Flutter

Yes Ma'am, we got the style that's wicked
Hope you can all keep up
Climbed all the way from the bottom to the top
Now we aint gettin nothin but love.
-Rich Girl by Gwen Stefani


May 29, 2010
9:00 AM
Prescot Residence-Grapevine, TX

“Mickie! Mickie, come on! You’ve got to wake up!”

I was being shaken awake. I peeked out of my eye, just a bit, at the alarm clock by my bedside table. I was being shaken away at nine AM. On a Saturday.

“What the bloody…?” I rolled over in bed, pulling my pillow over my neck. “Five more minutes, Mum,” I groaned, trying to go back to sleep. My mother, as grumpy and unreasonable as she usually was in the morning, was up and awake, perky and peppy.

“I’m giving you three seconds to sit up or I’m getting the water gun,” she said happily. I shuddered at the old method, used by my parents to get my older sisters up for school in years passed, and before she could get to two, I sat up and grabbed my glasses, trying to adjust my eyes. “There ya go,” my mother said, trying to fix stray red hairs flying into my face.

“Why, might I ask,” I started, grabbing my phone off the top of my bed, “are you waking me up at nine on a Saturday?” She smiled knowingly and stood up, patting me on the head.

What am I, a golden retriever?

“Text Rosie. Tell her she needs to be here by eleven. You, me, her and Aria are going into Southlake.”

“Really?” Southlake was a shopping center about twenty miles out of my city-closer to Dallas. We only went there like three or four times a year, because a lot of the shops were really expensive. Sure, I owned the occasional Juicy sweats or Abercrmbie hoodie, but I’d never even considered spending three hundred dollars on a casual dress.

“We’re going to go out for dinner for your dad’s birthday tonight, and I think I want to get our family pictures done. I mentioned it to you last week, remember?” she said, finally walking out the door with another smile.

“Oh, right…” I said to myself. I had no recollection of her mentioning this, ever, but then again I didn’t really have the best hearing skills around. I could remember most conversations with the drop of a hat, though… Shrugging it off, I grabbed my phone and texted Rosie, saying a short “Be here at 11. Shopping in Southlake. Mom’s driving.” I pulled my laptop off of my desk and threw it open, pressing the on button and then heading into the bathroom to brush my teeth. By the time I came back, it was on and ready for me to log in.

“Chocolate,” I typed into the password bar, smiling to myself. The password for the week, as designated by my best friend, Molly. Each week, we’d pick a new password for our computers so no one could ever hack them. Our computers were our havens-our retreats. They held our thoughts, our secrets. No way in hell anyone was going to get into that.

The first thing I did when I opened up my computer was get on Twitter.

“I’m up people! Mom’s got something secretive planned for the day. Not sure what! @RosieIsLove wake up!”

Next was the blog. I quickly typed thesocialbutterfly.onsugar.com (long name, but 65 wpm makes it go fast) into the URL bar and pressed enter. Scrolling down the homepage, I smiled. At the top was the graphic that Izzy from the JBFFA forums had made me. An amazing picture with a cute couple and some shoes and a cupcake. It totally gathered everything that I was into one graphic. Then on the side there was my bio.

“Mikayla. Mickie for short. 15. Blogger for three years. Single. Creative. Writer. Singer. Reader. Actor. Proudly plus sized. Music and fashion make me happy. Vintage is my second love, the first being my beloved iPod.”

That’s me, Mickie Prescot. I was, indeed, 15. My birthday was in a month and a half, and honestly, I had absolutely no big plans. Usually people have those huge sweet 16’s planned months ahead of time, but my huge party plans involved me, my ten closest friends, a Scary Movie marathon and lots of junk food. No performers or circus elephants.

I started blogging when I was thirteen. I had just moved to Dallas from London, and had made almost no friends. I decided, “Hey, why don’t I start venting my feelings on the web?” That was before blogs were actually considered “in.”

Three years later, I had made a few friends for real, yeah, but blogging was just one of those things that came out of habit, and I had an online following of a few hundred daily readers and commenters, who not only read the blog, but my short stories and articles I wrote for Teen Ink, an online magazine.

Aside from those few things that only certain people know about me, my life is pretty much an open book. No one can hold anything against me that way.

I was also single. But I was happily single. I was never one of those girls who strived to always have a boyfriend. Rosie was one of those girls. So I sat on the sidelines and watched her break hearts and have hers broken. I learned from her mistakes, rather than letting my own heart get hurt.

That’s why I started the advice portion on the blog. I’d learned so much over those three years that I needed to start helping people. It was just how I was.

Music, fashion, writing, those were just things that came naturally to me. Cooking was one of them too, but most of my time was taken up by doing promo and going to concerts and writing both the blog and my short stories and novels, so I hardly had time to cook anymore. My body was also something I fought to keep natural. Throughout my years in London, I’d had a horrible diet (thanks to my older sisters, who could eat anything and still be stick thin), so I was the biggest one in my family. When we moved to the US, I was a size 16 and not healthy at all. I joined the local health club and about a year later I was down to a size 12, still plus sized, but my doctor had told me that I was the healthiest anyone could ever be. Now, I’m still the same size, but I’d grown a bit so I didn’t look a lot like my size twelve comrades. I was 5’8, about four inches taller then Rosie, and everything looked proportionate. At least, to everyone else.

I looked in the mirror and still saw my thirteen year old, overweight self. No friends, bad health, horrible hair. On the outside, to everyone else, I was a confident, loud, creative, happy person. But on the inside, at age 15-going on-16, I need a good kick in the ass to get me to realize that I wasn’t a useless pile of fat who didn’t have a purpose, which is what I still felt like, despite my general popularity (general being that I still had my own little hate club among the jocks and cheerleaders).

I posted a quick blog, consisting of the jist of my rude awakening, and by the time I got out of the shower, I’d gotten a text from Rosie and a reply on my blog.

“I won’t be square :)” was her reply. Our own way of saying we’d be there. Get it?

“Looks like both our parents are trying to pull something on us,” the comment said. I already knew who it was from.

I dialed the number before I read anything else and waited for her to pick up.

“What am I missing?”

“Did you not read my post?” Molly asked in her half American, half English accent, followed by a large slurping sound. I fought a giggle as I put the phone on speaker, set it down on my desk and searched the room for my sweats, as I was still running around in a tee and underwear.

“Uhmmm, no.” This was one of the few times I hadn’t checked Molly’s blog shortly after mine in the morning. Molly Jane Hart was one of my best friends in the blogging world. She lived in Louisiana, but was originally from Gloucester. Her parents moved to Louisiana when she was a kid, and visited the UK a lot. I’d met her a few times out and about when she visited London when I lived there, but between our schedules and slight age difference, we’d never really become close until I started blogging. Molly was one of my biggest supporters and most avid readers.

I was the same for her, of course.

“My mum pulled me and Jess out of bed at four AM this morning to go on some voyage de mystere.”

“A mystery trip?” I asked, grabbing the phone and heading back to the bathroom, where I put some leave in gloss drops and gel in my hair. “And she’s not telling you where you’re going?”

“No,” she started, “but she packed like half of my closet, so I’m starting to get suspicious.” Another slurping sound plays in the background. “Jess, would you quit it with the Big Gulps already? You’re gonna have to pee in like an hour again and you’re already hyper enough!”

“Am not!” Jess called in the background. I laughed. Jess was one of the most bubbly, happy people I’d ever talked to, aside from myself. She was always in a good mood, even on the odd occasion that she and her long time boyfriend fought. She was a good best friend to Molly when I couldn’t be there, just like Rosie was for me.

Two hours later, Rosie rang the doorbell and kissed her boyfriend Robbie goodbye when he left us. He was such a sweetheart, it made my heart melt. But Rosie was, again, one of those girls who broke hearts. At this point, I was a little more worried about him than her.

I gave her outfit a once over before she came in. Black tank top, denim shorts, dark brown plaid overshirt, brown Uggs. Her medium length blonde hair was straight as usual, her tanned skin spot free and perfectly made up. I was dressed in a black tank, denim shorts, dark purple plaid overshirt and brown Uggs. My red hair was somewhat straight (it’s never really that straight, it always kind of waves at the sides) and my (relatively) tanned skin was kind of well made up. I mean, I’m from England. We don’t exactly have the best conditions for tanning. But the last couple of summers spent out in the Texas heat have made me less vulnerable to burning. I looked down at my outfit and back at her, grinning. She looked at me.

We both laughed.

“Was that Rosie at the door?” Mom asked as she walked into the living room where we stood. She saw our matching outfits and smiled, shook her head, and started walking out. “Be ready to leave in ten! Aria’s on her way! She had to go drop off Terry at work, then she’ll pop round,” she called over her shoulder as she headed into the kitchen. “I think she’s riding with us…” She said the last bit more to herself then us, so I took it as a que to leave.

1:30 PM
Southlake Town Square-Southlake, TX

“If I see one more rich bitch from SHS, I swear to freaking God I’m going to screammmm.” Aria and I both laughed at Rosie’s words. My older sister is less affected by cuss words then my mom. Mom grew up in a very proper British household with servants and butlers…the kind of life that she hated. When she was twenty, she left the house during the middle of the year and ran off to marry my dad, an exchange student from Italy. Hence my strong, dark eyebrows and naturally dark hair (the red is fake of course-the product of severe boredom with my uncooperative bleached blonde locks the year before-I’d gotten so used to having it that I just kept it).

“Southlake isn’t that bad,” I said, laughing. Rosie’s constant bashing of our school’s biggest rival was somewhat annoying, but hey, what could I do? We walked into Bebe, and I started looking for dresses. Mum had laid out one rule for the shopping trip. I could get one complete outfit for the family picture that both embodied my life in Texas, as well as the one I left in London. In short, I had no freaking idea what I was supposed to get. We were still in Bebe when I found it.

There were two left. One was on a mannequin, the other on the rack behind it. It was loose, dark, and absolutely gorgeous. It looked kind of like a giant shirt, but the way the mannequin wore it, you could tell that it was supposed a dress. The grey-to-the-point-of-black fabric was flat (meaning not shiny), and it had kind of an empire waist with elastic at the bottom (tighter near the chest, looser in the stomach, then tight again on the legs). When I pointed to it, wide eyed, and started walking slowly towards it, I heard Rosie gasp behind me. “It’s…perfect!” she whispered. The girl working the floor in the shop grabbed the last one on the rack, size 12, my size, amazingly, and set it in the dressing room. I put it on, and slowly stepped out. The gasps, dropped jaws and Rosie’s “Ohmigod!” told me it was the right one.

5:45 PM
Olive Garden-Grapevine, TX

“Thanks so much for letting me come out with you guys!” Rosie said to my mum across the table. The workers at Olive Garden had had to pull together two large tables to fit our enormous group which consisted of my parents, me, my little sister Libby, Rosie, my older sister Aria (21), my other older sister Liv (24), Aria’s fiancé Terry, and Liv’s husband Jim.

I know what your thinking-Geez! This girl has a huge family! It’s true. The average American and English home only has two kids. There’s a story behind every family. My oldest sisters-Ren and Liv (Ren was living in NYC at the time, working as a publicist for a publishing company) were both adopted from a little orphanage in Poland by my parents while we still lived in London. My mom was first told she couldn’t have kids, but when Ren was three and Liv was five, Mom got preggo with Aria. Her miracle kid. Then she had me, and then Libs. Libs was ahdorable, but she could be a little bit of a pain. She was diagnosed with Aspberger’s, a form of Autism, about two years before, at age six, on top of a former diagnoses of OCD.

So not only was our group large, but it was loud.

For most of the dinner, at least. Because about half way through, after presents had been opened, cake had been served (Chocolate Moose, the best kind there is), and toasts wishing my dad a happy birthday had been made, Liv stood up, her pregnant belly protruding over the table. She was seven months pregnant with the second Prescot grandchild (the first being Ren’s daughter, Olivia, named after her younger sister and supposed real grandmother back in Poland), due only weeks after Aria’s set wedding date this summer.

“So,” Liv started, one hand resting on her belly, the other holding Jim’s firmly. She flicked her head back, pushing a piece of dark hair out of her face. “I finally caved and asked the doctor yesterday what we were having, and we wanted you all to be the first to know-it’s twins!” Everyone at the table, Rosie included, screeched in delight.

“That’s so great!” she called, grinning as widely as I figured I was.

“Boys or girls?” Dad asked, speaking for the first time since toasts ended. I knew what he was hoping for-would there be a future member of the Prescot line with a Y chromosome?

“One of each!” Liv squealed, smiling again. My dad broke out into a grin I don’t think any of us could have rivaled, no matter how hard we tried. Mum screeched again and got up from her seat, running to hug her daughter. I looked to Rosie. She was smiling widely, glancing around the table at the people around us. I did the same, taking in the scene. My family was amazing. Nothing could make this night better.

Before I knew it, dinner was over, and we were all heading to the cars. “Which Picture People are we going to?” I asked, smoothing out my dress and checking it for pizza sauce stains. I’d paired it with my dark brown knee high country boots (the Texas part), black leggings, and a clutch I’d found in the clearance section at Bebe that was covered in sequins in the shape of the English flag (obviously, the English part). Mum glanced over to Dad, who gave a little nod.

“The one over at the Parks. They have the most room-they can fit us all in.” I smiled. The only downside to having a huge family was just that. There was not enough room for us anywhere. Each of us sank into our respective cars-Dad, Mum, Libs, Rosie and me In their Mini Van, Aria and Terry into their Audi, and Jim and Liv into their truck, and we started the drive. I felt my phone vibrate in my clutch and before I could pull it out, Molly’s ringtone, Start All Over, started blasting. Rosie bopped along to the beat of the chorus next to me, before I pulled it out and flipped it open.

“Mickie, Ohmigod,” someone whispered into the phone.

“Mol?” I asked, whispering back. Why, I have no idea. But I whispered back. Even though I didn’t have to.

This is what happens when you have crazy friends like Rosie and Molly.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Oh god, Mickie, you’re never gonna believe where I am!” I looked to Rosie, who was looking back at me with an expression as curious as I felt. Molly continued without waiting for me to ask where she was. “I’m at some rinky dink little road stop off the 820! I’m in Dallas!” She screamed the last part into the phone, and I pulled mine away from my ear.

And this is what happens when you have loud friends. You become partially deaf.

I could hear myself squeal a little bit, and Rosie must have heard what Molly said (who in the car hadn’t?) because she went wide eyed and grinned. “Oh my God!” I screamed, looking to Mum. “Did you hear that! Molly’s in…”

I trailed off.

Because for the first time I realized where we were. We weren’t at the Parks. Ohhhh, no. We weren’t anywhere near the Parks.

We were pulling into the parking lot of the new Cowboys Arena in Arlington. A good ten miles from the Parks.

And the parking lot was, to our surprise, flooded. Flooded with what looked to be thousands of Jonas Brothers fans.