(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 10; tap tap

"It looks lovely, Mrs. Maxwell."

"Oh, please call me Julia."

Jaylin's mother fiddled the oven mitts from her fingers and set them down on the kitchen counter. It was beyond Jaylin how they had fit four people in their tiny kitchen, let alone how they managed to cram so much food on a table sized for a single person.

Above all else, what Jaylinfailed to understand most was why a couple so clean and immaculate were seated across from him in his home. His cluttered, tiny hobbit hole of a home. His mother had gone as far as scrubbing the stains from five year's thanksgiving past off of the tile floor, but the place still looked and felt like a dump. This was no place for people like these—people who dressed like they made six figures a year and actually did something important for a living.

There was a woman on the left. Flora, she had introduced herself as. She was cute—Jaylin thought so the second she'd walked in. She had small shoulders, green almond eyes, and a chic blonde hair cut that cut straight along her nape but curled and swirled and bobbed in a way that softened her. Her dress was low cut—too low, and her bust popped proudly from the v-shaped gap in the neck. Jaylin had been ripping up pieces of napkin and rolling them into little snowballs to stop himself from staring.

Clasping her hand was her husband, Eduardo, who Jaylin found was just as difficult to keep his eyes off of. He was tan—darker than Quentin, with thick brows, a deep crease in his cheek when he smiled, and a Spanish accent that rumbled his tongue with every R he came across. He was looking to Flora like there were stars in the emeralds of her eyes. "We apologize for not bringing dessert as we promised, Flora took a little longer than expected."

"Oh hush." Flora pushed her hand to her nose and blushed. "I was eager to impress. But yes, thank you for having us Julia. I know this was sudden."

"It couldn't have come at a better time!" Jaylin's mother said, throwing an arm around her son. She pulled him into a hug so tight it hurt. "Jaylin, these people have a surprise for you."

Jaylin took his eyes off the charred chicken on his plate and looked to the young couple. Flora had her lips pursed tight, Eduardo with an arm scarfing her shoulders.

"Jaylin, my husband and I are volunteers for a program that works to give the underprivileged a secondary education. With your mother's medical status and your family's annual income, and considering your extracurricular activities in high school, you were one of the top contenders on our list."

Eduardo butted in, giving Flora's shoulder a squeeze, "We want to send you to college. Tuition free. All you need to do is work for us. Part time, of course. Consider it a work-study."

Jaylin stopped chewing on his food. He stopped trying to squeeze his way out of his mother's hug, and just stared. "I don't get it," he said finally. "What do extracurriculars have to do with anything? My grades were shit in high school."

His mother smacked him on the back and Jaylin choking on the dry chicken in his mouth. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Jaylin."

"We're looking for someone with the passion to learn, not the ability to read and take tests well," Flora said. "You were on the soccer team in high school, correct?"

Jaylin nodded.

Eduardo joined in, "Then you tried art, then orchestra. Swimming, key club, FFA. You had no prior experience with any of this, but you wanted to try. You wanted to learn, that's why you caught our eye."

Jaylin wanted to butt in. He wanted to object, to explain that he only joined so many extracurriculars because it meant skipping those clubs, running off to meet Tyler at the park two blocks away. It meant his mother never questioning where he was when he didn't show up back home until eight in the afternoon.