Fillipa

Present?

About three and a half hours pass until ‘The tribe’ comes home. ‘The tribe’ is the name I give to my seven siblings, Chloe, who is already home, Zeke, Lucy, Nikki, Logan, Noah, Max. So at least I will have something to do now, other than sit on my bed doing nothing with a headache and occasionally texting Penny.  But before get up, I fall asleep.

“FILLIPA! FILLIPA!!!!” hear, I open one of my eyes slightly and see its Nikki, Lucy and Chloe chanting my name, obviously something of non importance to me. Nikki pokes me in my stomach with her sharp little fingernails and it hurts. “Wake up sissy or no tea for you!” Nikki is in grade four and still calls me sissy. I really don’t get her sometimes. “Go away! I’m not hungry.....” I groan-mumble, just loud enough for them to hear and hopefully go away. I hear Mum pad up the stairs and into my room, but even just one of my sisters is like a herd of elephants. “I am also sure she does not want to be pestered by her four year old, ten year old and fourteen year old sisters!” she chuckles on her way up to my room, and I see that she is holding something in one of her hands.

Chloe and Nikki both run off playfully screaming at each other on their way down the stairs, possibly to go annoy the hell out of Zeke, Max, Noah and Logan.  Lucy sits on the foot of my bed with her tanned legs crossed, grinning. She obviously knows what it is. Is a box, but I can’t see whats on the lid, though. Mum and Lucy are now grinning their faces off, so it must be something that I have wanted for a while.

Mum places the box directly in front of me, and there are small holes scattered across the lid. Is it a Puppy, kitten, rabbit, guinea pig, or a hamster? –wait; there are no hamsters in Australia. I very carefully lift the lid off the box and look inside. Two small rats look back at me! I have always wanted at least one pet rat. I gently put the lid back down on them and smiled. “THANK YOUS SOOOOO MUCH!!!” I leaned over my bed and hugged Lucy and Mum. They give me a present and it’s not even Christmas or my birthday?

“Now I will have something to do if I am not texting Penny or going to school or being annoyed by my siblings!” I say, and Lucy smirks at me. “Well you are lucky we didn’t get you and pet snake! They were there in the pet shop and only a couple of enclosures away. But not close enough to eat the rats.....” Lucy chuckles.  Mum gently slaps Lucy over the back of her head. “NO ONE in this house will ever have as snake as a pet. Rats are okay...” Mum kind of growls but she smiles. The three of us giggle. “We will keep them in the box until tomorrow. After school we will go shopping for a nice cage for them,” Mum smiled at me.

“Anyways, its tea time, if you come down I’ll make you a sandwich....” Mum said. Lucy and I follow her down the stairs into the kitchen and she gets us two Nutella sandwiches while everyone else is eating chicken and chips for tea, my younger siblings looking at me, jealous because we are all chocolate lovers in this house and snake haters apart from Lucy who loves them. Every time we go to a zoo or a wildlife park of some sort we have to go visit the snake enclosure at least once. Every. Single. Time.
When I have finished off my sandwich, I run back up to my room and close the door, collapse on my bed, and fall asleep.