Carter leaned back and laid down on the floor in the middle of Zac's bedroom. She stared at the ceiling and made a face. "Zac, she's going to make us clean out your light fixture." She muttered, staring up at the glass covered fixture hanging from the ceiling.
"Ew." Zac made a face and continued throwing his clothes around the room, making it look like he was organizing. "Why?" He picked up a shoe and threw it against the wall.
"Because from this angle... and keep in mind I can't be sure about this... it looks like there's a small, dead, furry animal up there."
"Ew." Zac frowned and looked up at the light. He tilted his head to the side and made a face. "Well, how about we just keep it in it's final resting place. I'm sure it's content there."
"Sounds good to me." Carter nodded. "Hey when is Katie supposed to get here?"
Zac picked up a pair of pants, sniffed them, and then tossed them into the hallway. "Any minute. Are you still going to go and help Taylor with the garage then?"
"Yeah I promised I'd help sit on the roof and throw old tiles at him."
Zac stared at her, blankly.
"Your mom wants to re-tile the roof this year before we paint it. That way if we get roof crap on the garage, we can just paint over it." She smiled, quietly calling his mother insane.
Zac and Carter heard the front door open and close lightly. Katie was told to just come in and head upstairs to find Zac. Carter jumped up. "Ok, I'm gonna head outside then to find Taylor." Carter stopped when she saw that the cage that usually held Zac's pet snake was empty. "Uh, Zac, where's Fester?"
Zac sighed. "I dunno. He keeps escaping."
"Yeah, you might want to find him."
Zac nodded and Carter left his room. She ran into Katie on the stairs and gave her a quick wave before running outside to find Taylor.
She found him on the roof, throwing tiles onto the ground below him. She ducked when one of the tiles flew past her head and landed on the ground by her feet. "Hey. Watch it!"
Taylor blushed and apologized quickly. "Are you coming up?"
Carter nodded and jumped up onto the old swingset that was propped up against the garage. She stood on the metal bar and pulled herself up onto the roof. "Are you wearing rollerblades?"
"Yeah. It's fun. You should try it."
"No thanks. Me, plus the roof, plus wheels... not a good idea. Probably not a good idea for you either." She sat down on the roof next to him and started pulling up tiles. "Hey why is your dad's new car parked out here?" She asked, eyeing the brand new, red, SUV, that was parked next to the garage. It was Mr. Hanson's new baby. He drove it to the grocery store earlier and parked at the very end of the parking lot so nobody would hit it.
"I guess he was afraid somebody would run into it on the street."
Carter nodded. "Nice thinking. People can't drive worth a damn here."
"Carter, you can't drive for shit either."
"Yeah I know. But I really blame that on the great distance between my feet and the pedals." She grabbed a tile and threw it off of the porch. She laughed when it landed on top of the pool cover. "Woops. See now we're going to have to sanitize the pool."
"Are you implying that my mother is insane?"
"Yes." She grinned.
"Ok. Just checking." Taylor pulled himself up and kissed the top of Carter's head. He was about to stand when his feet slid out from under him and he fell back into a seated position.
Carter laughed. "That looked like it almost hurt. You ok?"
"Oh yeah. Fine fine. Didn't really need my butt for anything important anyway. Damn rollerblades. If I fall one more time, I'm taking them off."
"Good idea." She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder for a minute. "So what's next?"
"Well, I was thinking we'd run away in the middle of the night and get married."
Carter lifted her head and looked stunned. "I meant... today... what's next on our list of chores..."
Taylor frowned. "I was kidding. But good to know where we stand."
Carter followed him with another frown. "I'm sorry. You just caught me off guard. You need to not do that."
Taylor nodded. "Ok, time to move on to another spot." He said after pulling off the last of the tiles in his area. He stood up and inched to the left on his rollerblades.
Carter looked up at him and held up her arms. "Help?" She tried desperately to break the tension with a big, warm, smile.
Taylor smiled back at her. He could never resist her smile. He took her hands and pulled her up lightly, causing him to wheel backwards. Before he had the chance to regain his footing, his rollerblades caught the slope of the roof and he flew backwards off of the edge.
Carter gasped and stumbled onto her knees as she heard a loud crash. She jumped up and ran to the edge, stunned to see Taylor laying on the hood of the SUV, his left rollerblade stuck in the shattered glass of the windshield. "Oh my god... are you ok?"
Taylor squinted up into the sun as it came out from behind a cloud. "Fuck. Holy freakin fuck."
Carter laughed and jumped off of the roof, climbing onto the car to help Taylor out of the windshield. "This is so much worse than throwing a dresser through the wall."
"I'm dead. Very very very dead." Taylor crawled off of the car and landed on the gravel. "Ouch... dammit." He rubbed his elbow where he landed on the car.
"Are you sure you're ok?" She asked, putting her hand on the large red mark that covered a large portion of his arm.
Taylor nodded. "I'm so dead..."
"Yeah you are." Carter laughed as she gave him a big hug. "How about we just skip town."
"Yes. Skip town. And then elope."
"Sounds good to me." She answered with a straight face.
"I was kidding. Again."
Carter maintained her straight face and nodded. "I wasn't."
Katie followed Zac down the stairs and into the living room. "So now that you're sick of cleaning your room, what next?"
"Well my mom wanted us to wash all the windows."
"Ew. I'm against cleaning windows. When they're really clean, birds fly into them and die. It seems like a really crappy way to die too. Even though birds suck. I still wouldn't want to die by flying into a window and then have all the giant humans point and laugh and go 'HA, dumbass blonde girl ran into the window and died.'"
Zac stared at her for a minute and then laughed harder than he had in a long time. "It's times like these I wish I carried around a little tape recorder so that I can capture your moments of cute rambling." He smiled. "Ok. Now. We have those nifty flippy outy windows that ... flip out so you can clean the outside from the inside."
Katie's eyes widened and she smiled. "And you say I ramble. Do you have any windex?"
Zac disappeared for a minute and came back with a bottle of windex and a roll of paper towels. "Hello, my name is Zachary and my favorite color is windex." He gave Katie a goofy grin and set the windex and towels on the floor. He ran his hands across the top of the window, searching for the latch to unlock it. "Ok, so you pull this little latch thingy and then push the window out..." He pulled on the latch and pushed on the window only to see it pop out of his frame and fall out. It shattered on the sidewalk next to the house. "Aw son of a bitch. I so should have seen that coming."
Katie laughed loudly and fell sideways, falling onto the floor. "That is the funniest thing I've ever seen you do."
Zac recovered from his "dropped jaw" status and blinked. "Did I just throw the window out the window?"
"Yeah."
"Great. That's about as good as when Carter and I threw the dresser through the wall."
"You threw a dresser through a wall?"
"Totally not our fault."
Katie laughed again. "I swear, Zac, you have the best family in the world."
Zac smiled and looked down at her. "I do, don't I?"
"Although, your mom is going to kill you for breaking the window."
"Yeah." He shrugged. "Not like it hasn't happened before. Maybe if we're lucky Carter and Taylor will screw up the roof job and take the focus off of my screw up."
Katie nodded. "We can only hope."
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