Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“Oldies are gettin’ wild, huh?” he asked, rolling to his back.
“I doubt it.” My socks were still damp from sweat. Lovely. “But Pop’s been in a mood lately, so hopefully this’ll be good for them.”
“He’s been in a mood?”
“Yeah.” I grimaced. “Grumpy.”
“Samson?” His disbelief was clear. “That dude is Zen.”
“He wouldn’t be happy you’re using a hippie word like Zen,” I pointed out with a laugh. “But yeah, he’s usually pretty easygoing. I think he’s just tired. They’re getting old and he’s still working full time.”
“He seemed fine when I saw him earlier.”
“Good.” I leaned against his dresser. “Hopefully that means they’ll have fun tonight. I’ll text you later?”
“Fine,” Rumi grumbled. “Hey, you don’t think you have time to make me a sandwich, do you?”
My mouth dropped open in surprise.
“Ass,” I spit, laughing as I pulled the pillow out from under his head and smacked him in the face with it in one smooth motion.
“I was joking,” Rumi yelled as I left the room. “Mostly joking!”
By the time I got home, my grandparents had already left for the night and Bird was sitting at the kitchen table with a chemistry textbook open in front of him.
“Baby brother,” I sang, dropping my backpack on the floor. “Whatcha doing?”
“Homework,” he replied, tossing his pencil on the table. “This girl Haley was talking to me during fourth period, so I didn’t get to finish it at school.”
“Poor Bird.” I ruffled his hair on my way to the fridge. “Was she pretty?”
“She’s alright,” he said with a huff. “But not worth having to do homework at home.”
“You realize the irony in that, right?” I said, pulling out some hotdogs and milk.
“Homework is for losers that can’t finish their stuff at school.”
“Homework is for doing at home.”
“Homework fucking sucks and I hate it,” he snapped.
“Whoa.”
“Sorry,” he grumbled, picking his pencil back up. “Pop was pissy with Nana and I’m pretty sure that she didn’t even want to go tonight but she went anyway so she didn’t piss him off more.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “And I was stuck out here because I didn’t finish this chemistry assignment at school and I don’t have a desk in my room where I can actually work.”
“Why don’t we get you a little lap desk thing?” I asked, starting dinner. “Then you can just sit on your bed.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He was quiet for a few moments. “What the heck is wrong with Pop lately? He’s being a jerk.”
“I don’t know, bud.” I’d been wondering the same thing. He hadn’t snapped at me again since the night I’d gotten home late from Rumi’s, but he hadn’t exactly been his normal self either.
“He wasn’t happy that you weren’t here when they left.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re eleven years old. You can hang by yourself for a while.”
“Obviously,” Bird muttered.
“Just give him some space,” I advised, sitting down across from him while I waited for the water on the stove to boil. “He’ll snap out of whatever is going on.”
“I hope so. Nana was pretty rattled.”
A small frizzle of alarm ran down my spine. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug, pulling his notebook closer. “She just seemed weird, like she was tiptoeing around or something.”
“Did anything else happen?” I tried to keep my voice even, but something in it must have alerted Bird, because his eyes jerked up to mean mine.
“Like what?” he asked suspiciously.
“Anything,” I said, waving my hand like it was no big deal. “Did they get into a fight or something?”
“Nope.” He relaxed back in the chair. “Pop was just in a shitty mood, grumbling and bitching about everything until they walked out the door.”
“She was probably just not looking forward to hanging with him when he was acting like that,” I assured him, getting up to check on the water. I yanked on his earlobe as I passed, making him jerk away.
“Probably.” Bird leaned back in the chair and looked over his shoulder at me. “Hey, have you heard from that school you applied to?”
“Which one?”
“You know, the one,” he replied. “The one in town that you really wanted to get into.”
“Not yet,” I said with a sigh. “They probably threw out my application.”
“Yeah, right,” Bird scoffed. “You could’ve gotten into any college you wanted.”
“That was straight out of high school,” I pointed out. “Now they’re probably wondering what the hell I’ve been doing for the last year and a half.”
“Maybe they assume you were taking a gap year,” he joked, grinning. “Backpacking through Europe or some shit.”
“What the hell do you know about a gap year?”
“Rich people do it,” he answered with a laugh. “Because they need a long ass vacation after going to school for twelve years.”
“Unlike the poor schmucks like us that actually have to start working.”
“Exactly,” Bird said. “I really hope I can get a scholarship so I can just go straight to college.”