The Racquet Accident

Chapter Fifteen: It's Sunday.

Chapter Fifteen: "It's Sunday."

I WOKE UP TO a pillow hitting me straight in the face. A gasp left me as I sat up but was unable to stop another one from wacking the side of my head. I blocked the third attempt, yanking the pillow from my sister's grasp with a scowl. "What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked her, raking a hand through my disheveled hair.

"We're going to a cafe," Paula announced. The we in that sentence better have been her switching to French. We both knew Canadian French because of school back in BC but it didn't mean we spoke it often as she must have been trying to do. 

Judging by the look on her face, she wasn't speaking French.   

"I don't want to," I moaned. The two of us had stayed up late last night. The red coming from the clock on the nightstand next to me in her guest room (my room, really), let me know I only had three hours of sleep.

"It's either we go to a café or you make me your famous grilled cheese and we stay here."

I let out a sardonic laugh. Grilled cheese was something she claimed I was the only one who could make it correctly. "I'm not in the mood." I fell back into the comfy bed. "But if you want to make me some French toast or pancakes, that would be great."

I attempted to pull the comforter over my head but she yanked it out of my grasp. In fact, she pulled the entire comforter off of my body. I yelped at the sudden cold biting my skin exposed in shorts and tank top. "Could you please?"

"We're going out."

"Why?"

"Because I have manuscripts to read and you're sad."

I didn't even try to deny it. In front of my sister, there was no point when she could read me like a book. When I appeared on Paula's doorstep on Saturday night, after the tournament was over, a day before I was scheduled to come, she didn't ask questions. Instead, she, who wasn't typically warm, ordered my favorite food and put on Die Hard.

For the following days, we had done the same things.

Which meant I put her through Die Hard three times.

Today on Tuesday, she clearly had enough since the side of my face still felt like it had been hit with a typically soft yet hard cloud. "What does you reading manuscripts have to do with me?" I asked instead.

She raised a finger. "You've been drowning in school," Raised another finger. "You've barely gone outside—"

"There was a snowstorm yesterday." I gestured to where the open curtains displayed the snow-covered streets of downtown Toronto. I shivered at the view and still from the cold, pulling the comforter around my body.

"There's no snowstorm today." She snapped.

"I don't know about you," I said as I pulled the covers back on my body. "But some of us haven't adapted to this terrible weather."

"You've lived in Ontario for almost four years." She deadpanned.

"And I've dreaded the weather for the entire four years I've been here," I countered with the tilt of my head. Although my words only reminded me of a smiley, dark-headed man who would've laughed at my words, forming a pit in my stomach. "What's your point?"

She wasn't appreciating my attitude or my jokes this morning because she rolled her eyes. "What about Mariam? Are you seeing her?"

"Too many exams," Knowing me and my friend, Mariam, we'd be chatting for hours in the middle of a café. Mariam made her schooling her top priority. This meant that I wouldn't be able to see her for longer than a quick hi and bye until December. It'd be worth it, though.