Growing Pains

Chapter 6 - There was nothing tempting about a bad boy

Mom frowned, throwing her bag over her shoulder, "I'm not paying your phone bill."

I almost choked on my cereal, "Is that my book?"

My mom smirked, "Yes."

"Why are you taking it to work with you?"

"Well, it kept you up until 3 a.m, didn't it? It must be good. I'm gonna give it a try." She was way too amused by all of it. I wasn't amused at all. I did want her to read it but not before I did.

"I haven't even finished it yet."

Mom smiled, "Don't worry. I'll tell you how it ends."

"Mom!" I was finished with my cereal and up on my feet, reaching for my book. My mom snatched her bag away before I could reach it.

"Zoey, we've been over this," she said, walking to the kitchen door. "You can't go to bed that late on school nights. I am not sitting in front of any of your teachers again to explain why my daughter slept through their classes. I don't even know how to explain-"

"It's a really good book," I tried, but something told me I wouldn't get to finish it.

"Oh, I bet it is."

I grabbed my schoolbag, "Can you at least tell me what you thought of it?"

She smiled, moving to kiss my cheek before heading off to work, "I will."

I stayed still for a while, basking in her perfume before it was gone.

"I do love you, mom!" She was out the door already, but I could still hear her.

"More than all those boy bands?"

I almost laughed, "Know your limits!"

I doubted she heard it. I could hear her car engine coming on. I looked at the reminder on my phone instead – ask mom for concert tickets. Well, that hadn't gone well. I tapped the remind me tomorrow option and slid the phone into my pocket. All of it felt too much like yesterday when I had done the exact same thing.

I washed my cereal bowl in the sink and set it on the rack to dry. I had no idea how I was going to pay for the tickets. All my savings had gone into the schoolbooks for this year and the money I had made this summer at the ice cream parlor was untouchable. Mom said so. Apparently, college was more important than most concerts. I was still gathering the right arguments to refute that.

Outside, piles of leaves gathered on the sidewalks and the September sun hid under the brownstone apartment buildings across the street. I unlocked my bike from the railing and climbed on it, putting my headphones over my head. Then I pressed play, and just like that, life was good.

I was convinced the classroom clocks had been made in hell, convinced they somehow altered time and five minutes feel like fifty, ten like a hundred. There was consistency but an unholy one.

History class dragged on like a sloth. I wrote down 20 minutes under Daisy's 25 minutes. On our good days, we tracked time in less petty ways. I believed it had started with us keeping track of every half an hour that went by in class and ended with us breathing in relief with victories as small as five minutes gone.

"Oh," I remembered. "I figured I can't ask my mom for the tickets."

I wasn't exactly taking the title of most likely to slay a dragon home any time soon. Daisy's head had been spasming for the last half an hour, every time falling a little bit closer to the top of our desk. I didn't want to have to watch her head split open, but I couldn't just hold her head for her, so I just kept coming up with things to say to keep her awake.