Flawed (s.m.)

003.

 Monday morning rolled around far faster than expected, and what was even less expected was that I was grateful for it. For the first time ever, my mom spent the whole weekend livid with me for going to that party. No matter how many times I desperately tried to explain the situation to her, she wasn't having it. I didn't know if this was one of her strange ways of being a protective "mama bear", but that was what I decided to settle on so I could quit boggling my mind over it. I woke up late as usual, so I found myself rushing down the stairs as I hastily pulled my backpack on over my shoulders. I was just about to jog out the door and to my car when I heard the just glorious sound of my mother clearing her throat.

 "And where do you think you're going?" she interrogated with that awful parently stern voice. What the hell did she mean? I looked down at my outfit to assure that my clothes were worthy of her approval, and the faded blue jeans and plain white tube top didn't seem to disappoint.

 "Um.. to school.." was all I could bear to say as I was too focused on avoiding her cold gaze.

 "Actually, I had other ideas about that, young lady," she stated proudly, her hands on her hips. I could already feel my eyes tempting to roll towards the back of my head as I waited for her to explain further, and luckily enough for me she couldn't seem to get enough of hearing her own voice. "I'm taking your car away for this school week. You'll learn how to run on someone else's schedule besides your own, and we can hope to God that that will teach you some responsibility." Unbelievable.

 "Oh, yeah?" I retorted, placing my own hands on my hips. This was a classic sign that shit was about to go down between Landenna women. "And whose schedule will I be run—" I began, but my jaw ceased all movement as it nearly dropped to the floor. To my surprise, Shawn Mendes made his way into my foyer almost as if he lived here. "Um, how?" was what came out of my mouth, pathetically enough

 ."Shawn had to come by this morning to pick up some important papers his mother left behind last week. He so kindly offered to be your chauffeur for the week," she replied, smiling as if she was God himself and had just said "let there be light!" Hurriedly, she practically pushed us out the door, telling us to have a good day and whatnot. 

 Shawn was a nice kid, but I couldn't have been more annoyed. Yeah, I know he saved me from potential date rape and all, but my mind couldn't seem to filter out the bad viewpoints of this situation and leave me with the good. For most of the car ride, neither of us said a word, just like the ride back from the party on Friday night. I found myself sighing a lot just so there would be some sort of noise other than the faint sound of indie music playing through the radio, running my hand through by red-brown locks as my elbow rested near the window. Part of me wanted to properly thank him for helping me out last night, but the majority of my mind and my feelings were consumed by the sudden discipline my mother had decided to implement. I had never been truly grounded from anything before, so this was a different experience for me.

 As we finally parked in front of the high school, I turned my head to look at Shawn as I placed my hand on the door handle. Hesitantly, I spoke, "Sorry for this. It's honestly so stupid." The small talk earned a small smile from him as he looked back at me, but only so he could awkwardly glance back down at the steering wheel.

 "I don't think it's stupid..." he muttered. I shrugged, allowing my tongue to wet my lips.

 "I mean, your daughter nearly gets date raped and you can't even hear her out," I carried on. "She tells me she already knows the story, but there's no way. God, if she would just listen to me and.." I stopped myself. "Sorry, I'm ranting and you probably don't care." He took in a deep breath and a pondering look washed over his face for a brief second before he sneaked another glance at me through his long eyelashes.