Falling Fast

Chapter 5 - Please don't beat me to death with a basket ball

I woke up stiff and a little too warm the next morning. My face was pressed against a rock solid surface and there was something heavy weighing my shoulder down. I made an ‘ugh’ kind of noise and tried to move, but whatever was weighing my shoulders down was really, really heavy. I cracked an eye open and got a face full of a light blue t-shirt. Dan’s light blue t-shirt.

“Dan?” I mumbled quietly so that I didn’t wake anyone else. “Dan?”

“Muuuuh.”

“Dan,” I hissed and poked his side.

“Wha’?”

“Get off me.”

“Wha’?” he yawed and stretched. His leg. He stretched his leg instead of his arm. “Zo?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you lying on me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

He looked at me and then quickly moved his arm. I sat up and then noticed that all of our friends were stood in front of us, grinning.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“No, no,” Lex shook her head. She was holding her phone up, recording us. “We’re ok.”

“Ok. Well,” I looked around at everyone else. “I’m going to get some breakfast.”

“Not if you want to see this basket ball match,” Luke said seriously. “We’re nearly running late.”

“What time is it?” Dan asked.

“Two.”

“In the afternoon?” we asked together in the same incredulous voices.

We jumped up and hurried upstairs to get some clean clothes on, Dan changing in the bathroom and me in the bedroom. Then we thundered back down the stairs into the kitchen and grabbed some granola bars and a bottle of coke each and then waltzed into the lounge where everyone was waiting.

“Ready?” Liam asked.

“We’re waiting for you,” Dan said.

“My car’s only got four seatbelts,” Evan said.

“I can ride with the guys,” I said easily and munched on my breakfast bar.

We headed out, Evan, Scott, Luke and Lex going in the Mercedes and the rest of us in mine and Dan’s car, an old VW Beatle. Unlike our friends we weren’t from a filthy rich family. Mum could afford to send us to Sanctum Christophorus, the local private school which everyone called St. Christopher’s or simply Chris’s, but at the cost of a smaller house, us having to share a car and having pack lunches instead of paying out for the school’s cafeteria food. We also had to apply for learner grants so that we had money for ourselves because there was no way we could keep up with school work and a job. Bits of it went on the odd trip or two as well.

Alexis came from a huge family, mostly because her dad remarried and she had four kids of her own and then they had twins and she had two brothers anyway. There were nine ‘children’ altogether and still Andrew and Joy could afford to send them all to private school. They were both owned law firms.

Evan was an only child and his father was the dean of the school.

Luke had an older sister who had been to Chris’s, his father was in government and his mother was from old money, like really old money.

Scott’s parents had been given a huge inheritance from a long lost relative of his dad’s and it was enough to send him and his two sisters there.