6: MIDDLE CHILD TYPE OF LOVE

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Vera lets out one of the loudest screams I've ever heard yet again, her voice echoing around the hallway

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Vera lets out one of the loudest screams I've ever heard yet again, her voice echoing around the hallway. My heart stops in my chest when I hear her start crying. I knew leaving her alone with the Freakazoid was a bad idea. Fiona told me that she was able to take care of Vera, but I shouldn't have known better. Hopping up from my bed, I slide my phone into my pajama pants pocket. I race out of my room and head towards Fiona's, just in time to see Mom and Dad entering Fiona's room. 

I can't see anything from around them, so I try to stand on my tippy toes to see what Fiona has done to Vera. Still nothing. Sure, my shortness was an asset when headbutting Henry at the museum, but this time, it's a freaking curse. Even though both my parents are pretty short, I'm still shorter than them, which is saying something. 

Because I can't see anything in the Freakazoid's room, I head back to my own room. Well, technically, it's not really my room yet. Before Vera was born, Molly decided to give me this bedroom so she could live in the basement of our house to have some sense of normalcy with her child. This bedroom still doesn't really feel like mine just yet because Molly still has a ton of stuff on the walls and on the desk that's shoved in the corner of the room. As much as it doesn't feel like my own, I'm grateful to finally have my own room because I used to share with the Freakazoid, which was terrible.

I sit down on my bed in between the many stuffed animals that are piled around the edges and against the white wall. I've been collecting stuffed animals for as long as I can remember since I love animals so much. Every time I go to the zoo, I buy a different animal to add to my collection. I have a lot of different animals in my collection, but the one animal I have the most are squirrels. Those are my favorite animals because they're absolutely adorable and beautiful.

Vera's screams quiet down finally. I assume that Mom and Dad have taken Vera with them back to the living room or wherever they were before because I don't hear anything at all in the hallway that connects to the other two bedrooms. Before I can tell myself otherwise, I stand back up from my comfortable bed and step into the hallway, staring at the Freakazoid's cracked door. 

I enter the Freakazoid's room and nearly fall over when I see that the entire floor is covered with the dark clothes she's been wearing since she turned thirteen. Somehow, she's so very different than me with my clean and organized room while hers is such a mess. I can't believe that I'm surprised by the state of her room since we used to share a room together before Molly had Vera and moved to our basement. Her half of the room used to look absolutely disgusting while mine was always so clean.

"What are you doing in here?" the Freakazoid asks from her bed. She's lounging across the bed with her feet up against the wall while her head hangs over the side of her bed. Her shoulder-length blue and black hair almost brushes the pile of clothes on the floor. "There's nothing in here that you need, Laurel, so stop judging me with your goody-two-shoes gaze."

Ever since she became a teenager, she's been a little snippy with everyone in this house. I don't take much of what she says with a grain of salt because I know I was in that position once, too. That doesn't mean that I don't fight with her. We fight plenty of times together, mostly about the most random and little things.

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