𝐈𝐍 𝐌𝐘 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌, sex education

𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐧 - 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

instead of verbally answering, otis flipped to the very last page of the newspaper. thea raised her eyebrows, knowing that the last page is where the crossword puzzles usually were. she was expecting him to pull out a pen and start doing the puzzle, but instead, he ripped the page out and crumbled it into a ball. he then threw it over at the small trash ben by the fridge, completely missing it. jean looked at her son in bewilderment before she looked over at thea, the youngest milburn continuing to eat her toast while otis went back to reading the paper.

"you've been very quiet lately, sweetheart." jean pointed out as she walked over towards the table, placing her mug down. thea didn't say anything, knowing that she was talking to otis. "is there anything wrong?" jean finished, looking between her children.

otis quickly placed the paper down onto the table before he reached down and grabbed his bag. he then stood up and went over to his mother, pulling something out of his back before he slammed it onto the table. thea's eyebrows raised when she realized that otis had printed out every page of their mother's book but had crossed something out. instead of it saying profile of a post-pubescent boy with sexual phobias, it now said profile of my son with sexual phobias.

"i made some notes on your book. the one about me. you should consider using a thesaurus in the future. your vocabulary is very limited." otis told jean, pulling his book bag onto his back before he started for the door.

"otis, let's talk about this in a calm and rational way." jean tried, trailing behind him.

"not calm! not rational!" otis yelled before he stormed out the door.

"we'll talk about it later, darling." jean called after him.

"i don't think you will." thea mumbled, standing up from the table as she stuffed the rest of her toast into her mouth. "i should probably follow after him or i'll be riding by myself."

"yeah." jean nodded, watching her daughter walk towards the door. "you're not upset with me either, are you?"

"not really." thea answered, shrugging her shoulders. "you didn't write about me, you wrote about him. but, i gotta go, mum. love you."

"love you, too." jean mumbled.

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𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐀 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐒𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐈𝐍 office, sitting between maeve and otis. the three of them had been called into the office immediately after they had gotten to school, which had confused all of them. thea's leg had been anxiously bouncing, it brushing up against maeve's every few seconds. thea didn't seem to notice, too busy trying to stop herself from having an outburst of feelings in that moment. but maeve had noticed, her eyes landing onto thea's leg. she knew that thea only did that when she was anxious or worried about something. she probably thought that being sent to the office would send her back to the states.

"look, about what happened -" thea started, her voice shaky as she looked down at her leg, forcing it to stop.

"i'm over it -" maeve interrupted, picking up on how thea had crossed her feet to try and stop her leg from bouncing.

"well, i'm not." thea whispered, her leg immediately starting to bounce again. "jackson had came to us and asked us to help him get with you, but because we were closer, he ended up picking me. he stuffed the money into my hand and i tried to give it back to him, maeve. i promise you, i tried. then - then i went into the locker room to try to give it back to him, but he just kept. . . talking about how great the sex was and comparing you to inanimate objects. i just - i snapped, and started talking about you, and he - he used that. he never took the money back, so i gave it to you. i never intended to help him. he's like. . . some sort of jedi and -"