Almost Friends

Chapter 8- Mia

Chapter Eight

Mia

Self-Medicating

I throw my backpack down by the front door and drop my keys on our new oak foyer table. My father broke the old one last week. Mom didn't care; she said it was time for a new one anyway. That's the kind of thing my mom says when Dad breaks things. Always.

"Nadrine," I shout, pausing in front of the foyer's decorative mirror and glancing at my hair. "I'm home!"

I round the corner into our sitting room, my heels clicking against the marble tile.

The sitting room is the prettiest part of our house. When my father announced that he wanted our house redecorated, Mom was too stressed out to handle the entire project. So me and some flaming NOLA decorator took care of all of the downstairs. I really like what I did with the sitting room: I decked it out in ivory with gold trim and the gay dude decided that the room should also be peppered with orchid arrangements, each sitting in a delicate ivory vase and strategically placed. I have to give him props for the idea. There's one on the oak coffee table between two couches that face each other, another on the baby grand behind the couch that's closest to the stairs, and the prettiest bouquet sits on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

The only problem with my picture-perfect sitting room is that it's the complete opposite of private. Right splat in the middle of the house, it's situated between the kitchen, the foyer, the staircase, and the back patio. So, if you're wanting to avoid the walking dead that is your family, this is not the place to be.

I duck past the sitting room and make a beeline for our staircase. Our housekeeper, Nadrine, is coming down the stairs at the same time. She's clad in her typical black slacks and black shirt, her neat little afro resembling a small, dark cloud around her head.

She gives me a tight smile.

"My stuff's on the floor in the foyer," I say, running past her and heading to my cousin's game room.

"Yes, ma'am." Nadrine's voice is barely above a whisper and I could be wrong but it sounds like she's speaking through clenched teeth.

I straighten my palm over the cool of the banister.

Whenever I speak to Nadrine, I get the feeling she hates me, which is weird because Nadrine's like forty years old. I get why certain kids at school hate me. I'm not exactly nice to them and I have a lot of the things they wish they had. But why would a middle-aged woman hate a teenager?

Maybe she wishes her daughter had everything I have, I don't know. And honestly, why am I even wasting my time thinking about Nadrine and her issues?

At the top of the stairs, I turn away from the loneliness that is my giant room and head towards the sounds of whatever video game my cousin's playing.

I bang on my cousin's door, loud enough to be heard over his game. "Mark, it's Mia. Let me in!"

I bite down on my bottom lip and cross my arms while the noise of the game is paused. Mark's footsteps sound on the other side of the door. Seconds later, he opens the door and a fog of weed overtakes me.

I cough and take a step back. "Jesus, Mark."

He laughs and fans the air. "Sorry." His thick hair is a floppy mess and his brown eyes are bloodshot as he self-consciously tugs at the wrinkled, gray button-down shirt he's got on over a pair of dark, super-slim jeans. This is why I like my cousin: he looks like wrinkled crap but he cares enough to look like trendy wrinkled crap.