Stoneybrook Ayr

Katie stood by Sunny's door, unsure whether to ring the bell or not. She wanted to see her friend but she also felt kind of weird about it. She'd been laying low for a while, whitdrawing from her friends and spending more time down at the trailor park with her drinking friends. She lit a cigarette while she considered ringing the doorbell. Finally her hand made its way up and rang, on its own it seemed. She waited.

Sunny was glad her father had left for the bookstore. His decision to become a somewhat present parent was beginning to grate on her, ever so slightly, and she was glad that a supposed emergency had needed his attention. Truthfully, Sunny didn't think that there could really be an emergency regarding books and magazines, but she didn't dare ask for the specific details. Instead, she had called Katie and invited her over.

The doorbell rang and she answered it, glad to see her friend standing there.

"Hi!" Sunny said, motioning for her to come inside.

Katie didn't want to go home. She really, really, really didn't. Weeks without harsh words, blows to the stomach, everything that she couldn't live with, she'd been without, sober most of the time, and it had felt good. She'd been thinking as they were in Australia that maybe, maybe she could go off to College and live like this all the time. Maybe it was a possibility. Olivia, Corey and Ayla had survived these weeks. Maybe she could arrange for them to live without her. Maybe not.

The house was strangely quiet when she entered. No children came to greet her. It took her a moment to remember that she'd arranged for them all to have sleepovers until the next day, just in case she'd be delayed. But somebody was there, she could sense her mother's presens. Camila came out of the shadows, her face free from make up and her eyes clear with sobriety. It wasn't a face Katie saw often, but it did happen. She had left with the words "I wish you'd never been born" ringing in her ears, now she feared what was coming next. But Camila merely walked up to her, caressed her cheek gently with a newly manicured hand, and said;

"Cariña mía."

Option one: Rock Climbing at Kangaroo Point Cliffs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_Point_Cliffs

The flight from LA to Melbourne was long, but most of the travellers slept through the night. A full day was planned, which is an important step towards beating jetlag.

*

By some miracle, all the kids had managed to show up to SHS on time, and with the correct travel documentation. The flight from Conneticut to Atlanta had gone smoothly, and even the short layover in Atlanta, during which they'd had to practically run from one terminal to another to make the connection had gone smoothly. The big test, however, would be collecting all their bags at LAX, and going through International security there. But for now, everyone was settling in for the almost five hour flight to LA.

Sunny had called Katie earlier that morning and asked to hang out, so Katie had suggested the mall. It was a hot summer day but Katie had no ambition to hang out by the pool where the entire "ace gang" (she had just read the Georgia Nicholson books she'd found in her little sister's room) would be. The mall would be safe today. So now they were in the food court, where Katie didn't eat but sipped on a black coffee. She'd spent last night at a party with College students and hooked up with a guy whose name she'd now forgotten, and regretted it. It felet like cheating on Alan, even though they were no longer together.

"So, what's new?" she asked Sunny.

Katie hadn't talked to Marty in a long time. Before Alan, before everything, they had been pretty tight, hanging out and even throwing parties together, but they'd had a fall out and just stopped hanging out. When she saw him on the other side of the mall, she realized how much she'd missed his company. She felt a bit apprehensive, would he want to talk to her? She wasn't a cheerleader and the cheerleaders didn't exactly think highly of her. She was popular, that wasn't the issue, but she wasn't one of them. Still, she decided to walk up to him. Because once upon a time he listened to her tears.

"Hey, Marty" she said trying to sound casual.

It was Sunday night and Katie Lopez was walking down the street, three sheets to the wind. If somebody had asked her to walk in a straight line she would have laughed them in the face, because she could barely walk period. Her mission tonight had been to drink away the pain and she had succeeded to some level, but when she was here, walking all alone, everything came back to her. Everything that hurt worse than she'd ever expected it to. She wanted to cry, she wanted to throw up and she wanted everything to stop.

"Just stop!" she cried, frightening a couple of birds on the side of the road.

Sunny was awfully bored. She was still a bit disappointed in herself for getting so drunk at the party at Sheila's, and she was a lot embarrassed. Hadn't she promised that she'd matured? That things would be different?

Was she lying to herself that Stoneybrook was the change she'd needed? Maybe she should have just stuck with California and her drama out there.

She sat on the swing -- she was at some playground, close to her house -- and stared at the ground. She didn't know what to do, but she wanted to be left alone.

Much to her irritation, somebody joined her. She looked up at them, before looking down once more. "Hey," she said, dully.