Remembering Sunday (All Time Low)

“Frank! Yo, big brother!” I called up the stairs, hoping he was actually awake.
“What?” Came the groggy response as said brother poked his head out of his bedroom door.
“You’re taking Oli and me to school. Oh, and no, you don’t have a choice in the matter. Hurry up, we’re already pretty late.”
“Ugh! I can’t wait till the two of you get off your lazy asses and learn to drive!” He called back down.

A few seconds later my brother walked down the stairs in a pair of Superman boxers and nothing else.

“Oh God! Frank go put some clothes on!”

I looked away and put my hand up to block my view of him even more. He mumbled an apology before turning around and walking back up the stairs to go get dressed properly.

“Whoa, Frank! Go put some clothes on bro’, there are girls in the house.”

I rolled my eyes at my twin’s bluntness as he walked past me into the kitchen. Following him, I grabbed a pop tart and went to sit at the table after hearing my mother complain about the mess. My Mom was sitting at the head of the table next to my youngest sister, Millie, the only person in the whole house under the age of ten. My second sister, Caley, was sitting at the other head of the table, playing games on her phone and waiting for our Dad to be ready to take her to school.

I was still making funny faces at Millie, getting her to laugh, when she threw her spoon up in the air. All I could do was watch as it landed on my T-shirt and slid down to my jeans, leaving a trail of gooey baby food behind.

“Millie!”

I handed the spoon back to my Mom and ran upstairs to quickly change before Frank was ready and left without me. I shed the T-shirt and jeans I was currently wearing as fast as I could and just shoved on a pair of grey skinnies with a Rise Against T-shirt and a maroon sweatshirt. As I got back downstairs Frank was sitting at the bottom of the steps, elbows on his knees, his chin resting on his fists, fully clothed now.

“You two ready yet?”
“Almost.”

I grabbed my rucksack, slipped on a pair of Vans and tied my long blue hair up while Oli did the same but without tying his hair up, we tried doing that to him once… never again. We called goodbye to our mom as we shut the door behind us and suddenly it was a race to see who was going to get shotgun.

“I call it!” I yelled, sprinting to Frank’s old Ford.
“No! It’s mine today!”

It was a close call but at the last second, Oli tripped over the sprinkler and I yanked the door open, slid in and locked it behind me so that he couldn’t steal this spot from me.

“Hey Frank, you need to check the engine.” I said before sticking my iPod in my ears and blocking out any other sound.

He rolled his eyes and gave me the ‘you think?’ look, putting his seatbelt on and tapping his hands on the steering wheel to whatever music he was playing out of his stereo while we waited for Oli to get in the car.

Our school is around a fifteen minute drive away in good traffic so I nearly always get in around four or five songs but today I’d only just finished my first when out of the corner of my eye I could see my two brothers seemingly arguing over something so out of interest I pulled my headphones out. It didn’t work they stopped talking as soon as they realized I was listening in.

“What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” They quickly said in unison.
“Really? You’re going to play that card with me? You both know me better than that.”

There was a minute of silence, Frank and Oli stealing nervous and excited glances at each other.

“Were you talking about Jason? If so, no worries guys, I’m leaving him.”
“What! I thought you really liked each other.” Frank thought aloud, obviously interested and surprised.
“One, I’m not telling you because you’re my brother and that’s weird and two, really if either of you don’t know by now I’m just a little bit worried about your lack of observational skills.”
“Whatever Ashley. We have observational skills.” Frank told me, rolling his eyes.
“Well, you clearly don’t seeing as you almost ran over a cat and just ran a red light.”
“You have no proof!” He yelled, seeming to think that it would make him right.

For the rest of the journey I put my headphones back in and let the music wash over me, willing time to slow down but as always it didn’t and too soon Frank was pulling up in front of our school and kicking us out of his car. He drove off and Oli and I walked towards the school that had made our lives a living hell for the past two years.

We walked in and went our separate ways. I made my way to my locker that was situated on the other side of campus while Oli’s was about five steps inside the entrance. Once I had retrieved my books I slowly began to walk back to my homeroom near the entrance. I walked in and sat down next to three of my best friends, Magenta Greene, Craig Turner and Tiffany Gaskarth.

“Oh, Ashley! You forgot… Again!” Tiffany complained when she saw my shirt.

I looked over at her and noticed that she was wearing the All Time Low shirt that we both had. Then I remembered the promise that I’d made her that we’d match today. Oops.

Tiffany had always loved All Time Low and she shared the same last name as the lead singer but every time we suggested going to one of their concerts she refused even if we offered to buy her a ticket. It was confusing but as her best friends, we always shrugged it off.

We walked to English together and took our usual seats in the back.

“Okay girls and boys… Miss Iero!” my teacher, Mr. Crowster barked.
“Yes Sir?”
“Are you wearing a wig?”
“Well, I wasn’t the last time I checked. Why?”
“Your hair is blue. Blue is not a natural hair color. This school only allows natural hair colors.”
“Oh, well done Mr. Crowster that’s very smart of you.” I smiled at him as I clapped to his achievement.

He threw his bag on the floor and pointed at the door.

“Ashley Iero get out of my classroom right now!”

I rolled my eyes at him and walked out, my back sliding down the wall just to the side until I was sitting against the doorframe.

“Ashley!”

I opened my eyes to see two of my friends sitting against the wall of the science room.

“Drake, Derek! What did you get kicked out for?”
“Teasing our newest lab partner about the Bieber sweater she was wearing. How about you?”
“My hair. Well, that and talking back to the teacher.”

They laughed and Drake clapped my achievement. Did I mention that Derek and Drake are twins? Well, they are, and identical at that. The only way to tell them apart is that Drake usually has shorter hair at the back. It doesn’t help that they both act the same most of the time either. Their Mom always said that they were both born with ‘juvi’ written all over their faces. I didn’t blame her. Everybody had tried separating the two during school hours but it never worked. It only resulted in both of them flunking because they refused to do the work.

Just before I was able to ask them about the gig our band was playing tonight, Kayla, Derek’s girlfriend, turned the corner and started walking in our direction, her heels clicking against the linoleum floor that is the standard at any school. She had her ‘school bag’ under one arm, really it was a designer handbag but somehow she got away with all of these things while others didn’t.

“Hey baby. What are you doing out here?”
“Waiting for Mrs. Blake to come talk to us. Drake and me were kicked out for teasing someone about their choice of clothing. Ashley was kicked out for nothing more than her hair color.”
“Hi Kayla.”

She sneered at me.

“Anyway, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to the restroom. I got a hall pass.”
“Too much information!” Drake yelled out, causing one student passing our corridor to look at us strange.

Well, in her defense we were a strange group of people to be together. Drake, Derek and I were considered ‘emo’ sometimes people would call me a ‘scene kid’ while Kayla was the typical ‘preppy rich kid’ (A/N: I hate labeling people but it serves a purpose in stories). No prizes for guessing whom the odd one out was.

“Anyway! I’ve got to go, you’re taking me home tonight right?” Kayla asked Derek, using what she thought was a ‘cute’ duck-face when in reality it was opposite.
“Sorry babe, no, I’m not. We’ve got band practice then we’ve got a gig at the underage theatre downtown and after that we’re all going over to Ashley’s to hang out.” Derek pointed out while Kayla got close to actually stamping her foot in annoyance.
“Ugh! Fine, but promise me you’ll come hang out over at my place tomorrow.”
“Sure.”

The fact that he was pretending to like her now was becoming clearer and clearer to me and I’m pretty sure that Drake could see it too. Kayla was just blind.

“Okay. I’ll see you later then.” If she used that baby voice again I was going to hit her.

Drake finally noticed my annoyance and winked at me. Just as Kayla leant down for a kiss Drake skillfully got in the way. She left in a huff and I couldn’t help the fit of giggles that followed and in the spur of the moment I ended up rolling across the floor, ninja style.

“You gonna keep me out of the way Drake?”
“No, I like you Ash. You’re one of my best friends.”
“Okay Drake, take your hands off of my girl.”

Let me explain. For the past six months I had been with Derek but everyone outside our circle of friends thought that I was with a guy in our year called Jason and that Derek was in love with Kayla. Our plan had been to break it off with the others a while ago but the thing is that we sort of needed to do it gently and not at the same time, so that we didn’t cause suspicion but it was getting dangerously close to the end of the year, we had two days left to be exact, and so now the plan had changed. Now we didn’t care if everyone found out what had been going on. We were going to be rid of them for an entire summer so what did it matter what they thought.

I sat up and gave Derek a quick kiss and then turned around so that I was leaning against his chest and he wrapped his arms around me.

“You know if a teacher comes out and finds the two of you like that, you’re in deep shit.” Drake pointed out.
“Is the plan still on for today?” I asked, ignoring Drake.
“Well, my arms are wrapped around you and I happily just gave you an amazing kiss so I would say yes.”
“Don’t flatter yourself Derek, the kiss was good.”
“What?”
“You’ve gotten better. I’ve taught you well.”

Neither of us could help ourselves, Drake and I both burst out into hushed laughter at the look on Derek’s face. He looked like a lost puppy.

“Oh, screw both of you.”
“Eww, no thank you. Screw Ashley anytime you want man but me? That would be incest.”

We both started laughing again while Derek just reached out and smacked his brother around the back of the head. I guess that both teachers had forgotten about us because nobody came out so we spent the remainder of the lesson time just talking to each other until the bell rang. We stood up and went to our next lesson. Our entire group of friends had Spanish together.

We got there and were soon joined by the other four.

“What’s up Ashley? It feels like we haven’t spoken in ages!”

Craig, one of my best friends. He was the smart one out of our group and also the sensible one. The one who would advise the rest of us against something that was going to get us in trouble and the one that was always there to laugh and say ‘I told you so’ when we ignored him.

“Craig, we talked during homeroom.”
“Yeah, like I said… ages.”

I rolled my eyes as I sat next to Derek in the back while Drake sat to Derek’s left. My brother came and sat in the seat directly in front of mine with Tiffany to his right and Magenta to his left. Craig was forced to come and sit on my right. Although, he didn’t look too upset about it.

When Kayla walked in with her little group of so-called friends. (Only one of them would stay her friend after this week and stay friends with her next year as her ‘best friend for life’.) She looked over to where we were all sat and motioned for Derek to sit over by her but he just shrugged.

“Sorry Kayla, I can’t get out.” He smiled at her innocently.
“Yeah well, Jason will be here in a second so Ashley get out and let me sit next to my boyfriend.”

Just as she said this Jason came waltzing in with his group of friends. I sent every one of my friends a frantic glance but none of them were paying attention. I would never actually admit it to anyone but Jason scared me. This was last chance saloon to get out of sitting with him. If only Craig would look to his left…

“Hey babe. Come sit with me.” Time up.

I sighed and got up to walk over to where Jason was sat squeezing into the seat between him and one of his friends whose name I had never bothered to learn.

“Hey babe. I didn’t catch you earlier.”
“Sorry, I was kicked out of the classroom. So I had to run as soon as the bell went so that I wasn’t taken to the principal.”
“You are ALWAYS getting into trouble.” He said. “Really, you should try a little harder.”

He was getting the silent treatment for that one. A few minutes of that passed and by this point we were all pretty certain that our teacher had forgotten about us. As I finally turned back to Jason I noticed he was giving me one of his ‘special smiles’ at least they were special according to him, to me they were just creepy.

“What?”
“Tonight, you, me at my house, my parents are away for the weekend so we’ll have the house to ourselves.”
“Jason… no. I’ve already told you that I’m not ready for that yet. Plus, I’ve got a gig tonight. You coming?”
“No way in hell. No offense babe but your music is shit. Oh and you know you want to take that next step.”
“No I really don’t want to take that next step. I’m only sixteen.”
“Exactly why you should want to. But you’re coming over to mine this weekend whether you like it or not.” There was the creepy smile again.
“I’ll come to your house but I’m not doing anything with you like that.”
“We’ll see about that.”

I sighed but was secretly freaking out on the inside. I could stand up to Jason when we were around other people, just barely mind you, but on our own he was too strong for me to resist physically.

The teacher never did show up and I was almost out of the door, when the bell rung, almost caught up with my friends when Jason grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“You meet me by the back of building three. Five minutes or I come looking for you. Understand?”

I nodded quickly, without hesitation but then sprinted off as soon as he let go of me. I pushed through the crowds of people until I finally came to the school field. I didn’t need to listen out for everyone, or look for them. I knew where they would be because it’s where we had always sat, since we started this school.

The big oak tree that could probably fit around twenty people around its trunk. I quickly plopped down next to Tiffany who gave me a hug and passed me the can of soda that we always shared at lunchtime.

“What’s wrong?” She whispered, finally noticing my ‘deer caught in the headlights’ expression.
“I’m avoiding Jason. I’m breaking it with him this lunchtime if he comes out here. He scares me too much for us to be together anymore.”
“And the fact that you are with Derek has nothing to do with it does it?”

I giggled softly at her comment.

“We’re that obvious are we?”
“No, Drake let slip the other night.”
“Spend your last few days with your boyfriend wisely Tiff cause he isn’t going to be around much longer.”

This time it was her turn to laugh. For the next half hour or so all seven of us just spent the time laughing and talking with each other about the most random things we could come up with. At one point the talk went to the topic of, ‘Do you reckon Jesus wore underwear?’ Yeah, we were just that cool. I thought I was clear of Jason completely but fifteen minutes before lunch was over, he emerged from around the back of building number three.

“You know what, I can’t do this anymore. Ashley, you promised me something and you lied! You better listen to me you freak!”

Tiffany gave me a smile of encouragement when she saw the look of fear pass over my face. I still didn’t feel ready to face him but then I glanced over at Derek and he smiled at me, his expression full of nothing but adoration and confidence. That was all I needed, to know that Derek had faith in me. That was enough. I stood up and started walking towards him.

“No Jason! You listen to me now! I never liked you, you just creep me out and you scare me! So maybe it took you threatening me and trying to make it seem that you were the good guy in all of this, putting up a false bravado if you will but you and me are over! People call me a freak but you Jason are the real freak!”

I had just attracted the attention of anyone in the school who happened to be near the oak tree. Jason didn’t like this so he moved closer to me.

“You so much as touch her again there are six of us here who would happily stop you.” Derek stood up and moved in front of me.
“I’m not afraid of going up against six girls. Oh wait, I’m sorry, four of you are guys, I just thought cause you wear girl pants and eyeliner…”
“Jason! Forget about it! We are over! So you can go find some skanky cheerleader to follow you around and do your bidding! Get out of my sight!”

He walked off in a huff and I took a deep breath, sitting down next to Tiffany who wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezing.

“You did good Ash.”

On my other side Drake was moving over to give me a hug too. Before he could make it to me though Derek stood up and motioned for Kayla to come over to us from where she was sitting with her posse just a few feet away.

“Wait. I have something to say as well. Kayla. Stand up.”

She stood up and gave me a death stare; I had just turned down her brother.

“Baby, what is it?”
“Oh, God, let me just explain, I don’t like you. You’re one of the fakest girls that I have ever met. The last time I took you out you took an hour to do just your make-up and my God if I ever have to hear that baby voice or see that stupid duck face again I think I’m gonna have a mental breakdown! You disgust me! We are over! Oh and while you’re wasting the fake tears over it, go find some real friends too.”

She started to walk off, she was shocked, that much was clear, but then she turned around and walked over to me. She slapped me around the face and smiled.

“You have NO idea just how long that I’ve wanted to do that for.”
“Oh no that’s okay here let me make us even.”

I slapped her across the face and her smile disappeared.

“I know what’s going on! You two are already together and you needed to get rid of me and Jason before you could be public.”
“Okay, I’ll admit, that was one of our motives but otherwise we just told you and Jason why we are breaking it off with you.”
“You two are SO not going to last.”
“Really because last time I checked. I love Ashley and there is no one that I want to be with more.”

She walked off for the last time and I turned to Derek.

“What?” He looked worried.
“You just said that you loved me.”
“Well, it’s the truth. I do love you and there’s definitely not anyone that I want to be with more than you.”
“Guess what.”
“What?” he smiled at me.
“I love you too.”

I moved closer to him and stood on my tiptoes and kissed him. We stayed kissing for five minutes until I heard someone growl.

I pulled away from Derek and saw my brother tearing up pieces of grass and mumbling to himself.

“Oli, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong Ashley? I’m sitting here having to see my best friend making out with my sister every time I look up. It’s wrong and it’s weird.”

I laughed and ruffled his hair and carried on kissing Derek.