Never Met a Girl Like Her | ✔️

(5)

L E O N I E

Mom was home when I came home from school that afternoon. She'd be pleased to know that the day was trouble free. Aside from getting into a heated debate with the tennis coach about the fact that she made the boys split into teams. Shirts and no shirts.

She insisted that it was a normal practice and I'd argued that she was a perv. The twenty nine year old woman was a former state tennis champion and she was adamant that her trophies were enough to have us all in awe. She had a banging bod and I'm sure some of the testosterone driven males in our class wouldn't have minded if things escalated with the Serena Williams wannabe. But it made me gag. She told me that I was incapable of getting through one class without starting an argument over nothing and I told her that I was going to get her fired.

It hadn't gone further. I half expected a call to Mom or a meeting with the principal. The fact that she didn't follow through just proved to me that she was as gross as I accused her of being. So apart from that minor dispute - pun intended - school had been a success.

Mom had called ahead and told me to grab some Chinese before I came home. So I wandered into the kitchen with boxes of wantons, noodles, dumplings and a side of fries. Because I could eat fries until I throw up. And then I would have some more.

It was unusual for Mom to be home before me. She was back around five or six most evenings. Unless there was something particularly pressing that kept her over time. She often brought her work home as well. Mom had some cold water on the table and she was dressed in her casual home clothes. We both sat down at our four person glass table and began unpacking the food.

"How did the suit go down at work, Mom?" I pulled the lid off of the sweet and sour sauce. "Meet my new Mommy?"

"Stop it," she scoffed, sliding the box of wantons across the table after she'd served herself some on a plate. She went first because I ate straight out of the box - pun not intended. - She couldn't bring herself to do it. For someone who was raised on a farm, she sure had embraced the upper class lifestyle. "How was school?"

"How should I answer that Mom?" I shrugged, leaning back in my seat with the a dumpling between my chopsticks. "I mean what do parents want to hear? Oh Mom, school was swell. I learned the square root of pi which is far more useful than understanding tax or mortgages or how to deal with workplace stress when I reach the real world and want to stab someone with a compass. No but rest assured, I can do complicated Math that I will never, ever need to refer to again."

She stared at me with puzzlement. "You learned the square root of pi?"

"No," I scoffed. "School isn't even that helpful."

"Oh," her shoulders fell.

I swallowed a mouthful of noodles and stared at Mom, who was pushing food around on her plate with a distant expression. "So Mother. What was so important that you needed me to come home straight after school? Did Gran cark it?"

"Leonie," she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You know that she took care of you when you were little? Don't be so crass."

"She's a witch. And not the good sort."

"There's a good sort?"

"Of course," I nodded. "There is definitely a good sort."

She nodded but didn't respond again. She did that when the conversation was too tiresome for her to deal with.

"So what is it Mom?" I popped another dumpling into the sauce and ate it, waiting expectantly for the news to be delivered. I doubt it was as thrilling as she was making it seem.