There was blood, a lot of it. I didn’t want to admit the truth to my parents about what had happened, so I used one of the many excuses I had picked up along the way. Obviously to my parents, it looked like I had scraped my arm pretty badly on an oak tree out back. But my brother knew. He knew everything. Anything and everything there is to know about my life, Dominic knows it. Sometimes it comes to my benefit, other times it comes as a major disadvantage. He lay on the sofa in the upper story overlook watching from above as my parents had me sit in a chair in the living room and wrap up my arm. He was smirking, our bargain still remained.
Two weeks before…
It was early March, the heat hadn’t started yet in Florida and I was curled up drinking chocolate milk on my new white sofa my parents had gotten me for my birthday. My brother was out with his friends enjoying the lovely morning at a coffee shop a few blocks away. As for my parents, they hadn’t come home last night. I guess that’s what happens when your dad is the hottest guy in Florida and your mom is the ninth wealthiest person in the world. I didn’t care. Sometimes they’d be gone for a week and come back talking about their great time in Hawaii.
Now this is where my thoughts start to come in. I might seem like a strange person especially with the fact that I get couches for my birthday. But I guess after my last accident, I was in need of a new one. Growing up in Florida, I admit, was pretty much living the life. I had everything a typical teenager dreams of having: a beach house, a room with a balcony, and tons of money. I was pretty much “living the life” you could say.
The palm trees were swaying nicely in the soft breeze that was just perfect at this time. My bedroom terrace doors were open and the A.C. was turned off, not a care in the world I could sit here all day. Hearing a noise go off downstairs, I set down my chocolate milk to get up. My sweatpants bottoms dragged on the ground as I shuffled down the fuzzy carpet stairs into the great room. The same noise went off again in the kitchen where my phone was plugged in. The screen was lit up with a new text message. Not that surprising, probably just fan mail. The surprising part was that the text was from my mom. The only reason I find that surprising is because it was before noon. I expected her hangover to last longer than this. The text had so many messed up words I guess even auto-correct had a hard time figuring out what the hell my mom was trying to say. It wasn’t too hard for me though since I’d gotten plenty of practice. Even though the text said “” I knew she meant “daddy and I are going to Paris for two weeks. Tell your brother. Love you, mom”
“Why the hell does she think she can go to Paris? No fucking way. I have put up with this shit for my entire life.” I was yelling at my Golden Retriever now and words just kept coming out. Apparently I didn’t hear the front door open either. “She is always going around doing whatever the fuck pleases her but maybe I want to do something too!”
“Whoa, Astrid, calm down okay? What is going on?” My brother Dominic walked into the kitchen, his hair looked nice, uncombed, his cute style. My brother had seriously gotten the amazing looks of his dad. After grabbing a bagel, he sat down at the bar.
I handed him the phone. Judging by the look on his face I can tell he could read what it said as well. He, being the more mature one, obviously handled it much better than I did.
“She probably has a very good explanation Astrid. Just let her figure it out.”
“Dominic, she never has good explanations except for ‘I was drunk I’m sorry’ well fuck yeah you were drunk mom!”
“Astrid!” his temper shot up a little as usual. He always believed in giving mom another chance at things and that infuriated me so much. But he never completely lost it with me. “Calm down. We can talk about this later.”
I guess that’s one good thing about having an 18 year old brother: he always knows exactly what to do.
Still not satisfied, I stormed up to my room and flumped down on the fluffy pillows set neatly on my bed. I pulled my laptop over from the side table and set it on my stomach. My mom had posted a picture of her and daddy in the private jet on the way to Paris. Well screw her.
