Growing Pains

Chapter 39 - Hello, I'm trying my best

S K Y L A R

I was finishing my homework for Calculus at the kitchen table, struggling to get through my oatmeal, when mom came in, ready for work. On Mondays, mom left for her office at the same time as I left for school. She had insisted she could give me a ride, but I had insisted I could just take the bus, so she didn't have to go out of her way. That wasn't really why I didn't want her ride, but she had believed me all the same.

"What are you doing, honey?" she asked me this morning, a look of confusion on her face as she grabbed a banana from the fruit basket.

"I couldn't finish this last night," I told her, forcing another spoonful of oatmeal into my mouth, mostly so I didn't have to go on talking.

Mom's confusion dug wrinkles into her face, "What do you mean? You always finish your homework on time. You're so organized."

"I know, but half the class got an F on the last quiz, so the teacher sent us a bunch of homework to make up for it." This wasn't exactly a lie. Half of the class really did get an F, but the teacher hadn't really cared for it. Homework was the same as it always was, a couple of exercises I could usually do in less than half an hour, which was why I had decided I would just do it over breakfast today.

"What did you get on the quiz?" mom asked. I reached for it under the Calculus textbook and handed it to her. I had gotten an A. Mom was going to ask why not an A plus.

I answered before she could, "He doesn't give A plus to anyone."

"Why not?"

"I don't know."

"Right," she said, handing me back the quiz and kissing the top of my head. "Well, I have to go to work. Have a good day at school, honey."

"I will," I lied. I was a very good liar. I thought my mom knew but mostly pretended she didn't. I watched her walk out the door. After a couple of minutes, I heard her car start in the driveway.

I got back to my homework and abandoned the oatmeal. The real reason I had left Calculus for last minute was because I had spent the whole of last night doing the homework for English, even though Mr. Wyatt had said it wasn't really homework, but more of a challenge we could take on if we felt like it. It had been years since I felt like anything, but I had done it all the same.

The challenge was to write anything we wanted in the voice of Kurt Vonnegut. Except there was no word limit and so I hadn't known when to stop. I had just kept on writing. I stopped only to go have dinner, and then I went up to my bedroom again, and kept on writing some more. I had written well into the night and had woken up with dark circles under my eyes, which I had covered up with my mom's concealer. She hadn't noticed. I had printed the pages in my dad's copy machine just before breakfast. They were still warm in my backpack.

I finished my homework and then forced myself to finish my oatmeal too. I spent the bus ride to school thinking about those pages, stuck in between all my textbooks. In many ways, I felt like I was still writing them. My mind was still in that other place. I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen next, and how I would put it into words, not my words, but someone else's. Mr. Wyatt had given me permission to use someone else's voice for lack of one of my own, and I had. For hours last night, I had. 

I came back to the real world a few steps away from my locker, when I saw Luke Martin standing in front of it, cleaning whatever had been spray painted on it today. It had been a while since I had to clean it up myself, and so I had been under the impression that whoever usually did it, had finally grown tired of it. It turned out I was wrong. They were still at it. It was just that these days Luke was at it too.