Keepers

Social Nuke

The next morning I woke up sore all over my body. My lip is majorly bruised and I have a black eye. Mom and Gaz were really freaked out when they came home yesterday. I told them the truth and explained that I was fine, it only looked bad. Mom had made Matzo ball soup as Gaz had requested and it was the first time in a long time that I had felt anything close to being a kid as I did eating that soup.

It was a recipe passed down to my mom from her mom and from her mom before her. A true recipe of generations of Jewish women making boiled bread balls taste like heaven on earth. I hoped there were leftovers in the fridge I could heat up before going to school instead of having my usual muffin.

I had to get dressed first and if anyone thought I'd be dressing to hide my gnarly bruising, they were very wrong. I put my hair up in a high ponytail and pull on a v-neck long sleeve shirt in my favorite shade of deep black and shimmy into a pair of flared jeans. As always my black chucks are my feet friends and I pull them on before heading down to the kitchen.

I can smell the food before I get there and there's a sort of static energy that it creates inside me. The little Zora, warm and happy, trying to break through cold Zora. The Zora that had put in place so many types of armor and barriers in the absence of this mom Gaza seemed to bring back.

"Hey Sweetie." Mom smiles so brightly that for a moment I almost allow myself to think her divine again.

'Mom' is 'God' on the lips of babes. I forget where the quote is from or if I'm remembering it right but find it appropriate.

I smile back at her and comment on how good whatever she was making smelled. She tells me to sit at the table and I do but not before grabbing a cup of coffee.

"Since when do you drink coffee?" She pulls her face into confusion.

"For a while now mom." I smile again. It reinforces just how much she's missed in the last year of trying to lose herself

Gaz comes down yawning and pours himself a cup of straight black coffee. I grimace and he laughs at me, sitting to my right at the kitchen table. He asks me how I slept and I have to admit that I slept well considering. I tell him about the Anatomy paper that I have to present today and how I'd be up there looking like I'd gotten 619'd. He reminds me that a running knee is a perfectly reasonable wrestling move it's just that in wrestling it's much cooler.

Mom brings us buttery biscuits with thick country milk gravy on top of them, sunny-side up eggs, and a plate piled with sausages to pick off of.

"Hey, do you have anything you want special this week? Like for dinner or anything." Gaz asks through a mouthful of biscuit and sausage.

"Not really." I shake my head and give him a shrug.

"C'mon what about like a dessert or something?" He presses and I sigh.

"I'm fine with whatever. Really." I push my plate away and grab my bag. "I gotta go. See you guys after school."

"But you barely ate anything." My mom protests, pointing at my plate. I stare at it for a second and then smile for her.

"It was delicious. Thanks." I turn and head out to my car and start on my way to school.

Just five minutes after walking through the school to my locker and people are starting to whisper about the state of my face. I couldn't blame them for that but it would be nice to go a second. I get my Anatomy book out and reorganize some things for the day, making sure my paper for Anatomy was in the front pocket of my binder.

"Someone said you got your ass beat." Camden leans against the locker beside me. A laugh escapes me. Of course, that's what they'd start saying. "Kelsey said some girl probably finally stood up to you when you hit on her boyfriend."