Uncaged

Chapter 3

"Leon, come on, we're going to be late!" I called out to my brother. Fran and Sam were already in the truck, but Leon was running behind, as usual. I always dropped of Fran at her middle school on the way to the high school, so she didn't need to take the bus. Leon and Sam were at the high school with me, but over in the freshman annex, which was all by itself. Hopefully they could avoid the crap I had to deal with that way.

"Sorry!" Leon called out as he rushed out the door, pausing only long enough to lock it. "The damned IV bag was giving me fits this morning."

I wasn't going to give him grief for taking care of mom. Dad had left for his first job hours ago, he'd be working on under 5 hours of sleep again, so it was always up to us to get the meals ready and mom taken care of. We were a well-oiled machine at this point.

"When are we taking the beast to school?" Sam whined, looking over at the garage where the beast lay under its cover. It had made the drive home last night after dark just fine and felt like a million bucks. I had it under the car cover in the garage before anyone else had even seen it.

"Never. That car will go nowhere near assholes in high school," I vowed. "All it takes is one dickhead to feel like being cool. And I'm redoing a paint job after it gets keyed, or worse."

"Fine, but can we at least take it for a spin some time?" he begged.

"We'll see. Maybe next weekend we'll take it out for some ice cream," I demurred.

My three siblings rolled their eyes in unison, they weren't fooled.

"Come on Lucas, cars were meant to be driven, not hidden!" Leon complained.

"Yeah, and it will be driven, but not near high schoolers." I was sticking to my guns. None of my family knew about the shit that happened at school, and with my truck already dented and dinged, new marks weren't visible unless you paid attention. I did, and I noticed. I knew what would happen if I showed up with the beast. Ferraris and Maseratis might be popular with the rich kids, but everyone had them. Nothing like the beast was around, and that would make kids jealous, and I didn't need that at all.

Fran was dropped off at middle school, with no incident and we headed off to the high school. I dropped the twins at the freshman annex, then drove over to the student parking where I found my assigned spot easy enough. My poor old pick up looked out of place surrounded by all the newer cars there, but I didn't mind. Sure, some of my fellow students had jobs and paid for their cars, but all too many were gifts that the wealthier families bestowed upon their kids.

And yet, my car was the one that kept getting the added dings.

Having a fancy car made some people think they were better than others. I hate those people.

As always, first period was math. I didn't mind any of my classes, they weren't too tough. I qualified for a lot of the advanced placement classes but had to decline taking them so I could work enough to help dad out. The school wasn't thrilled about it, so I told them if they were going to have a hard time with it, I could tank all my finals so I wouldn't qualify. Sorry principal Monroe, I just don't want the extra homework, thank you very much.

One thing I was grateful for, was that when my mom was still healthy, they had put aside college money in prepaid college funds for all us kids. So even with all the money issues, all of us could go to college. No, it didn't pay for everything, but if we were able to get scholarships, we should be able to handle the rest of the fees. I knew I'd be going to community college to reduce the cost and keep working anyway, so that was an easy thing for me. My grades were still all A's, and I knew I'd do well on the SATs, so I should get some scholarship money.