Chapter 2 Rachel

Chapter 2 Rachel

I wake up in the morning to my blaring alarm clock, and gently turn the switch off.  I yawn and stretch my arms over my head. I quickly get ready for the day and go out of my room, into the hallway, and to the kitchen through the swinging double doors.

“Good morning, Rachel,” my mother says to me.

“Good morning,” I reply.

I sit down at the table to the right of my older sister, who is already eating a serving of eggs. The sausage is all gone so I wait until my mother finishes cooking the rest of the breakfast foods and sets it on the table. At that moment my father walks into the room and pecks my mother on the cheek. He sits down to the right of me at the head of the table and my mother sits in front of me. Soon my little brother enters the room and plops down in front of my sister.

“Hey Jack,” I say to him.

“Hi,” he responds, immediately reaching across the table for the pancakes. He leaves them in a pool of syrup, and loudly chews with his mouth open.

It doesn’t bother me, or the rest of my family for that matter, he’s only eight years of age, but I laugh at an old memory.

“Remember Ms. Perkins?” I ask him.

My brother laughs as well and everyone joins in softly. “Worst lunch aid ever,” he says, picking up his plate and drinking his excess syrup.

Ms. Perkins was a lunch aid at the k-8 school I went to last year that my brother still attends, Sunset Elementary School. The school has murals of sunsets all over the place that everyone thought were tacky but I thought were beautiful if you could look past the bird poop and dirt stains. Ms. Perkins seemed to have a problem with slurping, chewing, and swallowing loudly. My brother repeatedly got lunch detentions, although they kind of backfired on her since she had to supervise him and still heard him eat. She was later fired for disorderly conduct, apparently deemed unfit to work with children. I don’t know, I thought she could be alright.

After breakfast, my mother begins to wash the dishes and my dad say bye to us as he heads off to work. Roquelle and I catch the bus to school, although Jack doesn’t have to go until later. The bus is noisy when we board, but of course it always is.

“Good morning,” I say to our bus driver.

“Good morning,” she replies happily.

My sister sits down in our usual seat behind the bus driver and I sit beside her. We discuss our classes today. She has a Spanish test today and I quiz her until the bus gets to the next stop. Peter and Jenna get on and sit across the aisle.

“Ready for the math test?” Jenna asks me.

“I think so,” I answer, but in truth I had completely forgotten about it.

“Quick, what’s two plus two?” Peter questions me.

“Um… four?” I say.

Peter gives me a doubtful look, “How sure are you about that?”

“About ten point four percent,” I tell him.

“Ten point four percent?” Jenna repeats. “Sorry, Rachel, but you’re probably going to fail the test.”

I laugh, “I’m not worried. At least I know what the test is on. Chapter ten point four, by the way, not chapter one of kindergarten.”

Peter shrugs, “I knew that, it’s on volumes of spheres. Besides, at least I remembered there was a test.”

“Of course I remembered,” I say, waving him off.

“Oh please, Rachel, you can’t hide it from us,” insists Jenna.

“I’m allowed to forget one thing in my whole life,” I say.

“True,” Peter agrees, “but you used it up last week when you forgot to put the date on your essay.”

“I still don’t think I should have lost five points for that. I knew what the date was. It was Friday, April 26,” I declare proudly.

“Rache, it was the twenty-fifth,” Jenna corrects me.

“Whatever, I know today’s date, it’s Wednesday April 30.”

“There you go, Rachel, you finally got something right,” Peter teases me.

The bus arrives at the school. I’m always the first one off the bus, and as I pass by Peter going down the steps I say, “By the way, we’re not learning about volume of spheres until next week.” Then I walk off.

My first class is English. We’re having a To Kill a Mockingbird discussion today, so the bell work is to write down things we found interesting or questions we had for the class from last night’s chapter. I pull out my papers of all the things I took note of or thought would be fascinating to debate. Since I just finished the book last night, the packet of annotations is still flipped to chapter thirty-one. I go to the chapter we were supposed to have finished last night and find that the trial in the book is about to start.

“Hello Ms. Holly,” my teacher says to me, approaching my desk.

My seat is in the front, although not the closest seat to her desk, it’s the third one down the row from it.

“Good morning,” I reply cheerily.

“Finish the book?” she asks, glancing down at the packet of notes on my desk.

“Yes, just last night. I liked the ending.”

“So did I,” she says and continues her stroll, questioning other kids in the row about the book.

“I really hate her sometimes,” my friend, Sarah, says as she sits down in the desk to the left of me.

“Why?” I ask. I always thought Ms. Smithson was a good teacher.

“Just look at her sneaking down the aisles, trying to determine who read and who didn’t.”

“Well, did you read?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I didn’t,” says the kid who sits behind me, Tim. “Of course, I pretty much haven’t read since I got shot.”

“You can’t blame a mad dog for your laziness,” I tell him.

“I don’t blame the dog. No, Tim Johnson did nothing wrong. It was that guy who shot him, Altkis or somethin’. Besides, I’ve been busy.”

“Did you get any sleep these past few days?” I ask.

“Uh… yeah. So?”

“Then you had time to read.”

“I didn’t,” Carol says as she sits down next to Tim, behind Sarah. “My family went on a cruise, and my little brother dropped my book in the ocean. In the ocean! Then the stupid boat gets delayed. We got back on the Big Island yesterday.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I try to comfort her.

“Rachel,” I hear a voice say to my right.

I turn to see Jesse, a friend of mine. She’s got a very small structure and she’s pretty shy, but I enjoy talking to her. “Hey Jesse,” I say. “What’s up?”

“Oh, I was just wondering what we did in class so far this week, I’ve been absent.”

“No problem,” I say. I explain what we did in various classes I have with her. “Where were you anyway?”

“I was in Arizona, seeing the Grand Canyon. Apparently it’s on my mother’s bucket list to see the seven natural wonders of the world.”

“Cool,” I say, “That’s where I’m from, Arizona. I moved to Hawaii when I was little.”

“Remember it much?”

“Not really,” I reply, thinking, “Very hot with a lot of cacti.” We laugh about it and I continue speaking to people around me until class starts.

The day goes smoothly in the rest of my classes as well. I check the grade on got on my math test as I’m walking to the bus. Perfect score. I feel relieved.

“Hey, sis,” Roquelle calls to me, running to catch up.

“Hey, how’d the test go?” I ask.

“Muy Bueno,” she tells me, checking on her phone as well. “Ninety-one.”

“Good.”

“And I assume you aced your math test?”

“Of course.” I answer. “Don’t you have a track meet today?”

“No, it’s on Friday, and coach is making us run tomorrow after school, so I won’t be able to make it to your game, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, you’ve seen me play softball before. You won’t be missing anything,” I assure her.

When we get home, both my parents are already there. Usually my dad doesn’t get home until later, especially when he has a case he’s working on.

“How was court?” Roquelle asks him.

I go to the fridge and take out an apple. Then I sit at the counter, eager to hear about it.

“The defendant didn’t have a chance. My client got even more than she originally wanted. I’ve been home for a little over an hour now.”

My mom comes in, holding a basket of Jack’s laundry. She places it down, and we all automatically gravitate over to help her fold it. She’s a stay-at-home-mom, but we try not to let her do everything herself.

“I say, after we pick up Jack, we head down to the beach. How about it?” my father enquires.

“Great,” I enthuse, “and how about Roquelle drives.”

“Perfect. How about it, Roquelle, are you up for it?” my mom asks her.

“Sure,” she says a little nervously.

She only got her permit a few weeks ago. If it were me, I’d get my permit as soon as I turned fifteen and a half, get my provisional license as soon as I was sixteen, and I’d have my full license at seventeen. But she can do as she chooses. She has a bit of a hard time with driving. When my she was in driver’s ed earlier in the year her instructor told her she would never get her provisional license, and even if she did she’d have it until she was nineteen and they took it from her. Long story short, my sister dropped the class. She took up a course that was pretty much all running, said it would probably keep her in shape for track anyway.

An hour later we’ve loaded up our van with surfboards and beach towels and my sister drives gingerly to my brother’s school. Usually he takes the bus like Roquelle and I. Really, my mom could drive us all to school, but we don’t mind the bus. When we arrive, my mom hops out and goes to find him in the crowd of second graders. She ruffles his short blonde hair and they soon get back to the van.

“Hey Jack, how was school?” my father asks.

“Great, Dad,” He looks around at all the stuff loaded inside. “Are we going to the beach?”

“Yep.”

“Yay!” he yells out, dropping his backpack on the floor at his feet.

Normally, we wouldn’t drive to the beach, it’s a short walk from our house, but today is more of a deluxe trip I guess; picking up Jack from school and bringing all of our beach stuff.

After we’ve set up camp (laid down towels, put up umbrellas and chairs, etc.) I head down to the clear blue water. Roquelle follows close behind me and we trudge through the water until it’s high on our waist, then begin to swim around. Through the confines of its ponytail, my hair tangles up and the strawberry blonde color turn red. After enjoying the crash of the waves against us for a while, we head back up to the beach to get our surfboards. The rest of the family is waiting, ready to go in with us. We surf until the lights in the sky grow dim and the waves subside. I sit on my surfboard next to my sister and we watch the sunset.

“It’s beautiful,” she says, glancing over at me.

“Yeah,” I agree. The purple sky grows red at the horizon. The brilliant sun is the yellow center of the mixing colors.

“I’m coming to your game tomorrow,” she says then.

“Roquelle...”

“Don’t worry about it. Couch has been lenient with me about after schools runs since I took up that extra class this year anyway.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” I tell her. “Really, I’m just trying to… see if I’ll like softball or not.”

“Well, all four of us will be there for you.”

I smile at her, “Thank you.”

My mom comes up beside us then on her board, “Time to go home,” she says, and we follow her back to the beach.

When we arrive at the house, my sister parks in the dirt in front. There’s no road to park on, to get here you have to follow a dirt road that goes a short ways to our house. The house itself is surrounded in green shrubbery, with palm trees all over. Through the trees at the side, you can glimpse the beach not too far away. I look up at our house as I stand there. It’s one story, but with plenty of room for us, more than needed.

The front room of the house has a wall almost completely constructed out of windows so you can see the ocean. The living room, which is where you walk into if you go to the left when you walk in, is huge and leads to either the kitchen (which is also connected to the front room) or the hallway which connects to all or our bedrooms, another way into the kitchen, and the mural room. The mural room isn’t really for painting, but it has murals covering it, thus the name. Over the years my family has painted the different faces of the room, and when we finished we put a desk in it and now use it as a study, but I like to go in there just to look at the paintings.

We eat dinner, although it’s a little late for it, and discuss how our days went. Roquelle and I both get congratulated on our test scores, and Jack tells us about a project he’s doing at school. I go to bed soon afterward, having already finished my homework at school. After turning off the light, I quickly fall asleep.