Belahrin [ON HOLD]

Chapter Two

                                                            Chapter Two

“I can’t believe you’re alive!” my mother was crying, hugging me too tightly considering I’d just been in a car crash. “Thank God!”

    She pulled back to place wet kisses all over my face, making me flinch when her lips pressed against a newly acquired black-eye. She noticed, apologized, and returned to squeezing my sore body again.

    The collision between my BMW and the Seafood truck (which I learned it was after waking up in the hospital) hadn’t been as severe as one might think. Sure, I was hurt, just not in the really bad way.

    Aside from a few sore spots where my body had jerked into either the steering wheel or other hard parts of the car’s interior; I’d just ended up with a broken wrist. And … I reeked of fish. Which, for me, turned out to be the worst part. I’d have no trouble walking around looking like a complete bar brawl victim. Being a girly-girl I’d have no trouble making it work, but smelling of dead fish? Not really something a teenage girl would prefer.

    To be honest, what bothered me the most was that even though I myself hadn’t died, my car unfortunately had.

    I saw all of this as some sort of sign from above. Be a bitch, get treated like a bitch and have everyone say your nose is weird. Steal a tube of mascara from the department store, and say goodbye to your new car. Completely shatter someone’s world by exposing their darkest secret to their best friend, and end up with a broken wrist at the hospital. Even though I figured I’d gotten off easy at the latter punishment, I was still glad I was alive.

    For a second, when I first woke up and could feel actual pain in my body, I thought that maybe I finally would get to be myself. But as soon as my mother had entered the hospital, I’d started bawling, which was how she’d found me as she herself came rushing into my assigned room. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I really wasn’t that broken about all of this, so I let her believe I was astonished at the fact that I was still alive.

    “Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Let’s thank the big guy for the fact that the truck driver had some sense to swerve out of the way.”

    “Oh!” my mother sniffled. “No need for that. We’ve already bought the fish.”

    I frowned.

    “What?”

    My mother pulled pack, wiping her face, which looked horrible considering all the smudged makeup.

    “We paid for everything he lost,” she explained, just as I snapped up on someone being quite bored, and finally stopped sharing my mother’s tears. “Since he wasn’t the one responsible.”

    I felt like I should stick up for myself and call her a traitor or something. I mean, a mother shouldn’t just lay it all out there and blame her own daughter for ending up in the hospital. But she was right. I was the one who’d ignored the stop sign. And it wasn’t like she was mad at me, even though she probably should be, so I didn’t say anything about it.

    “That was nice of you,” I said, feeling guilty that I’d caused them to spend money on a whole lot of uneatable fish. “And I’m sorry about the car. I know I just got it, but–“

    “Who cares about the car?” my mother exclaimed, deciding to hug me again. “We’ll buy a new one just like it.”

    I knew that the moral thing to do in this situation would be to flat out refuse. After all, I’d done this myself. I shouldn’t just get a new one. And knowing my parents, if I asked them not to buy me a car, they wouldn’t. But I wanted a car, and I was still bored, so I figured ‘Spoiled little rich girl’ seemed like a good way of life right now. So instead of being the better person, I asked, “When can I go home?” in a very whiny tone.