Not Your Fault

Alex didn’t talk to Tea for the rest of the week. Meredith gave him half-smiles in the hallways, and sat in front of him and Jack at lunch every day. April had chosen it as her job to glare at Alex every chance she got, and to give Jack an earful every day in science.

Jack introduced him to his friend Rian, who looked like he could kick Alex’s ass, with his hands tied behind his back. He was funny, though.

Tea had begun a ritual to bring her phone every day, so she could avoid contact with Alex. She didn’t care if the teachers yelled at her or caught her, because, honestly, what would they do? They wouldn’t make eye contact with her, and they would dutifully call her mother at the diner. It had happened once in the month before.

“May I speak to Mrs. Montgomery? The mother of Tabitha?” The math teacher had decided that it was about time that Tea start acting like she was part of the class, so she had decided it was in her hands to reprimand her.

Even though, it might have been two weeks since she had been back in school.

“This is she, what do you want?” She had her on speaker, and it was lunch period. Tea sat in the front row, her back slouching and her fingers curled around the cheap dollar store headphones. Laying on her math teacher’s desk was her phone. It wasn’t anything really special, not like an iPhone, but it made do. It also contained her whole collection of songs, and the list didn’t stop.

Tea half-smiled at her mom’s no-business tone; it was lunch hour, after all.

“This is her math teacher, Miss Smith. I am calling you to inform you that your daughter had been listening to music during class, so I confiscated her phone. Would you mind coming to the school after hours to pick it up, and your daughter from detention?” Miss Smith, the nastiest lady Tea had ever encountered. She wasn’t nasty because she was a bad teacher (which she was), or that she had a bad appearance (which she did). No, Miss Smith was crazy.

Watering her fake plants and whispering, “You’re gonna grow up big and strong, just like your mother.”- kind of crazy.

“Well, I don’t pay you to reprimand my daughter, now do I? Yet, you call me when it’s lunch hour, when I’m working. Now, I best bet you pay for me talking to you. And, do you know how I want you to pay me? Giving my daughter her fucking phone back. She can take the detention, but I swear to God if you do not give my daughter her personal property, I’ll find you. “

“MOM!” Tea yelled, laughing. Her mother came on a tad too strong on everyone.

Miss Smith all but pursed her lips. “Now, I don’t see you paying me.”

“Woman, I swear. Just give my daughter her phone back, I work the night shift, so I can’t go and play tea party with you. I need to do adult things like keep a roof over my three kids, you hear me?”

“I guess I can let this one pass.”

Tea gave a sigh of relief, knowing she didn’t have the horrid math teacher anymore. Every semester, they switched classes, and Tea declined on taking another year of math she didn’t need until the next year.

So, Tea sat in science class, her headphones was hidden in her hair, and her attention was towards the sketchbook on the desk. She had to complete a drawing of someone she admired, and to try to fit their personality into their looks, to show that the shallow age of the generation was long-gone, and that you can admire someone on their personality just as much as their looks.

The prompt’s idea, not Tea’s.

Tea, of course, sat dumbstruck at the paper. She could draw Meredith, but that would piss of April, and vice versus. Tea could draw Brendon Urie, but she doubted any of the university’s scouts even heard of him. No, Tea knew a bunch of people her age who didn’t know who Brendon Urie.

Alex was tired (what else was new?); his parents were out all night, and he felt like he was a no-life parent waiting for his partying children to come home.

“Where were you?” Alex asked, his hands stuffed in his plaid pajama bottom’s pockets, his whole demeanor pissed the fuck off.

His mom giggled, leaning against his dad. “We just went to the grocery store.” His dad had obviously lied, because straight after the words came out of his lips, he over-dramatically winked at Alex’s giggling mother.

“Are you guys drunk?” Alex asked, disbelievingly. He never saw his mother pick up a wine glass in his life, neither his father.

“Just a tad.” His mother squeezed her thumb and pointer finger to show, “just a little bit.”
Alex smacked his teeth together. “Great, great. Fantastic example to your teenage son.” He angrily turned up the stairs.

“Oh, don’t be such a sour puss.”

Alex remembered when he would say the same exact thing to his parents, when they lived in Maine. It was like Maryland was a land of paradoxes, and his parents switched their life for Alex’s.

Tea was tapping her fingers on the desk, which was what brought Alex from his reverie. She looked different, and he had to blink his eyes to see if his eyes were just adjusting to the light, or something.

She was wearing one of those baby-doll dresses, the ones with the sash right under her chest. He even saw a tad bit of pink on her eyelids.

Alex could have sworn the first day he met her at the supermarket, she was wearing duckie pajamas. He could also sworn that the day before she wore sweatpants and a Green Day shirt. He had to stop himself for yelling a, “You like Green Day? Me too! Hate me less, maybe?”

Alex hated it when anyone hated him, like he wanted approval from everyone.

Slow down there, Dr. Phil. Alex thought.

“Why are you wearing a dress?” Alex wrote on her sketchbook, spotting the headphones in her ears a mile away. It took one to know one.

Tea’s eyes flickered to his, the brown swirling around, contemplating telling the guy to fuck off or the real reason.

“I have to go to dinner with my older brother, I have to meet his girlfriend.” She wrote in curly, bubbly script.

Alex nodded, taking a breath. Talking to her was like poking an unconscious man: he might smack you with too many pokes.

“Sorry for snapping at you.” Tea took her headphones from her ears, genuinely apologetic to the boy, tired of passing notes to him.

“It’s cool.” Alex replied.

“It’s just a…” Tea started, wringing her hands.

“I understand, it’s okay. I would of bitch slapped me, if I were in your position. Just telling me to shut up is probably the least damage you could have done.”

Tea laughed. “I’ll get April off your tail, too. It won’t be easy, but it can happen.”

Alex took a fake sigh of relief. “Oh thank God, I thought I was going to have to put salt lines in front of my doors to keep her out.”

“Wait, do you watch Supernatural?” Tea asked, her smile widening. Her mother thought she
was obsessed, and Jet hated it when she forced him to watch it.

“Yeah! I love that show!” Alex replied, his face widening. He hadn’t watched it in ages because of the move, but none of his friends would watch it with him.

“Not as much as me. How do you kill a vampire? Silver or wooden stakes?” Tea asked, her eyes crinkling.

“Neither, you cut its head off.” Alex answered, boasting.

“I like you.” Tea punched his shoulder, laughing.

**

Tea didn’t want to go to the stupid dinner to talk to her stupid brother, and meet his stupid girlfriend.

Her mother was picking her brother and her up from school, which was surprising. They usually had to take the long walk home in sleet or rain.

Tea’s mom was dressed in dress slacks and blouse, and her younger brother was wearing a polo shirt and khakis. They all looked like they came out of a Good Housekeeping magazine.
Jet climbed in the front seat, and Tea slid into the back.

“Now, I want you two to act like normal human beings. I don’t want you guys to scare off the first college girlfriend of Mikey.” Her mom started lecturing once she got on the road. They were going to some fancy restaurant a half an hour away, closer to Mikey’s college.

“That means Jet, you cannot sniff her.” Tea started laughing loudly at the thought.

“Mom, I stopped that when I was twelve.” Jet whined, hitting his head back of the seat.

“More like fourteen. And Tea, no dead baby jokes.”

Tea threw her hands up in the air. “How am I supposed to lighten the mood? By saying a knock-knock joke?”

“Dead baby jokes do not lighten the mood. Think of one right now that is appropriate.”
Tea snapped her fingers after thinking for a moment. “What’s better than feeling up a dead baby?”

“That joke is doomed from the start.” Jet sang.

“What?” Her mom sighed.

“Feeling up a dead baby with three nipples.”

“That was double whammy. I give it a seven for effort.” Jet announced.

“I give it a three, no dead baby jokes.”

Tea huffed. “Dark humor isn’t everyone’s cup of liquated dead baby.”

Her mom turned the radio up louder as Tea huffed.