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“Ashley Camilla Harper!” I shout from the bottom of my lungs the moment I step foot inside my house. “Would it kill you to text me when rehearsal gets canceled?”
No reply.
Her shoes are here, which means she is, too. In a fury, I dump my keys into the bowl by the door and take the stairs two at a time in direction of my sister’s bedroom.
“I waited for you for two hours. Two hours!” I yell over the music emanating from her closed door. The closer I get, the louder the chorus of “River” by Bishop Briggs roars. Gripping the knob, I slam her door open and…
Regret it instantly.
First thing I see is my sister half-naked on her bed. The second thing I see is the shirtless guy on top of her.
Funny enough, the sight of my seventeen-year-old sister getting down and dirty is not what does it for me. What sends my heart straight to my stomach is the boy with his tongue shoved down her throat.
What in heaven’s name is he doing here?
The music is so loud they didn’t even hear me come in. They probably didn’t hear me yell on my way up either. Douchebag’s hand snakes around my sister’s back to unclasp her bra, and I break into a mini panic attack. I’d rather she didn’t have her breasts out when I yelled at her, thank you very much.
In a moment of panic, I unplug my sister’s phone from her portable speaker and let out the loudest “What the fuck?” I can muster. The two culprits jump, backing away from each other as fast as humanly possible. Ashley’s jaw plummets to the ground as she pats the bed for her shirt.
“Vee! W-What are you doing home so early?” She crushes her T-shirt against her chest.
“Early? It’s past six.”
“It is?” Ashley pounces off her bed, throwing her T-shirt back on like the time on the clock is a much bigger deal than her getting caught in bed with him.
“You left me stranded at the academy for two hours!”
“Shit, shit, shit.” She begins roaming around her room like a maniac. “I…. Please don’t tell Mom. I’m so sorry, Vee. I was going to meet you at my school so you could pick me up, but then… I guess we lost track of time and—”
“Wait a second,” I cut in, “What do you mean you were going to meet me at the school so I could pick you up? As in you weren’t there to begin with?”
The face she makes next says it all. That wasn’t supposed to come out, was it?
She winces, “Okay, don’t be mad, but… I might’ve sort of made up the Sunday rehearsals.”
“Excuse me?”
She covers her face with her French manicured hands. “I know, I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me. I just wanted to have some free time. Mom is driving me insane.”
“So, you’re telling me I’ve been going out of my way to pick you up from a place you didn’t even have to go to every Sunday for three months?”
As if it weren’t bad enough that I have to pick her up from her singing lessons at her fancy-pants music academy every day of the week.
“You know damn well if I hadn’t come up with the rehearsals, Mom would have scheduled me like five lessons on Sundays, on top of Saturdays, and I barely have time to breathe as is. I’m sorry you have to play chauffeur. I told Mom I’d grab the bus so she wouldn’t make you pick me up, but she insisted you had nothing better to d—”
“Ash.” I exhale. “It’s fine. I get it.”
As much as I want to be mad at her, I can’t.
Can’t blame her for wanting to live a little.
Can’t blame her for being so ridiculously talented she won Rising Voices, a huge televised singing competition, when she was six years old. And I especially can’t blame her for paying a good part of our bills with said competition’s winning prize and her YouTube channel ever since.
Eleven-year-old Aveena used to yearn for this shit. There was a time where I would’ve killed to be my mom’s shining star. To be the center of her universe, to take Ashley’s place.
Not anymore.
Now I understand how lucky I was to be born ordinary.
