FicWad

I realised that I would do scary and possibly insanely homicidal things to get hold of a cup of coffee.

Was my addiction to coffee natural? I wondered as I waited amongst eleven year olds all talking and giggling and shooting me sideways glances that they thought I didn't notice. The little twerps were so irritating and I congratulated myself on not throttling them to stop them all chattering at once. Personally, I was a fan of silence. It seemed that none of these tiny little people were.

Perhaps coffee had nicotine in it, explaining the unnatural addiction. Or maybe it was only me who suffered from this coffee addiction. If coffee had nicotine in it wouldn't it taste something like a cigarette? Though that would make no difference to me because I'd never tasted a cigarette. And wouldn't more people be developing lung cancer although maybe not because it could be the other 2999 chemicals in cigarettes that caused lung cancer.

I settled for thinking, 'my addiction to coffee is completely normal. My body has become dependent upon it and its caffeine to keep it running.' It sounded like a bunch of scientific bullcrap to me but I accepted it anyway, pretending that it was a plausible answer in my mind.

If I was so desperately in need of a cup of coffee, why was I standing in the ice cream man line? There was a Starbucks across the road, beckoning me with the heavenly smell of coffee. There was an ever-growing line in Starbucks and patience was not my strong point. But if I left the ice cream man line I wouldn't be back in time to get myself an ice cream.

Coffee... life...

Ice cream... sugar...

I settled for ice cream. Who ever would've thought that a person would choose sugar over life? Maybe it was just me or maybe God should rethink this 'Grand Plan' of his 'cause it seems pretty fucked up to me.

Reaching the top of the line the ice cream line the man in the van asked me, "And what would you like little lady?" He gave me his patronising smile.

I glared at him as I chose my ice cream for a couple of reasons. I didn't like being patronised whether it was with words or smiles and I didn't like being referred to as 'little lady'. It was degrading. Perhaps he was taking the mick out of my height, after all, I was only five foot five. There were fourteen year olds taller than myself.

"I would like a... /Feast/, please," I said. I gave him fifty cents and he handed my ice cream to me and I took it without thanks. That'll teach him to call me, 'little lady'... asshole.

When I got home I had already decided that I wanted to go to Wal-Mart, which meant driving to the other side of Winnetka, and I needed my car keys. Unfortunately, I had not seen my car keys since my rendezvous with the large policeman, which was several days ago.

"Courtney!" I yelled when I walked in through the front door. I could hear my sister humming in the kitchen. "I'm going to Wal-Mart, have you seen my keys?" I yelled again and louder this time. The humming ceased and my sister appeared in the hallway. I vaguely wondered how she managed to look so responsible and sensible all the time.

"If you're going shopping then I'm coming too, we're low on groceries and I don't trust you to buy all the nutritional goods that we need," Courtney stated.

"Yes, fine, okay but have you seen my car keys?"

"No. We can just take mine."

"But I want my car keys."

"We'll look for them later," her word was final. There was no arguing with Courtney. She was one of two people in the entire world who wouldn't take my crap.

Fifteen minutes later, we were in Wal-Mart on the other side of Winnetka. I groaned as I saw how many brands of coffee there were. How was I supposed to know which one was my favourite? You can't place a 'favourite' sticker on coffee, its illegal.

But despite my confusion as to which brand of coffee to buy, my younger sister pulled two large jars of Nescafe from the shelves and placed them carefully in the shopping trolley. I didn't argue or else I'd have to buy them all and I really didn't have enough money to buy over 200 pots of coffee.

Pulling a list from her pocket, Courtney read, "We need... chicken, ham, jam, peanut butter, butter, chocolate spread, sparkling water, cereal, brown bread..." I stopped listening as she carried on for another 45 seconds. "Anything that we need to add, edit or remove?"

"Er... why do we need chicken and ham? They're the same."

"Charley," she sighed, "Chicken comes from chicken and ham comes from pig."

"Oh. Okay, then. And we need those bags to put nappies in."

"Why?"

"They smell good," I grinned at her but she simply rolled her eyes and carried on walking. I hated shopping with my sister, she was so boring and organised and not spontaneous. In fact, I hated doing just about anything with my sister.

When we finished gathering things into our shopping trolley, my sister and I went to the front of the shop and stood in line to purchase our stuff. I hoped to God that Courtney had an ample amount of money on her bankcard 'cause I was broke.

"That'll be fifty dollars and forty-nine cents," the shop clerk said finally. Courtney frowned, "But I only have forty-five dollars on me." She bit down on her lip.

"We can use my discount card!" I exclaimed, digging into my purse and producing a discount card for ten dollars. The clerk smiled and took it from me, examining it.

"Sorry, it's out of date."

"So?" I replied.

"We can't use it."

"I don't care, you will."

"Really, lady, we can't."

"Listen buster," I hissed, "I want to buy my coffee. If you get in the way of me and my coffee, I will pound you 'til you are black and blue."

"And then I'll make sure that you'll be charged for GBH," the clerk replied smartly.

"And it'll be the last thing you ever do." The clerk gulped and accepted my discount card, taking ten dollars of the price off our groceries.



To be standing in my kitchen with my hands in oven mittens only seconds after I had been in Wal-Mart, shopping with my sister for groceries, was no surprise. Like I said, I was used to these 'lapses in time'.

My best friend in the entire world, Lauren Jefferson, was stood next to me and her hands were also in oven mittens though hers were pink whereas mine were black. The microwave was switched on and a plastic Eragon bowl was spinning around rather slowly inside it. A popping sound filled the room.

Jeffers watched the microwave intently, her big blue eyes glazed over with a far away look to them. I glanced at her sideways and then around the room. I had to carry out the look, listen and learn exercise. It had been taught to me when I was six by Doctor Stephens. If, when I had a black out, I found myself in a situation where those around me might find it odd that I couldn't remember things, I should look around the room, listen as hard as I could and try to figure out what had happened.

I listened. I could hear voices coming from the living room. There were lots of them but I couldn't tell exactly how many.

"How many visitors do we have again?" I asked Jeffers.

Her eyes turned to me and her mouth was slightly agape. "You had another black out, didn't you?"

"Er... maybe."

Jeffer sighed. "There's four boys in your living room, you know, Joe and his friends and Courtney is in there too. We're going to watch a scary movie and we volunteered to make the popcorn."

I swallowed and nodded, Joe and his friends included Patrick Stumph, a boy I didn't get along with at all. In fact, I damn near hated him. And with good reason too though I think he had better reason to hate me than I did to hate him.

Joe, Jeffers and I had been friends since early 1999 when Jeffers met Joe when she got a job at Borders Bookstore. Joe had already been working there for a year. Jeffers and Joe began good friends and because Jeffers and me were inseparable, Joe and I became friends too.

"Don't look so pained," Jeffers snapped. "It's your own fault that Patrick dislikes you! Perhaps if you hadn't made such a snide remark upon first meeting him..."

"He started it!" I snapped, remembering my and Patrick's first meeting. Needless to say, I was never very good at first impressions though, neither was Patrick.

"Hey, are you Charley?" Patrick asked. He was short, shorter than me though not by much and he had huge sideburns and he wore a trucker hat. I shuddered to think what his head might look like without the aid of his hat.

"Yeah," I replied, "I'm guessing that you're Patrick. Joe's told me loads about you."

"He's told me loads about you."

An awkward silence occurred and I didn't know what to say. I wasn't very good at connecting with people I didn't know well, mainly because I didn't know what would make them connect with me.

"Charley..." Patrick breathed. "I thought that was a boy's name."

I froze for a long moment. When I unfroze I looked up at him with a look that was a mixture of disdain, contempt and irritation. Perhaps he was trying to be funny. It wasn't very funny. My eye twitched as the perfect remark formed in my head.

"Stumph..." I paused for dramatic effect. "As in a tree or your height?"

Ooh, burn.

Ever since our first meeting me and Patrick had had nothing nice to say to each other. Every time we met we exchanged vicious insults as if it were a sport. I have to say, I kicked his ass at it.

"He said my name was a boy's name!" I cried indignantly. "Arrogant little asshole..." I muttered underneath my breath.

"Yes, but you should have risen above it and ignored him," Jeffers shook her head as she pulled the bowl of popcorn out of the microwave with her oven mittens. "That was your first and only full-length conversation with one of Joe's bandmates and you screwed it up!"

"Actually, Patrick and I have had other conversations."

"Conversations that are reminiscent of a ping pong game where insults are the ball do not count!" Jeffers snapped. I rolled my eyes and followed her out of the kitchen.

Sure enough, four boys and my sister were sat in the living room. I could tell that I was in for a long night.



Author's Note: I'm not sure if this chapter was good enough. You might have to wait a couple days for the next chapter. And yes, I have only been posting like everyday because of my lack of a life. Now that I have found one my posts may be irregular.