Butterscotch Backstabber

Chapter 25: Nerds

Come on, come on. Seriously? Where is he? We are so screwed if he doesn't show up. Hilary's at practice so it's all up to me to do this. I did not just call into work for nothing. Where are you!?

"So... you and my daughter seem pretty close." Hilary's dad says.

I cringe.

"I'm assuming you two are official?"

"Er, yeah. We are." I avoid his gaze.

"Leave her alone Derik." Her mom says.

He grunts in annoyance.

"Where do you work?" he asks.

"Derik."

"It's okay, I work at royalty subs," I say.

"I've always been a hoagie guy myself."

Her mom sighs.

"Was it your idea for Hilary to get glasses? You don't like her contacts or what?" he challenges.

"What? She never even told me she was doing that." I say surprised.

"Derik." Her mom chastise.

He grunts again.

Finally, I see LaShawn pull around the corner. Took him long enough! Good stepdads are so hard to find these days. Georgia is in the passenger seat. Just great. As if I didn't have enough to worry about.

"Come on, hurry!" I say as he pulls in.

"Hurry daddy hurry!" Georgia cheers.

"Okay, okay, sorry. I got held up at work. But I came straight here."

"We only have until five! It's already about to be four!" I say.

"Okay, okay, let's load it up." He gets out of the truck.

Georgia tries to follow but I shut her back in.

"No, stay," I say.

She pouts.

With the help of Hilary's dad and Lashawn, we load up the piece into the back of the truck very carefully. They almost don't fit, but luckily Derik is a great organizer.

"Okay, let's go!" I quickly jump in the truck, pushing Georgia to the side.

"We'll meet you there." Hilary's mom says.

"Okay." Lashawn starts the truck.

We have to have it in the room, put it together, and sign off on it before five. Or we don't get entered in.

We still haven't painted it. But that's okay. It doesn't have to be done, but it does have to be there and mostly finished by today. Next week is the deadline to have it completely finished. But now we can only work on it during school hours. So finishing it will be a lot harder.

When we get to the school, Zoey, Wes, and Hailey are waiting for us to help. We unload it and rush it into the room where I instruct Derik how to put it together and what goes where. It's a chain of people bringing in the pieces one by one.

Hilary runs over during a break from practice, still all sweaty and in her softball clothes.

"Is it done?" she asks, out of breath.

"Almost," I say as I help her dad put it together.

"Poppy! We have like ten minutes left!"

"And counting," our art teacher says as she watches.

"I'm going, I'm going." I screw harder.

Hilary gets on her knees and starts helping.

Soon we have all the pieces in the room and now we are just working on putting it together.