Journey to Psitharis

Chapter 18

            That night I felt like cashing it all in. Thanks to my mom and what she did to us almost nine years ago I had gone from the victim of two bullies to public enemy number one. And the worst part was I could not tell a soul, not even her. If I had said anything to her she would have panicked, and I would have caught a huge lecture on how I had gotten her into trouble. Mr. Daniels knew what kind of girl I was. He knew I wouldn't tell anyone about his veiled threats or how the district had quietly railroaded me since the court of public opinion might have crucified them had they done anything in the open. I was stuck and I had no idea what to do, except finish my homework for my new class, which was log my shower time and how long I spent in the bathroom. Tomorrow's homework was learning to wash our clothes in, of all things, one of those new-fangled washing machines. Fun. I only hoped I could survive the section on how we had to separate colors from whites. Or maybe it was "proper fabric softener addition" that would do me in.

My sister was the one who noticed my foul mood that night during dinner. We were eating take-out pizza, and I had barely touched the slice on my plate. "What's with you?" she asked, mouth full of pepperoni and pizza crust. "You usually have one slice down by now."

I poked at my pizza and shoved my plate away from me. "I don't know; just not very hungry."

My mom looked at the uneaten slice of pizza and up at me. "Did something happen at school today? Did you have any problems?"

"No. It's just that..." I didn't know exactly what to tell her. "Mr. Daniels came back today."

"What?" Mom jumped up, pushing her chair against the wall. "That man got his job back? You just wait until I go to that school tomorrow! I'll murder him!"

"Mom, Mom!" I stopped her. The last thing I wanted was for her to go to that school and find out what he dug up on her. "His punishment is over. As far as I'm concerned if his brat daughter keeps her big mouth shut it's done. It's over with. Can we just leave it at that?" Mom slowly sat back down, thinking over what I just said.

Aurora agreed with me. "Yeah Mom. You go down there screaming at the principal and you'll just make it worse for both of us. They already think she's nuts; if you go down there and show your butt they'll just think it runs in the family. If Mer is okay with it, don't push it, all right?"

The truth was Aurora was more worried about her own reputation than she was worried about mine, but for the moment I appreciated her for helping me out. Mom calmed down, turning her attention back to her pizza. But not without asking one final time, "Are you sure? I don't want that ass giving you a hard time because you got him suspended."

I wanted to correct her, to tell her "we" got him suspended. But that might force us into territory I wanted to avoid. So I simply said, "He hasn't said anything to me so far. I think he's afraid to." It was a complete lie; I knew it, and there was a good chance Aurora knew it. But I knew she wouldn't contradict me, and neither of us wanted Mom at that school screaming her head off. "Anyway, the worst part of the school day was the class change. I got swapped out of art." I figured I had to tell her that part. I wouldn't be bringing any large-scale art projects home anymore and she'd probably notice.

"What?" Once again she was preparing to jump. I stopped her.

"No, no. It's a normal class change. Everybody got switched. We get more courses that way. I just don't like the class I got swapped to."

"What class was that?" She demanded.

I was honest. "Life skills. It's a very lame class. I thought if I was going to swap, might as well pick an easy-A class. But it's boring. They're teaching us how to wash laundry."