Parents

Caught

3pm rolled around, Lucy and Angela sat outside the school waiting to pick Tamara and Jack up.

"You excited for parent teacher conferences later?" Angela asked.

"Not really, I'm hoping this time they will actually have something good to say."

"I'm sure they will."

"How long does it usually take?"

"10-15 minutes, I'm glad we booked the earlier slots so we don't have to come back out."

"Yeah I want to get in my pyjamas."

"Lu u live in your pyjamas."

"Who wouldn't." Lucy smiled.

Tamara and Jack got into the car and started talking about their day.

"Tam what do you think your teacher is going to say about you?" Lucy asked.

"Probably that I'm so lovely."

"She won't say anything bad?"

"Hopefully not."

***

They all waited in the car until their appointment time, Lucy and Tamara went before Angela and Jack.

Lucy had tried to dress appropriately but was struggling to have the motivation to wear something other than sweats. She settled on jeans that looked 4 sizes too big and a tank top.

Her and Tamara sat opposite tams home room teacher.

"Hello Mrs Bradford it's so nice to meet you,"

"Hi, I'm sorry it's Miss Chen." Lucy smiled awkwardly.

"I'm so sorry."

"It's no problem."

"So we can start with either the positives or the negatives."

"Let's go for the positives."

"Tamara has been doing much better since coming back and she has been a lot calmer and less disruptive, I've noticed you seem to quite enjoy art?"

Tamara nodded.

"How's her grades?" Lucy asked.

"They could be better, current average grade is a E and we know you can do better than that."

"Ok we will work on getting those up, right tam?"

"Yep."

"Moving on, Miss Chen we have caught Tamara smoking a lot recently especially the last two days."

Lucy was pissed.

"Tamara where are you getting them from?"

"No where."

"Obviously it's somewhere tam, I've told you so many times to stop."

"From your room." She admitted.

"I can't believe you, that is stealing Tamara. You're going back to your dad's tonight."

"No mom that's not fair, maybe you shouldn't smoke and then I wouldn't!"

The teacher didn't know what to do, she watched the argument unfold.

"Tamara you know I can't help it." Lucy kept her voice to a minimum.

"You can mom! You just use how messed up in the head you are as an excuse!" Tamara stormed out.

"I..I'm so sorry." Lucy was so embarrassed

"Don't apologise, we haven't seen her act out like this for ages."

"I think she just needs to get back into her routine, she's been staying with me the last couple of nights as her dad was in an accident but he's out of the hospital now."