Riley's Box

Part 5

When I entered the living room, I honestly wasn't too sure what to think. 

My mother's expression was a little difficult to read, at the best of times, but she was painting her nails. A magazine was sprawled out on the sofa. Her favourite show was on. 

That could mean either of two things- she had a good day, or she had a really, really, bad one. 

She soon met my gaze and smiled and the lines in her forehead completely disappeared. 

Rebecca Lina Ruby. The woman who was my mother and simultaneously the strongest, hardest working person that I knew. 

When it came down to it, between her and my father, she most definitely worked the hardest in the family. 

She worked a taxing office job, babysat on the weekends, had her own hairdressing business, was working on her own novel and...Well, I'm sure that paints a pretty good picture of just how much she actually got up to on the average day. 

It still defeated me how she even found the time to get on with all of these things. 

Nonetheless, I was very impressed. 

"Becca!" my father called from the kitchen. 

My mother's eyes shone with amusement, as she went to respond to my father. 

"Yes, dear?" she called back to him, as she popped a chocolate button into her mouth. 

"Do you want rigatoni or tortellini?" he asked. 

"Either one will do!" she called back. 

"Yes, but which?" he called back again. 

I felt a soft laugh escape my lips. 

"Riley, dear, can you go and tell your father that the rigatoni pasta will be just fine?" she asked me. 

"Sure, mom," I told her and then made my way into the sunny, yellow kitchen, to inform him of my mother's pasta preference. 

He thanked me kindly and I was then able to return to the living room, so I could sit down beside my mother. 

She was wearing a silver necklace around her neck- the one that I had bought her for her birthday, which was on the fourth of January. She had turned forty-six, but you would hardly know it! My mother tried to relax as much as possible. She did yoga, Pilates and meditated. She was always telling me that it was important to de-stress to combat age lines, so I decided to take her up on that advice. 

My mother then stood up from the sofa, so she could bring me into a hug. 

While she hugged me, my attention was drawn to the fact, once again, that although I was a little short at five foot three, she was even shorter at just under five foot two. 

My father wasn't very tall either, which meant that I was probably destined to pass on the short gene to an unsuspecting child of mine, one day in the future. 

My mother's height was not the only thing that my attention was drawn to, however, when the two of us hugged. She was also so incredibly slim and slender. She worked out a bit but she didn't have as much muscle density as I did, so she seemed like this petite, model-looking person a lot of the time. 

A lot of other women had told her they were jealous of her for that fact, but my mother had always said that to be comfortable in your own skin was the most important thing, more important than looking a certain way could ever be. I definitely agreed with her on that front. 

My mother soon drew back from the hug and her eyes glanced over me, as if she was trying to gauge my mood purely based on perception alone. 

"Are you alright, dear? You look as though you saw something," she said. 

Well, I had seen something, but that was probably only part of the reason for my nerves. 

"Grandma did give me a lift home," I said. 

She chuckled. 

"Well, she's never been the most brilliant driver in the world," she said. 

"Hey, she's trying. Dinner's ready," my dad said. 

The two of us made our way into the kitchen almost at the exact same time, then, as my father began to dish up the pasta. 

We sat down at the table and began to eat and for the first few minutes, the food was a comforting distraction from everything that I had endured over the course of the day. Nevertheless, with that being said, I still had a few concerns on my mind. 

For starters, I had whether intentionally or not, now effectively started a school council war against Whit and Eric. Furthermore, I had seen some weird figure nearby my house. Lastly, I still had no idea what I was going to do about my birthday wish. Then again, I supposed I had plenty of time for that. My birthday was still a couple of days away, after all. 

Additionally, there were much more important matters to focus on. I would be turning sixteen in my (almost) final year of high school! Well, I was close to my final year, anyway. Eleventh grade. It was a grade that, back when I was little, I never really considered I would actually reach. That meant that there would be plenty of exams in store for me, which was great. I knew that they were unavoidable, but was there any possibility under the sun that I could hide under a table and not attend them? Maybe nobody would even suss me out...It could be a fool-proof plan, if I thought on it a little more.

"How's the pasta, Riles?" my father asked me. 

I quickly swallowed my bite and ended up scorching my tongue a little in the process. 

"Uh...it's really good dad. Hot," I said and quickly grabbed a glass of water to sip on some of the icy contents. Thank goodness. I thought I might have almost set my mouth on fire, but I had avoided doing such a thing on this occasion.