Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 129986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129986 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
“I suppose that’s fair.”
I wait for more, but he doesn’t give it to me, so I have to type back, “So… can you pick me up or not?”
“Sure. I’ll be there in a few minutes. But… you will owe me one.”
“Ugh,” I say out loud, rolling my eyes. “I’m gonna have to disagree. You triggered your girlfriend’s psycho tendencies inviting me to that stupid bonfire last night. She slashed my fucking tires, otherwise I would drive myself to school today.”
“Sounds like something she’d do,” he says, not even surprised.
They’re so fucking crazy.
I shake my head and type, “Anyway, I’ll deal with her later, but I really need to get to school right now, so…”
“I’ll be there soon,” he answers.
“Thank you,” I message back.
He doesn’t answer, but I don’t expect him to.
I’d like to go back in the house until he gets here, but I have to make phone calls and I don’t want Mom to ask questions.
I’m not sure who you’re supposed to call when you need your tires changed. It’s the kind of thing I would have had to ask Mom when I moved out on my own. I’d ask her now, but she’ll know we don’t have the money for that, and I’d have to explain why this happened since it’s not like I got a flat driving over a nail. A deranged psycho from my school stabbed my tired because I made them mad.
Ugh, I hate my school sometimes.
Back when I was able to focus my attention on academics, Baymont High was a dream come true. Yes, it’s full of spoiled assholes, but that’s because it’s one of the top schools in the state—and it’s a public school. It’s so expensive to live in this town, you pretty much have to be rich to go there, but since it is such a great school, some families with less money have made the sacrifice of moving to the area even if they had to rent out a room in someone’s attic, or live in a house so small a Barbie doll would be hard-pressed to live there.
We were lucky enough to find a house.
See, I used to have big dreams. I thought it would be amazing to get into an Ivy League school. It wasn’t just about the status, but the quality of the education I would get there.
My old middle school was a disaster area—literally. There was a lot of crime in the area. We had metal detectors, and kids still ended up getting stabbed every month or so.
Mom knew how miserable I was there and that the high school would be even worse, so she and my dad talked about how they could tweak their finances to move to Baymont, where the property values were a lot higher, but I could go to one of the best schools in California. It would be easier to get into Harvard or Yale—I wanted to go to the East Coast after spending my whole life on the west one—if I went to a school like Baymont High. There was no way they could afford to send me to private school, but maybe they could justify the higher mortgage if I would be able to go to a school just as good as private school because we lived there.
We all made the move, and I was ecstatic. I was so happy at Baymont. I didn’t care that I couldn’t afford the designer things like most of the other kids.
There were some kids like me there—ones without money, ones who didn’t really belong. I found friends there. Some were kids of the help. Their parents cleaned the rich kids’ houses or watched their younger siblings. Some ended up here incidentally due to advantageous marriages, others had parents who prioritized their kids’ education like mine did and wanted them at Baymont, even if it meant finances were tight.
It was easy to tell the difference between the super rich and the employees of the super rich, so even though we all go to the same school, the socioeconomic lines are drawn in the sand, and there’s not a lot of intermingling.
That was fine by me. I didn’t come here to hang out with rich kids.
Besides, maybe that’s what those Ivy League schools would be like, too. Maybe there would be a distinct line separating the haves and the have-nots, the kids whose educations were everything they had to rely on, and those whose parents’ connections had more to do with where they would end up than anything else. Maybe Baymont was preparing me for it.
But then sophomore year happened. Mom got sick. We all went through the wringer with her, and it never let up. Junior year came and went. I kept up last year. It was easier when Dad was here.
But then he left.