14

NOT FANFICTION

Bad Luck

By Sophia

*-----* = Authors note

****** = Change of time/setting

Prologue

"Mia! I thought you were working at the front desk!" I throw down my horror book and rush to the front desk of Dawson's Book Blossoms.

There is a huge line of people waiting, impatient looks on their faces.

"Sorry for the wait, how's your day?" The first woman looks at me like I'm dancing with monkeys on my head while standing on an elephant.

Okay, just stay positive and you can do this, I​​ think to myself.

I grab the price scanner only to drop it on my already bruised toe. I pick it up and the woman stares at me, eyes like lasers.

I manage to get through the line without having abnormal catastrophes ruin my job at the front desk.

*****

I sigh as I collapse onto the recliner in our house. It is still not calm since there are 8 other crazy children running around a three story house, not including the basement.

I have a list of all the siblings in the Dawson family including their age, hair color, and grade in age order from oldest to youngest,

Lilian

14

Brown

9th grade

Henri

12

Blondish brown

7th grade

Mia/Me

11

Brown

5th grade

Everleigh

9

Strawberry Blonde

3rd grade

Kyle

9

Strawberry blonde

3rd grade

Luke

6

Blonde

1st grade

Lily

6

Blonde

1st grade

Levi

6

Blonde

1st grade

Conner

4

Brown

Pre-K

Well... that's them. Luckily only Lilian and Henri work at Dawson's Book Blossoms because you have to be at least 10 to work at the store. Thank goodness!

My three hours alone are the best parts of my day because being in a house of 11 is just plain bad luck.

1

"Everyone, time for school!" Mom calls.

"Coming," call nine voices including my own.

When I get to the washing room I see two backpacks left, mine and Kyle's. I grab mine and call for Kyle to come down here or I won't give him my snickers bar for lunch.

As soon as I finish saying that I hear one pair of feet glide down the stairs. I see a flash of strawberry blonde run into the room, grab the backpack I'm holding and then run away. I ran out to the garage to get into our 12 person van.

Unfortunately I have the worst seat in the car. 3rd row, middle seat and in between Lilian and Luke. They both seem innocent but in the 3rd row of the van they are some of the most annoying people on earth!

Lilian is on her phone all the time and completely ignores me if I'm trying to talk to her, which is not helpful on a three hour car ride to Boston. Luke does the opposite of Lillian and bothers me the whole ride.

We live in New Hampshire and I say we have bad luck living in the state of New Hampshire because if one of my siblings does something bad or embarrassing the word gets around quickly.

Another unfortunate event is that every single one of my younger siblings goes to my school. Well except Conner. Luckily the terror triplets are in the farthest pod away from me.

Our van pulls into the drop-off lane. Another unfortunate event is that mom drops us off in the drop-off lane. It might not seem like a big uh-oh but it is. Everyone drops their kids off there. We are always waiting in the car for like 10 minutes before the school even comes into view!

I don't know why or how everyone in front of us always gets there so early. At the very front of the line there is the same car there is every day. A white Ford SUV. In that car is the Rodgers family.

It consists of two "Perfect" kids, a dog and a mom and a dad. Everyone in their family is snotty. Even the dog! They live next-door to us and their dog is something else.

There is a fence between our house and their house and there is a gate with a latch. It is only a couple feet off the ground so the littles could reach it. Marcy, their dog, stood up on its hind legs, used its nose to hit the latch and then trotted into our yard and took a poop! My parents were so mad they didn't talk to the Rodgers for a week and mom is the friendliest neighbor on our street.

"I SEE LEXI!!!" screams Lily.

"Lily, please don't yell," I say.

"Please don't yell," Lily mimics. I glare at her and she turns back around.

"Sweetie, if you want to say hi just roll down your window," Mom says as calmly as possible.

"But she's so far away," Lily whines.

"Then wait! Just chillax and quit talking!" Henri yells looking up, slamming his book down.

"SILENCE!" Mom yells, " Just sit quietly until we get to the front of the line!" We sat in silence for what felt like hours and finally we creeped up to the front of the line and we all got out.

"Take your siblings to their class" mom yells from the car. I sigh. Terror time isn't over yet.

2

"Everybody line up!" I yell to my siblings. "Single file follow me please don't get lost, first stop, Mr Alfonso's room! Keep up with us or you're on your own!" We walk to the first grade pod and surprisingly all my siblings keep up.

"Lexi!" Lily yells. I look ahead and see a bundle of red curls running to Lily.

"Lando!" Luke yells. Another bundle of red curls runs by but to Luke this time.

"Leo!" Levi yells. Yet another bundle of red curls comes running down the hall to Levi.

Leo, Lexi and Lando are another set of triplets from the McKenzie family that lives about three blocks down from us and have 6 kids. They have Leo, Lexi, and Leo who are also in first grade, they also have Kamryn who is in 4th grade, Leslie who is the same age as me and has been my best friend since kindergarten and Beckett who is in 7th grade. They also have a dog named Blueberry. It's almost like our BFFFs! Best Family Friends Forever!

"See you guys after school! Better hurry, Everleigh has basketball practice in the gym right after school so meet me there," I said. I doubt they heard a thing because they were already walking into the classroom. Well, you snooze, you lose I guess.

"Next stop, Ms Peter's room!" Somehow all of the triplets got in the same class and the twins got in the same class. I never complained since it was easier for me to drop everyone off. I turned the corner and ran smack into someone.

"Sorry! I said, reaching to help them pick up their books. I looked up to give them to the person until I saw who it was. Brandon Mitchell. The most annoying kid in 5th grade. I purposely dropped the books, right on his toe and then used my great acting skills to apologize.

"Is this your boyfriend?' Everleigh asked, so innocently.

"No! Ewww he's not my boyfriend!" I exclaimed, staring daggers at her. Brandon pretended to throw up, but with a smirk on his face. I walked past Brandon but not until he said he'd see me in class. Of course that got Everleigh talking. She was obsessed with playing a matchmaker role in everyone's life and it was super annoying.

"I think in your future I see," she said, raising her voice making sure everyone who was in the first grade pod heard her, "BRANDON AND MIA SITTING IN A TREE K-I-S-S-I-N-G! FIRST COMES," I put a hand over her mouth, muffling her voice. I'm sure my face was red but I didn't really care.

I dropped Everleigh and Kyle off and hurried to my classroom. I shoved my backpack in my locker after grabbing my water bottle and planner and walked into the classroom.

"Where have you been!" Leslie exclaimed, running over to me.

"I dropped my siblings off and came right here," I explained, filling out my planner.

"Don't look now but Brandon, Jack and Lewis are staring at us," she said, twirling her silky, blonde hair around her finger. Leslie is boy crazy and has had a crush on Lewis since second grade.

I looked up and sure enough they were all staring at us, whispering to each other. Leslie softly punched me in the arm. "I told you don't look," she said, rolling her eyes.

After I filled out my planner we headed over to the soft start cabinet and picked Hashtag Blocks. We brought it over to the very corner of the room where no one ever goes except us. The boys' eyes followed us. They all went over to the soft start cabinet and chose puzzles. They brought it over to where we were sitting and sat down about three feet away from us.

"Let's go to my desk," I whispered to Leslie. Of course she was too busy taking glances at Lewis who was blushing bright red, to hear me.

I rolled my eyes and walked over to the soft start cabinet and ripped my name tag off and put it back in its original place. I went back to my desk and pulled out my book and read until it was time for morning meeting.

Me and Leslie sat down first and then waited for all of the super slow people to get to the circle. Brandon came and sat down next to me. I scooched closer to Leslie. Lewis sat down next to Leslie and she turned bright red. For some reason people think they need to make their move in 5th grade. We are all 10 and 11 at least wait until middle school.

We got through the boring stuff, like Greeting and Sharing and then we finally got to our activity.

"Today for our activity we are going to play human tic tac toe against Ms Oakley's class," Ms Barkley said. Everyone cheered. We normally play against them and we normally win. The only problem is a kid in that class. Named Carter. I kind of maybe sort of have a tiny itty bitty crush on him. Okay it's a pretty big crush.

We have the same class number and so whenever 16 gets called, we both go and get a spot. Most of the time I beat him. Today when it was our turn I beat him yet again and it won us the whole thing.

All of the band kids headed to the band room after we finished human tic tac toe. I play the saxophone and Leslie plays the flute. Our band teacher, Mr Roy, is the best band teacher ever.

We ran through our warm ups and concert music and soon enough band was over. I disassembled my saxophone, grabbed my folder and ran to the door where Leslie was waiting. We walked back to the classroom together, slowly so we might miss the start of math.

I heard running and soon enough Brandon, Lewis and Jack caught up to us.

"Hey," they all said out of breath.

"How are you out of breath? The band room is literally right there," I said, gesturing to the door a couple feet away. They blushed. I rolled my eyes at them and kept talking to Leslie as if they weren't there.

"So did you guys check out that new ice cream place?" Jack asked.

"What new ice cream place?" Leslie asked. I elbowed her.

"OW! What was that for?!" She said, pulling me aside.

"They're trying to set us up. Come on, this way," I said, leading her down another hallway. The boys just follow us.