I woke up to the soft voice of the morning radio announcer of my alarm clock. Put on some dark jeans and a random t-shirt and just got my socks on when I heard my mother call up to my brother and I from the bottom of the stairs.
Too late mother. I think, and I hear my brother grumbling from inside his room as I pass his door. When I get to the kitchen, Stephanie is sitting at the island eating a bagel with her head lying sideways on the counter. I'm surprised she’s up until I realize that she has to work early today. Ha. I grab an orange from the fridge and a knife from the block. I cut it into wedges and carry it haphazardly to the living room. I sit down on the leather recliner and spin myself around so my feet are up in the air and my head is dangling off the front and eat my breakfast.
“Do you have to sit like that?” my mom asks from the connecting kitchen and I stick my free hand up as high as I can and sign a quick ‘yes’ to her before I continue eating.
Brendan shuffles into the living room and I start to sign ‘welcome to the world of the living’ to him like I do every morning.
“Can it Leann.” he says before I can finish, like HE does every morning. We’re so loving. He starts to make himself a bowl of cereal and I've just finished my orange as I rotate myself around to the proper sitting position and switch the television on. I stick my hand up and sign ‘Hey Mama’
“Yes dear?” she says from the kitchen, everyone is always looking out for my hand to go up, or else I’d never be heard.
‘what time do we have to be at school?’
“Class starts at 8 so about 7:45 to be able to get your schedules and such.” She replies.
‘Okey dokey lokey’ I sign quickly and get up, heading to my room. It’s 7:00 now so I sign to Brendan that he’d better not take long getting ready or I'm dragging him out of the house unprepared. He just replies with a “yeah yeah” as I make my way up the stairs.
About 30 minutes later I'm ready to go with a little bit of make-up on and slipping my Van’s on at the door as Brendan comes bounding down the stairs with his backpack on his shoulder. He slips his shoes on quickly and says a goodbye to mom for us. Mom gives us the ‘I love you’ sign from the couch and we do it back and walk out the door.
It’s about a ten minute walk to the school, and Brendan and I walk into the main office at 7:42. The receptionist, or whatever she is, looks up at us and smiles. You’re on Bren. I think as I smile back.
“Hi, we’re new here. Brendan and Leandra Anderson.” He says with a charming smile I know doesn’t fit him, but it works on him and she buys it.
“Ah, okay, let me just find your files,” She says and she begins to look through a stack on her desk. She pulls out two manila folders and stops at the first one, reading something written in bold on the front. She looks up at me quizzically and I know just about what she’s going to ask me, “Do you need anything to help accommodate you for your classes dear?”
I smile at her and shake my head, pulling out a little dry erase board from my bag to show her.
“Oh alright, I guess you’re more than prepared huh?” she laughs a little and I smile a little bigger, since I can’t laugh along. She hands us each some papers, Brendan just gets a schedule and I have a small stack of papers.
“Here are you’re schedules, and Leandra there’s a note for each of your teachers so that you don’t have to go through the trouble of explaining everything.”
I give her a thumbs up and Brendan thanks her, and we walk out of the office together.
“Here we go,” He says to me and I sigh and roll my eyes, “Yeah, tell me about it.” He laughs. It’s a little joke he just loves saying because we all know that I can’t ‘tell him about it’. I pinch his cheek, which he never enjoys, and sign to him that I’ll see him at lunch. He waves to me as we go our separate ways down the hall.
