When Perfect Meets Crazy

02 - How To Bring Your Child To Tears In Ten Seconds. Tested and trusted.

Dinner ended up being ten minutes late. A whole six hundred seconds later than it was supposed to be. I was toast. Dead meat. A sitting duck. A dead man walking. It was my day to cook and with dinner being late, my mom had a legitimate reason to shout at me.

Not that she needed one to begin with.

My eyelids drifted shut as I exhaled noisily through my mouth. This was bad. Very bad. If it had been any other night, I might have gotten away with it but definitely not tonight. Not after she specifically requested that we come straight home after school. Not after our neighbour informed her of what time I'd arrived, a mere half hour before she herself did.

She wasn't going to see that I still arrived before she did. What she'd see was the fact that school let out hours ago and contrary to her order, I hadn't come straight home. Shit. Shit. Shit.

My mother, the Jessica Johnson, was going to be less than pleased.

The contents of my stomach plummeted. I could more or less smell her anger.

After working a huge case, getting home at late hours of the night and early hours of the morning, for the past two weeks -four, if you counted getting home by nine p.m. late-, the one day she got off early, I couldn't have dinner ready on time.

She wasn't just going to let that slide.

I wriggled my shoulders and bent my neck one side, then the other like someone getting ready for a fight would.

Then, I called out, "Dinner's ready!"

A fun family dinner where we'd ask about the case and her breakthrough was nowhere to be found. Dinner was a tense strained affair where, as expected, my mother awarded me a beautifully worded lashing about how it wasn't too much to ask for me to come home straight from school just once -yes, let's conveniently forget that you ask this every time you get held up working a big case- and cook while simultaneously -and ironically- enjoying the spaghetti I, the "irresponsible and wilful" daughter had prepared.

If I was so irresponsible, I definitely wouldn't have bothered cooking anything.

I kept that thought to myself though. I quite liked living and wasn't ready to say goodbye to it.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled quietly, hating the tightness in my throat and the way my eyes were undoubtedly glistening with unshed tears. "I had to make a quick stop at the library."

"And it couldn't wait one day?" Her tone, the arc of her brows and her aura had me shrinking in my seat.

"I'm sorry." I squirmed.

I've always thought it was entirely unfair that parents had the ability to bring their kids to tears with only a few words or looks. It was even more unfair that my mom had mastered the art. Seriously, the woman could write a book; How To Bring Your Child To Tears In Ten Seconds. Tested and trusted.

I wasn't a crier. Not by any stretch of imagination. I could count on one hand the things that could make me cry and still have spare fingers but at times like this, it felt like I was more sensitive to my parents because I wasn't to other people or things. Like that somehow increased my sensitivity to parental disapproval.

Olly would never cry over simply being yelled at. She'd hardly even blink but unlike me -and though she hated it- she was the type to cry over a sad movie, a dead pet, a sad goodbye. She cried a bucket over Five Feet Apart, Titanic and The Fault In Our Stars. I smiled at the first and laughed at the other two because I actually thought they were funny and stupid but now, with my eyes misting with tears, I'd have given anything to be the one who cried over movies and weathered through being shouted at.