When Perfect Meets Crazy

05 - One of us is a confirmed criminal and it isn't me

There were two things I considered myself excellent at. I mean ridiculously excellent at. The wake-up-from-sleep-with-no-prior-warning-and-still-kill-it kind of excellent. They were my academics and staying out of trouble. I had never been in trouble before, not even once. Not unless you counted trouble at home which I definitely did not. Nobody could go through life without being in trouble at home at least once. It is impossible and anyone who says otherwise is smoking a unique idiocy-inducing kind of weed.

School, however, was an entirely different ball game. I'd never been in detention, never been yelled at, never been punished, never even gotten a question wrong in front of my classmates. I was that good.

Of course, I had a teacher who didn't like me -honestly, I think it was born out of jealousy and his need to see all students fail- but everyone else loved me so there wasn't much he could do about it. The teacher was known for never giving any higher than a B and I was known for only getting straight As and when I finally took his class, I broke his record. He wasn't a fan of that.

Anyway, the point is, I had a flawless record when it came to staying out of trouble outside my family life. The one time I had a serious argument with a teacher, it ended with said teacher having to formally apologize to me because it was discovered that I was right. And lets not even get started on my jobs. I was never late, never unsavoury to customers, never not the best employee. Needless to say, I always got promoted easily.

I was that girl. The one who excelled in her academics. The star of the school. The one who represents the school and then district and state and so on in competitions. The one people in places of power either doted on publicly or disliked secretly without being able to do anything about it. The girl everyone knew would go to an Ivy League school with ease. The one who would have her pick of Ivy league schools. That was me. Staying out of trouble and being smart were my superpowers.

But in that moment, as I froze in the process of re-shelving the books with my eyes trained on Masked Idiot, I wondered if I was truly any good at a staying out of trouble. In the space of less than a week, I'd gotten yelled at by my mom, had a criminal somehow trace me home and break in and to top it off, that same criminal was now showing up at my place of work.

Clearly, I wasn't half as good at staying out of trouble as I thought. This was trouble. Big trouble with a capital T and not only had I not managed to stay out of it, I was fore front and centre in it.

The only reason I followed my sister to that stupid arena was because I believed that with me there, she wouldn't get in trouble. Objectively speaking, I knew I accomplished that but I couldn't exactly call myself a master trouble evader if I never even considered the remote possibility of getting in trouble myself. First with my mom and now, with this idiot.

This can't be happening to me. Not again.

The first feeling that ran through me when I caught sight of him was fear. Pure unadulterated fear. Adrenaline kicked in but luckily so did common sense before I gave in to the irrational urge to run. To high tail it out the back door and not look back. Thank God too because how exactly was I going to explain taking off mid shift to my boss who would undoubtedly call my mother to find out why. That was not a conversation I at all wanted to have.

Oh, you see I have a perfectly reasonable explanation. I went to an illegal fight club and a criminal  followed me home from there and today, showed up at library so obviously I had to run.

Yeah, no. I'd much rather die first than see how that one would play out with my parents. My upstanding law-abiding role model citizen parents.

My flight instincts quickly changed to fight. I had no reason to run or hide. This was my place of work and on top of that, I'd been coming here since I was a kid. This was my turf. Not once in all that time had I ever seen the idiot here and now a few days after breaking into my room, he was 'coincidentally' at my place of work. I wasn't that naïve. The idiot was actually following me.