magic puddle again, and I go downstairs for pancakes.

Five minutes before we have to leave, I look up from putting the last of my things into my backpack to see Meggie come downstairs with her shirt half buttoned and mismatched socks. She yanks on some shoes and shoves folders and notebooks into her backpack, then straightens up, slings her bag on her back and grabs a pancake.

"Wow," is all I can say. "Your shirt's buttoned wrong," I add.

She glares at me, then fixes the buttons.

I shrug and grab the peanut butter jar from the cupboard and a spoon from the table.

"Come on girls, time to go," my dad says. I am a junior, and Meggie is a senior, but we don't have a ride in, so we take the car in with dad on his way to work and ride the bus home. Davey, our eight year old brother, rides in with mom, who is the fourth grade teacher at his school.

I get in the car with my peanut butter, and Meggie follows me.

"You know," she comments, "One day your metabolism will fail you, and you will get fat from eating all the time."

AN: I have no idea where I'm going to go with this story. In further notice, it took me four tries to spell no. I just wanted to write about trying to cartwheel from one bed to another. I will write more about this, though. I don't know what, but it will happen. The title is too amazing for me not to. I can't have that genius and then abandon it. Also, I have no idea how to add pictures that I have saved to my camera roll, so I don't know how to show you the characters. I do not know the people in the pictures, but my laptop has a feature where I can google search the imag,e (do all laptops do that?) and those were the people it identified.