(Srry I'm just hopping in. Had a dentist appointment that took hours longer than it should have.)
Sherri Lastless was drowning. Suffocating. Out of air. Deprived of oxygen. Her vision was blacked out, spots in her head, her lungs felt as though they were caving in, a heavy weight on top. Her face felt hot. Rumbles and spasms pulsed through her delicate body.
Is this what it feels like to die? she wondered, struggling.
Amber, her cat, gave her a critical look. She stared right over the bridge of Sherri's nose, obstructing all of Sherri's air passages completely.
Need... air.... thought Sherri, finally pushing the fluffy deadweight off her chest and taking in glorious breaths of oxygen.
Amber gave her a dirty look. I'm not that fat. In fact, Sherri made sure all three of her cats were kept to a healthy weight, but when you are oxygen deprived, that tiny fact doesn't matter much anymore.
Sherri glared at the red tabby cat and peeled herself out of bed.
But she really just wanted to pick Amber back up and cuddled her until it stopped raining.
Need... kitty...
Still, even a rainy day cannot turn a face down who looks on the sunny side, and soon she was dressed fashionably in jeggings and a tight lavender shirt with a pink scarf and straw sunhat, which folded over her ears perfectly, in direct denial of the rain outside.
She picked up her phone, it's case decorated with sparkly pink sequins, reflecting her attitude like granola reflects yogurt, or whatever the proper verb was, which is what she planned to eat for breakfast.
But then she remembered pancakes... dripping with maple syrup, yummy chocolate chips. She craved pancakes right now.
She turned off her phone after one last peek at her timeline on PicFlip, the latest social media network for teens, and pulled out a hairbrush, vigorously brushing, ripping out a couple of hairs in the process. Then she brushed some makeup on, and looked stunning, if any of the high school boys had been queried.
Her parents had already left for work, she knew, and had a note sending her mother's love on the counter to prove it.
She had woken up pretty late, typical of someone who avoided mornings like the plague.
But it was a weekend morning, and those were different. She was glad she worked school days.
Sherri tucked herself into a cool looking compact car, wincing as she sat on her tail, before realising the pancake place was just down the street. Putting her cross country training to the test, she ran down the road to the building, dodging the rain with futile effort.
She threw open the door and cried "Hi people I recognize from school but don't know all the names of!"