salvia. [h.s. AU]

Chapter Seven

Maria Eduarda

The highlight of the remainder of my week was arriving at the Styles's house Thursday and being washed over with compliments about the onion soup I cooked the day before. Mrs. Styles even asked me to give my recipe to Martha so she could cook it some other time.

Nothing makes me happier than knowing people actually enjoyed something I cooked, which is hard to happen because I usually don't feel comfortable enough to cook for strangers, while Dani, Marcos and Landon, the only 3 people I always cook for, are already used to my seasoning and stuff, and they love me, meaning they would never say something to hurt my feelings, right?

I was so happy about it, I didn't even notice how fast the two remaining days of the week went by. I spent most part of Thursday doing laundry, then ironing clothes and cleaning the kitchen floor, and Friday was pretty intense - I had to clean the whole house all at once, I mean, not like, deep clean it. It was just dusting the furniture and mopping the floor, but the house has 3 floors and is ginormous, so by the time I finally got home Friday night, I was so tired I went straight to bed, not even bothering on having dinner, only to be awaken a couple of hours later with the phone ringing loudly in the living room.

It was the police station, Marcos being held there again, this time for graffiting offensive words and the anarchy symbol against the politicians at the Clinton's summer house neighborhood, which doesn't even make sense, but still got me waiting for him to be released at the Police Station for almost 3 hours. By the time I was finally back home, after taking Marcos back to his dorm at Kendall, the sun was already starting to rise and I was officially worn out, so tired I didn't even find the energy to scold at Marcos for being arrested again.

Even though I'm only 4 years older than Marcos, ever since we were little I've kinda been doing somewhat of a parenting job around him. Guess one could say I've been doing a real shitty job, considering how much trouble he is always getting himself into, but to be fair it's not his fault our parents weren't around to be there for us and show us the right path. I guess we both have every reason in the book to be a little rebellious, but Marcos ended up taking it all to himself so the responsible rule fell on my shoulders. And it's not like he is a bad kid or whatever, on the contrary really, he is incredibly talented and smart, and can be really sweet when he is not trying to look all cool in front of his friends.

The thing is, we'd lost our parents when I was only 8 and Marcos, 4. I was so young still, it took me a while to understand they were never coming back, but as soon as I realized it I did everything I could to keep Marcos from suffering as well. Of course, our aunt Stella - my dad's sister - wasn't any help on the matter, she didn't offer much of a comfort for us, but I did my best to cope with everything without making it even harder on him. My mom's side of the family didn't want anything to do with us either, so ever since we were little it was always only Marcos and I against the world. We were very lucky for having Dani and her mother around, they were the closest to an actual family after our parents were gone.