Chapter 21 -- Vitamin T
Tuesday October 25
I'd been afraid I would wake up and hurt from yesterday's activity. While I could tell I'd pushed my limits some, it was more a good hurt, the kind you get from working out and not the sort from being injured. Today, for the first time, I felt like I would eventually be okay.
Duke heard me awaken and jumped on my bed for me to love him up. I must have found the right spot because he stretched out his neck and his back leg began to jerk back and forth like he was scratching himself. I'd wanted a similar experience with Brook last night, but her dad made her go home. He just didn't understand young love. Or maybe he understood too well ...
It's incredible the difference a day made. Now all that was left to deal with was Babygate, as Tami called it. The big difference between Ashley and Scarlet versus Pam was that they were older and able to stand on their own, or so I hoped. I made a mental note to carve out some time for Pam. I didn't want her to think I'd forgotten about her.
Duke and I got ready for our walk, and when we arrived downstairs, Brit and Precious met us by the door. Precious pushed by us and ran up the stairs.
"Good morning," I said.
"I need your help. I think Precious wants to have her kittens here."
I started to shake my head, but Brit stopped me.
"Just listen to me. My idiot brothers tormented Precious when she was a kitten, and consequently, I don't believe she feels safe having hers around them. I found her in Duke's crate, rearranging it. I suspect she's starting to nest to get ready for having kittens."
Duke wouldn't be happy about that. I'd gotten him a dog bed and blanket that he'd worked to get exactly right for him to sleep. Little David had made the mistake of crawling into the crate once. Duke had come and tattled on him. It was almost as bad as when the boys would get into his toys. Duke had a big heart, but he had issues with sharing.
"I'm not sure I want Precious taking over my apartment."
"If it weren't for you, she wouldn't be pregnant," Brit accused.
"How is it my fault?" I asked.
"You let Halle's cat get at her. You could have stopped this."
Welp, the cat was out of the bag, so to speak. I'd not shared the fact that Bandit was the father. I guess it wasn't that hard to figure out.
"Hang on. You seriously expected me to reach down and break that up? The best-case scenario would have been me losing a couple of fingers, if not my hand."
Sometimes I earn my moniker. Brit had been fishing to see if I would fess up. Now she had me and knew it.
"Just consider her another mother who needs your help with her babies."
"That was low," I said, shaking my head. "If she has her kittens in my apartment, you have to take care of them."
"I wouldn't have it any other way. I'll bring over everything she'll need."
I gathered my hound, and we went for our walk.
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Mom informed me that I would not skip breakfast and make Brook's mom feed me. Chuck drove today, so I had to explain what he missed yesterday. There weren't any croissants at the Dawson household, but we did have a breakfast casserole that everyone liked. I'd survived this long without fancy breakfast sandwiches, and so was content with eating at home.
Brook had waited for us. I don't think she thought her mom was ready to face me yet, now that we were back together. I suspected her mom secretly had the hots for me, but I've been wrong about that sort of thing in the past.
"You were too busy to even call me last night?" Brook teased when she got into the car.
Maybe I should check out her mom. I didn't need this to start my day.
"Silly girl," I said, then moved into her personal space.
"Just kiss me and make it all better," she whispered.
I'm sure we each wanted to remind the other what we had together. It seemed like only a moment later when Chuck pulled to a stop in front of the school. I wanted to have him drive around the block a few times, but Brook found the door handle and about fell out of the car.
"Dork," I observed as she clutched me to keep from sprawling on the pavement.
"Come on. I need to parade you past a few people so they understand who you belong to."
"You need to tell Halle. I think she plans to fly in today."
"Taken care of," Brook said.
She pulled me out of the car and latched onto my arm. Then Dare ruined her plans as he bounded up.
"David took me to the airport and let me fly drones yesterday."
Brook didn't have the heart to tell him to get lost so she could re-stake her claim. We'd both tried to bring Dare out of his shell; she wasn't about to shut him down. The two of them walked in front of me as he talked on and on about how I should buy one for him to thoroughly test out its capabilities.
Dare had done his homework and said that it had a lot of different applications. He explained how my mom's real estate business might do videos of properties and suggested that it would be useful for my security. Truthfully, it impressed me the way he was building his arguments. He unknowingly constructed a case I could present to Caryn so she wouldn't take my head off if I bought one. Dare said he would volunteer to take the class and then would fly it for me.
I guess Dare assumed Brook was in charge in our relationship and that if he convinced her, I would fall into line. I hated to tell him that only worked for married couples. Most single guys hadn't been fully trained yet.
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Dare and I arrived late for Chemistry because Zoe stopped me in the hall between classes and seemed upset.
"I'm afraid I might have to go back to being homeschooled. Mr. Dutton embarrassed me when he handed back our pop quizzes from yesterday."
I gave her a curious look, and she handed me the quiz. The test had twenty multiple-choice questions with A/B/C/D options. After that, it had five slots where you wrote in your answer. At the top, I saw that she'd only scored ten out of twenty-five.
"He embarrassed you because you hadn't studied?" I asked.
She blushed and pointed at the bottom.
"I didn't know the answers," she explained.
In slots twenty-one through twenty-five, she'd written 'Jesus,' and to the side, it said, 'Jesus is always the answer.' That made me smirk. Underneath it, Mr. Dutton wrote, 'Jesus didn't save you this time ...' Zoe did not find my reaction to his response amusing.
"It's not funny. What am I going to do?"
It took me a few minutes to talk her down, but once she realized he hadn't singled her out, she relaxed a bit. I told her what he'd done when Alan skipped his class. It even shocked me when Alan hadn't been there. Alan had forgotten to tell us that he had a doctor's appointment. The next day we walked in, and on the whiteboard was a missing person poster with Alan's picture on it. I reassured her that he just had a warped sense of humor.
"Darius; David," Mr. Dutton intoned as we made our way to our desks.
"We had to deal with a crisis. Everything is okay now," I assured him.
"Do you have any cash on you?" he asked me.
I pulled out my money clip and showed him. I kept my larger bills on the outside and the smaller ones in the middle. Mr. Dutton took my cash, extracted a hundred-dollar bill, and handed the rest back.
"Thanks, I need this for demonstration purposes," he explained and then turned to the class as he held up the bill. "Today we are going to be doing an experiment. When enough heat is applied, this will burn. Who can tell me what happens, chemically?"
I had an uneasy suspicion that Mr. Dutton might actually set my money on fire. The rest of the class seemed to suspect that as well but didn't appear as concerned as I was. He pointed at me to answer.
"Burning is a chemical process by which two atoms or molecules combine with each other, releasing energy in the form of heat. Usually one of the two molecules is oxygen or something else chemically similar called an oxidizer," I answered, using our textbook's definition.
Learning my lines for movies had taught me that I could also memorize textbook sections if I applied myself.
"Very good. Money is composed of 25 percent linen and 75 percent cotton. If I put a flame to it, we would expect that it would catch fire. What if I got it wet? Do you think it would burn, then?" Mr. Dutton asked.
The class seemed divided. We watched as he dunked my hundred-dollar bill into a bowl of liquid and then pulled it out wet. I rose halfway out of my chair when Mr. Dutton pulled a lighter out of his pocket and put the flame under my money. When the bill literally burst into flames, the class erupted. I couldn't believe that he'd torched a hundred dollars. Had I known what he would do, I would have given him a one.
Then, as if by magic, the flames vanished, and my money appeared unscathed. We all looked on in stunned silence.
"I want you all to take the next fifteen minutes to try to figure out what just happened. Write it down, and we will count this as a quiz."
We all sat there in shock, and slowly our brains tried to wrap themselves around what we'd witnessed. I glanced over at Dare, and he'd already written his answer down. The little shit covered it up as if I would steal it from him.
When Mr. Dutton had collected the papers, he read a few aloud. Half the class claimed to be convinced he was some kind of magician or warlock and just outed himself. The other half guessed he'd used some type of accelerant that didn't burn hot enough to catch the money on fire. Mr. Dutton clued us in that he'd soaked the bill in ethanol. I loved it when teachers got creative. It made learning fun.
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