Anonymous

I looked up from my laptop screen and stared at the ceiling. God, what was that word? It wasn’t pompous, but it was something like it…

I struggled for a good thirty seconds before my eyes shot to the ceiling and caught sight of a tiny speck. I squinted at it, trying to figure out whether it was simply a spot, or if it was one of the many bugs that somehow managed to find their ways to my room, despite the fact that Mum was so anal about cleaning.

Just as I was about to go back to whatever I was writing, deciding it was just a spot, it moved.

My heart started to race as I got to my feet, searching frantically for a shoe. How the hell I was going to kill it when I got the shoe, I had no idea. I definitely wasn’t tall enough to reach the ceiling.

Finally, after what seemed like ages of searching, I took hold of a rogue trainer and parked myself under the speck. It was a fairly small black spider, squirming around, rubbing its legs together, obviously trying its hardest to make a web. In my room.

I took a deep breath and prepared myself before jumping up and smashing my shoe against it. When I pulled it away, there was a scuff mark on the ceiling, and the spider was squished on the bottom, its guts oozing out all over the place.

“Gross,” I shuddered, walking down the hall to the bathroom so I could flush the guts.

When I got back to my room, I threw myself back into my chair and started to write, the words I had been grasping for coming to mind with ease once I started working.

But before I’d even gone half a page, my bedroom door was thrown open. “Um, whatever happened to privacy?” I accused, though not quite hostilely, knowing that only Maria would storm in like that.

“I’m pissed,” she said simply before throwing herself on my bed, which was opposite my place in the chair.

I waited for her to continue with her story, but she didn’t. “Um, why are you in my room?” I asked, raising a thin eyebrow at her.

“Because I’m pissed!” she repeated with a groan. “Aren’t sisters supposed to listen to each other when they’re pissed? I thought it was in the code book or something.”

I chuckled. “I didn’t get a copy of that. But go ahead.” I closed my laptop and put it on the floor next to me so she had my full attention. “What are you pissed about?”

She took a deep, dramatic breath before telling me, very gravely, “The guy that I was playing on the Xbox hasn’t been on in a few days. And it’s making me angry.”

I blinked at her a couple of times, letting her words sink in, sure that she wasn’t telling me the truth. “Wait, let me get this straight,” I repeated slowly as I leaned forward, putting my elbows on my knees, “you’re upset because the guy that you beat mercilessly at a videogame isn’t online anymore?”

“Right.”

“Why is it so important to you that he’s online?”

Maria let out a sharp sigh. “Because,” she started off like I should have known it was obvious, “he stopped going online once he beat me. And now I can’t get any revenge. He’s just walked away a winner. And that bugs me because he’s not a winner. He’s a loser, and I just want to show him that.”

Oh my God, my sister was a psychopath. Or she was just ultra-competitive. Whichever. “You just want him to go online…so you can beat up on him some more?”

Maria nodded, a lock of dark hair falling out of her ponytail and into her face. God, how was it possible that someone who looked so much like me be so different from me? “Yeah, exactly.”

I let out a long breath, wondering how I could word what I was thinking in a way that wouldn’t hurt her feelings. Finally, I settled with, “That’s incredibly mad.”

“What do you mean, it’s mad?” she huffed. “It’s not. I’m good at the game, and I just want to prove that.”

“You don’t think you proved that by beating him a million times originally? He probably just kept playing because he wanted to beat you, and when he did, he walked away. I’m sure videogames aren’t a massive part of his life like they are for you.”

“Then that pisses me off even more because he didn’t deserve to win. It’s all because of Mum, anyway. She came downstairs and started yelling at me to clean up my game room. I looked away for one second. One! And he took the opportunity to punch off my head.”

“That game is awfully violent,” I pointed out.

She shot me a look. “Not the point, Jess.”

“Sorry,” I chuckled. “I guess my advice to you-”

“I wasn’t looking for advice,” my sister interrupted. “I was just venting to you about how pissed I am that the guy doesn’t come online anymore.”

I hesitated, not really sure how to answer that. Finally, I came up with, “You know, at twelve years old, you shouldn’t use the word ‘pissed’. It’s not a very nice word.”

“How old am I, three?” Maria shot back, rolling her eyes. “I don’t care if it’s not a nice word. I know people who say worse.”

“But I’m not related to those other people,” I reminded her.

“Oh, please. Don’t act like you don’t swear all the time. Especially in those stories of yours.”

My face turned beet red. “Holy hell, Maria. Have you read my stories?!”

“No. But I’ve seen some of the papers that you wrote your chapters on in school after you’ve thrown them in the rubbish.”

“Ugh. That’s disgusting, you little freak.”

She gave me a sassy face, something worthy of Louis. “I was just curious.”

I shook my head and sighed. “Have you finished venting now? Are you leaving?”

“Fine. I can tell when I’m not wanted.” And with that, she left the room, slamming the door behind her forcefully.

“What a drama queen,” I grumbled under my breath, flipping my hair over my shoulder as I went back to my story.

But the time in the corner of the screen jarred back a memory. “Oh, shit,” I muttered under my breath as I slammed my computer shut again and lunged onto my bed, flipping it to channel 5 as quickly as I could.

The cable box took a second to respond to my command, and I just about had a heart attack. But when the image finally caught up, and the show was just beginning, I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t missed the boys.

“I know you really don’t want to hear me talk all by myself,” the show host Richard Stevens joked, a huge grin on his face. “So I guess I’ll bring out my first guests. They’re a little band with absolutely no importance whatsoever, but they were the best we could get for tonight because Pink was busy. Give it up for One Direction!”

An inhuman squeal escaped my mouth as my favorite boys filed onto the stage, waving and grinning at the people in the audience, who were screaming and clapping louder than I’d ever heard on the show.