Fuck Luigi
When I woke up the next morning I decided that while I loved Marcus, the morning wake up text was getting seriously annoying. And today it was even more aggravating than it usually was. Probably because the (actual) redheads I called my best friends had kept me up until two am to get the details about the situation with Casper. While I was doing the mess of numbers that my teacher called math homework. That'd been just so, so wonderful.
Now I had to deal with the next morning consequences, which were a headache, fucked up hair, and the obvious lack of sleep. Oh, and let's not forget that when I headed to school today I'd have to put up with the rumors about Casper's sudden change in attitude towards me. Wow, I was just looking forward to that. But not more than I was looking forward to the car ride to school with the twins!
"Jesus fucking Christ, I am going to throw my phone out of the window."
Said phone was buzzing, and buzzing, and buzzing. I mean, let me repeat myself, I loved my brother, I did not love his texting addiction.
"Whenever Marcus actually does find out, immediately after all the drama has settled down, I am giving him a piece of my mind about this buzzing mess," I grabbed my phone off the nightstand. Cracking an eye open I peaked at the screen.
Huh. Twenty messages from Marcus, three from the twins, and five from Casper?
Uh, what?
"How the hell did he even?" I wondered. Then it hit me.
"Marcus."
Of course he was the kind of asshole who'd steal my number from my brother's phone.
I eyed my phone apprehensively as I wiggled out of my sheets. Another night of making a cocoon, and another morning of waking up to the uncomfortable warmth. Only this morning I was debating whether or not I would a) answer my texts, and b) even attempt to go to school. See on one hand, I had to answer Marcus and the twins, or I'd have to endure some serious backlash of hurt man heart, and on the other hand I knew that if I answered my brother and the twins, I'd have to respond to Casper too.
And okay, let's be honest, if I skipped school dealing with my mom about would be the least of my concerns, she usually understood my need to de-stress. Others were not do understanding, insert here the names of my best friends, my brother and probably Casper. Because if I skipped the twins would use the extra house key I'd given them and drag me to school, or Casper would come pick me up himself.
Wow the latter was something I actually found kind of even more annoying than the vibrating of my phone. I mean, imagine all the creative rumors that would pop up after that.
Cue three and a half months later when Marcus realized that I was his sister and would promptly beat the shit out of Casper because of all the 'Casper Alistair banged Mercury Itou' rumors that would have been floating around all semester.
A shudder went through me. That was wrong on so many levels that I couldn't even count all of them.
"I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't."
Finally I got myself untangled as my fingers typed away. Might as well just respond to Marcus first. I did a quick scan of his texts (mostly complaints) until I got to the wake up call.
Marcus: Wake up sweets. Your favorite brother is suffering from lack of sisterly affection and an AP Statistics teacher from the Confederacy.
Merry: Poor baby, I'm sure that you'll be fine. And before you even ask I'm going to wear a tank and some shorts, it's going to be hot today.
Marcus: Fine. Least have some waffles for breakfast then, and water. Just water.
Merry: Done and done, now let a girl get ready for the hellhole called school.
One done and two to go. But instead of texting the Donovans I opted for calling them again. Lazily I lifted myself out of bed as I listened to the dial tone.
"Baby?"
"I fucking hate you guys."
"Dev who's calling? Is it Merc?"
"Morning Erik."
"Alright, shit, Erik get the hell off me. I'll put it on speaker."
A few seconds later I was graced by the voices of both of the twins.
"So, you're fucked."
"Thanks for the reminder Dev. Very eloquent of you."
"He's just stating the obvious Merc, but seriously shit is going to go down and you are in the middle of it. I mean, Alistair dropping his flavor of the week last night to spend time with you? That's not going to fly, even with the excuse of the combined Junior-Senior English project. Everyone's going to be all over it and the rumors about you two making out in his truck will be going around before lunch, at the latest."
I groaned, "Wow, that's a great visual image."
A series of unwanted fantasies of how the day could play out flashed through my mind. I winced, okay maybe I should make some decisions on how to approach this kind of situation. I gnawed on my lip a bit before deciding to just kind of give up.
I took a breath, "But you know what? Fuck it, Alistair can look like a total psycho on his own, it'll be his problem that his attitude took a one-eighty, and he can deal with the rumors. If anyone bothers me I'll act like Hunter and give them a noncommittal shrug."
"That's what you always say, hasn't really worked out for you Merc."
"Shut the hell up Dev. I swear to God that I'm going to punch you."
"Shouldn't that be 'or I swear to god I'll punch you?'. Huh baby?"
I set my phone down to shrug off my shirt, and tapped the speaker button before I moved onto my shorts, "No, I'm stating what I'm going to do. Like how this time, I am actually going to not give a fuck and freak out over something. I am not going to get all anxious and fluttery and end up crying over at your place at like, one am in the morning."
We all knew that was a maybe lie but at least I was trying to bluff my way out of another emotionally exhausting situation.
"Just because Alistair will look like a lunatic doesn't mean that I have to. Enough people, like the amazing Hunter, know that I would be chill around him if he would stop being such a dick to me. And look, it's happened, so it's kind of expected almost."
"Almost? More like impossible."
"She does have a point Erik, a lot of people know that Alistair acts decent around us and only gets into asshole mode because he's fucking loyal to Big Bro Marcus."
"And," I added as I stripped off my bra and underwear, "enough people know us to know not to mess with us. Courtesy of you two and the last three years of what you've done to the people who've tried to hurt me through those stupid other rumors."
Both of them laughed.
"Amen to that. God remember Jude? He still runs the other way when he sees us coming down the hall."
I threw my clothes into the bin in the corner, I did a half-hearted fist pump when they landed in the container.
"You set his shoes on fire."
A hiss escaped my mouth as a sudden faint pounding started to attack my brain. Well, that's wonderful. The twins were still laughing their asses off even as I slipped into the bathroom and turned the shower on. I heard their wheezing come to a stop only when I came back to retrieve my phone.
"At least we did it during PE baby girl. And we didn't get caught."
"Correction, you did get caught. You just bullshitted your way out of it. Now I'm going to shower and hang up on you losers. See you in a half an hour?"
I got a resounding answer of muffled laughter.
"God why are my best friends arsonists?" I moaned at the ceiling as if it had an answer. Instead I got jackshit.
And now I was left with nothing to do but shower or answer Alistair? Casper? Ah fuck it, I don't give a damn anymore. Shower it was.
"What the actual fuck you guys?"
Dev was currently styling my hair as we (meaning Erik who was playing Mario Kart on my 3DS and I) sat eating the beignets that the twins brought over, like halfway into my shower.
And no I didn't mean that they came into my shower, they just showed up just as I finished rinsing the shampoo out of my hair.
"What? You don't like beignets? Because mom made them for you this morning and she'll be so, so sad if you didn't like them," Dev chided as he finished with my hair and snagged the sugar coma inducing pastry.
"I adore beignets like they're going out of style Dev, you know that—Erik, blue shell!"
"Shit!"
There was a moment of silence as the younger twin came second in the race. He glared at the screen before he quietly (and kind of scarily) closed my 3DS and placed it on the table. Dev and I exchanged a look as the older twin leaned over my shoulder to get a better look at his brother. We waited for some kind of response from Erik, who we both knew to be a sore loser.
It took ten seconds.
"Oh my god," I whispered, horrified at what Erik had done.
The redhead had lunged for the plate of beignets and had promptly shoved an entire one in his mouth before grabbing a pastry in each of his hands. Right now he was in the middle of viciously chewing as he started to chow down on the sugar fest in his right hand. Powdered sugar was everywhere over the table, and Erik.
He glared at us as we leaned away from him.
"Bro, what the fuck."
Erik took his sweet time chewing and gnashing and swallowing before he replied. The redhead looked us dead in the eye, a beignet threateningly in his hand as he thrust it towards us to make his point.
"Fuck Luigi."
"Okay," I said pushing myself out from the table, "I think that's enough breakfast. Let's hit the road."
Without another word I escaped back up to my room. I sighed as I kicked the door behind me closed. My eyes regarded the phone on my bed with apprehension.
I still had yet to call Casper back.
My teeth gnawed on my bottom lip as I edged closer to my bed. It'd be better if I called him now rather than confronting me at school. I knew that.
Didn't make it any easier to pick up the phone and deal with the weird change in our relationship.
"And I can't text him, because that'd be like texting Marcus, and that's just fucking weird," I muttered to myself as I finally picked up the stupid electronic device.
"Ha, I sound like Mr. Kahn 'electronic device'," I smiled to myself.
Then the phone started to buzz.
In my hand.
And the winning name was…
Casper.
Oh shit.
"Hello?"
I had panicked and actually answered. What the fuck. What the fuck is wrong with me?
Everything.
"Merry?"
"No, President Obama. Yes it's me," I muttered as I let myself fall back onto my bed. Might as well get comfortable.
"Don't be a smartass."
I wished that Alistair could've seen me rolling my eyes.
"Sorry sir. What would his highness wish of me so early in the morning when—I glanced at my alarm clock—he should be in his first period class with my brother?"
I heard a sigh on the other end.
"I'm hiding out in a locked bathroom. We're having a free period today and your big brother won't stop pestering me about why in the hell I would want his little sister's number."
My nose scrunched up in disgust.
"The bathroom? The boys' bathroom?"
Another sigh.
"Yeah, I know. Fucking gross as shit. Get over it princess it's not like someone's been jacking off in here recently or anything."
My eyes squeezed shut in further disgust.
"Way too much information. Did not need to know that."
I had a feeling that Alistair was rolling his eyes at me.
"Okay," I finally said when I felt less grossed out, "What do you want?"
"To be friends."
"Yeah, and you left how many messages just to say that?"
"I wanted to apologize again for my shitty behavior. Like, I know that I'm an asshole but that isn't an excuse to hate someone without a reason. We should all be mature enough to get past first impressions and search for what's really there. I never looked at you closely enough, all I saw was the bitch that Marcus hated. Not his little sister."
It was my turn to sigh.
"How long did you practice that? And um, hello Casper, you weren't supposed to see the real me. That was the point of acting like a bitch."
"For the record I didn't practice that—I laughed, like I believed that—I didn't. I may have written it down on a piece of paper but I didn't practice saying it."
"Nice."
"I know. But seriously, sorry."
Cue another eye roll.
"Casper, listen. I don't give a shit. I gave you a reason to act like you did. I attacked you, you defended yourself. You were an extremely shitty person, but we're gonna move past that now."
I glanced at the clock.
"Just like how we're gonna move past this conversation. I've got to leave soon—there was a scream that suspiciously sounded like Erik's name—before the twins destroy my lovely kitchen."
"You mean the sterilized laboratory of steel?"
"Shut the fuck up Casper. I'll see you at school," I said, but my words were teasing, they were light. Huh, wow it was weird actually talking to Alistair, Casper, whatever, like this. Like how we normally talked over text.
"Yeah, yeah, see you there babe."
"Don't call me babe," I cooed, my voice sickeningly sweet, "Or I'll get really mad Cupcake."
He was laughing when I hung up.
So it's been a long time. Thank for anyone who's actually been looking at this story, and I apologize for the fact that no, I will not be updating regularly. I will write when I can and update when I can, but school keeps me busy.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. And a special shout out to one of my best friends who inspired the Luigi scene. Because seriously, fuck Luigi. His AI is horribly good at Mario Kart.
(All copyrights for the game Mario Kart and for the character Luigi go to Nintendo. This story is in no way, shape, or form related to the Nintendo Company.)
-Nico