Chapter 1

            I’m still in my Hello Kitty pyjamas as I amble up the stairs for breakfast, half asleep even though I only have like half an hour to get to school. And I still have to eat breakfast and shower and brush my hair like fifty times-

            Kidding. If I ever acted like that, I’d have to shoot myself.

            I wake up pretty quickly once I reach the top of the stairs, because that’s when I smell breakfast. It’s pancakes. Blueberry pancakes. Yeah, I’ve got the nose of a greyhound and the face of a movie star, if I do say so myself.

            Luca comes sprinting past me, taking the stairs two at a time and nearly knocking me over. Luca’s my jerk of a big brother. The one who walks past every night and calls the same thing out to me. It gets really repetitive after a while.

            “Watch it, idiot,” I call as he darts away. I can practically see him drooling like a St. Bernard with overactive salivary glands.

            Whoops, there I go again, letting my nerdy side show through.

            In reality, I’m a total swot. I could get A’s on every test I take if I wanted to, easy-peasy. But, for the sake of not sticking out, Felicity might as well have learning difficulties she’s so dumb. I suppose that her being such an idiot is going to make her stick out as well, so I think I’ll slowly make her ‘understand’ things �" things that I learned and understood three years ago and could recite off by heart.

            By the time I actually get to the kitchen table, Luca’s halfway through his pancakes already. If he eats any faster, he’s going to choke. Not that he’d be missed.

            He finishes his pancakes in like a minute, though that’s nowhere near his fastest time. But ten minutes later, I’m still sitting there, cutting the pancaky goodness into tiny, smaller-than-bite-size chunks. I never eat anything. Not that I’m anorexic or anything; I’m just never hungry.

            I’m just about to get up and dump the little pieces into the bin when my antisocial big sister �" yes, I’m the youngest of three �" Strawberry trudges into the kitchen, eyes on the floor as usual. Her name isn’t actually strawberry, it’s Mia, but she’s going through an anime phase and so she’s telling everyone to call her Ichigo. I looked the word up on Google Translator and lo and behold, Strawberry.

            Strawberry silently mows through her pancakes. I watch her, fascinated, as once she’s finished she starts eating the chunks from my plate. I open my mouth to stop her, then remember that I never would’ve eaten them anyway. Duh.

            Mum and Dad are at the table, too. At opposite ends. Reading the paper. Both of them. In silence. It’s eerie.

            Dad reaches out for his coffee, but knocks it over instead, the now-lukewarm liquid spreading like wildfire over the old table. He doesn’t seem to notice, so I sigh and stand up, saving the handy dandy rag from the dark brown puddle. The rag’s saved us from major stainage more times than I can count. Well, more than Felicity can count, at least.

            As I absently mop the puddle up, staring at my ugly chewed fingernails, Dad pipes up for the first time all �" all what? All week? It sure seems like it.

            “You’re a great help, Fel,” he mumbles, absorbed in whatever stupid propaganda story is printed in front of his face. Mum makes a small ‘mm’ sound from across the table, which shows she has been listening and actually does care. Maybe, although I have to say I highly doubt it.

           “You’re welcome, Dad,” I mumble back, sounding more masculine than I usually do. Hm. The façade is wearing thin. Maybe Felicity needs some more make-up caked on to her irritatingly feminine face.

            “Get out of your pyjamas, Felix, we’ve got ten minutes till the bus comes,” calls Luca as he runs past the kitchen. Meanwhile, I’ve frozen up. He said it? Actually called me Felix, in front of Mum and Dad! What was he thinking? I wasn’t ready, not yet, not yet, not-

            “How cute, he’s got a nickname for you.”

            Mum’s voice breaks through my downward spiral and I blink myself awake, looking surprised. Nothing happened. The world didn’t implode. And I’m still trapped as a woman. Great.

            I can hear Strawberry shouting at us from down the hall. “In one of the anime I watch,” she yells at nobody in particular, hoping someone will pay attention, “there’s a character called Feliks.”

            Right, Ichigo. Because just everybody cares about an anime nobody else has ever seen.

            There are a lot of thoughts running through my head as I pull on my school uniform. We’re allowed to mix and match �" quite a few people do �" so I’m wearing the boy’s uniform, all long pants and black shirt and shiny shoes.

            I’m thinking mostly about how nobody cared that Luca called me Felix. Maybe I can tell people earlier than I had planned. When did I plan to tell them, you ask?

            In an ideal world, they’d already know.

            But this isn’t an ideal world, and I know I’ll have to tell someone at some point, what with I-Know-All-Your-Secrets-Little-Sis looking for any opportunity to blackmail me. He’d tell the wrong person, no doubt, and the whole world would know all about it by lunchtime.

            I want to get the news out slowly, so that people don’t get too alarmed and start spreading rumors. Everyone has to hear it from me or else they won’t have the true story. That’s been one of my policies since I was a little kid; everyone gets the full story. Or else people just end up knitting one of those awful webs of lies and it all backfires on them. Dad didn’t give Mum the full story about something, and he made a lie-web. And now they’re thinking about getting a divorce. I know because their room is right above mine and I can hear them shouting, night after night. The walls and floors in this house are thin. I’m surprised the neighbours haven’t called the noise police about them.

            I’m just about out the door, my black leather satchel hanging from one shoulder, when I hear a soft meow and something rubs up against my trouser leg. I glance down, and my face breaks out into a wide, completely-and-utterly-real smile. It’s my little kitty, Papaya. She’s a blue-point Siamese, which basically mean’s that the markings on face, feet and tail are all a ‘cool grey’. Or so says Wikipedia. I think they look blue. Her fur is crimpy and wavy, and Mum says she’s crossed with a Cornish Rex. Whenever I tell my friends that, they get blank looks on their face, and I have to show them a picture. They still don’t get it.

            People never get why I called her Papaya, seeing as she’s white and grey and not papaya coloured at all. It’s because on the day I got her, a friend had brought round some fruit. As my parents walked through the door with cat box in hand, I came out to meet them and said ‘Look, Mum! Papaya!’ So, we called her Papaya, just for a joke.

            There’s an impatient honk, and I glance up to see my brother sitting in his car in the driveway, the engine throbbing rhythmically. He gestures at me to get in, and I feel a grin spreading across my face. He hasn’t driven me to school for a few months now. To be honest, I’m sick of catching a public bus and walking forever to get to school.

            As I slip into the passenger seat, nearly bashing my head on the doorframe, Luca frowns, giving me the once-over. “I never understand why you’re so shy about your ‘other self’ and yet you wear the boy’s uniform,” he mutters. I shrug and spout some nonsense about the fact that I’m not the only one who does that. But we both know that has nothing to do with the question.

            Luca drives in silence, and it slowly becomes more and more awkward. I thank him for driving me, but he just grunts (what a huge vocabulary that boy has), his hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles are white. He’s staring with such intensity at the road that I’m surprised he hasn’t burned holes in the asphalt. The thought crosses my mind that he’s angry, but then I remember that he’s petrified of driving, and I almost laugh. But I’m scared he’ll hurt me, so I keep quiet.

            “Thanks for driving me,” I say again, my voice loud in the confines of the care, and Luca actually looks away from the road to stare at me like I’m crazy. A faint blush stains my cheeks and I look away. “It was getting awkward,” I explain quietly, and he snorts.

            When we finally reach the school, he turns into a side road. I’m surprised, and open my mouth so say something before I realize that he has to go to school too. The lingering blush deepens, and I think I see the shadow of a smile flit across my brother’s face.

            What a day this is turning out to be.

Reviews

[Dini]

This is awesome and so...Mackenzie. The anime and nerd references and Papaya the 'kitty'. So great! LOL I should shut up because people on here don't know you personally.

So, she has, like an alter ego? I was a little (ok, very) confused as to why she was talking about herself in third person, but it makes more sense at the end. Now to read the next chapter! Add more! XD