status: incomplete
proloque
I knocked my forehead on the car window. I had been traveling with my dad and his new fiancée, Lacey, to meet Lacey’s parents. I’ve never minded my dad dating—or in this case marrying—women. It was nothing different. He’d always dated other women ever since he and my mom split up when I was eight. What I did mind, however, was the fact that I didn’t have much of a choice when it came to living with my dad. My mom just dumped me off at my dad’s place when I was eleven years old. Another thing I hated was Lacey. Now I was never one to judge blonde women and label them all as the ditzy airheads that all the blonde jokes always come to the conclusion of, but this woman fit those blonde-joke descriptions to a tee.
“Come on, Lys, my sis! We’ll be there in a couple more hours! Turn that funny frown upside-down before it sticks that way!” Lacey chirped from the front passenger seat of the Trans Am Pontiac.
“If I was your ‘sis’, you wouldn’t be marrying my dad…” I hissed quietly through my teeth.
I looked at my watch. Other than my state of sanity, it was the only thing in the car that was changing. It was three-forty-two in the middle of a hot, late summer afternoon. I heaved an aggravated sigh. I’d been in this squishy back seat for just over seven hours now. Seven undeniably boring, tiring and all-round stressing trip. Let’s not mention bloody annoying with Lacey around.
I glanced longingly at my Discman. My dad had made me turn it off so that I could talk with him and Lacey and “stop being so anti-social.”
“When are we gonna get there?” I asked with a whine. “My butt’s killing me!”
“Don’t worry Alyssa, it’s right over that hill,” Will, my dad, assured me.
I sat back and sighed with relief. All I wanted to do was get out of the car and possibly lock Lacey inside it. Maybe I could swipe the keys from Dad, lock Lacey out of the car and drive like mad all the way home.
The car drifted swiftly up the small hill to reveal a quaint, diminutive town. I let my head fall back onto the headrest of the seat.
“Great,” I thought. “Welcome to No-Wheres-Ville! You are visitor number six since 1835!”
“Hey, this is a nice little town!” Dad commented with a smile. “Don’t you think so, Lys?”
I forced out the phoniest smile I’d ever shown my father and nodded. “It’s wonderful.”
“Oh! I knew that she’d just simply adore it!” Lacey giggled, clapping her hands in delight.
I groaned. Since when do women her age giggle like a little schoolgirl gossiping about her latest crush? I hated that the most about Lacey. She was Barbie’s identical twin intelligent-wise. The only difference was that Lacey was talented enough to be able to keep a job from month-to-month instead of going from a doctor to a fashion designer to a police officer.
The silver car pulled up into a white, concrete driveway. As soon as Dad, Lacey and I stepped out of the car, two older people came running out of the house to greet Lacey with hugs and kisses.
“Oh, Lacey, sweetheart! We’ve missed you so much!” The woman, who was obviously Lacey’s mother, squeezed Lacey tightly, then turned to Dad. “Oh, Willy-Billy! We’ve missed you too! Gosh, it’s been too long!”
“It certainly has!” Dad agreed.
Well, now I knew where Lacey got the stupid “Lys my sis” and other various nicknames from.
“Come in! Come in! Jon and I have been so excited all day long awaiting your arrival! I’ve got dinner in the oven; it’ll be ready around five-ish. Until then, we can all just lounge around and chit-chat!” Lacey’s mother shoved and dragged everybody into the house.
When Lacey’s mother finally seemed to notice that I was there, she told her that there was a group of teens that hung out down the street at the playground.
“How old are you, dearie?” she asked.
“I’m seventeen, almost eighteen,” I informed her.
“Oh, wonderful! There are tons of teens down there at the park all the time! I’m sure that you’d simply love to gossip with somebody your own age. I know how boring we adults can be sometimes!”
Lady, I like the way you think.
“Now, to get to the park, it’s very simple. You go right, then when you’ve come to the end of the street, take a left turn and there’s a few houses there that are in a bit of a semi-circle. Between the two middle houses, there’s an asphalt path that leads right to the park!” she explained to me.
“Thank-you,” I smiled at her before I left the house.
Well, I guess I can’t complain too much. Lacey’s family—well, her mom—is tolerable.
I found my way to the park really quickly. I was pleased to find some people there, but they looked a little older than seventeen.
Hey, what do you know? I guess I found visitor numbers one through five!
“Hey! Get back here with that!” a tall guy with spiked brown hair with some highlights in it jumped off of his swing to run after his friend who had blonde, curly hair and was slightly taller than the man chasing him.
“Justin! Forty-dollar hat! Give back now!” the man laughed as he ran.
The guy who had stolen the hat from his friend turned around and ran backwards, holding the hat high in the air, teasing with his height. I just laughed.
They might not look like teenagers, but they sure act like them!
The men raced around the park. I stood by a bench to watch their frenzy as the other three guys on the swings began to stand and join in the game. The guy with curly hair passed the hat off to a short guy with nearly black, spiky hair. After a few brief moments, the hat made its way back into Curly’s hands. He laughed as he ran backwards, holding the hat just out of his friend’s clutches. I began to laugh a bit but my laughter ceased quickly as Curly ran into me, knocking both of us to the ground.
“What the—?” Curly gasped as he plummeted to the ground just above me. He looked me over quickly before apologizing and realizing I wasn't one of his friends and getting back up on his feet to pull me up.
“Uh, Joey, you can have this back.” Curly tossed the hat to his friend. “So, who are you?”
“I’m a little surprised, for one,” I joked. Who knew five guys could have so much fun at a kiddie playground in No-Wheres Ville? “And secondly, I’m Alyssa.”
“Hey, I’m Justin and I too, am fairly surprised!” Curly—I mean Justin—said with a smile. “These are my friends.”
“I’m Joey,” announced the guy whose forty-dollar hat was stolen by Justin.
A man with blonde, spiked hair joined us all. “My name is Lance.” I smiled. Mmm mmm! Hellooo Lance!
The short man with spiky, black hair told me his name was Chris and a man about Lance’s height, maybe a bit taller, introduced him self as J.C.
“Wanna hang with us?” Justin asked.
I shrugged. Yeah, like there’s anything else here that I could do.
“Sure.”
Justin smiled. “Cool!”
“Hackey-sac anybody?” Joey asked, bringing a small bean-filled ball out of his pocket.
The other guys all agreed.
“Alyssa, you wanna play?” Lance inquired. Duh.
“Yeah, why not?” I responded.
We played hackey-sac for nearly fory-five minutes. We were interrupted by none other than the one and only real-life Barbie, Lacey.
“Lys, my sis! Come on hunny-bunny, Mama’s got some appetizers ready! It’d be simply dandy if you came and tried a nibble!” Lacey chimed.
That’s funny, from the hint I got, I wasn’t supposed to be back until supper was ready. I think Mommy-Dearest just wanted to get rid of you for a while.
“I’d rather not, I’m not at all hungry,” I told her.
“Of course you are, silly! You’ve been out here for so long without anything to eat or drink! You must be famished!” Lacey argued.
Nope. The only thing I’m being 'famished' from is some time away from Barbie and Ken’s Dream House.
“Come along, Alyssa! It’s time to get some meat on those bones!” Lacey said, still smiling, as she put a hand on my shoulder to direct me back to her parents’ house.
I’ll show you exactly how much meat I’ve got on my bones if you touch me any more!
I sighed. “Okay, I’m coming, I’ll just be a minute.”
“Yay! And guess what your dad brought in the car? I bet you know what it is!” Lacey cooed. Oh no, please no! Not… “We’ve got some Scrabble to play when we get back!” Lacey clapped her hands in excitement.
No! Please, I cannot believe my dad actually took that stupid game! The only thing I ever do other than despise Lacey is play friggin’ scrabble with her! This is so not fair!
“Oh, uh, great…” I shuddered slightly at the thought of playing another horrific round of scrabble with Queen Ditz.
“Uh, I guess we’ll see you ‘round, Alyssa,” Lance spoke reluctantly.
“Will you be here sometime around seven?” I asked quickly. I needed any excuse I could find to ditch the Scrabble game.
“You bet! Will we see you here?” Justin replied smoothly.
I nodded. “Yes, I’ll see you here at seven!”
“Okay, see you then!” Joey called as Lacey dragged me back to the house.
“I cannot believe you didn’t introduce me to your wonderful new friends!” Lacey grouched. She sounded genuinely angry. It was really weird.
“Why would you wanna meet my friends?” I inquired with curiosity.
“Why not? I mean, Will’s great, but he can get a little on the boring side in bed. Those boys looked awfully scrumptious!”
“Oh-kay!” I said loudly, hinting to her that I really didn’t feel like touching that subject. I mean, who wants to know how their dad—you know what? I think I’ll just skip this. I think you get my drift with this.
Anyway, as soon as we entered the house, Lacey called out a high-pitched “we’re back!” and her mom set down some hors devours on the coffee table. I couldn’t get Lacey’s words out of my head. Did she always talk this way about Dad? For some reason, I wanted to find out and hope that she didn’t. But then I hoped that she did at the same time. At least if my dad caught her talking like that about him, she’d be gone. But…I dunno. I just didn’t want his feelings or pride to be hurt. But my curiosity got the better of me. If I got proof that she talked about him like that around everybody, I wouldn’t have to deal with a life-sized Barbie every single day of my life. Now that would be awesome. No more Lacey. Wouldn’t life be sweet then?
I flashed a half-smile at the thought. I couldn’t wait until I exposed her as the fraud she really was! Lacey looked at me kinda funny and asked me why I was smiling.
“Uh…I just can’t wait until Scrabble time…nope, can’t wait,” I lied.
Wow, that girl is gorgeous! I can’t wait until she gets back here at seven! I wonder if she likes me. Well, she doesn’t seem to mind me, that’s for sure. She wasn’t too happy about that lady stopping by to get her. I don’t blame her much, though. That woman seemed like a total ditz. I would never be able to handle that. Oh, but she said ‘Lys my sis,’ does that mean they’re friends? Are they actually sisters? No, I don’t think so, they don’t look anything alike. Well, hopefully I’ll be able to find out while we stay here…