When Perfect Meets Crazy

01 - What he had in muscles, he lacked in brain

I gritted my teeth, total displeasure coating my face as I leaned in further than I liked so my words could be heard over the roaring of the crowd. Even then, I still had to shout.

"I think we should go!"

My sister barely spared me an irritated glance before returning her attention to the small ring containing one immature man and an idiotic boy who clearly did not know that overdoing steroids could be life threatening as well as unattractive.

Or was I the only one who wasn't into overly buff guys?

I knew my sister well enough to understand that she was already regretting her decision to let me tag along on her little jailbreak expedition. Honestly, our current surroundings had very little on a jail cell. We were packed tighter than sardines which I would've hated even without the worrisome thought that some of the people I was mushed in with had questionable hygiene.

It was a miracle that Olly was able to enjoy herself at all. I could hardly breath without fighting the urge to throw up thanks to the unique and entirely nauseating combination of musk, sweat, grease and cigar that permeated the air.

Not to be overly dramatic or anything but I was breathing as little as I could.

Never again was I stepping foot in this dump.

My gaze involuntary went to the filthy, once white but now brown ceiling as I sent up a short fervent prayer that my sister and I make it back home before either of my parents did and all hell broke loose. They would gladly kill me for letting this expedition come to life, conveniently forgetting that it wasn't my idea nor did I even want to be here. It was part of the curse of being the older kid.

In my next life, if such things existed, I was definitely not going to be an older sister. I would be the last kid. The baby of the house. There was less stress involved.

Three weeks ago, when Olly suddenly -much to my consternation- became interested in boxing, I knew, in my heart of hearts, I knew it wasn't going to end well.

The last time she had picked up one such obsessions, it had been drag racing. It started out the same way, with her watching shows on TV, then onto constantly streaming them on YouTube until finally, she had to see it up close and personal in real life.

Needless to say, that ended less than spectacularly and she came out the other side with a mild concussion which I took the blame for when I covered for her.

I told our parents I almost got involved in a car accident, a near-miss. That I had slammed my foot on the brake at the last minute and the momentum caused her to hit her head on the dashboard. As punishment, I had my car privileges revoked for a month (there had even been talk about not letting me take the driver's test, I had only a learner's permit at the time), was on cooking duty for two and even now, a full year later, my mom still carried out regular inspections of my car to be sure I wasn't 'driving recklessly'.

So when Olly got to the streaming stage of her current obsession, I knew it was only a matter of time before she went and did something equally stupid. This time, however, I was determined to not let it get to the stage where I needed to take the blame.

A glance at my wristwatch informed me that I had only about thirty minutes to make that happen and my house was roughly twenty minutes away so my odds weren't great. Especially since Olly was insistent on staying till the last punch was thrown. Clearly, she had rightfully assumed that I was never letting her set foot in this hellhole ever again and wrongfully assumed that we had already been found out by our parents.

Our mom had pretty much ordered us to be home early today -disobedience was not an option- because for the first time in two weeks, she was getting off early from work and she wanted to have a big family dinner. Most of the family anyway since my dad was not at all going go leave work any earlier than ten p.m. unless the house was on fire.