Growing Pains

Chapter 70 - I was the worst person in the world

D A I S Y

I had been trying to do homework for hours, trying and failing, failing and trying. I couldn't focus for more than a few minutes without having to stop to scroll through my phone. Eventually, I would start feeling so guilty, I would throw it across the room, and promise myself not to touch it again until I finished everything I had to do for school, but a few minutes later, the inevitable would happen. I would get up and begin my endless scrolling yet again.

I wouldn't really care about this moronic back and forth if it wasn't for Jason coming into my room every time he got bored of shooting up pretend zombies with his pretend gun. Sometimes he barged in, jumped on top of my bed, and started going on and on about something I never cared enough to listen to, leaving when he finally ran out of things to say, which most times took a while. Other times, he just opened the door, gave me the side eye for being on my phone instead of doing my homework, and then left again without closing the door again behind him.

He was on my bed when the bell rang, reading the last page of the book he had found on my bedside table just to get to me, and failing because, surprise, surprise, I had read the book already, and knew exactly how it ended. He stopped when the bell rang again.

"Who is it?" he asked.

I put my phone down, "Zoey."

He got up at the same time as me, "I'll get it."

"No, you won't," I said, pushing him back on the bed and making it for the door. He grabbed my arm and yanked me back so hard I almost fell down. Then he rushed out of the room, slamming the door shut on his way out. "What's wrong with you?!"

I heard him laugh in the hallway, "Everything!"

I ran after him, considered pushing him down the stairs, and decided against it only for the sake of my parents savings, already stretched thin to cover the medical expenses of his broken leg. Instead, I just rushed down the steps, two, three, four at a time, cutting in front of him at the very bottom, and reaching for the door with my heart in my throat.

"Finally!!" I said when I saw Zoey waiting on the other side of it, her hands in the pockets of her jacket, a scarf around her neck even though winter was almost over, and her home baked smile on her lips. I wrapped my arms around her, "If I have to do any more homework, I will kill myself. Why do I need pre-calculus?! I don't wanna work a nine to five at some corner office for some corporate pig. I wanna go around looking for berries and nuts like I'm fucking supposed to."

Behind me, Jason snickered, "You haven't even done any homework yet."

Zoey looked at him over my shoulder, "That's not very helpful, Jason."

"I'm not trying to be helpful," he said.

I let go of Zoey to drag her with me back to my bedroom, and showed Jason my middle finger, "Just go shoot some more zombies with your incel friends."

He laughed, following us up the stairs, "Joke's on you. I'm playing The Sims."

Zoey and I both stopped to look at him and he offered us a smug smile, his special.

"You're lying," we said at the same time.

"I'm not." He shrugged. "I'm really good at it."

"You made so much fun of me for playing it and –"

"Get over it," he said. "People change."

"Yeah, into cockroaches."

"What?"

Zoey shook her head next to me, "It's from a book."

He threw his head back to laugh, "You're such a fucking nerd. It's embarrassing."