Mockingbird (A Stepbrother Romance #2)(9)
Mom would flip out if I even hinted at an interest. Think she was cold tonight? Bring up my father in conversation, and the temperature in the room drops to hypothermia levels. His fault, though. He's the one that stepped out on her. I remember when my mother was different. She was actually nice, for one thing. Sometimes she can be like that, now and then. It's like she forgets everything for a while and then some little thing reminds her and ruins it and she hardens up again and turns to stone, like tonight.
I worked my ass off to get where I am. 4.0 average, all the extracurriculars (she approved of that, it made getting me a spot at her school of choice that much easier) all the begging and kissing up for recommendation letters and all that. All of it for nothing, tossed out the window like it's meaningless. I'm starting to feel bad for getting so worked up over this. There are people out there with a lot bigger problems than "My Mommy won't give me an allowance so I can’t go to the college I pick."
Except that's not the problem is it?
My life isn't my own. It's her way or the highway. I already know I'm going to cave in to her again. I'll end up enrolling in her program of choice, pursuing her career of choice, living her life of choice. I'll end up back here, married to the museum like she is. Or worse, to Lucas. I can't stand that prick, and she practically sets me up on dates with him. Like I'm a six year old again, and she's trying to pick my friends. That is the limit of her interest in my having a social life.
At some point I actually get to sleep.
When I rise in the morning, there's a note taped to our kitchen table. Mom is out, the car is mine if I want to use it. The idea of hanging around the museum all day is less than appealing, but I don't have a lot of options. I end up showering, munching down a bowl of Captain Crunch, dry, and head down to the car.
Between her precious painting and the new wing, she'll be working twelve hour days, seven days a week. What I do during that time, as long as I don't get arrested, is not her concern, usually. Now that I've graduated and it's all over I'm in this weird interregnum between being a high school student and a college student and I don't know what to do with myself.
I guess I'm an adult now. An era of my life is over, and all that crap. I can't stand that nonsense. Being an adult doesn't feel much different than being almost an adult, to be brutally honest. If I ever leave my mom's shadow, it's going to be a long, long time from now. I snatch the car keys and trudge down to start up the 1999 Honda that my mother refers to, charitably, as The Car.
It putters to life and I head down the access road, tap in the pin number to the back gate and watch it rumble open. This whole estate is like a castle. It's a ten minute trip to town.
It would be a pleasant drive if I wasn't so used to it. The place has the unlikely name of Persistence, Pennsylvania, really a suburb slash bedroom community for Philadelphia. Once it was a cute little village of maybe three thousand people, but that's increased by a factor of five and now the quaint old town is lost in a sea of chain stores, big boxes, and metroplexes. It's full of people that live in developments with names like Huntley Chase at the Mews by the Brook and stuff. I don't even know what a mews is, but Persistence has five of them. I think. I stopped counting.
Parking in the old town is easy this early on Saturday morning. I drift down the sidewalk, wishing it were later in the day so I could hit Antonio's and get a cheesesteak. Everybody complains there's no good pizza places out here, but Antonios has the best greasy takeout food in the world. Their calzones are just incredible.
I end up wandering into Hermitage Books. Hank Hermitage runs the place, and it's the hangout for all the local witchy types, like wiccans and stuff. It's also the only bookstore in Persistence. We had a Borders, but it closed when the company folded. Now the only way to buy books besides this shop is drive to Philadelphia, or try to find another independent bookstore.
About a third of the floorspace is dedicated to the occult crap. I have a drawer full of stuff back at home, pendulums and tarot cards and something my friend Charity called a "mojo bag". I even bought some of the magic books he sells, but I couldn't get any of it to work.
Besides the books, there's a newsstand type section and the real source of most of the business the place generates, the cafe slash deli slash coffee shop. At least I don't have to sit in a coffee house with a clever pun name. We had one of those, Black to Black, but it went out of business last year.
Hank's niece Charity works the counter on weekends. She's full into the witchy stuff, with a pentagram hanging around her neck, a lot of black clothes, purple lipstick and a ring through her lip. She looks like Hot Topic barfed on her.
We're friends.
Still have to pay for coffee. She mixes me up a "Mocha Choca La-Ta-Ya-Ya", the special, and one for herself. She doesn't have to pay for her own coffee.
I still have to pay. Did I mention that?
She on the sofa next to me.
"So how'd it go?"
I let out a long sigh.
"That well, huh?"
"If I don't go where she says, I'm cut off."
"So? The scholarship-"
"Isn't going to buy me laundry detergent and pencils. I still need her support."
"Or you could get a job," she says.
"I could work over the summer," I shrug. "Save up. I don't think I can juggle a job and the kind of programs I'm looking at. Biotech stuff is pretty unforgiving. Lots of long hours studying. Labs and stuff."