Whispers In The Dark

Reximus

Reximus

"Hey, Lily," I smiled and shut the front door behind me.

The panting German Shepherd greeted me happily, sniffing at my pants and licking my hand.

"Want a treat?" I asked.

Her ears perked at the word 'treat', and she took off toward the kitchen, turning back only once to make sure that I was following her. I pulled a bone-shaped treat from a box full of them and waited for her to sit before giving her one, along with plenty of petting and praise. My mom also dropped a piece of roast beef as Lily walked by. She ate it quickly. Lily was a spoiled girl, that was for sure.

I gave my mom a quick, one-armed hug before sitting in one of the stools at the wooden island and pulling out my Algebra two book. I groaned.

"Homework?" Mom asked. "On the first day?"

I shook my head, flipping to a random page and just staring at the gibberish. "No, I have a quiz next week. A quiz!"

She merely shrugged her shoulders and went back to looking through a magazine. "You're good at math, Rex," she reasoned.

"Yeah," I agreed, "but I don't want to do anything. I want to go back to summer."

"It still is summer."

"No, it's not. Summer ends when school ends, that is the actual truth of the seasons." I skimmed through the pages, looking at the titles of the sections and figuring that it counted as studying.

"Suck it up, Rex," she laughed. "You have ten more months to go."

I groaned, again, and slammed the book closed, opting to just scribble on my notebook, instead.

She slowed her page-flipping, looking up at me, her forehead creasing. "So, no one bothered you today?"

I kept my eyes on my scribbling. "No. I mean, one of the guys tried to, but some girl helped me and then we hung out at lunch."

Her face brightened. "You made a friend?"

I rolled my eyes. "God, give me a gold star, why don't ya?" I mumbled. Louder, I said, "Yes, Mom. I made a friend. Her name is Victoria."

"That's great!" she exclaimed. "You guys should hang out here sometime!"

I exhaled. "Mom, we just met today. It's nothing big."

"What's she like?" she gushed.

Wow. It was great to know how drab my social life seemed to my mom. The worst part was that she was right. I hardly ever made friends, and when I did, something always got in the way of us hanging out together.

"You guys would probably think she's weird," I muttered. "Anyway, she has pink hair, and--"

"Pink hair?" Mom asked doubtfully.

"Well, yeah, but it's kind of fading back into blonde, so it's really light, like cotton-candy, and you can see that some of it is growing back black." I explained. Continuing, I said, "She has her lip pierced twice, which she told me are called snakebites, and she has a bunch of ear piercings. She sounds like one of those gets-into-trouble-all-the-time kind of girls, but she's really nice and she helped me avoid getting beat up today."

My mom looked a bit cautious, but at the same time was happy to hear that she helped me. "That's good." She smiled. "I still want to meet this girl. I have to see her pink hair for myself."

I rolled my eyes. "Maybe eventually, Mom. Let's just get through the first week of school, yeah?"

Get through the first week; that seemed like a reachable goal.

At least I hoped so.