Girl Meets Boy Wonder: A Prequel

I woke up to my alarm buzzing annoyingly at me. I opened my eyes slightly and reached out to smack the ‘snooze’ button (er, for the third time that morning). My smack was too sleepy and heavy, because I knocked my alarm clock off my night stand. I groaned and yanked my comforter up over my head.

Returning to school after winter vacation sucks balls. Major balls. And it’s a Monday morning too. Usually, you know, school starts again partway through the week after big vacations. To give the students a break, since we’ve been sleeping in and eating huge meals and getting presents and excellent shit like that. However, this year, the timing of it has worked out that school starts up again on a Monday.

God I hate Mondays. I feel half dead the entire day.

“Robin! Are you up??”

I groaned and tugged my comforter right around my head and curled into a ball.

“Robin…” I heard my mother, Katrina, enter my room. I’m in for it now.

“Robin. Get out of bed, right now. You’re going to be late for school if you don’t get up now!” She went on. My mother has this thing about being late: she hates it and it really bugs her.

“Robin!” She said. I suddenly felt her hands on my side and she started bouncing me like a basketball. She and Glenn (my dad) used to do that to me when I was little and wouldn’t get out of bed (mostly because I wanted them to bounce me up and down on my mattress).

“Mooom!” I complained in a long grunt from under my blanket. Katrina yanked the comforter off my head and I glared up at her, not really meaning the glare. She gave me a tiresome-but-kind mom look.

“Come on. I’m making eggs for you,” She said, insistently tapping my shoulder, and then she walked away. I rolled on to my back and looked up at the ugly water mark on my ceiling.

“Don’t lollygag, Robin,” Katrina said and then finally left my room. I sighed, but could smell the eggs cooking downstairs, making me aware my stomach was empty as a football.

I rolled out of bed clumsily and looked at myself in the mirror.

“Oh, blech,” I said to my reflection and smoothed my messy blonde hair. My hair hangs in my eyes and kinda flips out at my neck. I’ve always had short hair (Katrina used to drag me into the barber’s as soon as my hair was a millimeter longer than a buzz cut), but now that I’m a teenager, I get a say over the way I wear my hair.

Glenn likes my hair. He says I look like a little hippie, the love child of two freedom fighters. I don’t like that one bit (and I don’t really agree that I look that way either), but if it means I get to have a parent on my side, I won’t argue with him about my hairstyle choice.

Katrina is used to my hair now. She doesn’t give me hard time about it (much).

“Robin!” My mother yelled from downstairs.

I looked away from the mirror and hastily dressed. I wanted to be able to actually eat the eggs Katrina made before booking it to school. I think I’m like Garfield the cat: I hate Mondays, especially Monday mornings but I love breakfasts. Pancakes are my favourite… but who doesn’t like pancakes? Like actually?

“Robin!” Katrina yelled, starting to get annoyed,

“Ok, ok,” I said and started down the stairs.

“It’s alright. I can drive him to school, just take it easy,” I heard my dad say quietly in the kitchen.

He and Katrina don’t agree on… a lot of things. I mean, they agree that they love me… but that’s about it, really.

I slammed back my eggs, but was still running behind. Glenn gave me a ride to school, wishing me a good day and forcing me to let him kiss my forehead before leaving the car. I guess cuz it was the start of a new semester and stuff, he wanted to give me extra parental support. That I didn’t really want. But he kept, like, locking my passenger door from his driver’s side control panel when I tried to escape. So I groaned and just let my dad kiss my head. Right there in the damn high school parking lot.

Glenn is a kisser and a hugger. It embarrasses the living shit out of me, but that’s just the way he is.