Goal Oriented

Chapter 5

The rain isn't too bad on the walk home. What's worse is the thunder and lightning. 

I've never been scared of storms, but the piercing howling rattles the ground that I walk on, and the trees are swaying dangerously too much. 

My bike sits in the garage with a flat front tire. If I'd been smart enough to pump it up on the holidays, maybe I wouldn't be walking through layers of mud. 

The thin athletic jacket in my backpack is covering both my body and the laptop that I'm hugging to my chest. It seems relatively dry, but my bag hadn't, so I needed to move it. My maths book is probably already leaking ink, and I'm not sure how well the borrowed biology textbooks will fare. 

"My. Life. Sucks," I grit out as I walk down the muddy hill. 

And then, just my luck, my brown school shoe slips on the soaking wet ground and I fall on my butt. 

Good lord. Could this day get any worse? 

Well, apparently, yes, because as I'm slowly getting up, trying to protect my laptop, a car comes trundling down the hill. A black, shiny, brand new Hyundai i30, in fact, which belongs to none other than Mr James Hunters. 

Yipee. 

I scrape the mud off my back quickly and continue walking down the hill, hoping he won't notice me in the pouring rain. 

Humiliated, embarrassed, angry and soaking wet, I continue my walk of shame and, just my luck, the car slows a little as it passes. I guess that's better than him hurtling past at full speed and saturating me with the run-off dribbling quickly down the dirty road. Walking faster now, I keep my head down. 

Don't entertain him. Just keep walking. He's not worth your time, Daisy. 

I hear the window winding down. Something hard hits me on the shoulder, thumping to the ground. Before I get the chance to turn around, the car's already speeding away. 

A black object lies on the ground next to me. It gets picked up by the water swirling in the mud, so I quickly lean down to grab it. 

The mud tickles my fingers and I screw up my nose. I'm completely skeptical. What is this? Is James truly stooping low enough to continue to taunt me. I need a break. 

I shake the mud off the object in a few quick heaves. 

It's an umbrella. 

Oh. I mouth, but no sound comes out. 

Is this an olive branch? Surely not. Even if it were, I wouldn't accept it. 

Despite this, I still unfurl the dark material and pop the umbrella open. 

"This means nothing, Daisy," I mutter to myself as I continue my long trek home, finally able to see what's in front of me rather than batting the rain out of my eyes. "If he were really being nice he would've picked you up."

***

The walk back home gives me some much-needed time to think. 

James' insults were running havoc in my mind. I might've been able to brush them off had they been petty and shallow - making digs about how I can't use a crowbar or can't kick a football. That would've been fine. 

But he'd struck a nerve. 

My situation, I knew, wasn't ideal. With no father figure, Mum and Paul had raised me. And when she'd died when I was nine, Paul and Hamish were all I had. Then James himself had left, and my worldview, as a thirteen-year-old kid, had shifted into something way too cynical and pessimistic for my age. Hamish's death a few months ago was the final nail in the coffin. Paul had me in his care, using his small nurse's salary to look after me, the bills and the booze. Call me crazy, but with a half-absent father figure and no other family members, it hasn't exactly been easy to seek other human connections without the fear of losing anyone I love.