Charlie

1. Glittering Glass

I can hear Aiden sleepily dragging himself down the stairs, his duffel bag banging each step behind him. I must have called his name 3,000 times before I managed to get a half-asleep grunt from his closed bedroom door.
Lately, he's been keeping it locked. Which, I admit makes me a tad uncomfortable, how am I supposed to know what's going on in there? Should I sneak in while he's at school? Or is that not respecting his privacy? The stench that creeps out from behind the door is almost enough to make me just leave it alone.

"What's for breakfast?"

I snapped my head up from the pan I'm cooking in, having to push my glasses up with the spatula in my hand.

"Your voice is changing so much, I thought you were Blake!" I said, trying not to giggle at the voice crack in the middle of the word 'breakfast'.

"Can we not do this right now, Charlotte." He knows it irritates me when he calls me by my full name.

"We all get-", another voice crack. He clears his throat.

"We get it. I'm a 'growing boy' and it's all very exciting. Am I the only thing you can find to humor you?"

Just as I'm about to answer that with a snarky comment, Andrea trips over an untied shoelace half way down the stairs and flops down the rest of the way like a wet fish.
"Nope, I've found humor in something else now."

     Aiden laughs and turns around to help a groaning Andrea back to her feet. She yanks her arm away from her brother, who's still laughing, and gives him a disgusted look.
   "NOT. FUNNY."

    She slumps down on the couch to tie her bright white shoe lace. It matches her bright white converse. She's been a stickler for cleanliness since she was little.
Her bedroom is always, always perfect. Nothing is ever out of place. When our parents used to write us, Andrea would take her letters, straighten them and place them in-between the sticky pages of a scrapbook. She couldn't have been older than 8 or 9, because not too long after that the letters stopped. The phone calls stopped. The postcards stopped. The only thing that we could count on was the directly deposited checks into mine and Blake's banks accounts. The last branch we had connecting us to our parents.
At first, I thought it was crazy for her to care so much about her letters, as most of mine and Blake's got thrown in the garbage. Then I realized, she didn't have the years we had with them. Those letters were the only pieces of real parents she had left. Blake and I can try all we want to be the best role models for the twins, but we can never fill the void that's left by an absent parent.
Lately, Andreas' teenage mood swings have been almost too much to handle. Blake has been trying to get her and Aiden to talk to the school therapist, for several reasons. Mostly to get them both to talk about what's going on in their lives, and to let someone in, even if it's not either of us. We walk them to the school psychiatrist every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but we can't make them talk. Especially to Dr.Hudson, the newest addition to the Bradford Middle School faculty.
The last psychologist at the school was Dr.Phillips. She was amazing. Blake and I had been talking to her since we started at Bradford, and then went back even through high school. She was so easy to talk to and the twins loved her when they started middle school. About three months ago, she was in a car accident and has been in a coma ever since.
The new Doctor is.. strange to say the least.
                                                ...

Frantically, I run upstairs to get ready. I take long strides up the wooden stairs, skipping every second step.

"Let's go Blake! First day of senior year!" My voice sounds horse as I yell for my little brother, who isn't so little anymore. I knock on his door in passing and hear a tired grunt in response.

"Okay," I say aloud to myself. "Hair, first."

I stumble passed my mirror, a gift from my parents when they adventured in India, and realize I'm still in my orange silk pajamas'. I tilt my head and look dumbly at my refection.

I nod at myself. "Fine. Clothes first."

Reaching my hand out, I effortlessly push past my closet doors and step inside. This closet used to be my favorite place in the world. A place that was mine, JUST mine. Still painted pale pink top to bottom because I insisted, at 3 years old. When I was little this wasn't just a closet, it was a palace. It was a pirate ship. It was a rocket, and the beach, and outer space and whatever else my mind could create. Raina would play with me in here, a lot. She's the one who set up my secret hideout. I look up at the attic door fondly, remembering all the days I'd rush home from school, just to pull that string and watch the ladder cascade down in front of me, revealing my little hideout. I swallowed hard. I haven't been up there since the day Raina left, and didn't return. The Blood Day. That's what the twins call it.
I blink away that thought and pull out a pair of blue jeans, my favorite pair. They're ripped on one knee and tight enough to show my curvy figure, but loose enough to breathe. Only recently did I start to show off my hips instead of hiding behind loose jeans and long shirts. Today, I paired these jeans with a white t-shirt and white slip on shoes. Simple, but i can always accessorize.
I hopped over to my mirror, still struggling to pull on my right shoe. Looking from the bottom up, I puckered my lips, deciding if this outfit would suffice. I shook my head and went to grab a different top when I heard glass breaking in the kitchen, followed by Andrea (obviously irritated) yelling, "God, Aiden. You're SUCH an imbecile." That's her new favorite word.
I walked out of my room and peeked over the balcony to see Andrea standing in the middle of the kitchen, with the remnants of what was once a glass plate in shards by her bare feet. Aiden is frantically trying to find the broom and freaking out because he doesn't want to step on the glittering glass. I roll my eyes, knowing this is going to take up the rest of the morning. So much for accessorizing.

"Nobody move!" I shout as I bound down the stairs. Off to clean up the first mess of the new school year.

I'm sure it wont be the last.