Triple Dog Dare You

Chapter 9

I fall back on the couch and cover my face with my hands. I see from the corner of my eyes that Laura is coming to sit down beside me.

“Are you okay?” Laura asks me.

“No, I’m not okay,” I answer her. I take my hands off my face and turn my head to look at her.

“What did he say?” She asks.

“He said that it was sounding like I didn’t trust him because I kept asking him all these questions after I’ve spoken with Jack,” I reply. “And maybe he’s right.”

“No, no,” Laura says passionately. “You can’t let somebody make you feel bad about yourself. It isn’t your fault that Jack is such a jackass.”

“It isn’t Jack’s fault,” I say.

“Yes it is,” Laura answers. “If your boyfriend is hiding something from you and he knows what it is, then the honourable thing to do is to tell you exactly what it is. He shouldn’t be playing around with your emotions and giving us cryptic messages.”

“I suppose,” I agree.

Laura looks at her watch and gets up. “I’m sorry, Mads, but I have to go. I promised my sister I’d meet her this afternoon. Call me later if you get an update on him, whether or not he’s come around or not.”

She gives me a hug, packs up her stuff and leaves my house. I turn on the TV and close my eyes and relax into the couch. I’m not even watching the show that’s playing. I’m replaying everything that’s happened in the past few weeks. I can’t believe how my life has been turned upside down in this sort amount of time. My romantic life has turned from my having a crush on the same guy for a year and honestly thinking that he’d never ask me out and then one day the unimaginable comes true and he asks me out. I guess the saying is true; nothing is ever as it seems. I thought that I was going to be entering a typical teenage relationship with my boyfriend and focusing on my eleventh grade year. However, instead of worrying about studying for my upcoming math test, I’m stressing over whether my boyfriend of under a month is hiding something from me. My life has done a complete 180 degree turn and is now going in a completely opposite direction.

I’m sitting in the living room with my eyes closed and the lights dimmed when I hear the door open and then close. I don’t open my eyes and I hear the (semi) familiar voices of my parents. A few seconds after the entered the house, they come into the living room.

“Mady, what are you doing?” My mother asks. She turns the lights on full blast, causing me to squint against the bright light.

“I’m relaxing Mom,” I answer. I sit up on the couch.

“Why do you need to relax?” My father asks. “You’re in high school, what could possibly be so difficult that you need to sit here with the lights dimmed?”

That’s one of the things about my parents that has always annoyed me. They seem to forget what it was like to be in high school. They act like teenagers are being huge whiners when they are dealing with stress at high school.

“Don’t you have to work today?” My mother asks from up in the kitchen.

My mother thinks that I work every day or something. “No Mom, they’re actually cutting down on everyone’s hours during their construction of the grocery store.”

“Well that’s unfortunate,” My mother replies.

Not really. I say in my head. My job is actually one of the better jobs available to teenagers and I’m grateful that I have the job but I have so many other things on my plate, like trying to maintain my 90% average, that working twenty hours a week is not really enjoyable for me. I would prefer to have my hours cut down and have more time for my other interests. It was really important for my mother that both my sister and I get a job. I think it makes her a little more comfortable that we spend time in a safe area, after what happened to Jesse. I think it’s also hard for her to look at me and not feel sad because I look the most like my brother. I have a startlingly similar resemblance to my deceased brother.