Straighter than Parallel Parking

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{ Chapter Nineteen: Math Always Was a Tricky Equation }

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IF THERE IS ANYTHING JANICE HAS LEARNED OVER the seventeen years that she has lived under her sheltered life, that once things were starting to look better than she expected, a steady range of good events and okay events, things were bound to go downhill really bad, really soon. It's just the written make up of your happiness. You can't have a roller coaster if it only goes up. You have to go down.

Or fly off your railings because you can't remember how to subtract math from your life. 

"Janice, what's the answer to question three?" Mrs. Canafford asked her in her nasal voice, as if she suffered from a permanent cold (serves her right, that tonta).

Janice had a pretty rocky night the other day after coming from work a little later than usual. Karlo's had car broken down, and since Brielle and James had left before, she was stuck at the subway almost two hours later. She did messily finish her homework really late — she knew that senior year was going to kill her, and her sleeping schedule — but that still didn't help that she was groggy and cranky and really, really not in the mood for her teachers to pick on her right now.

One of them was asking for new hair cut from yours truly.

Janice pulls out her workbook, but her drowsiness makes her clumsy and she accidentally drops some of her books in front of her. She clenches her jaw, ignoring the snickers around her, pushing away the red hair drooping in front of her eyes as she picks up the fallen notebooks.

"Janice?" her teacher prompted, impatience clear through her tone.

"Please, ma'am, one second," Janice said, her tone a milder version of Mrs. Canafford's. She flips through some pages and thinks she's found it. "Uh, the precipitation is 95%—"

She feels heat start to flood her cheeks once she hears the teetering around her become louder, feeling like a grave mistake. "Um, as I was saying, uh."

"You are aware that you are on the wrong question, yes?" Mrs. Canafford informed her, and Janice pulled forth all the dignity in her to not sink further into her chair from embarrassment. "Mrs. Diablo, are you even taking me seriously?"

"Didn't her Mexican father teach the girl her place? They should've stuck to whatever the hell they immigrated from," a girl in the back, too faint for the teacher to hear but is crystal to Janice, who recognizes the voice to be of Madeline. She's heard Madeline's racist slurs before, but this time she doesn't react with three flicks of her wrists. (Though it would probably be twelve if the beat down came to it).

You can't risk getting another attention, a disgruntled voice inside her head said. You can't even risk talking back or losing your patience. This isn't a game of cat and mouse. You have something bigger to stay here for.

When the hell did I get so rational? grumbles Janice in her head, though she acquiesces and resorts to just gripping the underside of her chair instead. She turns her attention instead to her teacher, who was still looking unamused with the time Janice was taking in responding. "I apologize, Madame. I was so tired I hadn't realized that I was reciting the wrong question."

"Do us all a favour and don't party out late or succumb to your unladylike needs," Madame told her, the giggles resonating through the walls made Janice close her eyes to keep her control. "I don't know what influence you have with your brothers and all—"

"Don't." There was a line, and this woman had passed it.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I will endure your insults on my pettiness, my irresponsibility and my own clumsiness. But I do not wish for you to bring my personal family into this matter when they. Are. Not. Necessary." Janice had finished with gritted teeth, hardly keeping together.