Kitts Turns 22

Kitts had just turned 22.
“Oh, that’s so old,” Carrie-Bri would often say.
Sometimes 22 did feel very old. Even more so 23.
“Trooper, if you bite that, I’m gonna bite you. And you know it too.”
Carrie was in the living room monitoring things while Mom had taken Rose to another CLEP exam (which she passed) and Collette was teaching Frances math.
Carrie was also busy administering discipline to Frances that morning, after he had offended Linnea.
“Kiss it!” Carrie exclaimed. “Kiss it now!”
She pointed to Linnea’s foot.
“No!! I refuse!!”
Frances was not going to cooperate.
Carrie’s red hair had faded through the night. Maybe because she had used Easter egg dye.
When Rose returned from her exam, she was hungry.
“I’m so desperate, I’m eating dried up strawberries.”
She shook up a box of Honey Bunches of Oats with strawberries, and dug around for the red pieces.
Before Collette and Puck had left for the day, Carrie had dyed her hair back to almost its original color, which no one had seen for maybe five years.
Collette took a walk in the early evening: fresh air, barbecue, lemon-lime scrub of some kind.