Teach Me [COMPLETED✔]

4

Aspen

Too soon. Too much. I thought to myself as I walked the halls of school. So far I had received strange looks. Or rather looks I wasn't used to receiving. Even when I started school I hadn't gotten this much attention. 

It bothered me. I had been used to blending in with the rest of the girl, wearing the same clothes. That now that I stood out, that I was drawing unusual attention, it made my skin prickle. And I still hadn't worn my more revealing clothes, but I did wear clothes that showed my body. 

"They think you're hot," Penelope had said. "They're probably thinking about how to fuck you."

Fuck

That was a new word. To them it meant sex. But not the slow type, the one where you took your time with your significant other. But the quick one, meaningless. I was still confused about it, but spending so much time around others, I didn't doubt I'd come to understand better. I also knew that word was bad, had heard the teachers call out students when they hollered it across class. 

I figured they all knew about sex. But I didn't. And at this point I didn't even know about kissing. I doubted they would feel attracted to me if they knew my lack of experience. Though I think they knew that. 

It made me feel embarrassed about the situation I grew up in. Made me feel jealous, something that I knew was inaceptable. Jealousy fell under envy, and it turned my stomach knowing I felt that. Thinking that I envied these people who grew up surrounded by the unfiltered world. And I shouldn’t, I grew up seeing all these shades of white and black. But never gray and this world was filled with it. 

To them it was normal to feel jealousy, to me it was a sin. 

By the end of the day we were left with a school project. Penelope, Lilith and me teaming up to work on. Deciding it was better for us to work at Chris’s house considering he wasn't home. Yet. I had sent him a quick message before agreeing on it, asking if it was fine to take friends to his house. 

It's your home too. He had replied, but agreed on it. Asking if I wanted him to bring takeout on his way home. 

I answered with an emoji of a thump, thinking it was funny. It was just weird answering messages with those faces and expressions. Though I didn't understand half of them. 

We worked for two hours, which was enough for us to finish everything. And by six we were exhausted, Lilith looking at the pictures that lined the fireplace. In all the weeks I knew them and that she came by to pick me up, not once had I invited them in. It just didn't feel right inviting them in a place that wasn't actually mine. 

"Who's this?" Lilith asked, as she held up a framed picture of Chris and my mom on their wedding day. It was actually one of the few pictures of them and all of them looked so dull. I would think marriage meant happiness, but in all the pictures there wasn't a smile. 

"That's my mom and Chris," I answered her. 

"This is your step dad?" she asked in disbelief. Another thing they hadn't seen, Chris. It wasn't that I didn't want them to see him, but he spent most of the time at the hospital. Therefore he really wasn't here. 

I shook my head, "Technically he's my guardian. I barely met him a few months ago-" they both looked at eachother- "But your mom married him?"

I nodded, "Well yeah.”

“Then he’s your step father,” Penelope stated as if I didn't know my own situation. 

I stood up, plucking the picture from Lilith's hands. Looking down at a pristine Chris. “No. Im- I was under his legal care until the age of 18. But even before that, he didn't adopt me. Therefore he's not my step-father,” I reasoned with her. That was the truth, I had a father, even if he was dead. And even if my mother had remarried, she never actually introduced me to him till later. And I was 17, well 18. I didn't need a stepfather, I just needed someone who would help me navigate life.