Moving On

Sixteen

16 - Sandra

I've been looking after Dev (with the help of Jess, and sometimes, Austin) for about a month now, and Carly says she still can't come home.

I'm worried sick of her. I mean, how could she be away for almost a month now? If she's been at the hospital that long, then whatever her sickness is, it's pretty serious. Oh, I just hope she gets better soon.

If this happened a year ago I would've been eternally grateful to the gods that she's dying because I hated her to the bone back then, but things have drastically changed. I guess that just proves that all of us are mature now and we don't let our emotions solely dictate how we're going to live our lives.

It's Friday today, which means I'm sitting here in my World Religions class, utterly bored.

"Hey, Sandra," my seatmate (unfortunately, that's Austin) calls me, snapping me out of almost falling asleep.

I yawn before I turn to him and reply. "What?" It's quite refreshing to have someone to talk to during this boring ass subject, but I would've imagined that it was someone else, and not this obnoxious brat. I mean, if I were to get in trouble, I want it to be with someone decent.

"Are we going to have babysitting duties later?" He asks.

I don't exactly know why he's so enthusiastic about looking after Dev. I mean, I am too, but knowing that I'll be dead tired after that fiasco short-lives my enthusiasm. Maybe Austin just likes kids?

"I don't know," I say honestly. "I told Jess to fill in just in case we don't make it."

"And why exactly won't we make it?" He asks dumbly, like he has no idea that we're taking our preliminary exams for the next few days.

"Austin, we have exams," I tell him nonchalantly and without looking at him. I have the feeling that our prof already knows that we are not paying attention to him, though everyone else in his class are bored as hell too, and no one's being subtle about it at all. I'm respectful like that.

"So? They're just prelims, anyway," he counters.

I snap. "Look, if you don't care about your grades, don't implicate me. Jess already said that it's okay if she takes care of Dev on her own for a few days. She understands. And don't worry, we'll return the favour to her very soon."

"Okay," he backs down. "Sorry." That was music to my ears. "And why would we be returning the favour to her?"

"She's in college too, dickhead," I roll my eyes at him as I cross my arms in front of me. "If our preliminary exams are on the way, hers are probably coming soon too. She's sort of independent already but she's got school shit to deal with too."

I looked away and talked to Austin for, like, five seconds, and when my eyes get back, our professor's already standing in front of me and Austin.

"Mr. Miller and Ms. Queenly," he says in a mocking tone. "If you two are already talking to each other and completely ignoring the discussion which, may I remind all of you, will be present in your preliminary exams next week, I think you already know everything about this topic."

"No, Sir," Austin beats me to it. "I just asked her about some of the things I didn't understand in your discussion, Sir."

"Is that so?" He doesn't look impressed about Austin's flat-out lying.

The whole class is suddenly awake, every head in the room turned on us three, waiting for the next clever comeback to what our professor will say. I love college (minus the stress).

"Yes, Sir," Austin replies. Wow. He's got guts. I mean, I knew he was kind of a laid-back guy but I didn't know he could talk back to a professor without sounding mean at all.