Taking The Class Pt. 04

"Um," Laura said in an awkward tone.

Alaina stepped out of her mom's arms. Should I tell her? Ugh, I really don't wanna keep secrets from her anymore...

Mom turned to Laura, her arms still out. "Come on, young lady. House rules."

Laura looked between mother and daughter in confusion.

"Mom gets a hug any time she or I get home," Alaina said. "It's the rule." It used to be Dad's rule, though.

"If you live here, you're subject to the rules, Laura," said Mom, tilting her head a little and fixing the slightly shorter girl with a Mom look.

Laura hesitantly stepped forward, drawing closer to the short-haired woman.

Mom moved a little closer to meet her and folded her arms around the blonde girl. "That's better."

Laura's face peeked over her shoulder, eyes closed as she relaxed and leaned into the hug.

"You feel tense," Mom said. "Everything okay?"

Laura's eyes flew open.

I should tell her. I'm gonna tell her. "Well, Laura got a last-minute offer for a modeling job..."

Laura subtly shook her head back and forth over Mom's shoulder.

"But it seems like the whole thing was kind of a setup by this guy who wanted to...do some really icky things..." Alaina cringed. That's a pretty huge understatement. "We're okay now, though! We're both okay."

Mom gently pushed Laura back and turned to face her daughter. Her brows were in the process of lowering. "Icky how? And do I know this guy?"

"Um..." Alaina hesitated. "Do you know Floyd Goddard?"

Mom took a long blink. "As in, Jim Goddard's son, Floyd Goddard? That Floyd Goddard?"

Alaina nodded.

"I see," Mom said, her jaw decidedly not clenching. "Icky, you said?" One of the fingers on the hand opposite Laura briefly changed into a large, wicked-looking claw. Her smile returned a moment later. "Girls, I just remembered I have to make a quick call. I'll be right back!" She turned and walked out of the room the way she'd came, and the sound of feet stomping up the stairs echoed through the house a moment later.

Alaina stared after her. She's fucking furious.

Laura gave Alaina another confused look. "She knows Floyd, too? That was kind of a weird reaction."

Alaina blinked, and her half-grin widened. "Mom... Well, she's very protective. If I didn't have confidence that Daniel was going to take care of things—and... I hate to say it, but it actually kind of sounded like maybe he will—I think Floyd is really fucked now that Mom knows." Does she know Floyd's dad, too? Who's she even calling? Or did she just like, transform and fly out the window? Oh, that'd be just like that Classhero movie with the guy who had the shapeshifting Class! Except he was the villain...

Laura's confusion intensified. "But... If he can do that kind of thing, what's your mom going to be able to do to him? Daniel said not even the police could do anything."

"If I say this is one of those things I can't talk about now but someday I'll definitely tell you, would that be okay?"

Laura smiled brightly after a moment and nodded. "Sure! I trust you, Alaina. If you say it's a good thing, then I'll believe it."

Fuck, I feel like my legs are turning to jello when she smiles at me like that.

Laura moved over to the island and started taking more items out of the grocery bags. "I'll put these up out of the way," she said, holding up the two containers of chili powder. She walked back to the spice cabinet and put them up on the top shelf with the crushed red pepper.

"Hey!"

* * *

"Why are you being such a height-ist suddenly!"

"What? Alaina, we'll use these in an hour, and the counter's got so many other things on it."

"It does not! And the island's completely clear!"

"I just think this is a better place for the really hot peppers that you don't even like. If you have a better spot for them, I won't mind if you move them."

"But I..." Alaina glared semi-seriously at the taller girl. "I'll get a chair. I will!"

"Go ahead," Laura said, a teasing smile on her face. "I'll finish putting everything else away while you take care of putting the peppers where you want them. Be careful, though, I think if you get any of the pepper oils on your fingers it'll be really hard to get out."

"I can just wash them." Or use my Skill.

"I don't know," Laura said, carrying a large package of ground beef to the fridge. "That stuff gets really deep into your skin. And it can seriously irritate the more sensitive places."

"I'm pretty confident in my ability to get my hands clean."

"Just seems like an awful lot of effort to get to some peppers you don't even want..."

"Fine, I'll leave your stupid peppers alone."

"Our stupid peppers."

"Argh!"

* * *

"Sorry, girls, that took a little longer than I thought," said Mom as she walked back into the kitchen. "Tacos tonight?"

"Yup!"

"Laura, did Lainy tell you—"

"We got chili powder and peppers, Mrs. Bishop!"

"And you even put them all up where I can't reach," Alaina said under her breath as she finished folding the last grocery bag. She picked up the stack and walked past her mom to put them over by the front door.

"I told you, you can move them if you want."

"We have to do something about that, Laura," Mom broke in. "Call me Dot."

"I..."

"Laura."

"Okay, um... Dot?"

"Much better."

Alaina walked back into the kitchen.

Mom was seated at the table in her usual seat facing the doorway, and Laura was standing by the island smiling happily.

"You better not start putting everything up on the high shelves," Alaina said, looking at the blonde girl. She turned to look at her mom. "That goes for you, too."

"Lainy," said Mom. "What would we even put up on all... All those empty shelves..." She trailed off, tapping a finger against her lips.

"Moom!"

"I promise to only put stuff you don't like on the high shelves," Laura said, her smile becoming teasing once more. She looked over at the counter behind her. "Oh, like these blueberries here." She slowly moved towards them with her hands outstretched. "These could probably—"

Alaina raced over and snatched the carton off the counter, holding it to her chest. "How did these even get out of the fridge!"

Laura giggled and looked upwards in an incriminating fashion.

The door of the refrigerator closed with the blueberries once again safely inside on a shelf of reasonable height.

"I'm glad you're getting along so well," Mom said, wearing a pleased smile.

Laura smiled brightly. "Of course we are! Alaina's awesome!"

Alaina grinned. "You're pretty cool, too. Even if you don't have any taste buds."

"I do, too," Laura said, turning her smile on the redhead. "My taste buds could beat up your taste buds any day!"

"They..." Alaina trailed off. That would be like... She means kissing, right? Argh, this is so frustrating! I should call Will... But I can't really after that last call! Fuck, do I really have to be this horny all fucking night?

Laura's smile widened slightly. "I think I'm going to take that shower I was talking about earlier. Don't miss me too much."

Oh fuck, she's... Argh! Alaina tried to look elsewhere as the extremely attractive blonde girl walked away to get naked and wet without her.

"You still have your towel from last night, Laura?" Mom asked.

"Mm-hmm!" Laura paused in the doorway, smiling intently at Alaina for a moment before she left.

Alaina pressed her lips together. Please stop teasing me. Please. It's so hard already not to—

"So, sweetie, how was your day?" asked Mom. She patted the table in front of her daughter's new seat.

Alaina trudged over. "You mean other than the thing you had to make a call for? Pretty good, I guess?" She frowned. "Maybe not. I found out some girls on the swim team have been bullying Laura for a long time."

Mom's eyebrows rose. "Bullying? Sounds like an opportunity for the Student Council President."

Alaina sighed. "Yeah, I took care of it already. I just feel..." She looked down at the table. "Do you think I've been slacking off lately?"

"How do you mean?"

"Like..." Alaina looked up and grimaced. "I think maybe I forgot why I was in the student council for a while. Or why I became the drama club president. Why I've been doing a lot of things. I wanted to make things better." She fidgeted a little. "I wanted to help people. When you switched to work at the hospital after we lost Dad, I was so proud. I thought that you lost someone you loved, so you wanted to make sure nobody else lost someone like you did. And I wanted to be just like you.

"I tried!" Alaina gave a wry little grin. "I really did. I was there for Ay when she lost Colin, even though I couldn't do much. I got a little discouraged when I got to high school because there were so many people, but then I realized I could help there, too. I ran for president, and I won. It was hard. I was just a sophomore. But I wanted to help people so badly. I think people could tell. But then this year, nobody even ran against me. I just won by default. I didn't have to work for it. I think... I got lazy. I got selfish. But that's not me, is it, Mom? I'm not selfish, am I?" She looked at her mom with pleading eyes.

The sound of water running through pipes upstairs began.

Mom looked down at her daughter, her thumb tapping against the wooden table slowly and softly. She leaned forward in her seat after a moment. "Lainy, I'm going to tell you a story. A true story. It's about me when I was younger. When I went to college."

Alaina sat up in her seat. Mom never talks about stuff from before she met Dad...

"When I was younger..." Mom grinned, staring off into nowhere. "Well, I'll tell it like this."

* * *

My second year in college, there were two girls sharing an apartment. Neither of them made much money, so they shared an apartment to cut costs.

They weren't friends. They'd had a class together the year before and didn't hate each other. One of the girls asked the other the next year to share an apartment, and she said yes. It was a partnership. They split the chores evenly, they split the bills evenly, and they didn't even speak to each other that often. They each had their own worlds, and that was fine with both of them.

At least, it was fine until one day. One of the girls—let's call her X—went up to the other one—who we'll call Y. It was a little after noon, and Y had just gotten home from another night of partying and probably drugs and sex and whatever. Y was that kind of girl. She did what she wanted whenever she wanted. Her grades had declined since the start of the year. She had things she liked to do, and she pursued them to the exclusion of all else.

X confronted her. "Why are you doing this?" she said. X was a leader; she was in student government, she'd worked in her school's newspaper before college, she was on an accelerated track to graduate with honors—she was that kind of girl. "Why are you wasting your talents?" X asked. "I know you're smart. I know you can do more than... You can do more. Are you in trouble or something? Do you need help? I know we're not friends or anything, but if I can—"

"Shut the fuck up," yelled Y. "You don't know me! You don't know what I'm going through!"

And it was true. X didn't know Y. They'd shared a class, they lived together, they sometimes ate together in silence in the common room of their small apartment, but they seldom spoke to each other unless it was something related to the apartment.

That was the kind of people they were.

"Tell me, then," said X. "If you need someone to talk to, if—"

"What, I can talk to you?" Y sneered.

Y had a secret. Well, they both had secrets, but some of them were less secret than others.

Y was observant.

Y had noticed that X had a crush on her. That's the reason Y approached X in the first place to share an apartment. Y might have been interested in X, too. It's possible. But Y was too hurt. She'd fallen into a hole inside herself, and she couldn't climb out.

"I can talk to you?" Y said. Her lips curled into a cruel grin. "And then maybe I can cry on your shoulder after? You can comfort me? Maybe we kiss a little? Kissing leads further? X, I know. I've always known."

Y walked up to X and stood right in front of her, looking into her eyes. "Fuck. Off." said Y.

Y moved out of their apartment that night. She didn't have many things. She paid out the rest of her half of the lease. She didn't have to, but she didn't want to chance feeling guilty about it.

X found out later that Y had moved in with a guy she didn't even know before the night she'd moved out.

Y was very pretty.

X and Y never saw each other again after that night. They never spoke, they never wrote to each other.

That was the kind of people they were.

* * *

Alaina stared.

Mom sat back in her seat and sighed, a wistful look on her face as she raised her hand to her mouth. She didn't speak further.

"Well?" Alaina demanded. "What happened to Y, Mom? Did you at least find out what happened to her?"

Mom stared into nowhere for a while, and then her gaze refocused and she turned to her daughter. "Lainy, I'm Y."

Alaina goggled.

"I don't know what happened to the other girl," Mom said, her voice melancholy. "I never saw her again after that night." She looked down at her hands on the table for a moment. "Lainy, I was not a nice person growing up." She looked back up, fixing her daughter with a piercing stare. "I never wanted to help people. I never even thought about it. I wanted to help me," she said, tapping herself on the chest. "I wanted to know everything about me. I did what I wanted. After all, who could stop me?"

"But..." Alaina blinked. "But..." She gripped her hands tightly together on the table. "But you're... You're Mom. You're Doctor Bishop!"

"Back then I was just Dorothy Carver," said Mom. "And Dorothy Carver hurt a lot of people. I told you some of what I used to do when I worked at the lab. Do you really think that's the kind of place a doctor would work? Someone who wanted to help people?"

Alaina felt like her mind had broken.

Mom reached over and placed a warm hand over her daughter's clammy ones. "That's who I was, sweetie. I am a doctor now. I do want to help people. It's what I want more than anything, now."

"Why?" Alaina whispered. "How... How could someone like that be you? That's not you!"

"It was," Mom said, gently overruling her daughter's protestation, smiling once more. "And it was until I met a very special man."

The sound of water running through pipes died out.

"Dad?" Alaina said softly, her breath catching.

Mom nodded. "We fought a lot, y'know. He was like X. He couldn't understand why I'd waste my skills. And he only meant my intelligence—my wit—nothing to do with my Class. He kept urging me to change, to do something to really benefit people. I..." She sighed. "I didn't care. I loved him dearly, but everyone else could die, as far as I was concerned.

"We finally compromised. I said I'd study up to become a doctor. To become the best doctor. Just in case I ever changed my mind." Mom laughed. "I thought I'd won. He finally stopped badgering me, and I knew I'd never change. But..." She squeezed her daughter's hands. "Somewhere deep down, I always wanted to. I wished I could be who he wanted me to be."

Mom reached up and brushed her eye. "It wasn't until Art was the one who died that I could. There was a... A folder. Just a regular brown folder. He had it with his will. And in it..." She wiped her eye again. "It feels like it was just yesterday. He had a photo from our first date in the envelope. We were both laughing. Happy. Free. And on the back were three words. Three simple words in his usual cursive.

"You can change."

Alaina flew out of her chair and rushed to her mom, throwing her arms around the woman—the invincible woman. The woman who could make diamonds with her bare hands. The woman who was now crying for a single person who'd died too early even though she'd saved thousands of others.

"You did change, Mom," Alaina said, her eyes watering. "You did. You're Mom now. You are Doctor Bishop." She squeezed tightly, inhaling the ever-present scent of lilacs, and her mom reached up around her to return the hug. "Dad... Dad would be proud of you. I know he would. I'm proud of you, Mom."

Mom breathed in deeply through her nose. "Thanks, sweetie. That really means a lot to me."

They remained in place for a couple minutes.

"Why even tell me that story?" Alaina whispered at last. She pulled back, a look of hurt carved into her face. "I... I didn't want to know that. I—"

"Because you're already better than I ever used to be, Alaina," Mom said, smiling up at her daughter through misty eyes. She reached up and placed a hand against the girl's cheek. "Even if you slip, or stumble, or get a little lazy, you'll always be better than I was. You're strong enough to pick yourself up when you fall. You're strong enough to pull yourself out of any holes you fall into. You always have been. You'll be better than me. You just needed a little push." She poked her daughter's cheek lightly and let her hand fall away. "A tiny nudge. Something to always remind you why."

Alaina sniffled, then used her cleaning Skill. "That's pretty fucked up, Mom."

Mom snorted. "I'm gonna let that one go given the circumstances, but we're still not doing casual profanity in this household."

Alaina rolled her eyes.

"Don't let it get you down, sweetie," said Mom, her reddened eyes clearing up and her complexion returning to normal. "Everyone needs some time off once in a while. You'll bounce back even stronger than before."

Alaina frowned a little. "What if I don't, though? What if... What if I don't realize it again?"

Mom smirked. "What, you think I'd let you? As long as that's still your dream, I'll drag you kicking and screaming to it."

"But..." Alaina cringed a little. "You won't be around forever, Mom. What if—"

"Says who?" Mom said, tilting her head.

Alaina blinked, then opened her eyes even wider. "You, too?" she whispered.

Mom stared back. After a moment she snorted a laugh, then threw her head back and laughed even harder. "To think that runs in the family." She grinned widely. "Looks like we've got a long time to get our shit together, Lainy."

"Hey! What happened to—"

"You got one, now I get one," Mom said. She stood up and hugged her daughter again.

"I guess that's fair."

"I think we should talk more," Mom said after a minute. She pulled back, running her fingers fondly through her daughter's hair. "Really talk. We haven't done that enough until recently."

"Yeah..." Alaina smiled. "I always feel like I ask you the wrong questions when we talk now."

"Oh?" Mom brought her hand back and ran it through her own hair, tucking a few strands back behind her ear. "We've got time for a quick one now if you want. I don't want Laura to have to stay up there all night."