Extra Credit

Chapter 10 - Quality Time

Janet
"Toni!" Nothing. "Toni! Wake up!" I hit her with my pillow. She still didn't wake up. Ughh. I reached my hand over and pinched her ear. She jumped up. "What the hell?!"

"Oh good you're awake." I smiled. She looked at me with an angry mug.

"Janet, did you really just pinch my ear?"

"Yes."

"It better be for something important."

"It is. I can't reach my phone and water bottle. Can you grab it for me?" I smiled. She eased over and grabbed the things for me.

"Here." She went to lay back down. It had been three weeks since I agreed to date Toni and I got out of the hospital a week ago. She's been staying at my house because I need help walking around until my leg heals. She slept on the other side of my bed. It was pretty big so there was plenty of space between us.

"Toni." She rolled over and looked at me.

"What is it?"

"I'm bored. I'm sick of my leg being up here." I pouted.

"Janet, your leg isn't healed all the way yet. You have to keep it like that."

"Well, can we at least do something?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. We could talk." She sat up against the headboard.

"Okay. What do you want to talk about?"

"Ummm, tell me about your childhood. I want to know more about you."

"Oh okay. Well, there's not much to tell. I'm the oldest of six. I have four sisters and a brother. Uhhh. I'm originally from Maryland."

"I know that stuff. Tell me about you."

"What about me?"

"Ummm...okay you have a penis right."

"Yeah."

"How was it growing up with one?"

"Oh. It was okay I guess." She obviously didn't want to talk.

"Fine. Go back to sleep."

"I thought you wanted to talk."

"I do, but you don't so go back to sleep."

"Janet, don't be like that."

"I'm not being like anything. I just want to know more about you and you're not ready for me to. I'm not going to push you to talk about something you don't want to talk about." I grabbed my phone and started playing a game.

"What makes you think I don't want to talk about it?"

"Because you're giving me very basic answers."

"I just don't know what you want me to say."

"I just wanted to know more about you. You said you wanted to be with me and everything but I don't know that much about you."

"Look, I've just never done this okay. You're a psychologist, you do this all the time. I'm not big on talking about my personal life." I sat my phone down.

"Why?"

"I guess no one's ever asked."

"Well I'm asking now and I want to know you, not the you that you think you have to be." She took a breath.

"Alright. Ummm. Well. I didn't really like growing up."

"Why?"

"Because my dad didn't really like me. He did at first when he thought I was a boy but not long after they found out that I was a girl. He worked hard to get my mother pregnant so she'd have a boy, which was my brother. Then they kept having kids. He thought that if he had enough normal kids then no one would notice something was different about me."