Broken Girls And Broken Boys

Chapter Eleven: What is happening to me?

"Bugger," I curse as I attempt to dislodge a jam tart from the cupcake tray with a butter knife. It sags beneath the pressure and crumples without even breaking from the tin; jam (homemade, also crap) flies into my face and I groan, slamming the knife into another tart- this one also crumples (though it was on purpose this time). I try once more, finally safely dislodging one jam tart; though it's a bit of a distressed looking fella at least its alive- I can't say the same for the twelve others. I shove it into my mouth with one fail swoop and then turn to the oven.

Luckily my mum, Caleb and Lily are out visiting my great aunt (who despises me with all her sluggish heart) and so don't have to see this abomination. If mum was here she's probably shout at me for wasting all her ingredients on some half-baked, crumbly mess of jam tarts. Though that's not all I've made, so far I've managed a banana loaf (I put too much butter on the tin and the cake absorbed it- it looked more like a crumpet than anything else), brownies (they got stuck to the tray and were burned to a crisp- though I did try to eat it. Yes the whole thing), my poor excuse for tarts (that puffed up despite the fact I used short-crust pastry), and I am currently baking these biscuit things with self-raising flour (so we're gonna call them cookes; if cakes and cookies had babies this is what they would look like- deformed little puff things).

Most people when they're angry explode like a ticking time-bomb or find a therapist in a friend and vent to them instead. But I do two things: One, I watch every single Bridget Jones movie after reading every single Bridget Jones book while I eat food (because food is life and I'm not planning on a beach body any time soon- it's November! Also it can fill a void no one else can).

Or two, I bake using only my imagination- hey, I didn't say it was a good idea- and then I follow the step one.

I typically only complete the former task in fear of raising my stress levels to the max and causing me to have a full-blown melt down.

I don't know what I was thinking today.

The doorbell rings before I even have chance to bin the contents of the cupcake tray and I quickly switch off the oven and shout out, "I'm coming!" to however decided to intrude on my feeling-sorry-for-myself day. I throw down the tea-towel from the oven and head to the door in my slouchy jeans- I'm real classy on the weekends...not.

I open the door to see a very smiley looking Kent staring at me. Suddenly I hate Kent's amazing ability to be so upbeat in all conditions. I bet if I kicked him in the balls he'd still be smiling like the flipping Cheshire cat. It's ridiculous for someone to be that happy all of the time.

"Kendall, hey," he sounds surprised though I don't know why. He knocked on my door expecting to see me. I pull some sort of fake half-smile onto my face and open the door for him. Kent steps in and I kick the door shut as he takes off his sneakers. Kent glances at me and his smile drops for just a second. "Shit," he curses, his eyes wandering over my resting bitch face. "What have I done?"

I sigh, and wipe the remaining jam off the side of my face. "It's not you." I lead him into the kitchen; Kent gasps the moment he sees the state of it and all the burned and rubbish things I've been making all morning. Blood, sweat and tears went into that!

"Whoa. Those look a mess," he points to the jam tarts and I curse loudly, throwing them into the bin still attached to the tray. Kent begins to help me tidy away the ingredients and for the next twenty minutes we clean up in silence.

I sit back on the kitchen island and Kent sits in front of me with a mug of tea in his hands. "You know what Kendall, these strange cake-biscuit mutants are actually quite nice," he comments, reaching for another. I let him, but am aware of the fact he ate out of date chocolate so his opinion on food is rather irrelevant. Kent would've eaten the soggy buttery banana cake.