You Are My Sunshine

Chapter 4

"I'll go pick up Gabrielle at Chris's while you're in school." Angela told Fallon the following Monday. She was standing at the kitchen counter making coffee, dressed in an interesting combination of work clothes and pajamas. Her long brown hair was pinned back in a bun- somehow Angela always managed to fix up her hair before anything else.

Fallon, wearing her trademark jeans and sweatshirt, was sitting at the kitchen table slowly consuming a bagel smeared with cream cheese. She was taking tiny bites out of the pastry and chewing each for the count of fifteen before swallowing, so as to avoid the walk to school for as long as possible.

"You're sure I can't take off school just for today? I'd like to see this Nina you don't get along with," She added slyly, swallowing one miniscule portion of bagel and carefully biting off another.

"In that case you may certainly not skip school. I'm going to have my hands full trying not to strangle the woman without you watching gleefully from the sidelines," Angela replied. She poured coffee into her favorite porcelain mug, the one with the Texas flag on front, and drank deeply, closing her eyes in bliss.

"Ahh. What would we do without coffee? Honey, you cleared that space in your room, right?"

"Mmph," said Fallon through her tiny mouthful of bagel. She had since apologized for her initial outburst last week, but the matter of sharing her room was still a sore subject between herself and her mother.

Angela interpreted the grunt from her daughter to be an affirmative one, so she let the matter be and moved on to another cheerful topic.

"How has school been going?"

Fallon shrugged and moodily picked a raisin out of her dilapidated bagel.

"It's fine," she said in a tone that implied it was anything but.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Angela raised her eyebrow over the rim of her coffee mug. Fallon refused to make eye contact. Her grades were alright... well, except for Algebra- but she knew her mother was worried that she hadn't really been seeing her friends since school had started.

"Well, hurry up and eat your breakfast," Angela said finally, as Fallon was obviously none to eager to elaborate on the definition of the word 'fine'. "I'm working an early shift today and then taking off the afternoon to help your cousin get settled. Oh, and I need to stop by the grocery store on the way back for cereal..." her voice trailed off as she riffled through the papers on the kitchen counter for her shopping list. Fallon realized that her mother, having run out of other things to talk about, was lapsing into her habit of planning the day out loud. Angela thought she was making conversation; Fallon thought it was annoying. She decided that she favored the walk to school to her mother's rambling monologue.

"Well, I'm off to school," she said abruptly, cutting off her mother's musings on whether she should buy butter at Kroger or Wal-Mart that day.

"Ok sweetie. Gabrielle and I will be here when you get back. And maybe later we can have a talk about what's going on at school."

"Maybe," said Fallon, discreetly sliding her half-eaten bagel into the trash. She grabbed her backpack, eased the two-ton weight onto her shoulders, and trudged to the door.

And maybe pigs will learn to fly.

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Gabby was busy.