It Was The Best of Times, It Was The Worst of Times

Two

There are only four bedrooms in the house, you kids will have to share.

As the adults all wanted private rooms with their spouses (or lover in Mrs. Simon's case), in the case of, all four of the minors had to stay in a room together. There were two sets of bunk beds, given top to bottom respectively, to me and Leah with Josh and Claire to our right. The top beds did not have railings, meaning that Claire was never going to be allowed to have the top, and Leah-who was afraid of heights- was never going to give up the bottom. This meant that in the middle of the night, Josh could throw his pillows at me, shine his flashlight directly into my face, and, if he reached far enough, hit me hard enough to annoy me, but not hard enough to make me want to hit him back.

This led to lack of sleep and crankiness on both my end and Josh's, which inevitably led to teasing, "what were you two doing last night?" comments, and not-so-secretive winks. This sort of teasing was responded to with dirty looks and comments that would be hurtful under normal circumstances. This may also be the reason why that night, I packed a sleeping bad and a pillow into the kayak that was in the private beach and went to sleep on the square wooden dock near the center of the lake. I put on a life vest after everyone fell asleep (all but Josh, but I knew that he wouldn't come looking for me).

Unfortunately, like I am more often than I'd care to admit, I was wrong.

Of course Josh would come looking for me, I'm the only one who he can mess with and not get in trouble for it. He found me laying on the dock in the middle of the lake.

"'Lys, you get back in that kayak and go to sleep in your bed right now!"

"Yes, mum," I retorted. As if I was going to do what he said like a little puppy.

"That's 'Daddy' to you."

I was speechless. That was low. On several different levels.

"In your dreams."

"Every night."

I ignored him. That is, I ignored him until I heard him slowly approaching in a pool raft.

"Go away, damn it! Why do you love screwing with me so much? This is why I've never liked you."

"You're funny when you're angry. If you don't go inside, I'm sleeping here with you."

"Fine," I said, laying down and covering back up. He didn't get a blanket. Or a pillow. I suppose he thought that I would go without a fight. I wasn't like that, he should know by now.

"You'll get pneumonia or hypothermia or something."

"So will you."

---------------

In the morning, I woke up well-rested for the first time in the three days we'd been there. Today was the day when we wouldn't be stuck in he house, the adults had finally settled in, everything was in place.

I climbed down from my bed, careful not to wake anyone. I decided to make breakfast for everyone, since I was the only one awake. It wasn't until I finished the first two pancakes that Claire joined me.

Finally, when everyone was awake, we ate and had a nice conversation at the table. When the conversation was nearly over, I asked where Josh was, I didn't see him when I woke up, he wasn't on his bed.

"I didn't hear him come in the room, either. I'm a pretty light sleeper, I probably would have noticed." that was Claire.

"Yeah, same here." I replied.

His parents got angry, thinking he had snuck out again, he was always doing that. I shrugged off the accusation with an obligatory, "maybe."

It was then that the door slammed and a very wet Josh had come into the kitchen.