You Are My Sunshine

Chapter 8

The next morning, Angela told Fallon that now that Gabby was settled, she would have to go back to her regular work shift, working until after seven on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. This meant that the two cousins would have the house to themselves that evening after school.

"Think you can keep your cousin in one piece for a few hours?" Angela asked Fallon, who was staring moodily at the cheese omelet in front of her. The teenager was debating with herself as to whether she should eat the omelet slowly and so avoid the walk to school for as long as possible, or wolf it down quickly, bolt out the front door, and thus escape from Gabby's ceaseless chattering.

"Hm, what's that?" she asked, looking up.

"Can you watch Gabby after school today?" Angela repeated patiently.

"Well I don't actually seem to have a choice, do I?" grumbled Fallon.

"What?" Angela raised an eyebrow.

"Sure I guess," said Fallon in a louder tone.

Angela shook her head and pulled a carton of orange juice out of the fridge. Teenagers were so uncommunicative.

"You're gonna be my babysitter!" said Gabby excitedly, looking across the table at her cousin with rapt adoration. Fallon stifled a groan and started wolfing down her omelet. How long would it be before it occurred to this child that Fallon simply couldn't stand her?

"You girls can eat out of the fridge for dinner," said Angela, "We have plenty of leftovers. Oh, and don't open the door to anyone we don't know."

"I know the rules Mom," said Fallon.

"Ooh, can we play games and do each other's hair and paint our nails and all that stuff teenagers do?" asked Gabby hopefully.

Fallon nearly choked on her omelet.

"Um-" she managed.

"That is what teenagers do, right? Because I don't know a lot about them."

"Uh-"

"Oh yes, teenagers love that kind of thing," Angela said smoothly, "You'll have a great time together." As she said this she gave Fallon a pointed look that said and if you don't you can explain it all in Confession.

Fallon swallowed her omelet. "Right." She grabbed her backpack. "Okay, well, I'm off to school bye." She fairly flew from the kitchen and out the door. Even school seemed preferable to her kitchen table just then.

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As soon as Fallon got home from school that afternoon she flopped on her bed and covered her face with her arm, wishing she could sink into her mattress and disappear.

Liv had tried to talk to her again today, this time in the halls between classes. Fallon had managed to loose her in the crowd, but she had crashed into that sophomore guy again. It didn't help that this time she had really gotten a good look at him- he was undeniably cute, which made the whole thing doubly embarrassing. Now he was probably complaining to all his friends about the crazy girl who kept running headlong into him on his way out of the school.

On top of that, things had come to a crisis with Algebra. There had been another quiz today and she had flunked it- not just failed, flunked. She had missed over half the questions. Every time she thought she understood how to do an equation, she would mess up on one of those essential steps and get the entire problem wrong. Why did she have to learn this stuff anyway? Whatever she ended up doing with her life, it wasn't going to have anything to do with math.