The Significance of Orange Juice

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I sat looking mournfully down at my last Cheerio. It looked so lost in the great wide sea of milk in my bowl. Not a Cheerio at all. More of a Miserablo. Or a Sadio. Or even a Gloomio…

My train of thought was momentarily derailed when my mother whacked me with a rolled up magazine. I looked up in confusion, unsure what I had missed.

                “See Harold? Even now she’s not listening,” my mother whined.

I muttered a quiet apology and pretended to be interested in the conversation occurring around me.

                “Your mother and I were talking to you Isabelle. We were discussing your exam results.”

I groaned and face-palmed mentally. Was that today? I needed to get myself a calendar.

                “We were just saying that we’re totally confident that you will get all As and A*s in your A Levels. But just in case, your mother has enrolled you in a course that you can take over the summer so that your results will be better when you retake.” My father carried on.

                I snorted quietly. Only my parents would think that signing me up for a revision course would be displaying confidence in my abilities. I worked my butt off for those exams. I barely even saw my friends out of school because I spent so much time revising. I should get my grades too. I know that As are hard to get, but all my teachers seemed to think I’d manage it. My parents were the only ones who doubted my abilities.

Giving up on the conversation, I returned to my contemplation of my last remaining Gloomio. I paused and frowned suddenly. Could a cereal be sad? I shook off the doubt; if my parents could feel emotion, then there was no reason to expect that a wheat-based breakfast product couldn’t. Shrugging, I scooped up the Cheerio and put it out of its lonely misery. There. It was in a better place now.

I got up from the table and moved to the sink with my cereal bowl.

“Honey, you aren’t going to pour away that milk, are you? You know, children in Africa would love to have that milk that you’re going to waste.” My mother stated, barely even glancing up from her copy of Vogue.

I grimaced and lifted my bowl to my lips. Closing my eyes tightly, I tipped the bowl up and drank all the milk as quickly as possible. I swallowed and paused for a moment as I tried to repress my gag reflex. Milk was just disgusting. It was basically like cow pee, but no one else seemed to have made that link.

“Really Isabelle, could you not behave a bit more lady like?” my mother reprimanded, still flicking through her magazine.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes as I rinsed my bowl in the sink and started loading the dishwasher. If there was one thing my parents could not stand, it was disrespect.

“Can I go to my room?” I asked politely. I hoped that my parents wouldn’t notice how eager I was to leave. My father looked up from the newspaper he was reading and looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

“I don’t know. Can you?”

A sigh threatened to escape from my locked lips but I fought against it. “I’m sorry. May I go to my room?”

“Of course,” he replied, already absorbed in his newspaper again.

I took my chance and fled from the room before my parents started quizzing me on the current state of affairs in the world. My parents always expected me to be aware of everything that was happening, from the economic crisis to the various wars that surfaced from time to time across the globe. The problem was that politics seriously wasn’t my strong point. It was hard to muster up any enthusiasm for what was essentially a bunch of old white guys arguing with each other.