2. Like So Embarrassing!
Twenty minutes later, hair still damp from the shower, Alison brought her car to a halt in one of the visitor parking slots in front of the school. St Monica's School for Girls proclaimed the sign affixed to the impressive granite walls surrounding the school. The walls would want to be impressive, considering the astronomical fees the administrators gouged out of parents for sending their children here. Though Shepard griped about the fees like most every other parent, she was in truth glad to pay them. The school had a reputation for turning out a higher than average number of graduates with higher than average grades. The kind of grades that could get a certain young lady into medical school. If she could just avoid getting herself kicked out of school in the next few years. That was the main reason Shepard had enlisted...enrolled her daughter at St Monica's. She wanted her child to have all the advantages in life she herself hadn't. No girl of hers was going to sign up for the Alliance Military and risk having her head blown off during a training mishap. Like that poor lad from up the street. Enlisted straight out of high school, fulfilling a life-long dream to follow in his father's footsteps. He'd been shipped back home a month later.
Alison switched off the engine and got out, idly singing a few bars of the old rock song she'd been listening to during the drive. Shepard walked towards the main gates, and showed her ID to the security guard manning the entrance. The guard was mostly superfluous; automated security systems would turn unwanted guests into a red mist if they were to actually get past the gates. Shepard appreciated the gesture though. Humans were fallible but on the upside, you couldn't hack their brains.
The security guard accepted Shepard's ID, looked from it to her and back again. Then he snapped to attention and saluted.
"Captain Shepard! It's an honour to meet you!" the guard, whose badge identified him as Wilks said.
Alison fought down a grin and instead nodded formally and replied, "At ease, Wilks."
Wilks relaxed and asked, almost shyly, "Could I get an autograph? Normally I wouldn't ask but my father told me stories of how you fought off the geth on Eden Prime back in the day."
"Back in the day, right," Shepard said as she signed Wilks' notebook. The kid was only a few years older than Lauren. God I feel old, she thought to herself.
"Well, if you'll excuse me, I have a wayward daughter to collect," Alison said as she reclaimed her ID, stepped past the weapon scanners and onto the school grounds.
Slouched against the outside of the admin building, her backpack at her feet, Lauren Shepard rolled her eyes as her mother approached. God! She was so embarrassing. That outfit was like, six months out of date! Lauren sighed and rolled her eyes theatrically as Shepard the Elder stopped in front of her, arms crossed over her chest. Mother and daughter were both quite similar, physically at least. At five-eight Lauren was taller than most of the other girls at school and her mother's insistence that she learn self-defence had left her somewhat leaner and more muscular as well. Though not so lean that a person would ever mistake her for a boy, God forbid. Like her mother, Lauren possessed blue eyes and black hair. Unlike her mother, her shoulder-length hair wasn't shot through with streaks of purest white. Lauren had to admit that the effect on her mother was kinda cool. Though the thought of going grey herself filled her with dread. Lauren swore to herself that when her own hair started to turn, she'd dye it to within an inch of its life.
"So," Mum began. "Suspended. Again."
Lauren shrugged and smoothed down the skirt of her uniform over her thighs. "Seems like," she said. She picked up her backpack and slung it over her shoulder.
"For how long?" Mum asked, falling into step alongside her. Ugh! Did she have to walk so close to her? Lauren took a few steps to the left, and tried to ignore the glances of the few passing students hurrying to class. Stuck up cows.
"Two weeks. God! That stupid bitch had it coming!"
"Language, please," Mum said calmly. Lauren rolled her eyes again. If even half the stories about her mother's wartime exploits were true, Alison Shepard'd had a real mouth on her.
"So? What happened," inquired Shepard the Elder as they left the school grounds and headed to the silver car.
"What do you mean 'what happened'? Didn't that moron of a headmaster tell you?" Lauren flounced into the front passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
Alison settled into the driver's seat and started the car. Immediately that godawful old timey music her mother loved so much poured out of the speakers.
"Geez, Mum! This music is so old! You are like, so embarrassing! I can't believe we're related! My God!"
Pulling onto the road, Alison turned up the volume and began to sing along. Deliberately out of tune. Beside her, Lauren clapped her hands over her ears and said loudly "La la la! I'm not hearing you!"
After a few minutes, Shepard turned off the stereo and asked, "Well?"
Lauren shot her an annoyed glance and said, "That stupid cow Denise Robinson was saying that the only reason you'd been made a Spectre was because you'd had if off with the entire Council!"
Shepard couldn't help but grin to herself. "Really? The entire Council? Yeah, I can kinda see myself going for the asari," Alison laughed at the expression her daughter's face, "But the other two? And that turian? Honey, that guy was borderline xenophobic when it came to dealing with humans. Me especially."
"Look, I know I shouldn't have hit the bitch-"
"Language," Alison replied.
"But I wasn't just going to let her slag you off like that! After what you went through all those years ago, fighting the geth and that Saren prick...sorry. Anyway I just couldn't let that slide. So I popped her in the nose. I'm sorry I caused you all this trouble."
"Wow, an actual apology. O child of my loins, you never cease to amaze me."
"Ugh! That is so gross!" Lauren said and glared out the window. Overhead, the dark clouds that had formed during the last half-hour delivered the rain that Alison's joints had told her would come. Lauren frowned, "The weather service said it was going to be fine!" Then she turned to gaze at her mother. Despite the lines around her mouth and eyes, her mother was still quite good looking for her age.
"So I suppose you're going to ground me for like a month?" Lauren said, mostly to break the silence.
"I think you're getting a little old to be grounded, now," replied Shepard the Elder as she stopped at a set of traffic lights. Outside, the rain was already beginning to slacken off.
"Well aren't you going to yell at me at least? Tell me off for jeopardising my education and my future?"
Ahead, the lights turned green and Alison drove smoothly through the intersection. "I ask myself," Alison replied, "What would going off at you accomplish? Other than to trigger a screaming match neither of us wants that would result in you storming upstairs and slamming your bedroom door so hard that the entire house would shudder. No. You know what you did was wrong. Or at least, the wrong thing for the right reasons and I'm going to trust you to learn from this experience and hopefully this whole episode will bring us closer together as mother and daughter. Girls' night in?"
Lauren gaped at her mother in shock. Girls' night in? Bring them closer together? What the frack? "OK, whatever meds you're on, cut the dose. God!"
Alison just smiled to herself as she turned the sound system back on.