Broken

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

It seemed like the old karmic scale was still going strong and trying very hard to make up for how great Les Misérables had been. We finally arrived in town after way too many hours of driving and then I had to wait for mom to come pick me up.

The last chaperon had been about five minutes from throwing in the towel and just taking me home herself by the time mom finally pulled into the school parking lot. Mom hadn't even apologized. She'd mumbled something about needing to hit one of her 'close' sites while the moon was still high in the sky as she dropped me off at home and then drove off without looking back.

I'd just managed to drop off into a fitful sleep when she came back home and ruined any chance of me catching up on the sleep I'd missed because of the trip. I'd never been able to go back to sleep after being woken up in the morning, but I tried anyways. By the time I finally gave up and got out of bed I was not a happy camper.

I was even less so by the time mom finally woke up. Rachel not having been at Les Misérables had been preying on my mind the whole time I'd been studying, and since Brandon wouldn't work for girl talk, I needed to hash it all out with my mom.

Only she was so far gone, getting anything out of her was all but impossible. She interrupted partway through my description of what'd happened, to ask if I'd noticed when the light outside my bedroom had stopped working. As if I cared when some stupid bulb burned out.

I tried for another fifteen minutes, but once her mind started focusing on a new project, anything less than the domestic version of a tactical nuke had effectively zero chance of catching her attention.

Apparently someone decided that having my mom completely ignore me in my moment of need was going a little too far on the divine retribution. In an effort to try and balance things out the dream angels granted me another vivid dream on Sunday night. It was wonderful. I got to swim around in the most glorious pond known to man. I was somehow faster than normal, and spent what seemed like hours chasing around slivers of light that turned out to be some kind of long, thin fish.

For perhaps the first time in my entire life I didn't mind at all that I'd ended up in a swimsuit so small I may as well have been wearing nothing at all. In fact, the feel of the warm water sliding past my skin was so incredible I almost considered skinny dipping. Of course that'd only lasted for about a nanosecond. Even in a dream, there were things that were just too scary to really entertain.

The dream lasted longer than any of the others before it, but even so it eventually lapsed into a normal, boring dream. Still, I woke up feeling more refreshed and rested than any other time I could remember.

Even more amazing, the feeling was strong enough to carry me through Biology and Mrs. Sorenson's relentless grilling. I did better than expected, but still not as good as I'd hoped. Not considering how much time I'd spent studying. It was like she knew exactly which parts I didn't understand completely, and after letting me start to get a little bit of false confidence, she'd hammer me down again.

Talk about depressing. Still, I was feeling well-prepared for my English test tomorrow and Algebra flew by. By my latest calculations I was only about two weeks from being all caught up.

Lunch was interesting. I was still the odd man out, but it was amusing watching Vincent preen. I never did figure out what it was he did, but apparently it had him thinking he was even more of a stud than normal. Whatever it was, it had Brandon pissed, which was a refreshing change. If he had to be friends with some of these people out of responsibility, that was one thing, but letting them continue to be jerks was taking it too far.

Nobody was more surprised than me when Brandon pushed back from the table, scanned the room, and then pulled me to my feet. We spent the rest of lunch pacing around the outside of the school while he worked through whatever was bothering him. When the warning bell finally rang, he turned and looked at me with a considering smile. We sat like that for a good thirty seconds before he reached a single finger up and traced the left side of my face as he leaned in slightly.