AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Part I
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
-Marcus Aurelius
1
Hailee
Eight Years Old
Aiden wasthe kind of kid who made it easy to hate him.
“You can’t do that!” I screeched at Aiden, annoyed with his stupid face. He’d reached his dirty hands back into the cookie jar with the cookies I’d baked with Mama for later that day. Mama had already given us each a cookie before we played in the backyard. After we came back in, Aiden snuck into the kitchen and climbed onto the countertop. He was breaking all the rules!
“I can do it if you’d shut your fat mouth, chipmunk cheeks!” he replied.
I huffed and puffed out my cheeks, feeling my face heat as my balled-up hands slammed against my waist. “I don’t have chipmunk cheeks!”
“Then why do your cheeks look like a chipmunks?!”
“At least my face doesn’t look like a gorilla’s butt!”
“I’d rather look like a gorilla’s butt than have chipmunk cheeks.”
“I hate you, gorilla butt!”
“I don’t care, chipmunk cheeks!” he shouted back.
Aiden Walters was a pain in my butt. He was always getting himself in trouble, and I was always trying to stop him from doing stupid stuff. Most of my day was spent telling him no, and most of his day was spent ignoring me.
I climbed up on the countertop next to him and yanked the cookie jar out of his hands. “At least my head isn’t fat like yours!” I said, sticking my tongue out at him.
He grabbed the cookie jar back and slightly shoved me. “Your head is bigger than mine!”
“No, it’s not!”
“Yes, it is! It’s so big! It’s bigger than an elephant’s head!”
I grabbed the jar and tugged it toward me. “Shut up, Aiden!”
“You first, Hailee!” he shot back as he tugged it more.
We went back and forth with a tug-of-war, shouting at one another until Mama entered the kitchen.
“What’s going on in here?!” she yelled.
Aiden and I both got so spooked by her voice that we let go of the cookie jar. It crashed to the ground and shattered into a million billion trillion pieces.
Aiden and I froze in place.
Our eyes darted to Mama.
Then to the broken cookie jar.
Then back to Mama.
Then back to the broken cookie jar.
