Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Lena From the Block

“So you managed to destroy the school?” my mother asked.

“With the help of a stunningly irate sheep,” I added, nodding affirmatively. She looked at me for a long moment before she suddenly blinked twice, consecutively. She shook her head, and started to back away.

“Okay then,” she said.

“That’s all you’re going to ask me?” I demanded, surprised. She looked at me.

“Are there any other questions for this?” she asked back.

I thought about it and then nodded slowly. “Good point.”

She nodded back before she turned around and started for the door, stopping only when she was outside of it. She poked her head back into my room slightly to tell me, “Oh, and there’s this block party tonight, and we’re invited. You’re going.”

“But I have a black eye,” I whined.

“It makes you look tough,” my mother told me, grinning. “Like you’re in a biker gang or something.”

I glanced down at my Powder Puff Girls onesie pajamas and raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Besides,” she said, rolling her eyes, “you were the one that held onto the sheep. You deserve a little black eye.”

“And I also deserve the concussion?” I replied.

She giggled a little bit. “Actually, you were pretty funny back there in the ER. You told Felton that his hips looked big in those jeans, and I think he went to the bathroom to cry.”

“You’re a horrible mother,” I told her, only mostly-kidding. She rolled her eyes at me.

“I’m a modern mother,” she corrected me incorrectly. “I say it as it is and do it as it needs to be done. I’m a realist.”

“Whatever you say,” I said, unconvinced. And then I remembered something. I swallowed heavily before I said, “I can’t go tonight.”

“Why not?” she demanded. “Do you have prior plans sulking around your room watching Doctor Who reruns and feeling sorry for yourself?”

Yes. “Quinton was in the room during the sheep thing.”

“He’s also the one that took you to the hospital.”

“Right.”

“And?”

“And that’s it.”

“I don’t understand why this means you can’t go.”

“I told him that’s he’s really hot,” I told her, blushing. She raised one eyebrow with some serious skills that I couldn’t duplicate no matter how many times I made funny faces at myself in the mirror. I winced. “And that he had nice biceps.”

She kept staring at me.

I was bright red when I mumbled, “And I kind of told him that I wanted to marry him.”

She burst out laughing.

“I was coocoo for Cocoa Puffs!” I cried, trying to regain some of my dignity as my stomach flipped in my supreme and utter embarrassment. I ducked my head, hiding my face with my hair in shame. “I don’t even know why I was laughing. Or why I freaked out when people mentioned the days of the week. I just think it’s too soon to put myself in a position where I am going to have to apologize.”

She blinked. “Why?”

“Because I might not apologize,” I mumbled, turning redder, and she squealed happily.