Word Prompt: Transplant
Plot Generator—Binding Blurb: In 500 words or fewer, write a blurb or a short entry about beating the odds.
(Not including this A/N, titles, and headers, this is 497 words)
Something True
Transplant
Last Spring
Pot roast, mashed potatoes, asparagus. With her mother across from her and her dad looking on to her right, Bella picked up her plate and her glass. "I'm eating upstairs. Lots of homework."
"Again?" her dad said. "School's working you to the bone. A kid can't have dinner with her family anymore?"
The waver in her dad's voice caught her attention. Eyes dark and pensive, his fingers traced his mustache. He didn't believe her.
"Dad, I got behind a little. Term papers."
She started out of the kitchen, into the living room, her dad's voice falling quiet behind her.
"What's up with her?"
Bella paused to listen.
"She's just being a teenager."
"She okay?"
"I'll talk to her. She'll be fine, Charlie."
...
The wind rattled the windows, practically shaking the house. On her bed, half-eaten dinner to her side, Bella closed her eyes, imagining what it might look like outside: trees bending to the wind's will, dirt and dust from the ground creating a fog.
She looked up at her mother standing in the doorway, half expecting her hair to be blowing away from her face revealing the lines in her forehead.
"Goodbye."
Her mother stepped farther into the room. "Where's your homework?"
Bella didn't answer. She'd finished her homework earlier, but nothing she did or didn't do was her mother's business.
"Dad's worried about you."
"But you're not?"
"Of course I am. You know I am."
"Because you feel guilty. Because I know."
"How long have you known?"
"It's really dumb that you're worried about me just because my mother sucks. Plenty of people get through life with no mother at all. I'm sure they live happy lives anyway," Bella said, nodding as if she believed it.
Parents weren't everything; there were friends, there was falling in love—at this, Bella smiled to herself. There was future, and a family of her own to consider. Only a matter of time and kids are grown up, out of the house, on their own. Parents were just a small part of it, when she really thought about it. Eighteen years out of how many, if you lived to old age? Eighty, ninety?
"Tell dad not to worry. I'm perfectly fine."
She thought of Riley, the way he opened his door and pulled her inside before she even knocked, like he sensed her; the way he whispered low in her ear that she was beautiful, his hand drifting up her leg under her dress; the way his lips and stubble felt on the side of her neck when he stood behind her, pushing her hair aside. In a little more than a year, she'd be done with high school, they'd no longer have to keep their relationship a secret. If Bella could, she would transplant herself to next June right now—skip all the in-between.
"Bella..."
Bella met her mother's eyes, the same light brown as her own. "I'm just being a teenager. Goodbye."
The wind outside her window roared on.