Growing Pains

Chapter 48 - I had grown up an inconvenience

Z O E Y

My mom had the day off today, so she let me take her car to school. This almost never happened because mom never had any days off during the week, but the diner she worked had been forced to close for the day after a pipe burst in the kitchen. Mom had pretended to be worried when her boss told it to her over the phone last night but laughed as soon as she got off the phone. Apparently, she had warned them about that pipe before.

"Karma is a bitch," mom had said last night, putting on another episode of the crime show she had been watching, and sending me off to bed, since one of us still had an early morning. Not so early though, since I could take the car, and not my bicycle.

Still, off to bed I had gone, where I had read a chapter of the book I had picked up from a garage sale last weekend, and then another one, and another one, and another one. School the next day had been a struggle obviously. I had paid attention to almost nothing at all. All I wanted was to lay my head down and sleep. I didn't do that. I still remembered my mom telling me she wouldn't sit in front of any of my teachers again to explain why I slept through their classes every other week.

So, instead, at the end of the day, I laid my head back against the car seat and finally closed my eyes. I had told Daisy I would give her a ride home but given how long she usually took to get out of Germain every week, I probably had a few minutes until she made it to the school's parking lot.

I was just about drowse off when someone knocked on the window next to me. I opened my eyes. Outside the car, standing in his crutches, Jason looked very unimpressed with my sleeping arrangements. I rolled the window down and rubbed my eyes.

"You were sleeping with your mouth open," he said. "Everyone could see you."

I looked around. The parking lot was full of students crowding around cars, cramming into school buses, or unlocking bicycles. No one was looking at me.

I shrugged, "How was your day?"

He rolled his eyes, "Shit."

"Why?"

"The guys wouldn't shut up about the fucking ski trip I didn't go to this weekend. It's like they actually wanted to rub it all over my face."

"Kinky." I smiled.

"Fuck you," he said, which I guessed I deserved.

"Do you want a ride home?"

He seemed surprised I asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, why not? I'm giving Daisy a ride, so I might as well give you one too."

"Right, but I've seen you drive. You're –"

"That was one time, Jason!" I stopped him before he could go on about how I had almost driven his dad's car against traffic. We had all learned how to drive at the same time, Jason, Daisy, and I. Their dad had taught us. Daisy had been immediately good at it, Jason not so much, and me not at all, mostly because I was terrified of crashing their car with their dad in it. The day I drove on the wrong side of the road, Jason had been in the car too, so I had been even more nervous. Stephen had been very nice about it, probably because I had started crying almost immediately, but, of course, not Jason. Jason wouldn't let me forget it.

"That's already one too many times," he said as he struggled to get in the passenger's seat, almost dropping one of his crutches outside before closing the door. 

He was putting on his seatbelt when someone knocked hard on the windshield, and said, "That's my seat, Jason!"

I smiled at Daisy in her bright overalls, and said, "He had a bad day."