OUT OF THE RED ↝ dave grohl

one.

SEPTEMBER, 1990, OLYMPIA, WA

REAGAN LEANED HER forehead against the cool, semigloss paint of her home's bathroom door, placing both her hands on the frame around it and feeling her eyelids slip shut. Perhaps if she stood there long enough, she would finally be allowed in, where she would be able to actually get ready for work.

It would make my life a whole lot easier, Reagan thought, if this house had more than one god damn bathroom.

"Kate," she called out, rapping her knuckles against the door for the umpteenth time. "I have to shower before I go to work."

Reagan thought that her younger sister would have understood by then. Reagan's job was something of the utmost importance, and it was imperative that she not lose it. She'd been late several times already in the past, all due to the same annoying reason of there being only one stupid bathroom in her equally stupid household.

Suddenly, the bathroom door jerked open and Reagan stumbled forward. Her sister Kate peeked her head out from a cloud of shower steam, clutching a towel around her chest with her hair dripping wet.

"I'm getting ready too, you know," Kate snapped. "Did you forget? It's the first day of my senior year."

As if to further emphasize Kate's point that that very morning marked the first day of the nineteen-ninety, nineteen-ninety-one school year, their twelve-year-old brother Robbie came barreling by them with his oversized backpack slung over his shoulder. He clipped Reagan while tumbling down the cramped hallway, barely having time to shout an apology over his shoulder.

"How could I forget that?" Reagan said with a roll of her eyes.

"Then just wait!" Kate exclaimed, slamming the door shut before Reagan could protest.

"Ugh!" Reagan slapped her palms against the door in anger and spun around, coming to the conclusion that she would not be taking her morning shower after all. As she walked speedily back to her bedroom, the same one that she shared with Kate, she tugged her hair out of the messy braid she'd slept with, cursing her family.

Reagan should have been used to it all by now. In fact, she chided herself over not sucking up her own frustrations and simply dealing with them. She was the big sister, the oldest of the bunch and she usually prided herself on being level-headed. Yet, she'd been quite the opposite in the last year.

They could have at least purchased a bigger home when the twins had arrived. Reagan, Kate and Robbie had already been a handful, and the birth of Raelynn and Kody had only added to the mayhem. The two bedroom home that the Abners inhabited had become far too cramped as it was, with Robbie having to sleep in their parents bedroom.

In an effort to create space that already felt way too nonexistent, Reagan's dad had made the valiant attempt of converting half of the living room into a new bedroom for the babies. It had surprisingly worked. Robbie even got the new room to himself, seeing as the twins had yet to actually leave their parents' room.

But of course, they still only had that one damn bathroom.

She'd been told to appreciate her big family. Even as her friends had once moaned with jealousy over her sibling count, Reagan could not understand what there was to be envious of. She would have traded plenty to be out of the Northwest Olympia shack that she called home. But that was only a pipe dream.

As if her parents would actually let her move out.

Ha, Reagan snorted in her head. Good one.

She was the only twenty-one year old she knew who was being held captive by their own parents. And how selfish they were to do so to her . . .

"Reagan!"