The Tough Girls Club

Chapter 14 Clara's P.O.V: My Life In A Nutshell

       Clara's P.O.V:

         We got home at ten o'clock. I was tired, and the next morning when I woke up it was twelve a.m. I walked downstairs and my mom was sitting at the kitchen table with a strange man. He looked  ten years younger than her, and he was attractive. Like model atracttive.  When mom saw me, she turned towards me with that fake 'I'm such a great mom that doesn't hate her kid and bring random models home' look and gestured for me to come sit down.

        "Clara, come here please," she said, ushering me to the table.

        "Clara, Antonio. Antonio, Clara," mom says, gesturing from me to him and then from him to me. Antonio lifts up his hand for a shake and I take it. It feels sweaty, like an ice soda that's been left too long in the sun.

        "Pleased to meet you," he says.

        "Sit down, Clara, have some breakfast," mom says. The table is set with a spread of eggs, toast, pancakes, and bacon. This is what happens every time mom brings someone new home. She ususally just leaves me with some slightly stale cheerios and strawberries.

        I grab a plate and quickly scarf down some bacon, a pancake, and a few eggs.

        "Hey mom, gotta go," I say, putting my dishes in the sink.

        "Whoa whoa whoa, sit down." My creator obviously thinks that I'm commiting some kind of mortal sin by rushing from the table. I sit down again, for lack of anything else to do.

        "Why don't you tell Antonio a little about yourself?"

        I start pulling at a loose thread on the corner of our blue tablecloth.

        "What about how you love to dance?"

        I hate dancing. My mom forced me to take it up when I was five and desperately wanted to take fencing. But my mom somehow has it in her head that it's my passion, or whatever. What I really like is astronomy, but I've never told her that. I don't think she'd really care. She'd probably tell me astronomy was for old dudes in white lab coats with crazy hair.

        'Well, I've taken a couple of classes, and I won first solo in my category at a competiton last year, and yeah."

        I continue to work on the thread. The edge of the tablecloth is starting to unravel.

        "Is that all?" Mom says. She's smiling, and her voice is chirpy, but her eyes tell me she's gonna kill me when her runway-ready boyfriend is gone.

        "Well, I've been taking classes since I was two. I can show you something, If you want."

        "That would be lovely," the boyfriend responds.

        I can see on mom's face that I've done the right thing. I get up from the table and do a short, minute-long dance. It's one of the easier ones, but it's complicated enough that it can wow people who don't do dance, or aren't very advanced in it. The boyfriend claps, but I can tell he's not all that impressed.

        "Can I go now, mom?"

        "Yes, you can go." Clearly I've filled the meet-the-boyfriend quota.

        I run upstairs, relieved to be free of that situation.

        "Crazy kid," I hear her say from behind me. Perhaps I've embarrassed her. Oh well.

        I change into a tee shirt and shorts, putting a bikini underneath so I can change. I stuff a tee shirt in my backpack that mom hates because it advertises a band that she thinks is just noise. She's tried to ban me from listening to them, but Dad loves them, so whenever I go to his house we play all their albums. He even took me to see their concert. They had a giant fight about it later, but it was still a cool experience.