A Day In The Life - {Watty Awards 2015}

Chapter 2: Two Of Us (Jeb)

I awoke to the sound of Kansas and the smell of coffee. Melinda was making an effort to keep the music down, but the next track in the tape was, "Carry on, Wayward Son," so if she didn't turn it up, I would. I finally opened my eyes to try to find the volume knob, my hand moving in that direction as well. All I could see was black and then my first thought was that I'd gone blind, until I felt my hand straining against a surface. My next thought was that I'd been kidnapped by a criminal with great taste in music. The thought that directly followed that one was that I was still in my pajamas. What was this guy, the pajama kidnapper? I mean, seriously, isn't there some sort of unwritten code of courtesy among kidnappers that you don't kidnap a sleeping person? About this time, I began to scratch at the surface to get out, to find an opening of some sort. This was when I heard Melinda's laughter and felt something unzipping the surface like it were a bag. Of course, Melinda's body bag! Now I felt really stupid. I saw light and in that light, saw that we were in Melinda's Impala, which was stopped outside a gas station about five minutes from the library. She made no effort to hide her chuckles, which, now that I think about it, would have been difficult anyway, because she had a bag with breakfast and coffee in one hand and some clothes and a hairbrush for me in the other.

"Go on, eat your food and go change, we're going to be late!" she laughed in my direction, handing me the various items in her hands. Then she reached for the volume knob to turn it up, saying, "Oh, and by the way, I love the pjs."

I looked down at myself, I was wearing frog pajamas. Figures.

I looked at the coffee with great delight. Melinda somehow always knew exactly what I needed. I wondered for a moment what I would do without her, in college, if we wound up going separate ways. Then I was pulled out of my thoughts by the burning feeling of slightly-too-hot coffee being poured into my mouth. Ow. I scarfed down my breakfast with a ferocity that I am fairly certain can only be described as a hungry fifteen-year-old eating french toast, which was, of course, precisely what was going down. Girl versus food. Girl wins hands down, every time. When I was done, I ran into the gas station and bought a Slurpee for Melinda so that I could use the Customers-Only washroom in the back. I changed like the wind and was out at the Impala in two minutes maximum. I handed the Slurpee to Melinda and thanked her for the breakfast. In no time, we were off for the library, where we both volunteered. We got there right on time, like we normally do. We work in the children's section, so there is always work to be done, even though it's a quiet library, compared to some. When we're done with our nine to twelve shift there, we head over to our paying jobs at Pita Pit. I work as a slicer and Melinda works making the sandwiches.

Today, she seems oddly quiet. I mean, we're both quiet people, but today, she's hardly spoken to me since the car ride to the library that morning. I decided to make conversation, "Have you noticed how Anthony's been gone since last week? What do you think happened, because I haven't heard anything about him being sick at all." I suppose this was what she had been thinking about, because se seemed to have something to say about it.

"While you were asleep this morning, I went to the Cafe and I was reading the newspaper, like I normally do, and I came across a murder in the paper..." I could feel my eyes widen. "Not Anthony, his mother. They just released a missing persons on Anthony, though, he's been missing since Saturday. What's weird about that is that he and his mom had a great relationship and she doesn't appear to have called anyone about his disappearance."