Out in the Wind

Chapter 13

"Dish! I want to know everything! Did he kiss you?" Mandy rambles as I sit down in class right in front of her.

I turn around, trying my best to shut her up before Mrs. Hamburgh walks into class, but I know it won't do me any good. When Mandy wants to know something there's no way that I can get out of it.

"I found out my mother is an overprotective nutcase," I mutter to her through my teeth while keeping an eye on Patrick who is going through what I assume to be his homework.

"I needed to say something to protect the secrets you are keeping," she says. "So... Are the two of you a couple yet?"

"No," I answer. "And I don't think we are gonna be. I actually like him and I don't want to drag him into my shit or the web of lies I had to continue with thanks to you."

I know I am sounding a little bit bitter and Mandy probably only tried to protect me, but I can't help myself. I am mad at myself. Maybe if I could have explained the whole truth to Patrick and told him why I want to wait with relationships there could have been an actual future for us. Now there is none actually. Even if we do get a house and my mom does get a job it wouldn't help at all, because then I would have to tell Patrick how both Mandy and I lied to him. He would probably never forgive me for that. I know that I would never forgive lies like that at all.

"Hey, I was just trying to protect you. You said you didn't want him to know anything," Mandy hisses back at me. I can see she's getting a little bit pissed.

Luckily I am saved from answering her as Mrs. Hamburgh walks into the classroom and unceremoniously starts writing equations on the black board. Within a minute the entire class is quite as we scribble down everything she writes, knowing that when she is giving class in this manner it usually means that we are up for a class test sometime soon.

***

It's been exactly 8 days, 4 hours, and 17 minutes since I left Patrick's house from our last date and he messaged me to ask for another and I haven't answered him back at all. In actual fact I have been staying clear of him at school as well, making sure I am almost late for class and making sure I am the first one out of there as well. It's not that I don't want to talk to him, but obviously he is looking for something a little bit more than what I can give him at this stage.

It's just that things at what I have come to think of as a temporary home hasn't been going to well.

"Cory, please get ready," mom pleads again as I push my phone back into my pocket after deciding yet again that I will not be texting Patrick.

"I am ready," I mumble.

"Then why don't you have shoes on yet?" she asks looking down at my feet in the grey socks.

"I'll bring them with and put them on in the car," I say, wanting to prolong leaving the motel room for as long as I can.

"And walk over the dirty floors and parking lot on your socks? I don't think so," she says with her hand in her hip, trying to indicate that she is being serious now.

"Okay..." I say with a longwinded voice, as slowly as possible putting on my shoes. "I just don't get why we should go there now."

"Because this motel isn't going to pay itself Cory. Please now, I can really use a bit of support right about now," mom says as she grabs her handbag of the nightstand and picks Chloe up. "I just want to get this over with as quickly as possible."

"It's just that nobody told me that I need to dig through the relics of my past in order to have dinner," I mumble under my breath to myself, but her swinging around tells me that she heard every single word I said.