Stand behind yer sheriff Circulation: 188,131,375 Issue: 425 | 8th day of Sleeping, Y12
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A Glimpse of Mine


by farah_fadam

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I should say thanks to my pets: Fay, Adam, Gabby, and SpaQ, this is for you.

It’s that time of week again. The morning of a Saturday, the weekend, I am very glad to say. You woke up to nothing, not even a sound of the alarm clock ringing to wake you up and get you off the bed and straight to work, no thousand little cries of ‘Oh, Iz, I lost my books again, I swore they grew legs and run off from me,’ or ‘Nooooo! No slushies in the freezer, Iz? That’s a crime!’ from your lovely pets.

     Not a sound of chaos.

     You woke up to crisp, clean air, the sun rays just barely passing through the almost transparent curtains you have in your bedroom, making really pretty rainbow colours and you can see the little specks of dust, visible from the sun rays. It is truly a lovely morning.

     You rise from the bed, almost half-heartedly, brush your teeth, wash your face, and perform all of your little morning chores. Then, because you just couldn’t hate them no matter how they turned the house upside down, you take a peek at your very, really, lovely pets.

     They are all still sleeping; the most serene looks on their beautiful faces, and you just can’t help it when you feel your heart lift and really, is that why you can’t deny them anything?

     Haha. I would forget this heart-lifting thing on Monday for sure, when they almost banged my door of its hinges, requesting this and that and asking whether I’ve seen their book or their favourite socks or demanding no tomatoes for their sandwich (which I would ignore, obviously) and all sorts of things that only a house of four pets can bring.

     Oh, I forgot to introduce you to my family. Now that’s a crime, because you can never forget your family. Who else can get you headaches in an instance? Okay, I’m only half-joking.

     First, there’s Fay, my Disco Kacheek. She loves books, and she’s shy. But she’s also the nicest among the four, and it’s easy to love her. She keeps to herself a lot, she monitors her siblings very well, being the eldest in the house, and she makes Tigersquash Corn Dogs better than Hubert himself. She also owns Cookie, the Snow Kookith. We were walking in a park one day, and it was snowing. The Snow Kookith was obviously freezing, and Fay wouldn’t let me leave her on the pavement, and Fay had tears in her eyes and really, who can deny her anything?

     So we took the Snow Kookith home, and Fay tends to her very well, which surprises me because I don’t know anything about tending to a Petpet. When I ask her about her this, she just said, ‘Well, the library contains a vast variety of books, and books contain everything you need to know. Do the maths, and you’ll have all the knowledge you need in a library.’ Er, well. Did I mention she loves books?

     Unsurprisingly, Fay owning a Petpet leads to her siblings, or should I mention her less responsible siblings, bringing Petpets home and doing the ‘puppy eyes’ on me so as to make me let them keep the Petpets. One of them were even hinting to me very clearly that a trip to the Petpet Shop would make them very happy.

     I mean, isn’t the purpose of a hint, is for it to be very subtle?

     Anyway, Cookie becomes Fay’s best friend, and meanwhile her siblings’ Petpets... Well, easy to say if I was not there to feed them, they would have run away a long, long time ago.

     Then there’s Adam, my Blue Bruce, whom I got together with Fay, because I really don’t want Fay to be alone when I’m busy working. Money situation was tough back then, and I have to put a roof over their heads and make sure there’s food on the table, and sometimes I get too carried away with work. Turns out, it’s Adam who needs Fay’s company when I’m not home with them. Huh.

     Adam is the only boy in the family. I guess that would be the reason as to why he always, always walks behind us; he acts like our personal bodyguard. The girls would giggle to that, because he would puff out his body, and walk with his stomach first when we go out shopping or something. Boy, if that isn’t the cutest thing ever.

     He loves Happy Valley; just because there’s a Slushie Shop there. And he demands me to stock the freezer full of Slushies with every flavour, and to use his words, ‘We can never, ever run out of Slushies. That’s a crime.’

     I think that’s just ridiculous. In the end, we agreed to a few flavours, and we even made a contract, which was his idea. This is the contract, with his messy scrawl and drops of Slushie on the paper:

     This is to certify that:

     This is a contract between

     This contract is Adam’s and Izzie’s. Izzie has to buy Adam Slushies enough for forever. This is are the flavours that we have agreed on:

     (There are 15 of them; I don’t want to burden you with that.)

     If Izzie buys Adam Slushies, Adam will be nice to Izzie, and his siblings if they are nice to Adam. If Izzie does NOT buy Slushies for Adam, it’s a crime.... Muahaha.

     Signed by: Izzie (please oh pleaseeeee) and Adam.

     I think the first two lines that were crossed out were Fay’s handwriting. I could almost imagine him, crossing them off, saying, ‘No, Fay, she wouldn’t like a serious contract. Maybe if it’s funny, and we can get her to laugh, she would sign it.’ Fay wouldn’t say anything, and let Adam do whatever he want, and she would let Adam write his own contract, just guiding him here and there.

     Adam was right, I guess. I laughed reading the contract, and signed it without thinking, and regretted it instantly. He immediately dragged me to Happy Valley before my pen even left the paper.

     The contract is now framed, hanging in his bedroom, taking the place of honour, because when you open the door, the first thing you would see is the contract. I am never again going to sign a contract before seriously considering it. Even if it has Slushie drops on it.

     Fay and Adam were the duo, because it took quite some time before we got Gabby, the Red JubJub. She was very shy at first; mark my words, at first. She is everything but shy when you get to know her. She is always the one who would be turning the house upside down, and she has this mischievous side of her that you can never really guess what she is about to do. She gives me plenty of heart attacks when she does stunts like: ‘Iz, watch me watch me, I can skateboard down the stairs!’ and ‘Iz! I can use the knife with my foot to chop the carrot! Look!’ I have to go rescue her every time. You can’t let your eyes off her for even a minute.

     Gabby can also be very unpredictable. Once, we were browsing through the shops, and she came out of one, wearing the Ultra Fashionable Potato Sack, screaming and jumping, ‘Izzie! Isn’t this the cutest thing you’ve ever seen in your whole entire life?’ She begged and begged me to buy it for her, and people were staring, so I just bought it and left the store and almost ran away from there. That moment made it to my ‘Top 10 Most Embarrassing Moments in My Whole Entire Life’ list; in fact, it’s in the Top 3.

     The Cutest Thing I’ve Ever Seen now plays its role as Gabby’s cloth, if it can be called a cloth, when she decides it’s Painting Day. I never let Gabby even as much as smell A Pile of Dung, in case she wants that too. It’s not like I don’t have Neopoints to splurge on nice clothes for my pets.

     Lately, she won’t get out of the Cybunny pyjamas. I think she has a thing for cheap stuff. But a Strawberry Fields Forever Paint Brush is not exactly cheap, is it? That’s the most expensive thing, for her standard, that she has ever asked from me. She wants to be a Strawberry JubJub, because she feels that she is ‘destined to be one’. I said no anyway, because I don’t want her siblings to eat her someday, when they fight or something. Maybe that’s ridiculous, but who wants to look like food anyway?

     Last but not least, there’s SpaQ, the Blue Lutari. That’s really how to pronounce her name, you say Spa, and you say the letter Q. SpaQ. Yes, her name is a bit unique, but we all love it. SpaQ is extremely proud of her own name, and she even talks from the third party perspective. Example; ‘Iz, SpaQ wants that Popblew, can she have it?’ or ‘SpaQ wants her book back, Adam, right now!’ The rest of us sometimes tease her; we made the ‘Speak Your Own Name’ Day, which is really funny. SpaQ doesn’t mind at all, in fact she loves it.

     SpaQ just follows whatever crazy ideas Adam and Gabby are planning. This really drives me crazy, because you would sometimes find the three of them missing together, and they would return home with their hands at their back. I would stand in front of them, my hands on my hips, asking where had they been. They wouldn’t answer, of course, but made the little mistake of smiling with their full teeth showing, and I could see pieces of chocolate stuck on their teeth. Hah. Caught red-handed. Where else if not the Chocolate Factory.

     I think I let myself get carried away in describing my pets. Where was I, anyway?

     Oh. It’s Saturday. And Saturday means... the Neopian Times! Feeling as excited as Fay when she found the perfect book at the library, or as giddy as Gabby when she has the next perfect idea to drive me nuts, I walk to my front door, opened it, and there it is, lying in front of my doorstep, the new issue of the Neopian Times.

     I love the Neopian Times. I especially love the short stories, and I get really caught up in the stories with series. It sometimes feels like I’m living through the week just to get to Saturday, so that I can finally know what’s going to happen next, and of course I would gasp and get totally engrossed in it, sometimes even exclaiming loudly, ‘Noooo! That did NOT just happen!’

     Okay. Where else would my pets learn to be dramatic and over-reacting, except from me?

     While I’m browsing through the paper, with my mouth half-open, gripping the paper too hard, I would hear the soft thud of feet, yawns and the sound of something being dragged. I would feel the warm body of one of my pets, leaning against my legs. Without taking a look, I would know who it is.

     Gabby. Of course. Dragging her blanket, affectionately named Blanky, with her Petpet, Furby, the Pink Ona, still sleeping on it.

     “Morning,” I greeted her, my eyes still glued to the paper.

     “Breakfast?”

     Honestly, she eats too much for breakfast. She won’t eat lunch, and a few hours before dinner, she would lay on the floor, her stomach growling as if I hadn’t feed her for several days.

     And it’s not like I don’t leave her food. I allow her to take snacks before dinner, but nooooo, she would rather torture herself, lying on the floor of her room until its dinner time.

     I have the weirdest pets.

     “On the kitchen table, Gabby. Don’t eat too much, Gab, really,” I reminded her.

     Quiet. It’s like she can disappear through thin air, and reappear in the kitchen.

     “Morning, Iz.”

     “Morning, Adam. Slushie’s in the freezer, and we need to go to Happy Valley today to get your stock enough for a year.”

     He punched the air in a little celebration, obviously he missed my sarcasm. He ran to the kitchen, screaming happily, which would of course wake SpaQ and Fay up.

     Oh, no. Adam would probably expect me to keep his word. Where would I put a year worth of Slushies?

     “Aren’t you joining SpaQ and others for breakfast, Iz?”

     I smiled warmly at SpaQ, and made to get up from the sofa I’ve been sitting in for the past half an hour. All of them were already there, Fay trying to multitask like always, eating while reading, or is it reading while eating?

     "Now now, girls, behave now," I said. Gabby and SpaQ have been trying to grab Adam's slushie. They just love doing that, even though I think there is still a few slushies left in the freezer. I don't really understand them.

     "Why am I the only boy in the house?" Adam growled, trying to prise off SpaQ's fingers from his slushie.

     "Adam, you can dress in a pink tutu and nobody would notice that you're a boy," Gabby replied cheekily.

     I sense danger at once. "Careful, now..."

     Too late.

     "Adam!!! You did not just spill your slushie on my library book!"

     Sigh.

     Breakfast is, as always, a chaos. In fact, where there’s food involved, there’s always chaos. We lead a chaotic life, really, I must admit. But I don’t know how else to live our life together.

     When you read stories, and even articles in the Neopian Times, they’re always breathtaking and full of adventures; they can make you laugh and cry and think about them for days. You can’t wait until you get your hands on the next issue, because you get really addicted to the stories, and you need to know what happens.

     But this story, my story, may not be an adventure for you, but life with four pets is an adventure enough for me. And this story, I just have to share with every Neopians out there. Every one of us have different stories, own different pets, lead different lives, and well, I just gave you a glimpse of mine.

The End

 
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