Chapter 1: Beginning of Freshman Year

　　BEGINNING OF BOOK 1: FRESHMAN HAILEY

　　“Mom have you seen my socks that I bought yesterday?

　　“Dad, may I drive the convertible because I'm already a junior?"

　　“Andy, how many times do I have to tell you not to touch it?"

　　“Mom, I swore I placed it at my desk!"

　　“Has anyone seen my pencil?"

　　Morning zoos like this are a common occurrence in our house. I mean what do you expect if you're living with four brothers?

　　A Monday morning is a concrete jungle where everyone is a predator suiting their selfish needs. I look at my dad at the end of the table. He seemed to be too calm about the chaos happening behind his back. Our mom is sitting near dad. She also seemed to be eerily calm.

　　“Hailey, are you done eating your breakfast?" Mom asked.

　　I am sitting at my usual place at the dining table, passively listening to my brothers.

　　“Aren't you just tired of hearing them, mom?"

　　Dad took a comical look at me and eventually went back to reading his paper while my mom wiped the perspiration that formed at her forehead by the back of her hand.

　　“Better than having no noise at all." She smiled, but of course, I didn't understand what she just said. If there is any award for being the most lenient person in this world, she would be awarded consecutively without doubt.

　　My mom is Diana Madrigal. She is a proud woman standing at 5 feet and two inches. Her shiny and straight ebony hair dangles like restless waves around her shoulders. Her eyes are deep brown like wood that reflect an independent spirit. She has pristine white skin that she got from her Spanish ancestors, and her thin red lips express a warm and mischievous smile at the same time.

　　“Mom, I was asking you if you have seen my socks." Trevor, my Einstein brother who wears glasses, emerged with his books underneath his arms, as usual.

　　“Didn't you check in your drawers?" Mom asked. “I think you placed it there."

　　Trevor scrutinized me for a moment but eventually looked away.

　　It must be because I'm already wearing the same high school uniform as them. My brothers' uniforms were short-sleeved buttoned-down collared powder blue polo shirts with a pocket at their upper-left chest. The school's insignia is stitched on their pocket. They're also required to wear navy blue neckties. They were also wearing khaki pants and leather shoes.

　　Me, on the other hand, is wearing the same short-sleeved two-buttoned powder blue shirt but with a curved-designed collar in front. I also got the same upper-left pocket with our school's insignia stitched on it. Instead of a necktie, girls are required to wear a navy blue ribbon. I am also wearing a navy blue pleated skirt with hemlines cut two inches under the knee. My socks are powder blue and just like my brothers, I'm also wearing leather shoes.

　　“Ready for school?" He asked, and I nodded.

　　“Yep, I'm very ready," I fake a smile. I didn't really like talking to Trevor who eats Calculus by breakfast and breathes Chemistry for his oxygen tank.

　　“Come, Andy." Mom pulls a chair for our youngest guy in the house.

　　“Mom, I lost my pencil," he said in a low tone. He grabbed some hotdogs and gobble them vigorously. Smudges around the corners of his mouth disgusted me, but I didn't say anything.

　　“Don't worry, son, I have a hundred of pencils in my room." Dad patted his back. I was about to drink my milk when my twin brothers, Gregory and Corey, emerged and literally jumped on their seats.

　　I spilled my milk and gritted my teeth to hide my irritation. Greg and Corey began gobbling hotdogs and eggs inside their mouths. Bits of their food dripped from their lips. Disgusting.

　　“Why so in a hurry, boys?" Mom asked them.

　　“Mom, you wouldn't want to be late for school," Greg said while eating.

　　“Especially not in the first day of school," added Corey.

　　I was about to drink my milk when Greg asks, “Hailey, are you wearing make-up?"

　　Everyone suddenly grew silent and looked at me.

　　I feel like being sold in an auction where everybody's scrutinizing every single detail of an artifact. “Just eye shadows. That's all," I said. I look at dad, pleading for a rescue.

　　“Well, it's girl stuff, isn't it?" Dad commented.

　　“Seems like our little girl's trying to get a boyfriend now." Trevor winked at me.

　　“I'm not a little girl anymore!"

　　I got annoyed while my twin brothers and Trevor give each other high fives. Andy joined too. I look at dad for a rescue, but he is merely smirking while shaking his head.

　　“Hailey, don't you just go over it." Mom raised an eyebrow.

　　“I won't, mom. Can we just stop talking about it?" I throw murderous glances at my brothers who are still laughing while bits of pancake syrups are dripping down from their mouths.

　　Yep, I have always been the laughing stock of my family since the day I was born.

　　Okay, I'll introduce you to this jungle, er, I mean my family.

　　Trevor Madrigal is the one with the glasses and jet-black hair. He's my know-it-all brother who's already in senior. He's too smart that he calls everyone stupid whenever someone placed the wrong preposition in their sentence and throws snide comments coupled with some mock coughing when someone couldn't define the centrifugal force.

　　He's always in the middle of something whenever you bump into him at the school hallway or at the staircase of our house. And he's always in the middle of something that you never bother to ask him when was the last time that he went to watch a movie, or when was the last year he dated a girl without bringing her to the library.

　　As my brother being a true-blue genius, it really embarrasses me sometimes. Trevor's known in town for being the “Most Outstanding Student of the Year," “Most Active Student Council Representative of the Year," “Outstanding Science Student of the Year," “Math Wizard of the Year," and even being an active member of the “Wrenchplains '

our town

Young Volunteers for Catechism."

　　Wrenchplains is a small town in Negros Oriental, Philippines. It is an idyllic setting to raise a family. And because everyone knows anyone, I have always been compared to my older brothers who have been the favorites of most mothers in this small town.

　　Why do I know this all? Well, good question because every time someone asked me for my name, I will anticipate questions like these: “Are you Trevor Madrigal's sister? Was he the one who won the Bible quiz bee?"

　　And then I can't lie. At the back of my mind, I always apologize to them for not acquiring the smart genes because Trevor hoarded it

it makes sense now how Corey and Greg are airheads

.

　　Trevor used to do damage control whenever we mock him for being the lost great godson of Albert Einstein. He kept on telling us that our smart genes are just recessive. Whatever, I hate Trevor for being an evil scientist and an evil brother.

　　I have identical twin brothers whom I could sell at a zoo if I could. Corey is a musician while Gregory is an athlete. Pretty cool, isn't it?

　　They both have golden brown eyes, and both have dark brown hair. The thing is, they aren't really twins. I mean even if they look the same, they're really different from each other when you will know them deeper. Of course, I'm their one and only sister, so how would I know who they really are beneath their identical masks?

　　Corey's more annoying than Gregory, that's a fact. If Greg's good at soccer or badminton, Corey's a total handicap when it comes to sports while Greg's a slow learner in music. I even learned piano faster than him when we were studying it the whole summer.

　　Now I'm introducing our youngest brother, Andrew or Andy. Well, Andy is almost as an equal to my older brothers. I can say that because he gets straight As like Trevor does, Corey taught him guitar, and he learnt it in weeks. He plays badminton with Greg even if he's just seven years old.

　　I guess my favorite brother will always be Andy, but of course, I love all of my brothers equally, even if I sometimes wish that I could transport them to space.

　　My dad is Benedict Madrigal. He wears glasses, and he's working as a marketing officer of an insecticide company while mom's working as a columnist and a copyeditor of the Wrenchplains Herald.

　　And me? Besides for being the only girl in the family aside from our mom, I'm just Hailey Madrigal. I'm the girl known in school as “The Cute Gregory's Sister," or “Trevor the Genius's Sister," or “Awesome Corey's Sister." Trust me, all my life I'm known to be their sister, just their sister. I'll never be popular for being Hailey, but sure, I'll be popular for being their sister.

　　Maybe because I am just average looking. I got wavy brown hair that shines under the golden sun and brown eyes which are nothing special, not deep like Trevor's that could classify me as philosophical or not as doe-eyed that could stop a guy with one look. I have tiny freckles across my nose, and I'm not that tall like my friend Christine is. And oh, I sometimes slouch.

　　I'm just some girl that's officially a high school student in a few minutes. I can barely fork my egg because in a few minutes, thinking that I'll already be going to Wrenchplains High School.

　　“So dad, as I was saying, can I drive the convertible now?" Corey asked.

　　“Son, Trevor's older," Dad disagreed without lifting his eyes from the morning paper.

　　Typical of dad, he is still engrossed with the money figures that make my head ache at the Business section, but he always fold the feature page where my mom writes her parental advice every day, so that he may read it later after immersing all the daily money troubles in his head for his job's sake.

　　My dad blatantly sermons my brothers that being in the business world is a competitive venture, and you couldn't afford to lose foresight.

　　My brothers, except for Trevor, never really cared about economics. My mother kept telling my father that Corey and Greg still have a lot of time to grow up, so he mockingly challenges my mom to cut their allowances in half in order for them to learn the value of economics, to the petition of the two whenever it comes up.

　　“But I'm smarter!" Corey reasoned.

　　“Greg, you still don't have a license!" Mom barged in.

　　“And mom, I'm Corey."

　　I grin because mom sometimes don't get their names right. I'm sometimes confused too, but I'm better at my mom when it comes to identifying the twins.

　　“Okay, everyone, time to get going!" Mom rose up from the table, just in time when Andy's school bus honked outside. I laugh when clumsy Greg spilled milk all over his face in the middle of drinking.

　　“C'mon, Andy." Mom goes out with Andy.

　　“I can't believe this will be my last year in high school!" Trevor rose up too and almost spilled dad's coffee that is resting in the table. Dad finally looked up from his morning paper and eyed Trevor. Poor dad, his children doesn't take his newspaper reading seriously.

　　“Sorry dad."

　　Trevor hastily approached and asked for the car key from dad. Dad grudgingly dug from inside his pocket and tossed it to him. Trevor caught it smoothly, to the comical envious face of Corey.

　　“Someday, if I'm going to be a millionaire, I'll buy a Ferrari, and I won't let Trevor drive it!" Corey threw his head in the air, to everyone's delight. He earned chuckles from everybody.

　　“And this will be our junior year, Corey!" Greg got up and banged his hands to the table, which completely knocked dad's coffee all over the table. “Um, sorry dad?"

　　Greg grabbed Corey's sleeve, and they both went running away to avoid dad's wrath.

　　Trevor, who is anticipating a scene, also exited immediately and hurriedly picked up his books while whistling his way out.

　　Dad gave himself a face palm as he took a deep breath in expressing remorse over his spilled coffee. I didn't know whether to follow my brothers to wisely escape dad's wrath or to stay to calm his nerves by reminding him that my brothers were mere imbeciles in the first place.

　　“And how about my little girl? Don't you need to go now?" Dad placed down his paper and frowned at his spilled coffee for the last time.

　　“I might stay for a little bit. I'm sorry about your spilled coffee, though," I said and checked the time, which is ten minutes before eight o'clock

　　“Well, your brothers will never grow up, I guess."

　　Miraculously, he nonchalantly smiles, gets up, and searches around for a rug.