Chapter 4: Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
"Maybe yellow would be nice." My mother picked up one of the color swatches littering our dining room table and held it up against the wall, "What do you think?"
How is holding a little two by three inch colored square against the wall supposed to help me imagine what the entire room would look like painted yellow? If anything it helps me imagine what the room would look like with a yellow stain on the wall.
"I think it would be like living in a giant banana." I answered, staring dubiously at the neon yellow paper she held to the wall.
Mom stepped back to examine the swatch more carefully, "It is a little banana-like in color, isn't it?"
She tossed the banana swatch onto the table and grabbed an orange one.
"No," I said, before she could even hold it up to the wall. I won't be living inside a traffic cone, thank you very much.
She mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like 'paint-Nazi' under her breath. I chose to ignore this because I'm an incredibly nice person.
"Maybe blue?" She held up a cheerful cape-code blue swatch.
"Blue sounds safe." I tried to imagine our large open floor plan living room/dining room/ kitchen area painted blue. "Maybe just an accent wall, though. Like on the big wall over by the stairs."
"You're probably right. That way we can paint it ourselves instead of hiring people. Surely we can manage one wall."
I immediately regretted my suggestion. The wall I had pointed out was one solid wall that ran up both stories of the house. There was no way we could do that ourselves. I opened my mouth to tell my mother that but she was already grabbing her keys and rambling on about paint brushes. Well, my mother will probably forget about the project before she even starts it. She's funny like that.
Anyway I didn't have time to try and talk my mother down from her latest home renovation kick. Ally had been honking the horn non-stop for the last ten minutes and if I waited any longer they'd leave with out me. They've done it before.
"Hey." I jumped in to Tiffany's shiny silver car and pulled the door shut behind me.
"Finally." Ally carefully reversed out of my driveway, avoided hitting Mr. Waverly's mail box and took off toward school.
If by 'took off' you meant drove to at a speed that was ten miles per hour less than the legal limit.
"Sorry," I strapped on my seatbelt after a stern order from Ally to do so, "My mom wants to paint the living room."
"You're mom always wants to paint something." Tiffany sipped coke through a neon pink crazy straw and chewed bubble gum at the same time. Ew.
"Or build something, " Sara added around a mouthful of soy protein bar. Double ew.
"Or tear down something," Tiff countered.
"Or remodel something."
"Yes, I know. You don't have to tell me, I live with her craziness daily." I stopped them.
It was true that my mother was big on home projects. Whenever she starts talking about home 'improvements' (I use the word 'improvement' reluctantly) that's when I know her 'muse' is failing her. My mother is an artist, using the word lightly. She hasn't finished a painting in over five years now. Instead her studio is filled with partially finished pieces. When she gets frustrated with whatever she's working on she starts to take out her excess energy on the house. I.E- home improvements. She usually gets half-way through them, gets bored and moves onto something else. After that it's up to me to finish them unless I want to live in a construction zone. As a result I now know how to cock a tube, put in and pull out tile, rewire a lamp, lay dry-wall and use wall paper.
If I fail to come up with a career before I graduate (which is always looking more and more like a possibility) I could always fall back on construction. I hear it pays alright and I definitely have the build for it.
I used to leave the cleaning up after my mother job to my father but five years ago he got a job as C.E.O of some big name computer software company and isn't usually home a lot. I could go days with out seeing him and have. He'll get in when I'm already asleep and take off before I wake up. Luckily, I get along better with my mother anyway. The whole absentee parent thing has made him completely out of the loop with me. Last year my birthday card from him read 'Happy Fourteenth!'. I was turning sixteen. Fortunately there was a big wad of cash in it to make up for the blunder.
When we pulled into the parking lot the fearsome foursome was leaning against Sean's shiny new truck. Amy had draped herself around Jared, much to the displeasure of her lap dog and boy toy. When we opened the door I heard her cooing something about going to the nurse. Come to think of it, Jared is looking a little bit like crap (setting aside the issue of whether or not he's Satan's spawn he usually looks pretty hot, I'm ashamed to say). His face had a pale and sickly look to it, like he was hung-over or something. But if he was hung-over Amy would know. Those four never go anywhere without at least one of the others especially not partying.
"I'm fine." Jared assured her while trying to stealthily work his way out of her death grip. No such luck. That bitch was on him like a fly on sticky paper.
"Are you sure?," Amy purred and rubbed her boob against his arm. Oh, gag me. "How about I bring by some of my famous chicken noodle soup by your place tonight?"
"Oh, so that's who started Campbell's. I was wondering." Tiffany murmured to us in an aside while shoving her feet back into her shoes. Tiff has a habit of kicking off her shoes in the car. Luckily she doesn't have smelly feet.
"I'll bet you five bucks she slips a roufie in it." I said while climbing out of the backseat.
I'm fairly certain Amy heard me but she ignored me this time in favor of playing nurse to Casanova over there. She now started to feel his temperature with the wrong side of her hand while leaning in super close. I swear to god she just blew in his ear. If she keeps this up I'm going to be the one who needs a nurse. Behind me, Sara started to make gagging noises.
It's always a toss up as to how the fearsome foursome is going to react to me. Half the time they ignore me and the other half they let the mocking commence. Unfortunately Jared seems to be distracting Amy's attention from me. How I'll miss our bonding time. I'm sure she'll make up for it in Spanish class.
"I'm sure that won't be necessary, but thanks." Either Jared heard me or was thinking somewhere along the same lines. Nobody would put it past Amy to poison somebody and I have a sneaking suspicion that he's well aware of the feud that Amy and Shandra have going over him.
Amy pouted but let up. "Well, in that case I'll see you guys at lunch." She grabbed her purse off the hood of the car, Amy doesn't bother with back packs she doesn't do anything in class but reapply make-up in class anyway. I don't think anybody really knows what she actually looks like under all that sludge, "Come one, now, Shandra."
Shandra pushed herself off the hood and sashayed after her friend. She purposely swung her non-existent behind from side to side as she walked away. I'm sure she was hoping that Jared was watching her walk away. If so she would have been disappointed. Jared was leaning back on the car and tipping his face towards the sun with his eyes closed.
I turned away from him so I wouldn't be tempted to stare. Even though I've known about the evil that lurks underneath the good looking surface (and boy was the surface ever good looking) for about three years now I still found myself gawking at him occasionally along with all the other girls at my school. I can't be blamed for these rare occasions, though. I'm a hormonal teenage girl and sometimes my hormones get the best of me.
Don't judge me.
Some guys over by the office started calling Tiffany's name, at this moment. "Duty calls, girls! See ya'll at lunch." Tiffany adjusted her top to expose more cleavage and made her way towards them.
"Okay, I got to go. Later." I turned and made my way over to the math and science building. This was our daily routine and we all knew it well by now.
"Good morning, Mrs. Curleck. " Mr. Maddox greeted as I walked in the door. As usual I was the first person here.
"Morning, Sir, " responded politely and took my seat.
I pulled out my math book and started to go over the chapter we covered last class. When you're as number challenged as me you have to do things like this just to keep up. The bell didn't ring for another seven minutes so I was surprised to hear the door open again. I was even more surprised when Jared walked through it. He's usually the one who saunters in five minutes after the bell rang, during the pledge. Mr. Maddox looked equally shocked but nonetheless greeted him as he greeted me. Jared just grunted at him and plopped himself into his seat. He looked slightly tight inside the space available in the standard school desks.
One of the reasons I had been so excited when he asked me out was because he wasn't any taller than me. When you're my size you can't just run around dating anyone. We're about the same height, Jared and I. I, however, didn't looked so smashed inside my seat. Same height or not he's still got about fifty pounds on me.
Jared leaned himself forward and laid his head down on his crossed arms. Usually he waited until fifth period to start napping. He's one of those infuriating morning people. His first period was reserved for socializing with his buddies and flirting with all the good looking, normal sized, girls in the class around him, even though he's already had sex with all of them At least that's the word around the ladies washroom.
Slowly students started to file into the classroom. Paul made his way over to the desk two chairs behind me and one row to the left. "Morning, Sasquatch." he said to me while he passed.
"Morning, giant walking bag of dog dung." I replied cheerfully. This was all just a part of our morning routine.
I know what you're thinking. I couldn't possibly have any more enemies at this school. Well, you'd be wrong. While Paul wasn't as prominent or active enemy as the fearsome foursome was he was still definitely an enemy. We more or less just lived in silent hatred for each other, him and I.
Long story short Paul got to third base with Tiffany at some seniors end of the year party and wouldn't talk to her the next day. Though, she'll readily deny it, Tiff had always had a little bit of a thing for Paul. He was also the same guy who had always thrown rude comments at Sara in the halls. Everyone knew what a sore point Sara's weight was for her and Paul, like Amy, didn't hesitate to use it against her.
Sara burst through the door while the bell was still ringing. She never used to be late but this year her locker is on the other side of the world and no matter how much she rushes she can never quite make it on time. Mr., Maddox knew this so he never gave her a hard time about it. Instead he just nodded politely at her rushed apology and started to shuffle through the papers on his desk.
Sara grinned at me while she made her way to the seat next to mine. Behind me Paul started to moo at her. I threw my pocket dictionary at him. I didn't turn around because it would look suspicious but I took his grunt to mean that it had hit it's intended target.
Math class passed by in a blur of numbers and confusing formulas that I knew would take hours of studying in my room tonight to comprehend. Mr. Maddox was droning on about pi when the room suddenly became silent. I looked up to see what the hassle was. I'll be the first to admit that one of the reasons I had trouble in this class was because I had a tendency to daydream. I was currently dreaming that Amy was really some sort of alien underneath all of that make up and she had just bitten off Shandra's head. Taking this into account you can understand my momentary confusion quickly followed by a fear the I had been called on for something.
Luckily, when I let my gaze rake the room, all while trying to look like I knew what was going on of course, nobody was looking at me. Instead all eyes were on Jared.
"I don't know," Jared had his eyes narrowed and was glaring straight at the teacher, a sure sign that he had already said this.
Mr. Maddox sighed in exasperation, "We've gone over this three times this class period alone, Mr. Ferdy."
"I don't know, " Jared repeated, starting to look angry.
"Why don't you come on up and give it a try anyway?"
"Because there's nothing to try. I said, I don't know the answer. That's not going to change by standing up there."
"Mr. Ferdy, I told you to try to answer the question. It's either that or you can go over to the principals office and try to explain to him why you were sleeping in my class instead of paying attention." Mr. Maddox held out the marker and waited.
The whole class jumped when Jared's desk suddenly upended itself with the force of him leaping out of it. We all stared at him dumbfounded, Mr. Maddox included, as Jared just stood there glaring at the teacher and started to shake. This went on for almost a full minute before he darted out of the room, leaving his things behind.
Well, I guess that means he chose the principals office then.
A/N (1)- I don't know anybody's last names so you'll have to excuse me if I got them wrong.
A/N (2)- Fresh baked cookies to all who review!!! If by fresh baked cookies you mean Oreo's I unwrapped and put on a plastic plate. Mmmmm, Oreo's.
