Insomnia

Chapter 5

Cal made really good pie.

As soon as we got home from the grocery store we had went to the kitchen to make the pie. However, Cal had soon shooed me out of the kitchen after I dropped too many ingredients. He had turned on the TV for me and I was forced to watch what Cal called a "cartoon."

"Why can they talk?" I asked Cal while starting at the TV screen. The show was about fish who lived underwater, with a sponge. I could barely pay attention to it though, the smell of the pie baking attracted most of my attention.

"It's not made to be realistic," Cal replied while walking towards me. He sat next to me and stretched his arms out on both sides of himself. "How do you know what's realistic or not anyways, you didn't even know what a TV was yesterday. You're worse than Captain America when he came back."

"Who?" I looked at him with a puzzled face.

"Of course you don't know who Captain America is. I thought you had a lot of books in your house."

"Yes, but they were educational. At least I think most of them were." I started to think back to most of them, trying to distinguish which ones seemed real and which seemed fake.

"What did you read about?"

"There was this one book on mermaids, but I had eliminated that at a possibility pretty much as soon as I read it." I looked over to him with hope that mermaids were actually real. He laughed.

"Sorry, those are fake." I stuck my lip out and tried to think of what else I read about.

"I read about these really big wars, but it seemed silly."

"The World Wars? No those were real." I looked at him with disbelief.

"You mean we actually made the same mistake twice? That we let one guy kill millions of people?" Cal had an indifferent look on his face but nodded. "That's stupid."

"Yeah. I'm sorry mermaids don't exist but the World Wars do." He shrugged. "So since you didn't go to school, I'm assuming, are you behind in that also?"

I rolled my eyes in memory, "God, no. When I was younger, all my grandmother did was sit me at a table everyday and teach me things I would've been learning in school. We finished most of the material by the time I was 12 because that's all we would ever do."

"Are you like a child prodigy or something?" I laughed when he said that.

"No, I'm a pretty slow learner, my grandmother hated me because of that. I would zone off so much she started spraying me with water if I wasn't paying attention." Cal burst out laughing at that, I couldn't help but giggle with him.

"Can't exactly say I'm on the same boat as you, but I can feel the hatred of being forced to learn." I nodded but then thought about how young he is.

"Why aren't you still in school? You said you had a job, but I thought most people your age still went on the further their education?"

"Oh yeah, my dad is friend's with my boss. I guess it gives me perks, like having a less likely chance of being fired. It seemed like a cheat at first, but I love the job too much to give it up now." I stared at him as he started watching the TV instead of me. His eyes were dreamy as he thought about his job. Then he suddenly looked back over at me. "You're always talking about your grandmother, where were your parents? If I may ask."

I bit my lip as I thought about what Grandmother told me. "I'm not sure. My grandmother never really told me they were dead, but she hasn't told me where they are either. I guess she didn't really think it mattered since she didn't think I was leaving." Cal nodded like he was thinking over something. Then we heard the oven go off, so Cal stood to retrieve the pie.