Characters: Ben, Brian, & Erica.
Setting: Tuesday, December 14th. Redd Household [Gloucester, Massachusetts].
Rating: SFW.. unless Erica kills one of them from frustration.
Summary: Momma Redd has gone out to do some Christmas shopping.. and left Erica in charge. With the simple task of getting her brothers to leave their rooms and decorate the tree with her.


Erica had been intending to spend most of her day on the sofa. She was still in her pajamas, and she could curl up, grab a blanket, watch some television. Perhaps she'd bust out her KISSmas DVDs. She'd text some friends, maybe see what they were up to. If anyone was up for something fun, she was considering going out, but she doubted that. It felt kind of like an indoor lazy day.

After dinner, once she was well rested, she thought she might try to get a hold of some of her muggle friends from the city, most of whom she scarcely saw, even over break. Now that she thought about it, some of those muggle boys were really quite handsome..

Her plans came to a halt, however, when Barbie Redd poked her head into the living room.

"Erica, honey? I'm going to get some shopping done with Margaret. Why don't you get your brothers and decorate the tree? It's been bare for a week!"

She scarcely had any time to protest, before her mother was gone again. Erica propped herself up onto her elbows, listening as she heard some brief noise in the kitchen, her mom grabbing her purse and keys, before she called out again. "I'll expect it beautiful when we get home! Keep an eye on the oven, I put a roast in!"

Hearing the door shut, Erica groaned, flopping back onto the couch and covering her face with her hands. There went a day of relaxing. It would probably take her hours to convince the two of them out of their bedrooms. She was happy for her mother, really, she was. Barbie was doing so well, experiencing true freedom for the first time in ages, and Erica was glad for that. She wasn't a hundred percent sure what she felt on the divorce just yet, but seeing her mother happy.. well, that at least was nice. And since Barbie had joined a divorcee support group, it seemed like she had loads of friends now, loads of support, lots of other people to shop with, to have dinners with, to talk to, and Erica enjoyed having some of the support role taken off of her her own shoulders.

Right then, however, she would much rather have her mother home than out shopping with the fellow divorcee coalition.

Accomplishing the task of decorating a tree was never that easy, but it was only going to be harder with her brothers as her helpers. Assuming she could even convince them to help in the first place. Brian might be easier, but she was sure that Ben would give her a pain in the ass, as usual. Sighing heavily, the dark-haired girl pushed herself up from the couch, standing and stretching. Taking up her phone, she typed one simple text, sending it to Adelaide;

'I have to decorate all day with brothers. Alone. Mom bailed. Shoot me in the face please.'

Tossing her phone down onto the sofa, where it landed gently into the blanket she had been planning to snuggle up under, Erica began to trudge out of the room, making her way up the stairs. Stopping in the corridor, she peered down it, sighing again. Her own bedroom door stood ajar, but both Brian and Ben's were shut solid. Knowing Ben's, it'd probably be locked, too.

"Hey! Mom says you both have to help with the tree, and she wants it done before she gets back, so come on!"

This day just kept looking longer and longer.

Tags: !incomplete, benjamin redd, brian redd, erica redd