Gristrift

Every Student's Worst Nightmare

"Son," said Dad, "After these tests are completed, you will have jumped the final hurdle before becoming a high schooler. You must treat this responsibility with maturity and manliness. I am so proud of you."

John rolled his eyes, though inside he felt tingles of happiness, reminiscent of when Nicholas Cage (playing as Benjamin Franklin Gates) saw the extent of the treasure room in National Treasure. What a glorious movie. John owned the DVD and watched it every weekend as part of his awesome movies marathon, which both began and ended with Con Air.

A familiar scent wafted from downstairs, breaking him away from his thought tangent. "Is that smell what I think it is?" he asked. Dad was pretty much the best baker in the whole world, times infinity. He could take a box of Betty Crocker's vanilla cake, mix it up with love and make the world taste good. John gave a goofy grin at his internal cool movie reference.

Dad gave John a stern look, but John knew there weren't any mean feelings involved. He beckoned for John to follow him downstairs. John walked through the lame living room filled with weirdo clowns and Nana's ashes and into the kitchen, where a giant cake took up the entire table. A red light shone from the stove, which indicated the oven currently contained a cake, which indicated that this cake would not stand alone. A celebration without at least ten cakes was like a baby without a pacifier. That was to say, he was a rather piss-poor excuse for a baby if you asked John.

Of course, he couldn't finish even the one cake, what with it taking up the entire table. It was the principle of the thing.

Even Dad could go overboard, though. On John's thirteenth birthday a few months ago, he had baked like twenty-six cakes, which was altogether too many cakes. John had flipped out a bit and stuck his fake arms into one of them before going back to playing his video games. He still thought the addition of arms made the cake at least three times funnier.

The icing was mostly white, but because Dad was a total cornball, a picture of John's face adorned the middle: dark brown skin, black hair that he tried to make look like Astro Boy's from the 2009 film but ended up making look like a bunch of lumpy spikes, glasses with giant frames and tiny temples, and three teeth that poked out from his smiling upper lip.

"DAD," John said in an annoyed voice.

Dad ignored the comment. "This cake is for after your tests. We leave as soon as I get the batter into the oven. Are you prepared?"

The tests. Bluh. As far as John was concerned, final tests were for high schools and colleges and the like, not middle schools. The closer the hands on the clock got to 7:40, the lower his stomach sank. Maybe he could delay Dad a bit. See if he could get to school late enough that his final could be rescheduled. "Wow, Dad, are you sure? I mean, I would love to have just a taste right now of this fantastic cake that I am sure was baked with love. Heheheh."

"Son, this cake is meant as a reward. The time to eat it is when you have completed your tests."

Fuck! John waited for Dad to finish his batter and rushed off to the bathroom before Dad could make him get in the car. Nobody could fault him for going to the bathroom, right? He looked around for possible materials for an awesome disguise, but unless he wanted a literal toothbrush mustache, nothing presented itself.

"You are going to be late for your tests," called Dad.

"I'll be there in a minute!" If only he had something that could cause a distraction. Unfortunately, he had used his last smoke pellet last week in a daring escape from having to go to Dadly Depot again to buy new nose hair trimmers.

"Son, you are going to be late for school, and that is unacceptable on such an important day."

John sighed and walked slowly to the white minivan. At least Dad was the kind of good citizen who never went above the speed limit. He could have written the manual on how to drive safely.