Blossoming Magic

Ebony - IV

        I rolled my eyes without letting Dad see. I couldn't tell if Amëra actually ate burnt pizza, but odds are she didn't and was just using it to get away from me.

        I tugged on one of my longer bangs that framed both sides of my face. Amëra never stayed around me me for more than a few minutes. Oh well, I thought. She hasn't changed.

        Dad started talking about his new house up in Kentucky, and how he'd been promoted after years of waiting on the promotions list. I nodded every so often, thinking that, if he gave me a rundown of everything that had happened in the past year, I would be here a very long time.

        "Dad!" I heard Amëra yell.

        Leaning out the porch, I saw her sticking half her body out of the window in the guestroom upstairs, the one next to mine.

        "Ellamarie said we'd have to order pizza! What toppings do you want on yours?"

        "Meat supreme!" Dad called back.

        "Hawaiian? Okay!" She yelled, smiling wickedly and quickly popped back into her room.

        "WHAT?" yelped Dad, his voice an octave higher than usual. Dad's deathly allergic to pineapples. He can't get within ten feet of the fruit, which sucks for me because my absolute favorite pizza is Hawaiian with stuffed crust.

        "Amëra, don't you dare!" continued Dad, running past me and practically jerking the front door off its hinges as he barrelled inside my house.

        Following him, I walked to the kitchen just in time to see Amëra dancing around, holding her phone away from Dad as she dialed the pizza place's number. The phone number had been strategically placed in the center of our fridge, the number's all in bold and easily-viewable red ink.

Dad was chasing Amëra when he slipped on the neatly mopped, still-wet floors. Grabbing about instinctively as he fell, Dad latched himself onto the nearest thing: Mom.

        Dad dragged Mom down, who fell to the floor so hard that the potato chip bag she'd been just about to open up, got crushed in between Mom and the hardwood floors. But not before all the contents of the potato chip bag were blasted straight at me, exploding into my face. Multiple potato chip pieces got stuck in my hair.

        Amëra looked at us and started laughing. Everyone except her had potato chips all over them. She abruptly stopped laughing and started ordering pizza to the guy on the other end of her cell.

        Unbelievable. She actually had managed to call the pizza place while dancing around like a crazy person, I thought, shaking my head and dislodging a few potato chips.

        One of Amëra's hands flew outwards at me, snagged a chip, and plopped it into her mouth. I made a face, to which she responded by crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue, still ordering pizza.

        This is going to be a long day.

                                                   *  *  *  *  *

        After a lot of awkwardness in the kitchen (mostly from Dad and Mom, both who seemed to want to help each other up without touching each other. The result: too many apologies, knocked heads, ands crush pieces of chips everywhere), Amëra plopped herself onto our couch and cranked her I-pod to a brain damaging level.

        I don't know what she was listening to, but it sounded like a teacher scratching her nails across a blackboard combined with pieces of nails being chopped up in a blender.

        "Honey?" Mom asked.  She was giving me a weird look, some where between I-know=your-sister's-a-slob-and-I'm-sorry and She's-your-sister-be-Friends. "Why don't you go sit with Amëra?  Christoph and I need to talk."

        "Fine."

        Mumbling Latin cursewords softly so Mom won't catch me, I went over to the couch and sat next to Amëra, who didn't even look up.  MOm and Dad started whispering in the kitchen.  I consider evesdropping but they were probably talking about birthday plans.  I wanted those tto be a surprise.

        Having no conversation with Amëra, I was busy figuring out if Hannibal could have defeated the Romans if he had left Carthage a few weeks earlier when the doorbell had rang.  Amëra didn't even twitch.  Surprise, surprise.

        "I'll get it, Mom," I said, happy to have an excuse to get off of the couch.  Maybe I could sneak a piece of pizza and go back to reading upstairs in my room.

        When I opened the door, the happy feeling evaporated.  The pizza guy was standing there nervously.  They're always standing there nervously.

        "20.69," he said in a squeeky voice.

        I handed him a twenty and a 5 with a sigh, taking the pizza.  As soon as his hand closed around the bills, the pizza delivery guy dashed to his car with another squeak, driving back to town as fast as he could.

        It sucks when poeple think the forest you live in is haunted.