Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

5

5

Three weeks.

That's how long they have put me out for.

When the letter arrived in the mail, Mom tried to get Dad to pull a few strings but he straight up refused after taunting me about setting a brand new record.

Suspended for three weeks in two days.

New schools, new heights.

I have not been invited down to the dinner table for the same reason in the two nights of my house arrest and I am glad for it. I just wake up, put my Indie playlist on shuffle and walk around.

I was sitting on my window-sill scribbling nonsense in my notebook when I see a black Prius pull into our driveway.

I watch Mr. Collins step out, go over to the other side and pull out a wheelchair.

I watch him cradle Anastasia down and go over to ring our doorbell. My mother and he help Anastasia up the patio stairs and into the house when he waves at her, gets into the driver's seat and drives off.

All the while, my feet stand frozen to the hardwood floor.

She knows where I live.

A knock on the door snaps at me. I pull it open.

"What?" I almost bark.

"You have a friend visiting. She is downstairs." Mom crosses over to her own bedroom and I hear the lock click.

"What are you doing here?"

She looks back at me staring down at her from the landing, then points to the painting on our mantel, "That's a beautiful painting."

"My mother made it."

"It is beautiful."

"Why are you here? How do you know where I live?" It comes out a little ruder than I intended.

"I just wanted to see how you are doing."

The twinge of alienation in her voice startles me.

"How did you get my address?"

The iconic smile reappears. "There is nothing in this world a little charm cannot extract, Brooklyn."

I roll my eyes.

"I actually wanted to show you something."
She pulls a laptop out of her unzipped bag lying near her feet and says, "I did some snooping around."

"You remember the guy from that day, right?" She asks slowly giving me time to interpret, recall and realize her question.
I understand her strategy of dipping the toe first to test the waters.

"The other guy, which I later found out, is Richard Baker. His father is on the board of Trustees. They say that he is suspended but he was never called into the office. In fact-"

She pushes the screen up and an already open tab to Richard Baker's Facebook flashes.

"He is not even in town. Hasn't been since the day of the fiasco."

She points to his check-in in San Francisco, exactly the date of the fight.

"My assumption is-", she continues, "He just got away on a little vacation to wait until the tension dies down."

"So he got away with it," I say.

She hesitates. "Yes."