Dark Night

Four Continents

Like for Thanksgiving, Grandpa showed up early with a mocha for me, and we made breakfast--pancakes, eggs, and bacon with a fruit salad. The smell of food woke everybody up--it was past nine, no reason for them to not be up, and we ate before opening presents. Grandpa detailed Starry to clean up, which peeved him. There wasn't even much to do, we'd cleaned as we went along. "Your sister and I made breakfast," Grandpa said, nicely but firmly. "The least you can do is put a few plates in the dishwasher." I went down the hall to get my presents, Grandpa following me to help.

"What happened to the canopy on the bed?" he asked, looking around.

"That soffit. It comes down too far, the posts are too tall."

"Didn't you used to have posters?"

"Yeah, but I can't use thumbtacks on the walls here, and for some reason that sticky stuff doesn't want to stick to the wall. I got tired of picking them up." I passed Grandpa a couple of presents to carry.

"That's a cute tree, punkin. Where did you get it?"

"Cass found a pattern for them, and Carol's dad cut the wood for us. We took an afternoon and spraypainted the wood and assembled it. We each made one."

"Clever," he praised me.

Mom and Dad gave me clothes for school and Starry an Amazon card for my Kindle, but Grandpa had given me some skateboarding clothes. There were black leggings with a reflective stripe on each outside seam, a pair of high top black Vanns skate shoes, a close-fitting teal hoodie that had Obey's rose logo down the sleeves and "Obey" stenciled across the hood in reflective ink. There was also a Zine white, lavender, and aqua windbreaker. It was awesome. I don't think Mom and Dad recognized the skater brands, because they didn't look perturbed. Everybody thanked me for my presents, although I thought Starry looked a little disappointed. Well, tough. Then we picked everything up and Dad turned on the TV to watch the Detroit team play the Christmas day game. Mom and Starry talked with Grandpa, and I put in a load of laundry with my new clothes so that I could wear them tomorrow when I went to the park. Then I kind of watched the game with Dad and texted my friends off and on until it was time to help Grandpa make the dinner. This year, we were having root vegetables roasted with a big chunk o' beef, Waldorf salad, and we were going to try Yorkshire puddings. I'd made gingerbread cake for dessert. The puddings turned out really well, and this time both my parents thanked me for helping with dinner. Even Starry said it was good, but I think my mom kicked him under the table because he jumped right before he said it.

The next day, Starry went back to the rink and Dad went back to work. Mom was going to show Grandpa around, which left me free to go to the park. I wore my new gear and the girls thought it was great and the teal looked fantastic with my hair. Mom and Grandpa showed up around noon to take me to lunch at a cute cafe. I didn't know they were going to do that, but fortunately I wasn't doing anything mildly dangerous; I'd stopped to talk to Zayna  and had my foot on the end of the board, pinning it to the ground.

My new schedule came in the mail; my math had been switched, gym was switched, and I'd been enrolled in both creative writing and psychology because the Spanish class didn't take new students second semester. English, history, and earth science remained the same, which was nice because I liked those teachers.

Grandpa went home the day after New Years, and I went back to school the day after that. It was so much nicer this semester. I had friends, pre-calc was making a lot of sense, and I liked both my new electives.Classes were mostly genuinely interesting and I was enthusiastic about them for more than one reason. Not just learning interesting information or getting good grades, but if I had difficult subjects and a lot of AP classes, my chances of getting one of those $2500 National Merit scholarships went up, not to mention other scholarships next year. We were studying poetry in English, including some song lyrics, which I'd never really considered to be poetry, and closing in on WWI in history. I was really interested in this because it seemed to be kind of a forgotten war, despite being called "The Great War."  In earth science, we were studying ecosystems, and just before Four Continents, Mr Tiller gave us an assignment to create a complex food web for an ecosystem. It was a partners assignment, so John and I teamed up again, choosing Madagascar. With any other partner, I'd be afraid that he'd use the competition to weasel out of the work, but not John. Before he left, he gave me information on the plant and insect life, and I'd do the animals and show the connections between everything. It was a good choice, because there's so much about Madagascar that's unique. And I really worked hard on it, going beyond just the usual producers, consumers, decomposers, blah blah, but specifically around the major rivers and mountains and forests and coasts, but also urban wildlife, showing specifically what ate what.