All We Are

A few minutes after I finished, Jude walked in from outside. I blushed and looked down at my empty plate while he filled up his own plate with food. He came to sit across from me, but didn't say anything.

"I'm going to get ready, then we can go shopping, Willow," Katie said.

I nodded, trying to keep my head down, so that she and Jude couldn't see my blush.

Once she left, I looked up slowly. Jude was watching me curiously, as if nothing had happened.

"I'm so sorry!" I said blushing even more. "I forgot that our bedrooms were connected. I-I should have knocked."

"It's ok," he said chuckling slightly my embarrassment. "No harm done. I should have locked the other door."

I nodded but didn't say anything else. It was extremely awkward.

He laughed again. "Willow, it's ok. Just pretend nothing happened."

I nodded again. "So, um...Did you sleep well?" I asked stupidly, trying to start a conversation.

"Could've been better," he said with a shrug. "Maybe if you weren't snoring so loudly, I might've been able to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time!"

My jaw dropped. "I do not snore!" I said indignantly.

"Oh yes you do!" He syarted immitating my supposed snore, sounding completely ridiculous.

I started laughing. "I think I would know if I snored."

"How? You're asleep."

I frowned. "I don't snore! Someone would've told me by now if I did," I said.

He laughed. "I'm just messing with you. You're too gullible, Willow."

I stuck my tongue out at him and folded my arms across my chest.

Before he could reply, Katie walked into the kitchen. "Are you ready Willow?"

I stood up. "Yeah, um, just let me take care of my dishes," I said, picking up my plate.

"I'll get it," Jude said, standing up with his own plate in his hand.

"Thanks." I gave him my plate and took them over to the sink.

I followed Katie outside and toward a shiny, black convertable parked in the driveway. We got inside and she started driving, pointing out places around the city as we went.

"There's your new school," she said as we passed a huge brick building. It looked 10 times the size of my old school.

"Wow, it's huge." I said, eyeing it skeptically.

"One of the largest in the state," Katie agreed.

"Wow," I said again.

A few minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of a huge shopping mall. The first store that we went into was a clothing store. Katie bought me more clothes than I'd probably ever had in my life. I tried to tell her I didn't need them all, but she just waved away my complaints.

"Nonsense. Everyone could always use new clothes," she told me.

Next, she took me to a bathing suit store where I got three new bikinis and a 1-peice. I also got a pair of sunglasses and some flip flops. Our last stop at the mall was the store that had room decorations. I picked out a purple bedspread and sheets. I also got a few other decorations matching the purple bed-stuff.

By the end of the day, I swore that Katie had spent more than $500. I felt so bad that she spent so much on me; I didn't really need all the new stuff. But she seemed so happy to be buying me new things, and just shopping in general. I didn't want to let my bad mood spoil her good one, so I suffered through it with a smile.

Before returning to the house, we stopped at an electronic store, where Katie bought me a cell phone and laptop. I told her that both were completely unnecessary, but she was unstoppable. She said that I needed the cell phone to keep in touch and in case of emergencies, and the laptop I would need for school.

After that, Katie passed through a drive-thru to get ice cream cones. We ate our treats as we drove back to the house. The top of the convertible was down, and the wind was blowing my hair everywhere. But I didn’t mind. For once, I felt a little less sad, a little less lost as she talked about her family and job, explaining how things worked around the town.

When we got back to the house, Jude and Jesse came out to help us carry bags up. They seemed to have anticipated that we would return with a lot. The whole trunk and back seat were filled with shopping bags, as well as the floor space by my feet. I felt incredibly spoiled.

“Sorry about my mom,” Jude said as we trudged up the stairs, arms loaded with bags. “She can go a little overboard sometimes.”

“It’s okay. I had fun. I don’t even remember the last time I went shopping.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “A girl that doesn’t like shopping?”

“It’s not that I don’t like it, I just never really went much.”

He rolled his eyes and set the bags down at the foot of my bed. “You’re weird,” he said. I couldn’t tell if it was an insult or not.
Before I could respond, Jesse and Katie entered the room with the rest of the bags, and set them next to the others.

After they all left, I began to take clothing out of bags and put them on hangers, and then into my closet. After that, I put the new bedspread and sheets on my bed. By the time I was finished, it was 5:30. My room now looked less plain and ordinary, and more like an actual bedroom. With some posters on the walls and perhaps some curtains over the windows, it would look a lot better.

How quickly I was already starting to settle into the Sullivans’ house was a little scary. I had expected to be like an annoyance in the family, an unwanted responsibility. I expected that they would only keep me out of duty to my parents, and when I turned 18, turn me out of the house immediately. I was surprised at how wrong my assumptions were, and how glad I was that I was at my own fallacy.