5. A Little Too Much

“Hey! Alexis, you’re lucky, you’re just this close to getting late” Lisa gestures with her fingers, the second I came down from the car.

“Really?” I replied to her, acting like I was clueless, seeing her face, I know she’s about to gag because she gives me a sarcastic look.

“Alex wipe that-” Lisa was not able to complete her sentence as our attentions were both directed to Aron who says,

“Alex, I’m gonna come pick you up by 3 pm today” I just nod my head in agreement, then he drives away.

As soon as he drove off, I felt tired all of a sudden, even though I hadn’t done anything yet, but It happens every time I get a notification from my driver, telling me he’s going to pick me up by 3 pm like he just did now, and it happens every fucking day and I’m pretty much used to it by now.

But just because I’m used to it, doesn’t mean I’m okay. I let out a deep sigh after the chain of thoughts ran through my head, attracting Lisa’s attention.

“Aww, you have to go to the company today again,” Lisa says, I think she is trying to sympathize with me.

Lisa Johnson’s kind of like my female best friend, I’ve known her since freshmen year in high school, and she’s kind of sophisticated too, kind of like my sister, but she doesn’t look at me with contempt and she can be quite nice sometimes, but she’s unpredictable and bossy all the time, but… in a cute way… I guess.

Sometimes, I wonder why we are still close -up to this point- and only three answers come to mind.

It's either because we’ve been seatmates for close to three years now -though only at homeroom class- because I’m the only one that can put up with her character or just plainly because I’m rich, no scratch that because my father’s rich.

“Yeah, well you know the drill” I reply as I roll my eyes,

“it’s for your own good you know, you’re gonna be the owner of ZD-Co someday, you have to be ready” as I listened, I conclude that she’s with me only because of my father’s wealth. That’s sad though, I kinda like her.

Soon, we walked into the school and made our way to our lockers down the hallway, of course; Lisa was rambling about how some guy named Stephen Brown kept trying to hook up with her, funny enough I wasn’t listening.

A part of me is trying to get ready for class, as I shuffle through my locker, looking for my books while the other part of me just thinking of the smartest way to shut Lisa up, I like her but she can be a little noisy sometimes.

“Lisa, baby!” Stephen Brown calls out her name from a good distance in the hallway, and he was a little too loud because the whole hallway has their eyes on her and I’m right beside her, meaning I’m receiving second-grade embarrassment from her.

“Speak of the devil and he appears” Lisa grumbles, she tries to hide her face and believe me I stand with her, and right now, I think I’m about to gag from all this drama, but I think I can survive because nothing, and I mean nothing beats my sister’s.

“what the fuck do you want hobo” Lisa sounded indifferent, not even trying to hide her irritation as she gave Stephen cold stares.

“Babe, don’t be like that… this hobo here, just wants to make his princess happy” Stephen sounded like fucking cupid and makes me cringe

“Are you seriously shitting with me, who are you calling princess?”

“You babe… tell me, what would you like for breakfast hmm… strawberry milk or chocolate milk?” Stephen asks, holding out a pack of both strawberry milk and chocolate milk on either of his hands,

I think Lisa finally understands that continuing this conversation with lover boy, will probably make her the school’s main topic throughout this week, because she hurriedly grabs some textbooks from her locker, slams its door, and walks out on Stephen, who’s on one of his knees, formally presenting beverages like he's proposing to her with a diamond ring.

Stephen’s facial expression becomes sullen, he looks like a kid who had his candy stolen from him, literally!

So, since I don’t want to be the bearer of residual feeling I hurriedly lock my locker then try to flee from him, but he stops me as he stands up, positioning his 6.3 feet tall body that clearly shout out *I go to the gym every fucking day* in front of me like a fucking wall.

As he stands in front of me, I shudder and gulp, I could feel cold sweats oozing from my skin pores, because the Stephen Brown in front of me now, isn’t the angelic cupid from before, he’s now like an angry mob who had his girlfriend stolen from him.

He’s only cupid in front of Lisa, he’s a bouncer to everyone else!

“Hey! You are the one who wants to steal Lisa from me. RIGHT?!” Stephen growls.

“What sort of drama is this at 8 am in the morning” I mutter to myself, but I think Stephen heard because the next thing I heard from him was;

“What? What the fuck did you say?” Stephen interrogates, looking like he’s about to eat me raw,

“Ah… See, there’s Lisa at the beginning of the hallway” I said pointing to the end of the hallway, but he totally buys it and gets distracted.

So, I use the chance to flee from him. As I ran, he yells my name after realizing I pulled a number on him.

Anyway, I think the school’s main topic won’t be his stunt with Lisa, but my epic sprint.

I got to class, just before the first period starts and I find cupid’s princess on her seat at the back of the classroom which is next to mine, which was by the window.

I don’t know if she was waiting for me to show up or something, but the moment I walked through the classroom’s door, the stared at me with a grin,

“Now we share the same plight” Lisa scoffs

“Plight?” I narrow my eyes, biting my lower lip, trying to reason who or what she meant by plight, as I walk to my seat beside her.

While I was making myself comfortable, she showed me a clip she was watching just before I entered the classroom.

Immediately I saw the clip I chuckled sheepishly because it was a clip of what I called ‘My Epic Embarrassment’ and as I said, I’m gonna be the topic of the week at Jerseyville High School and I am.

“Plight? isn’t it a bit too harsh, and how are we sharing it” I asked Lisa while making a sullen facial expression, because it’s the only news I’m seeing.

“Aww, why’s your face like that, like I said, we are sharing the plight together” She tries to console me, then she swipe across her phone, the shoved it to my face, I don’t know if it was due to pent up aggression or something else,

But what I saw on her phone, was definitely enough to make Lisa mad with embarrassment. It read;

“PRINCESS LISA FINALLY GETS PROPOSED TO, BUT IT WASN’T WITH A DIAMOND RING, BUT WITH TWO BOXES OF CHOCOLATE DRINKS, WORTHY OF HER ROYAL HIGHNESS”

I chuckle after reading it, but I covered my mouth after seeing Lisa’s small face, red with anger but to me, she just looks like a child that’s sulking.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me Zander” Lisa commands.

“well, a hell lot of people hate you though,” I said to her, looking around the classroom of twenty rich students, giving Lisa sardonic stares and giggling as they did so.

“Don’t even remind me. Anyway, they are like that because they are jealous of me and they wanna be me” she says with pride sharp in the tone of her voice as she takes her hair back with style.

I just sat beside her, as I positioned my hand on the table with my elbow and rested my head on my palm, and stare at her sarcastically, listening to her praise herself.

It's always amusing to watch Lisa glorify herself, she always looks like a child when she does so, even though she’s Sixteen.

I chuckle as I continued to watch her, Lisa hears my little laughter, which causes her to abruptly stop her self-admiration.

“Why did you laugh? didn’t I tell you not to laugh at me” Lisa asks, still sulking.

“Lisa, I just-”

“So, are you satisfied, now that you have publicly embarrassed the family’s name?” a voice, scolded me in a mediocre tone, and the voice, I’m all too familiar with it.

I turn my head to face the voice, and the first thing I see is a pink-colored phone shoved to my face again, with the video of me sprinting down the hallways, trying to escape a figure of what’s look to be like Stephen, but they edited they it and replaced his head with a dragon’s head, who’s roaring out fire from its mouth,

“This is overly exaggerated, it hasn’t even been up to thirty minutes” I squint my eyes, trying to get a better view of the clip.

“Really? That’s all you can say…” Alexia scolds.

“First, could you get your phone off my face” I sounded a little too rude, and that wasn’t like me.

Alexia didn’t look too happy about the way I replied to her, because the nasty frown on her face said it all.

Then we heard murmuring from the herd of junior years that surrounded us, I wasn’t really interested in what they were saying, so I didn’t border listening, but I think Alexia and Lisa heard them because they look like growling lionesses.

“Look what you are causing, all you go about doing is making a clown out of yourself and a bigger joke out of our family, you can just crawl back to the shitty orphanage you came from,” Alexia said, looking at me sardonically,

“Did she have to mention the orphanage part, what the hell is she aiming at this time?”, “Alexia, don’t you think-”

“You BITCH!” Lisa yells at Alexia, cutting me before I could complete my sentence, the look on her face isn’t pleasant at all, and it's all because she knows Alexia just crossed the line.

“Is she getting mad for me?” I ask myself as I watch little Lisa of 5’4 feet talk trying to defend me.

Lisa rushes to Alexia's front, so close that she could easily give her a head but, I made sure I stood close enough to them, so I could intervene if anything violent goes down.

“You know, you're taking this too far… and, you’re the one who’s the biggest joke of all, trying so obsessively, to crawl out of your little brother’s shadow” Lisa scoffs looking directly into Alexia's eyes with so much confidence, even though my sister’s a little taller than her.

Immediately Alexia hears her, she shudders, “You… You… you….” She said pointing her index finger at Lisa, with the intensity of her voice growing lower and lower until she becomes totally dumbfounded, then she slowly retracts her finger.

I could see the intense rage in Alexia’s face rapidly reduce to a gloomy expression, she gave Lisa a spiteful glance, then lifted her eyes to give me a long stare with her face looking so sore and dejected, her eyes were turning red and I knew she was about to cry.

At that point, I gasp as I suddenly realize how much Lisa had said, as I stared into my twin sister's red eyes, my heartfelt as if it was gripped with pain and my chest felt tight; “no… no… no, this is so wrong”

As we are still surrounded by the entire classroom, who are probably thinking, “what sort of a freak show is this?”, Lisa still stood with confidence, sardonically staring at Alexia, with her arms crossed, Alexia was staring at me and I made eye contact with her.

The only thing that ran through my head is “how is Lexa feeling right now” I moved my head almost 360 degrees to observe the murmuring crowd around us, “we need to get out of this crowd, this situation is toxic”.

“Alexia let’s -” I wanted to call out to her, but she darted off before I could finish, I guess she really didn’t want to hear me speak. So, I ran after her, I couldn’t let her run off in that state.

“Hey! Where are you running off to?!” Lisa yells as I ran out of the classroom.

“She’s my sister!” I yelled back.

Then, the bell rings indicating the beginning of first period’s mathematics, “perfect timing” I groan as I sprinted after my sister.