OO-RAH!

Chapter 5

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock and the sound of heavy rain hitting my bedroom window. I turned off my alarm and got up to look out the window. The sky was a dark grey, and the rain came heavily on the earth. I smiled to myself, knowing that this downpour was going to be great for the corn field. I walked down stairs, once again to find Billie-Mae at her computer working with all the numbers. This time her music consisted of much more classic country music. As I walked into the kitchen, "I Cross My Heart" by George Strait was playing through the small speakers of the laptop, and Billie-Mae hardly even noticed me when I greeted her. 

"Billie-Mae?" I tried getting her attention again. This time she lifted her head up, a confused and blank look on her face. 

"Oh, good morning, Hayden." she said plainly. She immediately dropped her head back down to the papers that laid scattered in front of her. 

"Is everything alright?" I ask her as pour myself a glass of orange juice. Billie-Mae answered me right away this time, but didn't take her eyes off her work for a single second. 

"Who? Me?" she asked confusingly. "Oh, I'm alright, just a little tired is all." she says. 

"Why's that? Didn't you get any sleep last night?" I asked, a little concerned about her mood. 

"Yeah, I slept fine. It's just. . .all these college assignments are draining all the energy out of me." she tells me. Billie-Mae had been accepted to some fancy university up in Virginia three years ago. She received a scholarship in honor of taking advanced math and science classes since she was in junior high, and was planning on leaving late that summer. But about a month before she was supposed to leave, her mama got really sick. Billie-Mae couldn't bring herself to leave her mother alone for so long, considering her father left their family when she was only a little girl and there wasn't anyone else who'd be able to watch her and take care of her, so she contacted the university and was able to keep her scholarship while earning her degree online. Eventually, Billie-Mae's mama, my Aunt Jeanie, got better and Billie-Mae would've been able to go to the university, accept she had gotten comfortable with online classes and decided to continue college via internet. 

"Why's that?" I ask as I take a seat next to her at the table. Unlike my sister and cousin, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I never really had the desire to go to college. I was always perfectly content where I was. So, I decided to stay home and take over the farm as my career, which of course I didn't mind. Mama used to tell me she wished I would've gone to college, earn my degree and make a living for myself, doing what I wanted to do without having to be stuck in Jameson my whole life. I won't lie, there were times when I wished I had applied somewhere, maybe start my degree in agriculture or something, but it was too late now at this point. I had an entire farm to run, and Lord knows I don't have the money to pay for college anyways. 

"Just a lot of complicated, time consuming problems and equations and stuff. I don't get summers off since a vocational school, so I'm stuck doing homework all year round." she informs me. I made a face at the idea of having to go to school in the summer. I barely liked going to school fall, winter, and spring. "Sometimes I just wish I could push all this stress away, or maybe even have the ability to get the answers right every time, no matter how hard I'd try to get them wrong." she admits. 

I notice the song had changed to my favorite one of all time. I smiled, remembering my phone call with Chase a couple days ago. I felt a little bad for Billie-Mae having so much to stress about so much. I rubbed the back of her shoulders a little while she let her head hang low, her arms around her neck. 

"You don't know how jealous I am of you right now." she also admits. I furrow my eyebrows at and giggle a little. 

"What on earth do I have for you to be jealous of?" I asked, confused. She picked her head back up and looked at me with her tired eyes.