Relying On Ben and Jerry (Waltham #1)

Chapter One: The Voyage Home

Ten minutes later, I ripped my headphones off.

“I’m bored,” I whined.

“Too bad,” my father growled as my mother chimed, “We could play a car game!”

Felton leveled an acidic glare up at me that I read as something along the lines of I hate you, and you’re adopted.

My mother leaned forward eagerly, tapping her long red nails on the dashboard. “I spy!” she chanted, brightening as she looked around frantically. “I spy something brown! No, wait, we already passed it. Pink! Hurry!”

“The car next to us?” I guessed.

She sighed in disappointment. “No, Lena. There was a small flower on the side of the road by a memorial. Did you miss it?”

“Oh,” I replied as Felton smirked to himself. “I must have. What a tragedy.”

“It was cute,” my mother remarked offhandedly as she went back to scouting, her eyes scanning the highway like an assassin searching for a target. “What’s something black in the day and black at night?”

“Lena’s soul?” Felton guessed. I leveled a punch at his crotch, but he managed to maneuver away in time. “Mom, Lena went for a ball shot!”

“Good girl,” my mother told me, turning around to smile at me in pride.

I took a gander around at my family—my brother upside down in the seat, my mother with her too-big hair, my father squat and balding and glaring out the windshield—and contemplated just jumping out of the speeding car and ending my misery.

My phone beeped, and my hand went to it automatically. Problem was, Felton had already snatched it up into his bear paws disguised as hands and slid it open, clicking a button. I unhooked my seatbelt to attack, but he was already whistling in appreciation under his breath, saying, “Remind me to thank your little red headed friend for sending a picture of her bra.”

I dove at him, and after about thirty seconds of scuffling, the car veered off into the side of the road.

And that is how I ended up walking on the side of the highway in a foot of snow.

~*~

Once upon a time, there was a house. A normal sized house. It looked Victorian style and it was angularly cut and overall pretty, the color a light sky blue. It had probably been there for a while, but maybe not too long. On the lawn there was a sad looking oak tree filled with snow and not a lot of leaves, and it looked like if a tornado came it would be picked up and chucked all the way out past Kansas. When my dad pulled up two hours after picking my sorry hide up after walking along the highway for enough time for them to have lunch, I wasn’t very pleased with life in general, and I certainly didn’t have the energy to look at the house like it was a sacred landmark.

My mother sighed like it was Channing Tatum. “Isn’t it cute?”

My brother, who doesn’t have the word cute in his vocabulary, just grunted and swung his backpack around, hoping to clock me in the head but I was too fast for him. I ducked in time, leaving enough room for it just to skim the top of my hair before I slid out of the car myself, not even bothering to take anything with me.

Yeah, I guess it was cute. If it was in Florida, I would have given my soul, my pack of Stride, and all of the money in my pocket for a house like this in a heartbeat, but after nearly having my fingertips fall off I wasn’t in such a welcoming mood. I stomped out of the car and managed a hurrump in response to my mother’s enthusiasm, but they had been ignoring me for too long to even notice.