“How are you feeling today? Did relaxing this weekend help with your anxiety?” Eva greeted me as we met by our lockers at school.
“I can honestly say that I’m not feeling anxious at all anymore. I feel like a new person.” I really did. Finding mom had solved my anxiety issue for good. I wondered what I’d need to worry about next.
“Maybe I should switch to psychology. I’m pretty good at this advice thing.” Eva literally gave herself a pat on the back.
“Stick to sports medicine. Being right once in your life doesn’t make you pretty good at it.” Eva took a casual swipe at me and I automatically dodged it and came back with a counter-attach. Instead of hitting her, I honked her nose and said, “Danielson, ladies no wait forever” before heading off to class.
“Hey! You’re Kung Fu girl. You can’t steal lines from the Karate Kid.”
“Sure I can. The remake with Jaden Smith was called Karate Kid, but all the moves were Kung Fu. Also, Jaden and I share the same last name, so I’m an authority on the subject.”
“That’s like saying you’re an authority on gloves, because you and Anna Nicole share the same last name.”
It took me a few seconds to figure out the reference. “Seriously? You’re bringing up OJ and the gloves that didn’t fit? Boomer!”
We argued back and forth until class started and our biology teacher, Mrs. Cranston, handed out a pop quiz. Thirty-five multiple choice questions and a diagram of the heart where we had to label all the parts. There was a bonus section on the last page where we could get extra points for labeling the diagram of the muscular system. It was disingenuous of her to call this a pop quiz. This was clearly of test proportions and a few of the students correctly took her to task over it. She ignored their arguments and told them they were wasting time.
I finished the ‘quiz’ in ten minutes and spent a few more minutes adding in labels to areas that Mrs. Cranston hadn’t marked off. I practically filled the page before I’d gotten bored and decided to just hand it all in to the teacher. Mrs. Cranston looked up in curiosity as I dropped off my test and seemed about to say something. Instead, she looked down at my test and started going over it. I returned to my seat. With nothing else to do for the rest of class, I put in my ear buds and watched YouTube videos of surgeries. At least Mrs. Cranston couldn’t accuse me of not working on biology.
I’d managed to watch a few videos before I noticed Mrs. Cranston getting up from her desk and heading towards me. “Since you’ve finished your test, I’d like you to come sit up front and work on these for the rest of class.” She booted Elsa Traeger from her seat at the front of the class to my seat at the back and I sat up front with my extra work, wondering what this was all about. She’d given me a packet of diagrams like the ones I’d just filled out for the test, each on a different system of the body and several on cell structures. There was also three pages of words that needed to be defined.
I looked over the pages and shrugged. I had nothing better to do, so I dug in. Like the quiz, it was all very basic, but it was still better than sitting through a regular class and waiting for it to end. By the time the two-hour double biology class was over, I’d finished the packet and two more besides. These other packets were all short answer questions and so they’d taken a bit longer to finish.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“When did you become a biology genius?” Eva asked as we walked out together.
“In October. That’s when I developed a photographic memory. It’s comes in real handy. You should try it.”
“Smartass.”
There rest of the day wasn’t nearly as engaging and I found myself almost wishing for more pop-quizzes. Two more months. I kept repeating that to myself. Then exams and graduation. Two more months.
Having rescheduled all the imaging patients from Saturday to this week meant that I was scanning people non-stop throughout my two hour after-school shift at the clinic. This week it was mostly paramedics getting scanned, along with a smattering of police officers that had been putting it off as long as they could. Next week the firemen were coming in. When she heard about that, Eva kindly offered to help me.
“I can bring them those backless gowns and slippers to change into and walk behind them as they go in to get scanned.”
I laughed and answered, “They don’t change into gowns. The scans go through clothes.”
“They don’t have to know that.”
At home, I came in to find mom and dad cooking dinner together. That was so weird. I could easily get used to it though.
“Did we have so many of those things before?”, I asked mom.
“You mean pots and pans? No. You guys only had the two that you used for pasta. Your father had to take me to Walmart to get some more and to buy some real food.”
“Hey! We eat salads all the time. Also look, no scurvy!” I pulled back my lips to show her my teeth and gums.
Mom laughed and continued breaded the chicken. Raw chicken looks pretty disgusting. “Didn’t you guys ever get tired of pasta and salads?”
“Sure. That’s what the Olive Garden is for. And Domino’s.”
I got my very first facepalm from mom for that.
After dinner, I started off on my plans to bring mom up to date on all the movies she’d missed out on. Compared to the movies of the eighties and nineties, the past thirteen years hadn’t had much to offer that was worthy, unless you enjoyed CGI superheroes. I did, dad didn’t, so I started her off with the Harry Potter series. The first few had come out before she’d gone into L2, but she hadn’t seen them. I had been too young for them.
Uncle Magnum tried to convince us to wait until the weekend so he could join us with Maggie, but I wanted to get started right away. I didn’t want mom to miss out on all the pop culture references that I made. I already had dad for that. If I was taking the week off from Kung Fu, I wanted to make sure that it was for a good reason. Mom’s education was just that important.
By Wednesday, mom had the kitchen organized just the way she liked it. This meant that dad and I no longer knew where anything was and it was full of things that we had no idea what to do with. Who uses a spice or even has multiple spices that would necessitate an entire rack? She’d rounded out her wardrobe considerably and gotten a few odds and ends to give the house a homier feel to it. She was also going stir crazy.
“I miss working at the community center and taking care of little Abby. Abby’s all grown up now and doesn’t need me to help her with anything. There’s only so much organizing I can do around the house. I need to be doing something. Something worthwhile.”
I was heading to the kitchen to grab a late-night snack when I overheard mom and dad talking in the Parlor. I already decided that I was going to stop and listen so I shifted to R1. There was no point in getting caught eavesdropping.
“There’s a community center here you could volunteer at and in eight months you’ll have a new baby to look after.”
“I’ve checked out the center online. The old center had programs for at risk kids where I could make a positive difference in someone’s life. This center is more like a recreation center. Swimming, basketball, yoga, fitness classes and weight training. There’s nothing for me to add there. Even if they did have a program there, I still couldn’t start there because I’d have to stop in six months when I’m closer to term.”
“We should move up our plans for Harry to come over. He might have some ideas for you. He is the dean of a university now. He has to have connections to various programs all over the state.”
“Ok. How about Friday?”
I shifted back to reality and continued on my way to the kitchen. I needed to nip that dinner in the bud for now or at least delay it by a day or two. It simply did not fit into my plans for mom.