Extra Credit Parenthood - Chapters 1 & 2

1

Nathan

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Lil smiled, showing off her pink-wired braces. “Afraid not, brother. Father’s out like a light, so he can’t take me.”

I growled in frustration. Of course. Our dad just had to go and get drunk the night before I had an important exam in my Child Development class, leaving him with a crippling hangover and my sister in need of a drive to elementary school.

Thanks, Dad.

“Sorry, brother. But you’re going to have to take me to school.” Her amused smile twisted into that look of pure evil that only nine-year-olds could pull off. “Then again, I could always walk there.”

Lillian, having learned that annoying nine-year-old sass, was already the spunkiest person I knew. What was extra annoying was that no matter how sassy or irritating she was, she also always sounded intelligent and logical, like she was the seventeen-year-old and I was the nine-year-old.

I sighed and grabbed her arm as she started to walk towards the front door. I crouched in front of her. “I thought you said school doesn’t start until nine,” I questioned.

“It doesn’t,” she said, smoothing her hot pink skirt like she was trying to look dignified, “but it’s obviously going to take a lot longer to get there on foot than it would driving. So I gotta leave now to get there on time.”

She turned to leave again, and I held her back. “You’re not walking to school alone, Lil,” I told her firmly. “Now. You’re sure that your classes start at nine? I can’t drop you off earlier?”

Lil gave me a look like I was dumb. “No. No one would be there.”

I sighed again, tearing my free hand through my dark hair.

If this was going to be a repetitive thing, I really needed to switch Lil’s school to one that had the same hours as mine. While her classes started at nine, mine started at eight. Which was, unfortunately, when my Child Development class was. So, by the time I even got to school, the exam would be over.

"Can you miss school today?” I asked her desperately.

“And stay home with Dad when he’s having a hangover? I think not.”

Good point.

“A friend can’t pick you up or something?”

She raised an eyebrow and countered, “Who says I have friends?”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, Lil. You not having friends would be like the earth not having the moon.”

It was true. Lil’s sass came hand-in-hand with her extraversion and confidence. If anyone was Queen Bee at her school—Little Miss Popular—it was Lil. We both knew that her question was baloney.

She rolled her eyes. “Ugh. No. One of my friends has a dentist appointment, and the other is sick. The rest of them... I don’t know that well. You wouldn’t want me driving with strangers, would you?”

My head dropped. “No,” I admitted. I sighed for the third time. I’d just have to take her and explain the situation to Mr. Owens. Hopefully he’d still let me take the test. Especially since it was a test I’d actually studied for.

Not to mention the fact that my grade in the class was already dropping dangerously close to the Fail Zone. If I missed this test, I probably would fail.

Luckily for me, Mr. Owens was pretty chill. I had hope.

“Fine, I can take you. Have you eaten?” I asked her. They had over an hour before she had to be at school.

She looked at the ground. “No. Dad was in the kitchen getting pain medicine for his headache and I didn’t want to bother him.”

I stared at her downcast expression for a second, then stood up. “Alright, come on. Get your school bag.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as she followed me to the door, her sparkling yellow backpack bobbing behind her.

I turned and gave her a half smile. “Waffle House.”

Her stormy-blue eyes lit up when she smiled. 

2

Willow

“Quit it, guys!”

“Make us!” Watson and Weston shouted together.

Why God, or the universe, or whoever, had decided to punish me and make me the only girl in a set of triplets was a mystery. I didn’t have the patience, attitude, or personality for that. I would have fit much better as an only child, but nope. Mom just had to get pregnant with triplets. Of course.

I lunged for my school backpack, which the two demons I was born with held hostage, and almost fell off the couch. “Guys! Please!” I begged, balancing precariously on the edge of the brown leather. “Before you spill anything!”

I was definitely not built for this. The wall holding my emotions in place was withstanding a lot of pressure and on the verge of collapse. Any second now the floodgates would open, and I’d melt into a puddle of tears.

Stupid period hormones.

“Boys, stop tormenting your sister.” Mom waddled into the living room, holding her large belly. At only five months pregnant, her bump looked more like she was seven or eight months along. But that was to be expected given the fact that she was pregnant with twins. Mom, like the rest of her family, was unfortunately very susceptible to having multiple babies per pregnancy. Aunt Meggie had quadruplets, Uncle Tom a set of twins, and Grandma, like Mom, had had triplets—Mom, Aunt Meggie, and Uncle Tom. That was a very large reason I didn’t plan on having kids, at least not any biologically related kids. With my luck, I’d end up with quintuplets or something.

I often wondered why Mom had thought it a good idea to get pregnant again. She already had three kids; why would she want any more? I guess it’s because she remarried a little over a year ago and she wanted kids with the new guy, Steve. Still, that seemed kind of insane to me.

On the plus side, the doctor had announced that both babies were girls, so I finally wouldn’t be the only female sibling anymore. If it had been two more boys that Mom was pregnant with, I probably would have lost my mind.

Watson and Weston jumped off the couch.

“Mom,” Weston responded to Mom’s exasperated words, “we were just making sure Willow didn’t have any drugs in her backpack. We don’t want her doing bad things.”

“Yeah, Mom,” Watson agreed, slinging his arm around Weston, “we’re just doing our job as her older brothers.”

“Oh, please!” I retorted, stepping off the couch. “‘Older’ by what, three minutes?”

“Exactly!” they both exclaimed.

“It’s our job to make sure that you don’t harm yourself, and that no one else harms you either,” Watson stated.

“You don’t have a boyfriend yet, do you?” Weston asked, squinting at me.

I glared at them both. “Mom.” I looked at her pleadingly.

She gave me a sympathetic smile and, with surprisingly fast reflexes for a heavily pregnant woman, snatched my bag out of Watson’s hands. “Here you go, darling.”

I smiled sardonically at Watson and Weston’s shocked looks. “Thanks, Mom.” I kissed her cheek and walked back to my room. All I had needed from my backpack was my mascara. But of course when I asked my brothers if they had seen my bag, they found it necessary to torment me.

…we were just making sure Willow didn’t have any drugs in her backpack.

Right. Like I of all people would have a secret stash of vapes and drugs and cigarettes in one of the pouches of my bag. I could hardly take pain medicine without feeling weird, let alone cocaine or something.

I shook my head at my brothers’ stupidity and reached into the front pouch of my pastel pink backpack. I fished around in the pocket until I found my mascara.

Drugs, I thought, snorting. What idiots.

As I was applying my mascara, my phone rang, the ringtone playing the beginning of a song from Barbie: The Princess and the Pauper. “We’re late, late, late! We have twenty, maximum twenty-two minutes for your royal fitting—"

I reached for my phone and pressed answer without looking at the contact. I already knew who it was.

“Hey, girl!” Carly’s voice blasted out of the speaker.

“Ow,” I said, quickly lowering the volume. Carly was definitely the louder of the two of us. “Keep it down, girl, or my moronic brothers will hear.”

“Ooh, which one?”

Carly's been my best friend since we were five, which meant that she's also known my brothers for the same amount of time. It was her not-very-well-kept secret that she had a crush on Watson.

I rolled my eyes at her, knowing she wouldn’t see it. “Both of them.”

“Hm. Sorry, girl.”

Girl was all we ever called each other when we weren’t being serious. That and the nicknames we had given each other when we were seven. Her straight blonde hair in contrast to my curly red hair had made us decide we looked like fire and ice princesses. So her nickname was Princess Snowflake, and mine was Princess Ash. Those were also our contact names for each other in our phones.

“So, what’s wrong?” Carly asked. We could always tell when something was off with the other.

I shook my head. “Nothing. My brothers are just morons.”

I finished applying my mascara as Carly wondered, “What’d they do?”

“My mascara was in my backpack, so I asked them if they knew where it was, which of course made them decide to play a good ole’ fashion game of Keep Away. Then—get this—when Mom told them to stop, they claimed to be making sure I didn’t have drugs in my bag.”

Carly laughed. “Drugs? You can’t even take Ibuprofen without getting sick!”

“I know,” I laughed. “My brothers are so stupid.”

“I think you mean all boys are so stupid,” Carly corrected.

“True.”

It was the sad reality of society. Men ran the countries around the world, yet they had the demeanor of dogs—playful, careless, and a threat to cat-like people such as myself.

Strange.

“How well do you think you’ll do on your Child Development test today?” Carly asked, changing the subject and emphasizing the words ‘Child Development’ with disdain. She thought it was strange that I had enrolled in that of all classes for one of my electives, considering the material that was taught in it. But I wanted to become a Social Worker and had figured it would be good to know about kids and babies and stuff.

“I think I’ll do good,” I said. I’d been studying all last night, and for the past week. I would honestly be surprised if I didn’t do good.

“You probably will,” Carly agreed.

A timer on my phone went off, announcing that the time to get ready was over. “I got to go, girl. Breakfast. See you at school.”

“See ya’!”

The call ended with a soft click.