I woke up to the smell of burnt toast and automatically smiled. I’m sure the majority of you would have bolted out of bed and ran to the kitchen to see what was burning down. But in the Norton household, the smell of burnt… something was a routine. I calmly got up from my bed and opened my door, which lead to the small but homely kitchen. Mom was leaning against the counter, reading a thick novel, her back towards the dark smoke emitting from the toaster.

I watched my mom’s face and the only wrinkles on her face were the ones around her mouth—caused by the many years of laughing. She had long black hair and her big brown eyes were shifting across the page quickly. Mom was still very beautiful at the age of 34.

“Mom, what’s wrong with this picture?” I calmly asked her.

She was startled and looked up at me in surprise. Her brows furrowed in confusion and the corners of her lips pulled up into a smile. “You should be at school?”

I walked over to where she was standing and flipped the toaster switch up. The two pieces of black bread popped up and using two forks, I carried them to the trash can and they fell with a resounding thud.

“Incorrect, Ms. Beth Norton,” I mocked a game show host’s overly dramatic voice and held the fork by my mouth. “It is in fact 7:00 A.M. and your daughter—the gorgeous and graceful—Gillian Norton does not go to school until 7:40 A.M.” I swung the fork accusingly towards her and bit my tongue from giggling because of the amused look that she gave me. “The answer is… you are cooking.”

Mom gave a huge gasp and put a hand to her throat. “Say it isn’t so!”

I nodded grimly and made my voice very low, this time, impersonating a police officer interrogating his suspect. “Was it not just yesterday that you had almost burned this house to the ground, Ms. Norton?”

This time, Mom put her hands on her hips. “I threw that pan out.”

I shook my head sadly. “It was a good thing that fish was already dead, Ms. Norton; because the fate that had followed in the frying pan was much… much worse!”

Mom and I stared daggers at each other for a few seconds before I burst out laughing. Mom threw a smile at me and said, “Ha, I win.”

I slowly backed into my room and watched my mother. “You may have won this battle, Mother. But you shall never win the war!” I threw my head back and let out a huge cackle and ran into my room—with my mom’s laughter following me.

And, thus, the typical lives of the Norton women fell into a comfortable—and humorous—custom.

An hour later, I was settling into homeroom when my best friend, Kaylee Shoals bounded into the room, already hyped up for the morning.

“Gillian! You would not believe who just asked me out!” She practically squealed into my ear. Kaylee didn’t have a chance to tell me who it was when the bell rang and Ms. Kist walked into the room and glared at us all—as if we were the bane of her existence.

Five excruciating minutes later, the bell rang again, signaling that homeroom was over and our five minute walk to first period began. As soon as we got out of the classroom, I whispered to Kaylee, “I still don’t understand how people who hate kids work at a school.”

“Maybe they were bullied when they went to high school and so came to teach to make other kid’s grovel in fear,” Kaylee interjected.

“Maybe,” I pondered. “So who asked you out?”

“Sam!” She shouted excitedly. I smiled with her. Sam Ho was the really handsome boy that was the captain of our school’s varsity badminton team. He may play a game Kaylee and I knew nothing about, but he sure was cute. “I can’t believe he asked me out; he is so adorable, don’t you think so?”

I rolled my eyes good-naturedly and asked her, “Didn’t you used to like Hunter Ban? I thought he was your flavor of the week.”

She waved him away as if the thought of Hunter was as of little importance as a fly. “Yeah… but I don’t think Hunter likes me. He sure as heck isn’t getting any of my hints.”

I raised an eyebrow. Kaylee gave some pretty obvious hints. “Well, it doesn’t matter now because Sam asked you out, right?”

She gave a firm nod. “That’s right. He’s taking me out to get some drinks and we’re going to go down to the beach and hang out.” She had a far off twinkle in her eyes and sighed happily.

The warning bell signaling that we all had one minute to get to our first period rang and I turned to Kaylee, “Well, you better wipe that smile off your face before Ms. Elardo helps you herself.”

She shuddered and whispered, “That woman is horrendous!” Kaylee walked off to her history class and I slipped inside my English class for another fun-filled day of reading Macbeth. Yay.

After school, I waited with Kaylee for Sam to come by and pick her up and I quietly examined her while she chattered happily about Sam. Kaylee was the same age as me—17—and our birthdays were only five days apart. My birthday was on the 26th of September and Kaylee’s was on the 21st. Even though she was older, I sometimes felt as if I had to take care of her. She was about two inches shorter than me—I was 5’7”—and her hair was a dirty blonde whereas my hair was black like my mom’s. She was pretty if one had the chance to get close to her, but it wasn’t a double take sort of pretty. The thing with Kaylee was that she has the worse attention span ever in guys. She’s taken by one guy one month and infatuated with another in the next month. I could only hope that Sam knew what he was doing.

My thoughts were interrupted with a, “Sam!” and I turned around to see the tall Vietnamese/Chinese boy walking towards us. Sam was pretty good-looking for an Asian guy—there weren’t many Asian people at our school and fewer cute ones. He noticed me and let out a nervous chuckle.

“Hey,” Sam stuck out his hand towards me and I tilted my head a bit, staring at his hand. He looked confused by my actions and said, “Uh, you shake it.”

Kaylee started laughing and I said, “Oh, I know, duh.” I smacked myself in the forehead and took his hand. “I just didn’t know that people still did that these days. You know, shake hands. Well, yeah, people shake hands. But I didn’t know people our age did that. I’m not saying we’re old. Or, you know, young. I mean, we’re seniors. So that’s as old as a young person can get, huh?” I was babbling and I knew it. The trick was to get me to shut up. See, although Kaylee was incredibly smooth with the opposite species, I was a bumbling fool. Kaylee and I have been friends long enough for her to know that I wasn’t crushing on her “guy”. It’s just what I did. I blush and act like an idiot. Thank you, God.

“Sam, you know my best friend, Gillian, right?” Kaylee introduced.

“Yeah, I have Psych with her,” Sam smiled.

I bit my tongue and smiled back. I turned to Kaylee and said, “So, I’ve got to get home now and get started on dinner. You know Mom. Cooking is to Mom as Titanic is to water.”

She giggled and slapped me on the arm. “Isn’t she hilarious, Sam?”

He nodded and smiled politely back at me.

“Anyhoo…” I dragged out. “I’ve got to go. Call me tomorrow, okay, Kaylee?”

“Yeah, no problem. Bye,” she waved as I walked off to the student parking lot.

“See you on Monday, Gillian!” I heard Sam calling behind me. I waved without looking back.

As soon as I got into my car, I threw my backpack into the passenger seat and mumbled to myself, “Great going, Gillian. You might as well have told him that you were mentally retarded.” I groaned loudly and put my head on the steering wheel. “I have no luck with guys, whatsoever.”

On the drive home, the thought of a Friday night dinner with Mom and a nice romantic movie cheered me up. We could watch How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and watch as Kate Hudson’s character runs her relationship into the ground with lies—not that Matthew McConaughey’s character didn’t add more wood to the flame… or whatever that quote was.

Eeyup, a simple girl-and-girl time with my mom was just what I needed. No boys. Because boys were stupid and made me feel stupid when I was around them. Stupid boys…

When I got home, however, Mom’s Highlander was already in the driveway and I thought something was wrong since she never came home early from work. I ran into the house and Mom was sitting on the couch, when she turned around and saw me, her first words were, “I got engaged!”