The Legacy of Kilkenny (2 page)
Read The Legacy of Kilkenny Online
Authors: Devyn Dawson
Sleep
ABEL
Rolling over in bed, pulling the pillow over my head, didn’t help to muffle the noise that assaulted me awake.
I sail across the room to bang my hand on my alarm clock until it is silenced, nice way to start my day.
Not any day, my first day of my junior year.
If things work out right, I’ll have enough money saved up to buy a car by the end of this semester.
Until then, I get to ride with my mom.
Lame right?
It’s six in the morning, usually I’d be dragging ass since I didn’t fall asleep until four, but the first day jitters have me amped awake.
Last night I was almost asleep, and then I heard the neighbors’ dogs barking, which kept me up. Not to mention, before that happened, I saw the crazy lady across the street sneaking to water her lawn.
It had been another dry summer in Oklahoma; a water rationing ordinance is in place.
If anyone is caught watering their lawn, they are slapped with a hundred dollar fine.
It is beyond me how she isn’t caught, being she is the only one with green grass on our street.
Why risk a ticket for green grass?
I never saw what caused the dogs to bark, but I was amazed that no one even bothered shushing them.
No lights.
No yelling.
Nothing.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I just love the wonderful sounds of the broom stick banging on the ceiling, which happens to be the floor to my room.
It is one of my mom’s wonderful ideas to make sure I was awake, it sounded like a sonic boom went off under the bed.
“I’m up!” I yell down to her as I bang my baseball bat on the floor.
BOOM!
“Mom, I’m up!”
Scrambling across the room to yell out from my bedroom door, I stub my big toe on my hand weight I forgot to put away. “Shit,” I grumble under my breath.
As I do every morning, I send a text to my sister Allie, telling her to get up.
I know for a fact she sleeps with the phone by her head so she can see status updates as they come across the phone.
We’re both insomniacs, so mornings always come too soon.
I’ve been her personal alarm clock for the last year when our mom suggested I start calling her to wake her up.
So, she gets to go away and I’m still responsible to make sure she is responsible.
She starts her second year at college, and I’m stuck here to entertain the parents.
The silence after she moved out was deafening.
In the beginning, I would get up and walk around my room trying to make my mind shut up and let me sleep.
I would hear the mumbling of my mom and dad talking, or whatever it is parents do behind closed doors when they think their kids are sleeping.
I miss having Allie just a wall away, now there’s no one tapping on the wall checking if I’m awake.
I don’t miss her dramatic attitude, but I do miss her driving me to school.
For someone that is 5’3” and weighs next to nothing, she has enough attitude to put Chelsea Handler to shame.
The kitchen still smells of fresh paint and sawdust from the recent renovation.
I’ve logged hours and hours of being in home improvement stores, staring at colors of paint.
Yellow apparently isn’t just yellow anymore, it is
sweet buttery cream
not to be confused with
buttery cream.
I think it took my mom about a month to pick a color, just the other night I heard her talking about changing it.
Argh
.
My usual backpack parking place is on the counter by the barstools…. not anymore.
I might scratch the granite and I’ll be reminded how long it took her and dad to save up to have a nice kitchen.
I drop my stuff by the back door for our frantic escape to get to school on time.
