Bad Boy Gone Shy

T W E N T Y F I V E - Mother's Show dog

On Saturday mornings, Jasmine let the tire of the week sink into her and lie wrapped up in her sheets for an hour longer. She listened to the roar of her neighbour's car pulling out of the driveway and her mother's pompous voice downstairs, bickering on about the next tennis session with her girls and whatnot.
Today, however, she found herself waking to silence.

Jasmine stretched, let out a long yawn and rolled out of bed. She peered out the window at a man watering his plants, and a middle-aged lady calmly watching the morning birds from her balcony. They seemed almost amiable; as if they were incapable of eyeing her like a laboratory specimen - the way they had when she was smaller, during what her mother had called 'punishment time'.

Jasmine pulled on a comfortable hoodie and lumbered downstairs, her hair a nest and her eyes still barely unstuck. She made her way to the kitchen, and swung open the fridge, pulling out a bottle of milk and bringing it up to her lips. A mouthful of the creamy liquid had barely slid down her throat when she received a painful wack to the back of her head. 'Mph!'

'Pour the milk into a cup for goodness sake!' Her mother growled behind her.

Coughing, Jasmine slowly looked over her shoulder at her mother, who fixed herself to re-organising the magnets and notes on the fridge. 'I'll finish the milk today.' Jasmine replied.

Her mother rolled her eyes and with the notes in her hand, turned away from Jasmine and towards the dining table. 'You should stay off your phone at school,' She said, flicking through the papers, 'Applegate tells me you were using your phone in class.'

Jasmine felt a shudder slither down her spine. Word could travel fast along the neighbourhood like wildfire and the last thing Jasmine wanted to hear was that a saved copy of her twerking on the kitchen table had leaked and someone's mother had gotten a hold of it.  'B-but I wasn't using it for anything inappropriate...' Jasmine stuttered.

'I don't want to hear it.' Jasmine stared at her mother, lean in figure with streaks of auburn concealing the grey in her hair. Still, she looked older with her brows knotted in concentration and the wrinkles dragged into her skin, forming small crests in her forehead. 'This is ridiculous, Jasmine Winters! You don't go to school to look at your phone now do you?' Her sharp eyes seemed to be able to command anything into a position of her choice. Jasmine's lips, for example, were forced into a thin, straight line.

Jasmine stiffly nodded, turning towards her escape route - the stairs. 'Sit down, you.' Jasmine groaned inwardly as her mother's fingers curled around a chair, pulling it out for Jasmine to sit. Another minute and her mother may be presenting a lecture over how Jasmine had let her down by using her phone during class time. What would other adults think when they find out Jasmine Winters doesn't pay attention in class?
But what Jasmine feared most was the video - on the loose. One broken phone did not mean the video wasn't alive and thriving on other's. Her mother was a famished vulture when it came to neighbourhood gossip. She knew where people talked, which people to stalk, and where to dig for the juiciest news to flood out. If unlucky, even a little swooping around may have landed her mother on the subject of the video, featuring her own daughter, breaking a million codes of behaviour that she had so ardently tried to hammer into her. 

Her mother swept the envelopes to one side, then repositioned herself infinitesimally - an effort to display overt composure and maintain the notion of power which she aimed to claim part of her character. However, Jasmine recognised restlessness in her otherwise unreadable mother. 'I want you and Jonathan to move out for a little while,' she began monotonously. 'Your grandmother has decided to take you in for a month. I want you to focus on schoolwork as usual...and please do not bother her.'

Jasmine frowned. Okay, so it wasn't about her misbehaving. It was about something else entirely - something she wasn't sure she was quite happy about. For a moment, she forgot how to speak; how to move her mouth in different shapes and produce words. 'W-Why would we stay at her place?' She managed to mutter out.