Frigid Flora

thirty-six - court cases

Chapter Thirty-Six

Flora's P.O.V

There are very few places I can't picture myself in. This might be because I often find myself in the most peculiar of settings. Take, for example, the time I got into a turf war with the local stray cat around the back of my house. Or the time I ended up stuck in a portable toilet hyperventilating for ten minutes as people queued and shouted outside whilst I contemplated how I was to break free without tipping the contents of the toilet over my head, like you see in the films when the entire stall falls over, only to realise that I'd forgotten to unlock the door and hadn't been stuck at all. Or that very fresh memory of running down the streets in my pyjamas in search of the police station as my shins felt like they were frying from the recent inferno I'd been forced to run through in order to prevent my sudden death. Funnily enough, all incidents would have seemed fairly plausible to me prior to them actually occurring taking into account that it was, after all, me in question.

A place I couldn't picture myself in? Probably court. My experiences were serious but never had they reached quite such a level. Which leads me to the next obscure scene I had in fact found myself in: court. It had taken months to get there, but this was finally it. This was the final stand-off and I couldn't be more nervous.

Lots of things had changed since prom night. Unsurprisingly, most of those changes were found in Parker and I. They varied from minor alterations such as our group's bruises, cuts and broken bones collectively healing up so we didn't look like quite such a bunch of thugs anymore (not that I ever really passed as thug), to the start of Parker's temporary job and the return of his father.

It was a big surprise when my mother offered Parker a job at her bakery. Parker, though he hadn't yet admitted it, was thrilled to be shadowing her and receive such professional training without his past crimes deterring the boss. Not only because this acted as my mother at long last accepting him into the fold, but because as it turned out he genuinely enjoyed the practice. I'd always known he was passionate about cooking in spite of the disaster that had been Olivia's birthday cake - granted we'd been a little distracted upstairs when he'd made it in his sister's memory - and so it almost made me as happy as he was to see him that way, with his life sorted out even if my own wasn't.

I didn't know what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do with my time yet. If my experience from the previous year had taught me anything it was never to work in a grocery store when your boyfriend had a tendency to steal you away alongside the produce being sold. Despite neither one of us lacking in brains, the hectic events we'd undergone had understandably shown in the results of our sad attempt at sitting exams - or sitting in classes, period. Parker intended to go straight into work anyway and was more than content working nervously alongside my mother doing what he enjoyed. I, however, was still clueless.

But that didn't matter right now. It was a hurdle I refused to tackle until the much larger, closer, and most formidable of any I'd been faced with yet had been leapt over - a feat of which I was desperately hoping would be accomplished with minimal injury.

The matter of Mr Heywood was an even greater surprise. Parker's father, as it so happened, had been studying law in his time spent away from him. It was the only thing Mrs Heywood had known about him after he'd left - his ambition - and called on the off-chance he might have made something of himself. He had. Instead of working in a rundown music store like he had been prior to his abrupt departure he was now a successful lawyer, and in spite of his absence and previous disregard of Parker was more than happy to offer his services free of charge to support his son and friends. It was the least he could do, apparently, after how he had dealt with things. It came as nothing short of a miracle.