Manipulation High

Chapter 25: Days out and stories

George POV.

“Okay George, you can stay there the rest of the night, and why not take tomorrow off school too, you deserve it.” My mother had told me, and I kept thinking about that sentence all night as I drifted in and out of sleep.

My parents were often busy, as most people would be able to tell from meeting them. After all, I spent a lot of time having to take care of myself over the years; learning to cook basic meals, clean a lot of things safely, organise my way to and from school, stuff like that. And while a lot of people would assume that my parents were neglectful, that was far from the truth.

Even though they often were away, whenever they were home they’d spend a lot of time with me, if I wasn’t busy with homework or stuff. Plus they always made sure to spend time with me during holidays, or birthdays, and I appreciated that, and to be honest I often preferred to be alone doing my own thing anyway.

But that didn’t mean they were any less strict than most other parents. My mother and father always had to be told by me that I was sick before they told the school so I could stay home that day. Sometimes one of them would even come home to check on me to make sure that I wasn’t faking it.

Another example is they gave me a fair share of chores and since they were away often I got more time to do it than most other kids my age would. Unfortunately for me, they never forget what jobs they assign. Sometimes I’ll go for days without seeing them because of their work schedules then a week later I’ll get in trouble for not vacuuming or whatever.

So it was weird that they’d let me do something like skip school for apparently ‘deserving it’, and that they’d let me spend the day with someone they met once for a few hours and talked to for about five minutes in total. Something seemed strange to me.

When Clay snuck into the room, which was his so he had no reason to have to sneak in, to grab himself some clothes he noticed I was up and gave me a smile. “Morning,” he greeted, and I matched his expression as I gave a ‘good morning’ in response.

“Any ideas on what you want to do today? He asked as he pulled his shirt over his head to change it, not even caring that I was looking at him.
“Shouldn’t we… uh be going to school?” I asked the blond, since I still wasn’t certain about this ‘take tomorrow off school’ thing.

“Well our parents said we didn’t need to, and don’t worry it won’t show on our attendance records, I promise.” Clay said, which confused me even further.
“Okay then,” I still was very confused, but didn't say anything about it either way. “But we’ll have to go to my house first to get a change of clothes, I don’t want to wear this stuff two days in a row.”

“Why not just wear some of my clothes?” The blond offered, reaching in and grabbing out a pink shirt which he offered out to me. “In fact you can keep them, I barely wear some of this stuff anyway.”
“But are you sure you are okay with this?” I questioned, and he just nodded.

Clay threw a pink shirt and a pair of sweatpants over to me before walking out of the room and I quickly pulled my clothes off to change, not knowing how long Clay was going to be out of the room for. Once I’d pulled on the blond’s clothes which were absolutely too comfy to be just normal clothes, I folded up what I had been wearing and walked out of the room.

Then I wandered downstairs, still being cautious about being in the house of people I don’t really know, besides talking to them for like fifteen minutes during dinner last night, which was absolutely delicious. His parents were both nice and his younger sister was good fun, but they didn’t tell me much about themselves, more often asking things about me, not that I minded.

Clay was standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of water, but he lowered the glass away from his lips to smile at me as I came into the room. I noticed that Clay’s mother was also standing in the room, chatting to her son with her back facing him.

“So you remember I am working late right?” She asked, and the blond just hummed a yes before she continued. “Well I want you to buy some take out for you and Drista, get a receipt and then I will pay you however much you spend, okay?”
“Sure,” Clay responded again as I began walking over to him.

The woman finished grabbing whatever she needed to grab before standing up and letting out a noise of surprise as she saw me standing here. “Oh hello George, it’s good to see you. Did you sleep well?” She gave me a warm smile, similar to the ones my mother gives.
“Yes I slept very well thank you, sorry for falling asleep last night though.”

“Oh that’s okay George,” Clay’s mother batted her hands playfully. “Clay has people staying over way too often. Once a month all of his friends will come over and spend the whole weekend in the basement, playing games and shouting. Having you over was a welcoming break from Clay’s louder friends, like Sapnap and Quackity.”

As she spoke, Clay’s mother began walking towards the door which connected the house to the garage. I watched with a smile as she waved us both goodbye before the door shut, and a moment later the blond and I heard the sound of an engine, along with an electric whirr as the garage door opened with the help of the remote.

“So where are your dad and sister?” I asked as Clay turned to grab some stuff out of his pantry to make some breakfast.
“They left ages ago,” the blond answered. “My dad dropped my sister off at school then he went to his job, he works at the bank. You do realise it is 10am, right Georgie?”

“It is?” I responded, wide eyed, before turning to look at a clock on the wall and sure enough, the hour hand was hovering over the 10. “Holy shit I slept late this morning." I paused for a moment. "Anyway, want me to help with breakfast?” 

“Yeah,” Clay beamed as he started pulling stuff out of his pantry and stacking them on the counter while I walked over to the fridge. “I was thinking we could make some more of the waffles and smoothies, just so we got a little bit more practice before we have to have the food done tomorrow.”

The two of us had sampled many different recipes and you could tell, there was a pile of containers stacked in the fridge, each filled with different types of waffles which we had found recipes for last night.

There were containers of plain waffles, Belgian waffles, chocolate waffles, chocolate chip waffles, chocolate waffles with chocolate chips, and buttermilk vanilla waffles. Basically any recipe we found that Clay’s family had the ingredients for we tried to make. We even made vegan waffles because there was a girl in the cooking class who was vegan.

Along with that were smoothies. There were banana smoothies, tropical smoothies, strawberries smoothies, mixed berry smoothies, and mango smoothies. Plus Clay’s mother had several cartons of oat milk (which she claimed was the best type of milk for cooking and baking) so we made vegan versions of all of the drinks too, which were all in different bottles in the fridge too.

I had been worried about wasting all of this food, but Clay reassured me that whatever food we didn’t sample after we had cooked a batch we would deliver to some of the homeless people downtown. It was amazing that Clay had come up with that idea and I couldn’t help but think about how nice and selfless he was.

Without a word the two of us got to work cooking some more food for breakfast, with so much practice yesterday we were pretty much able to read each other's minds in the kitchen and I smirked at the fact that we were clearly going to win the cooking contest tomorrow.
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1440 words

God, Clay is so nice and selfless isn't he