This is a small little snippet of something I'm working on. Not giving away too much here. Enjoy. Don't kill it.
I knocked on her door at 7:49 am. It swung open a moment later, revealing a very tired looking Amelia. She was half dressed, wearing her uniform kilt and tights, but still sporting her pyjama top. She also had a toothbrush wedged in between her teeth.
"Kmfth," she said, which I realized afterwards was my name in toothbrush talk. "Gmrnfng."
"Good morning to you, too," I said, then flashed her a wry smile. "Happy birthday."
Amelia smiled faintly, sighed, slumped forward, and took the toothbrush out of her mouth. "Thanks," she said with a mouth full of paste.
After I hugged her and was ushered inside, she ran to the bathroom to rinse her mouth. When she came back out to the kitchen-living room area of her apartment, she'd already switched to her uniform polo. Amelia looked utterly exhausted.
"I think my mom turned off my alarm this morning," She said as I plopped onto the couch. "I woke up at 7:45. My alarm goes off almost an hour before that."
"How late did you stay up last night?" I asked, noticing a sheet of paper on the farthest side of the coffee table topped with a little pink bow.
"Not that long," Amelia mumbled as she opened the fridge and poured herself a glass of orange juice. I could immediately sense something was up.
"What's wrong?" I asked, probably sounding just a bit too concerned for a guy that was just supposed to be her friend.
Amelia chugged her juice down in two quick gulps then slammed the cup on the counter. "Nobody even woke me up to sing happy birthday." She muttered, hurt.
"Well maybe they didn't want to disturb your birthday sleep?" I offered.
"Kenneth," Amelia said, turning to face me while propping her elbows on the counter behind her. "Every year since I was four, my family would wake me up at 6:30 to serenade me, kiss me, hug me, etcetera, etcetera, and give me a present."
"Maybe they were in a hurry?"
"Maybe they forgot," Amelia snorted, putting her glass in the sink. She walked over to the couch and put her head on my shoulder. I rested my head on hers. We both stared blankly at the empty TV screen. "Sixteen was supposed to be awesome."
"Sixteen still has three hundred and sixty four days to be awesome."
"But starting off bad is like a jinx."
I eyed the paper with the bow again. I figured she hadn't noticed it yet.
"Are you sure they forgot?" I asked. "Maybe they did sing happy birthday but you slept right through it."
The corner of her mouth turned up. "I wasn't that dead to the world."
As we sat in silence, I listened to her breathe. We were officially different ages. It would take me seven months to catch up to her now. I mean, she was already so ahead of me; she was crazy smart, mature, she had the vocabulary of a scholar, she knew what she wanted and how she was going to get there.
Me? Pfft. All I wanted was to get high. And to have more moments like these with Amelia.
"I'm already late for school," she murmured, yet she didn't move.
I looked at the clock on top of the TV. "Me too," I murmured back.
Neither of us moved an inch.
"You know when you said your family always gives you a present?" I asked.
Amelia lifted her head and looked me straight in the eyes. "Yeah."
I tilted my head in the direction of the coffee table. "What's that?"
Amelia looked. She slowly stood up, reached for it, and flicked the ribbon off. I studied her face as she read the paper, her eyebrows coming together at first, then slowly going back to their normal place, though her eyes widened with every word.
"Oh my... God," She whispered, putting a hand over her mouth and then resting it on her cheek.
"What?" I asked quickly, hoping it wasn't an expensive phone bill or an eviction notice.
Amelia fumbled with the paper, flipping it over to reveal another one underneath. As the first page swayed back and forth, I saw the words printed on the front. They even made my heart skip a beat. Or two.
Gender:
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