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Enjoy. And comment! And I think that after this entry I will take a short break from posting and post an entry of my own, rather than of Ada Keegan's..... xd COMMENT MY DEARS!

November 16th, Eighth grade, 5:10 p.m.
I walked home from school today. I’ve never walked home in my life; I live almost a mile and a half from the middle school. But I felt like walking home today.
I’d started on my way and then realized I didn’t want to pull an Edgar, so I called Alice to let her know.
“Hello?”
“Alice?” I asked. She sounded stressed.
“Ya? Ada?”
“Yeah. I’m just calling so you know that I’m not dead.”
She paused. “Why would you be dead?”
“Cause I’m walking home.”
“What?”
“I mean, I’m not taking the bus, ‘cause I’m walking home, so don’t freak out and think I’m dead.”
There was another pause from the other line. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Um, okay.”
“See you at home.”
“Kay. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I had a lot of thinking time when I was walking home. I didn’t think about Edgar or Alice or even Mom, though. I didn’t think about Dad, and wonder when he was going to come back. I thought about Marco.
He’s been my best friend since about the second grade, when he moved in next door from Mexico. He moved across the neighborhood two years later, but we stayed friends. He’s Hispanic (though you could probably guess that from his name and place of origin) with dark, gelled up hair and brown eyes. I was always the taller one in elementary school, and even sixth and seventh grade, but over this past summer he started catching up, and now he’s a few inches taller than me (which he won’t let me forget, that pain in the a**). He always wears horizontally striped shirts, for some reason, with jeans and gym shoes. Just about every day. Eating with his family in his little white house is why I’ve got such a high tolerance for spicy foods. Marco’s funny; that’s one of the reasons I first started being friends with him. He’s a class clown type, really, but the kind that’s actually funny, and doesn’t just try to be and fail. He’s well-liked, but I’ve always been his only close friend, and he’s mine. Marco has a huge appetite, and he sneezes twice every time he walks outside. He always writes reminders on his hands, so they’re often a sort of bluish color from half-washed-off pen. He’s a touchy-feely kind of guy, but never in a weird way, and that’s not to say he’s not guyish as well. He’s a superb soccer player, and sometimes he goes and plays with some Mexican boys in his neighborhood. We play together sometimes, but he’s better than me, and always ends up just laughing as I chase him around the field. We’ve always told each other everything; I told him about my mom and her illness, and he told me about his father going to jail. His mom’s a sweet person, and he has two little sisters. I love his family a lot; if you’re friends with Marco, you’re sort of friends with them all. And Marco’s a cool guy; he’s always around when you need him.
Until these past few weeks, that is. All of the sudden, he stopped hanging out with me as much and he’s been going around with this guy Pedro and his twin sister, Cecilia. Marco still sits with me at lunch and stuff, but he’s been inviting them over to sit with us also, which was fine and all, at first. But he’s also been hanging out with them all the time after school, talking to them in classes…I mean, yeah, Pedro is pretty cool. He saw me playing a game of solitaire one time when Marco was immersed in some discussion with Cecilia, and he helped me win the game, and we cracked a few jokes and hung out.
But Cecilia bugs me. She’s just so damn girly and always flipping her hair all over the place and fixing her makeup and fussing with stuff on her skirts and on and on and on…when I first met her, I was like, okay, well, that’s fine, as long as she’s nice. But then one time, we were sitting at lunch and she was talking to Marco and I tried to join their conversation…
Marco was like, “Oh, man, I hate that show…my sister always watches it, and I’m like, what the hell? It’s just an excuse for people to get insulted on camera!”
Cecilia scoffed. “Oh, that’s just your guy opinion, it’s such a good show!”
I popped in. “Whatcha guys talkin’ about?”
Marco glanced at me. “That show What Not To Wear.” He looked at Cecilia again. “It’s so stupid!”
She rolled her eyes and started picking at one of her nails, every so often flicking her eyes up to look at Marco. “Oh, whatever. I think it’s funny, and really interesting, ya know.”
“Yeah, if you’re like a total ditz,” Marco said jokingly.
Cecilia slapped him on the arm, all playfully and stuff, and was like, “Oh my gawd, shut up...” And then she giggled. I wanted to go gag myself in the bathroom.
But Marco, oh no, he just grinned and watched her poke at her stupid peppers.
Anyway, I asked them if they’d ever seen this one show on abc, and like, I was ready to shoot them both. They completely ignored me! But they heard me, oh yes, they heard me. Cecilia flicked her eyes at me and gave this little sigh thing, like oh-my-god-she-is-sooo-annoying-don’t-you-think, Marco? And he just sort of bobbed his head and watched her bat her overly mascara-ed eyelashes at him.
Can you say EWW, GAG? If you can’t, I will say it for you. EWW, GAG.
I mean, right? I’m not crazy here! He’s acting like an a*****e. And I don’t like assholes.
But on the other hand, he’s Marco. I mean, come on, Marco. Funny, genial, goofball, loveable, stupid, obnoxious Marco. Marco who I’ve known since I was like, eight. Marco who accidentally got gum in my hair in fourth grade and felt so bad that when he came to school the next day, his mother had shaved his head because he’d shoved so much grape-flavored Bubblicious into it the night before. Yeah, it was kind of a stupid gesture, but at least it was sincere. I’ve never known him to be like this. He’ll talk to anyone, he never excludes people. Least of all me!
Whatever. If he wants to go giggle like a four-year-old with little miss oh-ho [insert giggle here] you-are-sooo-funny-Marco [insert ruffle of Marco’s hair here], then fine. What do I care? I’ve got my own issues to deal with, I don’t need his.
Speaking of which. When I got home today, Rachel still wasn’t around, and we had no idea why she hadn’t showed up this morning, either. That’s not like her, you see. She always arrives precisely when she means to, and on the impossible incidence where some sort of natural disaster keeps her from being on time, she always at least shows up. So you see, we were getting rather worried.
But not only worried for her. Our house was like a mad house, so some of that anxiety was about our own well-being. But I’ll get to that later.
When I got home, Alice and Edgar were already home, which was strange for me because when I take the bus, I’m always home earlier. Middle school ends about fifteen minutes before the high school, plus it’s a bit closer. Anyway, they were home, and I found them walking around the open fridge with wet paper towels, apparently cleaning something up.
I walked in. “Hey, guys…what’re you doing?”
Alice scoffed angrily and bit her lip. She was pissed about something.
“Mom decided to leave us a little present,” Edgar said sarcastically, dumping his paper towel in the trash.
I looked in the refrigerator. There was egg dripping from the second shelf, landing on the floor of the fridge. Sausage, uncooked and out of its package, was sitting on the shelf. None of our breakfast food was on a plate. The cinnamon rolls we found, frosted but not baked, in the fruit drawer. She’d even put the forks in there, though we only found that out later, when we tried to pour ourselves orange juice out of the carton and something more than fruit juice came out.
I was utterly confused.
“Wha-?” I looked at my siblings.
Alice said nothing, and Edgar merely shrugged in irritation as he stuck the sausages back in a Tupperware. Normally, he asks a million questions when he’s doing things in the kitchen, about where things go and such (because he only helps out when Dad makes him), but today he seemed reluctant to address the fact that his kitchen duty was so strange. In fact, neither of them would talk.
Oh, well. I almost didn’t want to know.
Anyhow, we were all getting rather desperate, so I checked our messages in the hopes that Rachel had let us know where she was. She had.
“Hello, its Rachel.” Her voice sounded strange and distracted that even Edgar and Alice stopped their cleaning for a moment to listen. “Eli’s in the hospital. He had a heart attack, I’m waiting to see if he’s alright. He’s in…” her voice had gotten less and less steady as she’d spoken, and now she seemed to be holding off tears with great determination. This was surprising; none of us had ever seen or heard Rachel get emotional. We heard her swallow. “He’s in emergency surgery,” she said, plowing through her words, “and I’m waiting to see if he’ll be-” there was a long pause here, and we heard some little gasping and a few cries that were quickly covered up. When she spoke again, her voice was steadier. “-if he’ll be alright. I’m not going to be able to come around for the next few days, my dears. There’s some frozen lasagna in the fridge, one with no meat for you, Alice. You all can have that for dinner.” She hung up.
We stood for a moment in a kind of stupor. Gone. Rachel. Crying. No food for tomorrow. School. Eli. Crying. Heart attack.
Slowly, Alice finished cleaning up and closed the fridge. Edgar and I sat at the table, and a few minutes later Alice joined us.
She frowned uncertainly, staring at her black nail polish. “I hope Eli’s alright.” I could tell she was trying hard not to grind her teeth; the dentist said it was very bad for her.
I pulled my jacket off my waist and over my head. “I hope Rachel’s alright.”
Edgar simply furrowed his brow.
After a few minutes, we drifted out of the room. We survived the next hour without any sort of problem, drama, nervous breakdown, screaming session, or eggs dripping from places they don’t belong.