A Day In The Life - {Watty Awards 2015}

Chapter 1: Rock and Roll Music (Melinda)

"Annette, is Jeb awake? We have to be at the library in a half-hour." I asked her mom.

"I don't know, but she's in her room, and you're welcome to go check, and if she's not, can you do the honours of waking her up for me?" came her reply.

"Yes, thank you, Annette." I came back to my Impala, the thing that I was most proud of in this world. I loved my car, which I found fully restored and for a great deal in New Jersey, but the eighteen-hour drive was completely worth it. When I got to the trunk, I opened it and pulled out a body bag.

I came back to the house, and lost no time getting to her room and found her, still asleep, having fallen off of her bed. I turned to her closet and picked out some clothes for her. Without further ado, put my friend into the body bag. Now, before you judge, it's not like I zipped the thing up the whole way. I'm not that cruel. No, I just needed to have something to carry her in to get her to the car.

I did this with little difficulty and, after saying goodbye to her mom, left to get her into the car.

As I was leaving, her mom offered me breakfast, not at all concerned that I was carrying her daughter in a body bag, because that's just the way I am and she knows it. I declined, saying that I'd get some on the way to work.

"Okay then, drive safe!" She sent me off.

I fired up the Impala, to Kansas that I knew was too loud not to wake Jezebel up. Before the stereo system could fire up all the way, I snapped the volume down. I tried to keep it as quiet as I could, but I love loud music, and I figured that the bag must provide some sort of soundproofing, so about a quarter of the possible volume was about as low as I was willing to go. Sorry, Jezebel.

I decided on Owl Cafe, because it was right between her house and the library, where we volunteered. I went in and waited for our food. I decided to eat inside, partly because I had time and partly because I figured that she wouldn't wake up while I was gone.

I ordered french toast from the french toast bar. (They have amazing make-your-own french toast) I got Jezebel some, too and a coffee. I knew she'd be tired whenever she decided to wake up. When I was done making french toast and while I waited for the coffee to arrive, I read the newspaper. I know, a fifteen-year-old who reads the newspaper? *gasp* How rare a specimen!

Anyway, I was reading the Local News section of the Coeur d'Alene Press, the local newspaper, because that is where all of the recent crimes are listed and as I wanted to be a behavioural analyst, so crimes were my thing. As I read up on the latest local crimes, I classified the mental instabilities of the criminals as I always did, and separated them into categories: 4 robberies, possibly a string from the same band, 6 sexual assaults (how typical of Hayden), and a murder. It was the murder that caught my attention, and the fact that I recognized the nineteen-year-old son of the murdered woman. Anthony Groeneweld had been kidnapped sometime before. Huh, odd that they'd release the missing persons after a few days... Anthony volunteered with us at the library, and I was wondering why he hadn't shown up at work recently. Normally, he was perfectly on schedule; he'd been working there longer than Jezebel and I had, for a couple years longer, actually. It was then that the coffee arrived, though, snapping me out of my own thoughts. Wow, I could really get lost in there, sometimes.

I got back into the car, and as I had suspected, Jezebel had still not stirred. Big shock, that one. I drove for a few minutes before I saw a hand, or what looked like a hand, reaching out in the general direction of the volume knob. I could not help myself from laughing, so I pulled over in front of a 7-Eleven and unzipped the bag, holding out clothes, food, and coffee to a very dazed friend. I handed all of the items in question to her and bent over to turn up the music, our favourite classic rock song: "Carry on, Wayward Son," and murmured some comment about her frog pajamas.