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chapter four
I closed my eyes to avoid the swirling colors around me. They were so bright and vivid it made my eyes hurt if I tried to look at them. After a few minutes, I felt my feet hit the ground. I opened my eyes and looked around. One of the first things I observed was Zac, sitting at his desk bent over some book. I walked over to him.
“What do you want?” he said without looking up and pushing a stray strand of hair from his face.
“I just went to the mall and talked to this girl I’ve never see-,”
“Alexis Sandra Mitchell, 19 years old. Lives on 14146 Maple Street. In other words, your girlfriend.” I stared at him for a moment before replying. He still hadn’t looked up.
“I’ve never seen her before! How can she be my girlfriend?!?!?!?!?”
“Tay?” my mom called up the stairs. “Is that you? Get down here now!” I glowered at Zac, whose eyes were now trained exactly on me, a false smile plastered on his face.
“It’s your birthday. Let’s go open some presents, huh?” I glared angrily at his back and followed him downstairs. He was babbling something.
“Happy birthday to me,” I muttered to myself. “Wouldn’t it have been nice to witness the two in between??”
Another boring birthday party. It was almost exactly like the one I had yesterday! Wow, isn’t that amazing? It only took about an hour of time. Time I need. I didn’t need to be sitting around opening birthday presents. I would just open some more tomorrow. It did seem like it would be nice to have a birthday every day. But then you would get old really fast. I decided I didn’t like the idea of three years every night. Especially since I had to show up on my birthday. My entire family was in the living room. There appeared to be presents in every corner of the room! It was amazing. It was like each person in my family got me 19 presents for my 19th birthday. But hey, I could live with that. Even though all this would be lost in the middle of the night.
The party was the same. Presents, cake. Blah, blah, blah. I wanted to get out of there. After the party, Dad took Zoë to a birthday party, Avery went to her friends’ house across the street, Mom took Jessica out, and Ike disappeared. Before Mom left, she said, “Taylor, why don’t you and Zac take your brother to the park? I’m sure he’d enjoy that.” Mackenzie jumped up and down in anticipation.
“Park! Park! Park…” he chanted on and on. We were committed now. Mackie wouldn’t shut up unless we took him. I groaned and frowned at Zac as Mom hurried out the door with Jessica. It was going to be a long day.