Loose Ends

Chapter 45

"Part of me kinda hates her even more now," said a girl as she glanced angrily at her smart phone and took a sip of her orange juice.

"For what?" asked another girl at the table, picking up her hash brown patty and taking a bite.

"'Cuz her kid's adorable," the first girl answered glumly. A third girl at the table snorted into her milk and had to wipe her mouth quickly before milk dribbled down her chin.

"You make it sound like some great tragedy, Kim." Kim glared at her.

"Oh lighten up, Kim," said the second girl who'd spoken. "As hot as Ricky is there was no way his kid wouldn't be cute. And it's not like Amy's ugly or anything either." Kim narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"You're telling me you never once thought their kid might be ugly since we've never seen him at any school events?" The second girl shrugged. "Well excuse me for being human Saint Tamie." Tamie could tell Kim was being sarcastic and just stuck her tongue out at her before taking a bite of her breakfast sandwich.

At the Cooperstein residence Madison had just pulled herself out of bed. She stretched as she made her way over to her desk and woke up her laptop. Once it woke up, she logged into Facebook and then headed to her closet to find something comfortable to wear, knowing she had no plans to see Justin today so she could look as scrubby as she wanted to. Once dressed Madison made her way back to her desk and sat down. Her eyes widened with surprise as she saw several pictures of Amy, Ricky and John from last night at the football game. Her eyes narrowed with irritation as she began reading some of the comments. While quite a few girls, and even some guys, commented about how cute John was, quite a few Grant students thought Amy and Ricky had never taken John to a school event because he was ugly. Madison felt torn. On the one hand she should warn Amy that there were pictures of John floating around Facebook and who knows where else, but on the other, weren't they trying to avoid getting caught up in gossip and drama? Eventually Madison reasoned that Amy deserved a heads up about this since it involved John and she grabbed her phone and sent a text to her and Lauren: Peep took pics of John at the game last nite. They're on FB :S

Amy woke up to the sound of her phone vibrating. She grabbed it sleepily and saw that it was a text from Madison. She rolled onto her back as she opened it and then sat up abruptly when she read it. Amy jumped out of bed and woke up her laptop, logging into Facebook to see exactly what was going on. While Amy wasn't friends with a lot of the Grant High student body, she had joined the school's band group and most of the student body hadn't bothered to change their post settings to friends only so Amy was able to both look at some of the pictures that had been posted and read the comments made about them. While Amy became slightly angry when she read people's assumptions that John was ugly, she soon realized that most of the negative and neutral comments were posted simply because there was apparently a lot of curiosity about what her and Ricky's kid looked like. After several minutes Amy logged off and picked up her phone to text Ricky. Madison had given her a heads up and it was her turn to do the same. She opened Madison's text and forwarded it to Ricky.

Ricky felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket as he picked up another box to flatten it. He dropped it and checked his phone, sighing with irritation as he read the text.

"What's wrong?" Ben asked.

"I'm not sure yet. Probably just people being stupid," Ricky said. While he and Ben finished their flattening task, Adrian was getting the hang of the order system at work and actually enjoying it so far. Like Ben, she was still unaware of the nonsense playing out on Facebook. At the end of his shift, Ricky headed upstairs to shower and change before driving over to his mom's to pick up John. When he arrived, he found the two of them playing on the floor in the living room; John spotted Ricky first.