About 8pm that evening, I awoke feeling refreshed and pumped up. Glad that it looked as if I was over my flu spell, I got up and went straight for the shower. I took a long relaxing shower; shaved my legs even though they really didn’t feel as if they needed it, but nobody wants to be a prickly pear, even though I knew nobody would be feeling my legs but me.
Kristen was in the living room with the TV blaring and her head in one of her school books which was sitting on the coffee table. It looked as if she had gotten every snack out that we had in the house and had them sitting all around her. My stomach started growling as I looked at the empty wrappers. Kristen looked up and smiled, “Feeling better mom?” I responded back with a smile, “Yeah, much better. Thank god. I didn’t want to miss another day of work; I like to save those for vacation time with you in the summer.” She nodded and looked back towards her books and the mess she had made. “I’ve got so much homework tonight. Every class had homework and one of my projects is due for Social Studies. I have no idea what I’m doing with this Geometry work, so I’ll probably need you to take me to school early in the morning, so I can talk with Mr. Alexander.”
Knowing how hard she worked to keep all of her grades up and that she was taking the accelerated Math class, I had no problem taking her to school early to get extra help. I knew that I couldn’t help her. I had stopped taking Math after 9th grade, when I took Algebra I. I tried Geometry for about a week in 10th grade, but realized very quickly that I didn’t like it and found that if I took Accounting classes, it counted towards my math credits, so that’s what I did. Kristen was so driven towards doing well in school and had been talking the last couple years of going to an Ivy League college. While that excited me, it also scared me. I knew that I couldn’t afford it, so I knew she would have to work on getting scholarships and grants in order to go. Anything I could do to help her get there, I would.
I looked back to her on the floor at the coffee table and then went over to start picking up the mess of wrappers she had left behind. She looked up again and said, “I’ll pick it up mom, after I’m done with my homework.” I told her not to worry about it, I didn’t mind. “You need to eat something real instead of this junk food. You are a growing teenager.” At that moment, my stomach growled again, I thought from the smell of the empty Doritos bag I had just picked up. “It also looks like I’m hungry as well, especially since I haven’t eaten in the last day. What do you want me to make you?”
I knew better, from experience, than eating anything with any real substance after I had been so sick, was a really bad idea. I decided to grab a can of soup out of the cupboard and poured it into a pan, adding the necessary water to the concentrated soup. Chicken Noodle, isn’t that what you usually eat when you don’t feel good? Kristen decided she wanted some Ramen noodles, which of course wasn’t much better than the junk food she’d already eaten, but I figured it didn’t hurt every once in a while to have junk food days. I put her noodles in a bowl and turned on the microwave to heat it up. When my chicken noodle soup was done, I poured a majority of it into a bowl and added a couple of ice cubes and repeated the task with Kristen’s Ramen noodles. I took the bowl to her and added a can of Dr. Pepper for her to drink. She briefly looked up, moved the noodles closer to her and started eating while reading at the same time.
I returned to the kitchen and grabbed my chicken noodle soup and headed to my bedroom to watch tv and eat. I must have been more hungry than I had originally thought, because I ate the soup fast and my stomach still felt like I was starving myself. It was already after 9pm and I hated to eat so late, so I figured it could wait until the morning when I had breakfast and since I was feeling so good, I would make a big breakfast for Kristen, with eggs, bacon and pancakes, her favorite.
I looked over at the nightstand and again saw that letter from ‘C’ looming there. I grabbed it, and crumpled it up and threw it into the trashcan. That was definitely a night I would like to forget. Being stupid and making bad choices was definitely something I didn’t do often, but I didn’t relish the thought of reliving it when I saw the girls next. Which reminded me; I never did call them on Sunday to tell them that everything was fine and I had made it home safe and sound. Well at least, I had made it home. I picked up my phone only to realize that there were over 50 text messages. I open and read the first one, it was Donna. “What the heck happened last night? Why didn’t you call me when you got home? You were crazy and I was crazy to let you go home with that Chris guy.” I had similar messages from the other 4 girls and then the next messages which had come in later on Sunday were a little more frantic. “Arianna, where the heck are you? Are you ok? Why aren’t you answering me? I decided to send a note to all of them at once instead of writing 5 separate messages. “I’m fine. Chris brought me home safe and sound. I guess I got the flu and have been sick in bed the last 2 days. Everything is good and no need to worry. Talk with you all this weekend about what happened, which was NOTHING.” I sent the message and got back 5 replies in a matter of seconds. Ranging from “Can’t believe you did that” to “glad you are feeling better, talk to you soon.”
I turned off the tv at around 2 am, knowing that I needed to get some sleep for the day ahead, only to toss and turn all night long. Finally around 4:30 am I started to drift off to sleep. Thinking as I looked at the clock that it was going to be a long day tomorrow.
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