Clueless

C4

                We moved out of, what we'll call Hillside, and into a city called Ridgeville. My mom had a new boyfriend named Danny, I remember when she introduced us to him. My brother and I had spent the weekend with our dad about 45 minutes to an hour away from where we lived and she had drove to pick us up, which has never happened. She told us that she wanted us to meet someone that she had been talking to, little did we know, he already moved in within the span of about a month in my mind. The actual meeting part, I can't recall, but I didn't like him, I can tell you that. Didn't have a logical reason to not like him, in my 9 year old mind, he was just some bad guy.

My mom told me that he had a daughter a few years older than me named Britini, who was just as excited to meet me as I was to meet her. Yeah, I have two older sisters, but they aren't in my life so can you blame me for being ecstatic about possibly having an older sister who will actually be a part of my life?

The night I met her, I was an anxious mess. I couldn't approach her because I was so nervous, I needed to make a good impression or I would crawl in a tiny hole somewhere and wither away from embarrassment. We were in our roach-infested house in the living room, she was sitting on the couch across the room whist I sat next to my mom with my heart practically beating on the floor.

I wanted to come off as cool and like I knew what I was doing. So what did my child brain come up with?

Ask her if she wants to have a sleepover.

Yes! Brilliant! Do that while future me hides in a barrel and cries. Why did I think that was cool? She was a teenager! I was asking a teenager if she wanted to have a sleepover with me.

Anyways, I was way too tense and couldn't bring myself to ask her directly, so I leaned over to my mom and asked her to do it for me. But no, why would she make things easy for me?

"Ask her yourself." With a big cheeky grin across her face. Oh gee, why didn't I think of that myself? Right, I did! This is where my anxiety started showing itself, but right now, it's not important, we'll get back to all that chaos later if you decide to even read that far.

So here I am, glaring at my mom while she continues smiling at my potential sister, while I feel insanely nauseous from mortification. Eventually, I gathered up the sliver of courage I needed and shuffled my little feet over to the other couch.

I cannot emphasize the amount of shyness that filled my system, it was indescribable, but just do your best to imagine it. Before I could finish the 7-word question, she already accepted. Absolutely dumbfounded, I led her to my overwhelmingly messy room and just began talking about whatever a 8 year old and 14 year old could possibly relate on.

I had a toy box in my closet next to my brothers and I began showing off my toys to try and impress her. As if she wasn't already bored hanging out with a child with a stutter, but now I'm digging through my pink and cream colored plastic toy box showing her the monstrous things I tossed in there over the years.

I dug out a mint Care Bear that's batteries died years ago. Or so we thought. She said she didn't want it to talk if she held it because Care Bears scared her, and I managed to convince her that it wasn't going to make a sound by harshly pressing its stomach and all of its limbs. Nothing. Not a sound. As she sat across the sea of clothes and toys I scattered across the floor, I tossed it to her.

"Hi, my name is Wish Bear!" Without even holding it for a second, she launched the bear across the room with sheer terror on her face with a quick screech. We both sat looking at the face down stuffed bear that wasn't supposed to speak. It lied there and kept saying things such as, 'do you want a hug?', 'let's be friends!', and 'I'm Wish Bear and I give the best hugs!' without anyone touching it. Both of us sat in complete silence when the bear finally stopped talking and looked at each other before bursting into laughter over the situation.

I had little shelves in my closet that I didn't use for normal purposes, and I had one shelf dedicated to my odd tea set. Idea. Let's have a tea party. Yet, another marvelous initiative my cluttered mind thought of. So, yeah, you bet we had a tea party, and it was the coolest tea party ever because we didn't use tea. We used Dr. Pepper. Rebels, I know.

Eventually, we got bored of going through my toy box and the items on the floor until I remembered we had Candy Land. Yes, I just saved this sleepover from disaster! No, young me, you did not; half the game pieces weren't even in the box. But did we let that stop us from correctly playing? Absolutely. We had to make up our own version of the game and make do with what was there.

I couldn't remember how we played it or just how much of the game we lost in the process, but I can tell you what we did afterwards. Not really a smooth transition, but I'm going to go on with it anyways because I don't have time to think of a cleaver play on words.

I had a plastic Hannah Montana camera that I probably got for Christmas with a ribbon through the wrist strap outlet. I brought that out while she was on the top bunk of the bunk bed we were sharing for the night and asked her if she wanted to have a photo shoot. Of course we did, but the lights were off so I had to turn the flash on to be able to see anything. She stuck her head over the railing so I could see her, she also posed with one of my stuffed pigs that was up there.

As for the rest of the night, I have no idea what happened, surprise. But we're getting into the stages of my life where I can actually remember events more clearly so don't worry.