Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter thirteen - tests

Daisy always liked to have her entire day mapped out for her from start to finish. It made her feel safe and secure. Naturally, when something prevented that, she tended to freak out a little bit.

"Who's picking me up?" Daisy questioned for the hundredth time as they pulled into the parking lot of Daisy's school.

"I don't know, Daisy." Mark sighed, trying his best not to be annoyed. But the kid had asked the question every five seconds, and it was always the same answer.

"Why don't you know? Is it gonna be you, or...or Naomi? Just give me a clue." Daisy wanted to know what the rest of her day was going to look like. It was such a minute detail, but Daisy wanted to know so bad.

"I don't know." Mark spoke firmly. Daisy had been living with him long enough to know that being on call means his work situation is unpredictable. He might stay home all day and not get called in at all, he might get paged five minutes into getting home. It was in the air.

"I promise someone will be here to pick you up, okay? Don't worry about it."

The way that Mark said "don't worry about it" made it sound easy, as if Daisy was ever able to actually control her nerves.

He seriously couldn't give her any clue? He didn't know at all?

Daisy sighed as the car came to a stop outside of her school. She looked over at Mark who was giving her an expectant look, as if wanting her to go and challenging her to ask one more time who was picking her up.

Gathering her book bag and opening the car door, Daisy mumbled a goodbye, making sure to shut the door hard enough to make quite the statement.

Why couldn't Mark plan anything out? Daisy understood that being on call was out of his hands, but...couldn't they form a plan? Couldn't they designate someone to definitively pick her up rather than leaving it up in the air?

Daisy trudged past the sea of students filtering into the school building. Her day would be a bad one, she knew that much. Unplanned days always went horribly. It was much nicer to know what would be going on at school, what would be going on after school, what dinner would entail, etc. She didn't like not knowing what came next.

But of course Mark wasn't a planner. Calypso wasn't either, and it drove her crazy. She was living with a bunch of careless, non-obsessive freaks. Boring.

The classmates that Daisy walked with were all mere acquaintances. She didn't have any friends, nor anyone she could rant to about her frustrations.

She wished she had somebody the way that Calypso had her little friend Ava. Someone she could walk out of the car and run across the courtyard to.

But alas, Daisy had no one except...Daisy.

Why though? Daisy thought she was friendly enough. She didn't look intimidating...or at least she didn't think so. If Daisy could be friends with herself, she would.

Mental turmoil followed Daisy all the way up the stairs to her first period class. Her snarky teacher was stood in the doorway greeting students with that stupid disapproving stare. Daisy wouldn't ever dream of it, but if she were brave enough, she'd like to think she'd tell the teacher off.

Mrs. Mathews was most definitely the worst teacher Daisy had ever had. And she taught Algebra too, which automatically put her a level lower in Daisy's eyes. Algebra was a big no-no for Daisy.

Daisy slipped past the woman and into the classroom, the woman not even acknowledging her. That's how it always was though.

Mrs. Mathews didn't acknowledge academics as much as she did just student popularity. She had favorites, and her favorites were the cool kids that talked to her. Which...automatically put Daisy in the bottom tier considering the only time she's spoken to the woman has been to ask to go to the bathroom.