Mad Rooster Marketing

Chapter 25 (Emily) - The Frogs in My Bag

In the morning, I dragged myself into the kitchen. The light hurt my eyes, so they kept closing. Instantly, I was somewhere else. Not sure where but the ocean was light blue, and a seagull kept trying to eat my ice cream. I tried shooing it away with my hand and almost dropped the mug full of hot chocolate that Charlie suddenly chucked almost straight onto my lap. Some of the hot liquid splashed over my fingers.

"Aargh! Why did you do that? Didn’t you see that I was trying to chase away the—umm...I really hope this is not one of your stupid pranks!"

Charlie apologised and gave me a tissue. He swore that he would never sabotage my hot chocolate. That, naturally, was not true at all, but when you know someone really well, you can sense if they are trying to fool you or not, and this time he seemed sincere.

I dashed to rinse my hand with cold water. At least the seagull was gone. It must have realised that this angry woman was not someone to trifle with. Charlie seemed to have realised the same thing. I felt bad for snapping at him.

My hand was tingling from the piping-hot liquid or maybe from the icy cold tap water. When I looked at it, the red glow made me glad that my pain tolerance is so good. ‘Thank you. I mean, Sorry. I mean, I’m just...just... just not in the mood for childish pranks right now.’

‘I better take the frogs out of your bag then. Although, they would have woken you right up.’

His smile really is beautiful. Thinking of those soft lips still lights up a warm glow deep down my stomach. We all need beautiful things in our lives. They should taste inviting too.

I licked my lips playfully and sat down next to him. ‘Listen, Charlie. I hope I didn’t put too many frogs in your bag last night. I didn’t mean to be so—’

‘Put too many frogs in my bag? Who says that? And what’s it even supposed to mean? Sometimes I don’t understand you at all, and that’s when you don’t speak in Latin.’

‘What I meant to say was: Thank you.’

‘Yes, you did say that already, ten seconds ago. You’re welcome, by the way. If hot chocolate is all I need to make you happy, life will be easy. I will even stop lacing it with sugar.’

Stop lacing it with sugar? I sipped the cocoa again and ruminated it in my mouth to determine if he had pranked me or not. It tasted very sweet, but isn’t that what it’s supposed to taste like? I was not sure if I wanted things to change.
 
‘You can always prank me as much as you want. Childish is good.’

Pretending that he didn’t understand me was one of the nicest things he had done. Time to think things through was exactly what I needed. That, and to know that I didn’t have to try to explain myself when I was still trying to figure things out. This is what I meant earlier when I said that Charlie has always been good at letting things just be.

I had almost moved in to kiss him but had to abandon the mission when Mrs Smith suddenly waltzed in. The mug proved to be a good place to hide.

Charlie and I had to fight hard not to laugh, so unless Mrs Smith was both blind and stupid, she must have seen that something was going on. Ricky clearly knew. He was standing behind her back and making faces. Later at school, Charlie told me that when he left me on the sofa and walked towards his room, he saw Mrs Smith reading a book with a flashlight in his parent’s bedroom.

Sometimes walls really do have eyes. I decided to try to get him alone with me to our flat, which was more difficult than you would think because it had turned into both armoury and treasury for Scottish Liberation Army. Mother had probably drawn up an actual guard roster. Mrs Smith didn’t need one because she did all the guarding herself.

‘I can see that you both have found some hot chocolate. Good, it will go bad if you don’t use it. Charlie only drinks it nowadays when you are around. Did you get any sleep, Emily? People say that our sofa is too hard and lumpy, and they just end up rolling around the whole night.‘

‘I slept very well, thank you, Mrs Smith.’

‘Sometimes I wonder why we even bother opening our mouths when most of what comes out are half-truths and scripted lies.’

‘Wh-What?’

I turned to look at Charlie and got annoyed when he was laughing at my discomfort, especially as this was as much his fault as it was mine.

‘If you are going to spend your nights here, you will have the follow the house rules. The rules say that if something is bothering you, you have to say it out loud. No sneaking around in the dark. We don’t need any more visits to the hospital right now. And that goes double for you, Charlie.’

‘But I didn’t even do anything!’

‘You were thinking about it.’

I decided to concentrate on counting the bubbles on top of the hot chocolate. There were sixteen of them. Plus one baby.