that's some bullshit || task one
setting: tuesday, 10:15 am; school campus
"tell me when you're done with baseball practice and i'll come back and pick you up ok?"
Both Andrew and Max went to a private school, while Cassidy when to public. She had purposely failed the intake exam—at the time still rebelling against her parents. So now she had to rush from her school to be sure to pick up Max on time, only to have to go back up there to get Andrew—with Max still in tow.
"Who are you texting, Cassidy? Your baby daddy?" some loudmouth junior called from the front of the classroom, snickering to his friends.
"No, I'm textin' my..." Cassidy paused, processing what he had said. "What did you say?" she asked, as if the question was venom dripping from her mouth.
"Your baby daddy. Heard you have a kid," He laughed, waving a big, dark colored book in the air. Cassidy was shocked, but didn't let it show.
"You must be gone in the head," she countered, returning her focus to her phone. Why would people say she had a kid? It's not like she was known for sleeping around. Thoughts swirled in her head as she stared at the screen. At least until the kid—whose name she was fairly sure was AJ—slammed the book he had been holding onto her desk.
"Read it and weep, Cassidy," He replied, flipping the book open.
"Why don't ya just come off it, alright?" She said, rolling her eyes. She was about to shove the book off the desk, but she saw the page had on it. It was her yearbook picture printed out with plain printed text under it.
Everyone knows Cassidy Molloy as the smartass in the back row of every classroom, but there might be more than meets the eye with this blondie. I saw child’s car seat in the backseat of her car, so she must be hiding a baby in her life. So is Cassidy a teen mom, or is she holding it for a friend?
Cassidy's breathing started to hitch. Max was only seven and was still too small to ride without a carseat. She drove picked him up from school and was mostly the one to take him places, so obviously she wanted her brother to safe. It was her brother's carseat.
Around her picture, other people had scrawled extra comments:
No wonder she's repeating her senior year, a thick black sharpie commented.
I wonder who's the father?, curly cursive questioned.
I bet it's the guy that graduated last year that she hung out with, replied sloppy handwriting.
Fuming at people's ease to believe a stupid lie printed in a "burn book", she slammed the book shut and pushed it off her desk onto the floor.
"Hey, hey! Don't you wanna read other's people's pages? It's in alphabetical order," he said picking it up off the floor.
"As far as I'm concerned, AJ. That whole book is bullshit."
"Just some bullshit? Funny." Cassidy rolled her eyes at him, but she realized that all eyes where on her. She didn't mean to cause a scene, but she probably wasn't talking quietly. Some girls where whispering in the corner, judging her, while a couple of guys were just laughing at her.
Mr. Wilkinson was just walking into the classroom as everyone made it back to their seats, but Cassidy was leaving. She didn't want to deal with this shit. She could hear the AJ's stupid voice, but couldn't make out what he was saying. She just had to get out of here.
"Fuck off, yeah?" was all she could get out as she pushed past him. Mr. Wilkinson said something to her as she walked out of the classroom, but everything sounded echoey and she could only think about getting out of that stupid classroom. Pulling her messenger bag across her thin body, she walked down the hall ignoring the bell that was sounding.
Walking out of the school, she headed for the parking lot. With shaky hands, she lit a marlboro light as her thoughts continued to swirl. No, she didn't have a kid. Well, yes, she did. He was her brother. Her parents were fucking killed less than a year ago and now she was caring for her two younger brothers with the slight help her of her aunt. Throwing her bag onto the parking lot's concrete, she contiuned to mentally fuming at whoever wrote that ridiculous book.
Cassidy didn't want a fucking pity party and wasn't going to tweet and instagram her information out into the world. It wasn't anyone's business what was happinging. If people cared enough to get to know her, they'd know.
They'd know that she didn't miss the last three months of her senior year because she was hiding a growing belly, but because she was burying her parents in their home country. They'd know that she wasn't cleaning up her act because she was a teen mom, but because she was on babysitting duty around the clock. They'd know that the carseat in her run down Honda Civic was her baby brother's, not her own child's. They'd know that her life wasn't a fucking walk in the park. They'd know that if they cared for half second about something other than themselves.
Slowly sliding down the side of someone's car, she pulled her knees up to her chin. And for the first time since her parents' funeral, she cried.