Unexpected Visitors

Chapter Two: Damn Karma



Aurora spent the rest of the morning in her room taking a nap, so she didn’t have to deal with Chris. The soft and cautious knock on her door brought her back to reality, and she pushed the blankets off and sat up on her bed. She placed the orange cat plushie that she had cuddled up with on her lap and glared at the door. “What?” she asked, annoyed at being woken up.



The only response she got was another knock. Sighing, Aurora climbed of off her bed, letting the blankets fall onto the floor. She stumbled across her bedroom with the plushie still in her grasp and opened the door lazily. “What?” she repeated looking at the person responsible for waking her up.



Chris stood on the other side of the doorframe holding Aurora’s quilt neatly folded in his arms. “Thanks,” he said as he handed it to her.



There was an awkward moment of silence as Aurora accepted her quilt back and proceeded to unfold and wrap it around her shivering body. She threw her plushie back onto her bed and took a small step forward, closing the door behind her. “You didn’t come all the way up here just to return my quit, did you?” she glared and continued, knowing that she was right. “What do you want?”



Chris looked to the ground and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Finally, he was able to meet her eyes again as he whispered what he had wanted to tell her since the moment it had happened, “I’m sorry.”



Aurora snorted. “For what? For being a jerk? Well don’t bother apologizing for that, it’s who you are. You’ll never change,” she spat and turned to open her bedroom door again and tried to close it behind her.



Her plan was unsuccessful when Chris put his hand in the way and held the door open against Aurora’s will. “I’m sorry for what happened in grade seven,” he said. “I really am.”



She glared harder up at him. “It’s a little late for that, asshole.”



“Ok, I deserve that, but it’s better late than never, right?” he tried.



“Not this time it isn’t,” she said angrily and managed to close the door on him. After she had sat back down on her bed there was another knock at her door. “Fuck off.”



“Aurora I actually came because your mother told me to get you for lunch,” Chris called through the door.



“I’m not hungry,” she lied and a moment later, she heard the sound of Chris going down the stairs.



~*~



Ten minutes later, wrapped up in her quilt, Aurora had fallen asleep. She was dreaming about walking through a maze filled with traps to find a dog named Tenma, when she was poked awake. “Go away,” she immediately snapped at the intruder who had dared to enter her room with out permission and poke her awake, while sitting on her bed.



When she was poked some more, she finally stuck her head out from her quilt and glared at her sister. “What do you want?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and yawning.



“Geez, Aurora,” Liz said, looking down at her little sister. “If I knew you were going to be all grumpy, then I wouldn’t have brought you this,” she finished and waved a plate with some of buns over her head.



“Food,” Aurora cheered happily as she sat up in bed as quickly as she could and snatched one of the buns off the plate. She lifted the item up to her nose and took in its delicious scent before taking a bite and almost giggling as she munched on it. “Yay.”



“I knew you’d be hungry,” Liz stated, as she observed her sister wolf down the bun and reach for another one.



“Starving,” Aurora replied; she even managed a quick ‘thank you’ between bites.



They sat in silence for a few minutes while Aurora ate, but finally Liz spoke with the question that had been bugging her from earlier. “So what’s going on between you and Chris? He seems like a pretty nice guy,” she trailed off.



Aurora almost started laughing at the though of Chris being anything but an asshole. “Right,” she said sarcastically, “he’s real nice. Nicest boy on the fucking planet. Everyone just loves him.”



Liz just raised an eyebrow at her sister. What the hell could he have possibly done to her that could make her hate him that much, she wondered. The older girl was also very curious about why her sister had never even mentioned Chris before, or what he did to her.



“Anyways,” Aurora continued, bringing Liz away from her thoughts, “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”



“Sure thing,” Liz agreed. If Aurora didn’t want to talk about it, then she’d drop the subject; she knew that if she inquired any further, it would only start a fight, and she knew their mother would not tolerate a fight this close to Christmas. Thinking about her mother reminded Liz about the real reason she had come upstairs in the first place, besides to sneak Aurora some food.



“Mom said you shouldn’t sleep anymore today,” Liz said, covering up the silence once again. “She mentioned something about if you sleep too much during the day, then you won’t be able to sleep at night.”



“Whatever,” Aurora responded, telling Liz that she understood.



At the sound of someone knocking at Aurora’s door, both sisters kept silent and turned towards the door. Since Aurora was feeling too lazy to get up at the moment to open her door, she just gave whoever it was permission to enter her room.



The door was cautiously pushed opened, and the naturally dark haired Italian teen stepped in. His gaze traveled around Aurora’s room for a second, looking at all he various things she had in it, although he failed to see the most important object sleeping on her night stand, before his eyes finally rested on the two girls sitting on Aurora’s bed.



“Can I help you?” Aurora asked, anger laced in her words, but just enough so that Liz was the only one to pick up on her rudeness.



“Your mom wanted me to come and get you two,” he said calmly.



The girls exchanged knowing glances. Their mother was the biggest neat freak there ever was; she obviously had some sort of odd chore she wanted the girls to do to make the house ‘suitable for guests’, but the truth was that their house couldn’t be anymore clean. They had been forced to clean it two days ago to get ready for Christmas, and their mother as made sure that it was kept that way.



“Well, we better get going,” Liz said, standing up from Aurora’s bed and following Chris out into the hall, “she’ll only get angry if we keep her waiting.”



“Yeah, alright,” Aurora agreed and stood up to leave her room as well. Before she closed her door, she stopped and continued quite loudly, “I’m leaving.”



From his spot on the stairs, Chris turned around and gave her a funny look; it was obvious that she was leaving, why the hell did she have to say it that loudly? Hell, Chris wondered why she was saying it at all. He didn’t remember her being this strange back when they shared the same classes in school. He was about to ask her what the fuck she was doing when she continued speaking using the same volume as before.



“Are you coming or staying?” she asked, still holding the door open. She just had enough time to make eye contact with Chris and give his confused look a smirk before a pure black object darted out from her room and down the stairs, making Chris jump as it dashed past him.



Both girls immediately burst out laughing at the startled Chris. He had moved back out of the way and almost fell down the rest of the stairs. Aurora continued to giggle as Chris grabbed the place where his heart pounded and he struggled to catch his breath. “What the fuck was that thing,” he gasped, looking where the object had disappeared, then back up to the sisters; he was surprised to see that they both had straight faces on.



“What the fuck was what?” Aurora asked, looking innocently down at him. “I didn’t see anything, did you, Liz?”



Catching on to Aurora’s little game, Liz frowned and looked to Chris then back to her sister. “No, I didn’t see anything,” she said, pretending to be confused. “Are you sure you aren’t just seeing things, Chris?”



The Italian teen just glared at the pair above him on the staircase. Finally he answered while he continued to climb down the stairs, “I’m not just seeing things.”



The girls exchanged silent giggles before hurrying down the stairs after Chris and entering the living room.



Mrs. Carson and Mr. Giovanni were sitting comfortably in there and chatting happily away, when they arrived. They carried out the rest of their conversation before they acknowledged that their children were even there.



“Aurora,” Her mother addressed her, “since you have nothing better to do than sleep all day, you can sweep the garage for me. And Elizabeth,” she addressed her eldest daughter with her full name, “be a dear and dust the house please?”



Liz agreed to her mother’s request without complaint and left the room, even though she knew her mother had dusted the entire house the day before. Aurora, on the other hand, couldn’t believe what her mother was asking her to do.



“Mom, it’s the middle of winter,” Aurora protested. “You said it, yourself that it’s forty below outside. Can’t it wait until spring? We don’t even use the garage, how dirty can the floor possibly be that you want me to do it right now?”



“Aurora, don’t be silly. It’s only forty below with the wind chill. And since there’s no wind in the garage, it should only be about thirty-five,” Mrs. Carson chirped.



Aurora narrowed her eyes at her mother. She actually expected her daughter to go out into their garage and sweep, at this time of winter, and three days before Christmas? Her mother was crazier that she thought, and she really hated the fact that she loved to keep her children busy with chores when they were bored; she could only imagine what her brother was up to right now.



“Don’t look at your mother like that,” Mr. Giovanni said, which surprised Aurora, and annoyed her that she was being told what to do by a random stranger that had just met a few hours earlier; it also didn’t help that he was the father of the guy she hated. He was probably just as much of a prick his son was. After all, Aurora guessed, Chris had to have learnt it from someone.



Aurora turned her angry gaze to Mr. Giovanni as he continued to speak, “You shouldn’t be so rude to your mother so close to Christmas, or Santa Clause might not bring you any presents this year.”



Ha, Aurora thought sarcastically, because I really believe in Santa. What a dumbass.



“Aurora, just go do it and get it over with,” Mrs. Carson said. “The more you stand here arguing, the longer it will take you to get it done.”



The teenage girl finally gave up on complaining. After all her mother was right; standing there and whining about it wasn’t getting the job done any faster. At least she was going to be spending some more time away from Chris. Hopefully he wouldn’t bother her while she worked.



“Whatever,” Aurora sighed. Just as she was about to leave, Mr. Giovanni’s suggestion stopped her dead in her tracks.



“Chris, why don’t you help her out?” he asked his son.



Bastard. Bastard. Bastard. You big bastard! Aurora cursed violently in her head. She quickly continued before anyone else has a chance to speak again, “no, it’s ok. I can handle this job myself.” She turned around and gave them a fake sweet smile. “Chris is a guest, he shouldn’t have to do any work,” she tried not to grit her teeth after she almost spat out those words.



“It’s ok, I’d love to help,” Chris said, giving Aurora’s mother a charming smile. “After all, you are letting us stay here for a while. It’s the lease I can do.”



Damn him and his stupid smile, Aurora cursed. Maybe, she thought, just maybe she shouldn’t have scared Chris earlier. Now stupid karma was out to get her. Damn karma too.



“Alright,” her mother agreed. “Aurora, Sweetie, go show Chris where his coat is, so you to can get to work on the garage?”



Great, Aurora thought as she left down the hall with Chris following close behind. Now I have to spend at least half an hour with Chris. Alone. She refrained from shuddering and pushed the thought out of her mind as she grabbed Chris’ winter coat out of the closet and roughly shoved it into his chest.



It was going to be a long day …



~*~



AN: Yay, updating!! So ha, how’d you like where I ended the chapter, I’m so evil, aren’t I? And what about the crazy black thing that freaked out Chris, well, you’ll find out more about it in the next chapter. Don’t when that’s going to be, though, so just be patient, ok? Yeah, I know it’s not much of an author’s note, but it’s about one am, and I have my graduation ceremony in about twelve hours, so yeah …