Carrier

Chapter 2

Thankfully, my dad wouldn’t be home for about a week because he was on a business trip that was supposedly pretty important.

After going back to lying on my back and counting cracks for a while I decided to go to sleep. 

I liked sleep; it was the perfect break from it all.  I wasn’t suicidal or anything, despite the accusations from my parents.  And school counselors.  And teachers.  And the checkout people at the local grocery store.  And former bosses.  And prospective bosses.  And my (miniscule amount of) friends.  Quite a few people, now that I think about it.

I just liked thinking about death.  I mean, was it not awesome that you could be on Earth, living and breathing and loving and watching YouTube or whatever people spend their lives doing and than just not.  I find that infinitely interesting.  Thus, I talked a lot about it.  I mean if you liked the band The Mountain Goats, you wouldn’t hide it, you would want to talk about it with other people, right?  I would, so, I like thinking about death, is it wrong of me to want discuss that with other people?

Anyways, eventually, I slept.

**********

The next morning I got up and out of bed at the last possible second, in order to annoy my mother as much as possible.  She had almost resorted to literally plowing through my door to get me up.

As, I didn’t really want that to happen, I exited my room at the last possible second, to find her fuming outside my door.  I could almost see the smoke coming out of her ears.

“Good morning,” I said pleasantly, enjoying the look of rage on her face.  Her hair was up on top of her head in a messy bun, parts of it falling into her eyes.  She wore a plain bathrobe and had a cup of coffee in her hand.  I was always struck by how average she looked in the morning, half-falling apart like the rest of us normal people.  But then she would transform into the pastel-wearing monster she was during the day, and I would lose any of the respect for her I may have gained.

I then strode past her easily and proceeded down the stairs.

I walked down, hand on the railing as always because there was no way I was going to take any chances.  Falling down the stairs seems like a really wimpy way to go.

I got downstairs and grabbed a quick bite to eat, toast with plain old butter. 

As I just finished eating my mother came back downstairs, heels clicking pretentiously down the stairs.

She looked a lot more put together than she had earlier.  She now had on makeup and a sophisticated pantsuit, she really didn’t need to wear a pantsuit, it’s not like she worked or anything, she just schmoozed with people here at the house.  She wore the aforementioned pretentious heels, navy blue, matching the pantsuit in a perfect and pretentious fashion (I seem to like the word pretentious when describing my mother, from now on just add it on without me writing it.)  Her hair was down and lightly curled, her blonde highlights shining much more than my hair ever did naturally.

“Good morning, Sweetheart,” she said, our argument from earlier obviously having left her mind so as to not distract her from important things, like whatever (remember to add pretentious) social gathering she was hosting today.  Or what charity she was donating to, which would normally be, like, the most amazing thing ever, my mother being generous, imagine.  However, she only did it to make herself seem more generous and gracious than was actually the case, which kind of negated the whole, my-mother-is-now-a-normal-person-who-understands-that-the-world-doesn’t-revolve-around-her thing. 

“Well, are you ready to go to school?” she asked pleasantly, leaning casually against the counter as I shoved textbooks into my bag violently.

“Well, I’m not lugging these things around for fun, y’know,” I replied, getting the last one to fit, the pages were a little bit bent, but, whatever it was just a book.

She looked at me disapprovingly before sighing and snatching her keys off where they rested on the table.

I sighed in return and walked behind her unwillingly out the front door and to the car.

I pulled open the passenger seat door, and threw my bag in violently (I become very violent when it comes to school) and swung into the seat after it. 

By the time I had settled myself in the seat, making as much noise as possible, my mother had started the car.  She stared at me, then at my seatbelt, then at me.  I gave her a little puppy dog face, “What?”  I asked innocently.

“Your seatbelt,” she replied.  Enunciating each word almost comically.

“Oh, right, that.  Thanks for reminding me dear mother, you know how forgetful I get.”  I said obnoxiously.

I don’t really know why, but I really loved making my mother angry.  There was something very satisfying in the redness of her face and how her eyes were fighting a constant battle.  Like, one part of them was like, “Let’s push her out of the car.  No one will ever know.”  And the second one’s like, “No, remember?  We have a pretentious reputation to uphold.”  And then the first one replies, “Yeah, but, it’s just so tempting.  It’d be super easy, we could like hide her in garbage bag and then throw her in the river.”  And then the first one says, “Since when is there a river around here?”

And then it goes on with EP1 (eye part one) trying to convince EP2 (you can figure it out) that it’d be super easy to kill me and then EP2 reminding EP1 why it (they?  She?  I’m not really sure of the correct pronoun in this situation) can’t murder me.

These are the types of things that go on in my brain regularly.