Maddie's Girls

Chapter 2

Sometimes, when the planets align, and it rained while it was sunny, Aunt Cecil decided to cook.

Sometimes, she did great. Some other times, I worried I would come home to find the kitchen on fire.

When I walked inside my house, though, I couldn't help but scrunch up my face.

"Aunt Ceci, what did you do?" I yelled, covering my nose with my hand. The smell was so bad— it was like fart mixed with rotten eggs.

Cecil rushed out of the kitchen, she had kitchen gloves on, and an old t-shirt that I'm pretty sure belonged to one of her ex-boyfriends. Her dirty blonde hair was up in the messiest bun I've ever seen, the panic in her green eyes visible.

Sometimes, looking at Aunt Cecil was like looking at a younger model of Mum. They had the same eyes, the same hair colour, sometimes even their voices sounded similar. Sometimes, looking at her was harder than I'd care to admit.

"You're early!" She shouted, taking me in desperately. "Why are you early?"

"I'm actually late."

I took my jacket off and used it as a fan to ventilate the room, breathing through my mouth as I try to get rid of the smell.

"What is that?" I said.

"It doesn't smell that bad," Ceci drew her eyebrows together, looking slightly offended. It made me feel bad.

At least she was trying. She was always trying.

"I'm sorry," I told her, making a face after I made the mistake of breathing through my nose.

The thing with Aunt Ceci was that she could cook. We learnt together. But we learnt simple stuff. However, sometimes Aunt Cecil woke up in a mood, excited and wanting to try new things... that's when things go south, and we end up sick.

Aunt Cecil's shoulders dropped, she took a seat by the stairs and looked over at me. "Should I order pizza?"

I grabbed hold of the door's handle, opening it and closing it. Aunt Cecil laughed, rolling her eyes at me.

"Nah, Abuela's Tacos, instead?" Before I even had time to finish my sentence, Aunt Cecil was making her way up the stairs, telling me she was going to get ready.

While she was getting ready, I headed to the kitchen to make sure everything was fine and that nothing could burn while we were out. If the smell of what Cecil was cooking didn't kill me, the way the kitchen looked would've done the job. She had somehow managed to use every single pot and about four different spatulas. There were bits of sauce dripping down the oven's door.

Biting my lower lip, I grabbed the pods and put them in the sink, letting the hot water run over them. I put the many plates she had used in the dishwasher and with a kitchen towel, I started wiping the counters.

An hour and a half later, Aunt Cecil and I were in her car, on our way to Abuela's Tacos.

Aunt Cecil was telling me about her day. She worked at a book shop that belonged to my granddad before grandma practically forced him to retire about six years go. Since Aunt Jeanine didn't want anything to do with the book store, they were going to rent it, but Aunt Cecil asked him to let her run it.

I remember back then, it brought a lot of discussions, arguments between Jeanine and Cecil. It was mostly because Aunt Jeanine thought Aunt Cecil couldn't be responsible for both running a book shop and taking care of me.

Aunt Cecil showed them all wrong, though, like I knew she would. She updated the stock. Stopped focusing so much on non-fiction and history books. Instead, she started getting more YA, MG, fiction, sci-fi, graphic novels and even a bit of R rated books... at first, it was a little hard because she had to change the old image of the shop. Still, soon enough, the sales began to pick up, and Aunt Cecil even started running book clubs and stuff. Aunt Jeanine sort of apologised.