Page 86 of The Rebel
I ran my hand through my knotted hair and frowned. “Don’t be crazy.”
“No, you do, something’s different.” Mom scrutinized me a little closer. “Did you dye your hair?”
“No! I didn’t dye my hair,” I said, taking the scrunchie off of my wrist and pulling my hair back into a loose bun.
“Well, I’m sensing something.”
“I got that feeling too,” Dad said, “when I first saw her.”
“Huh!” I scoffed. “All you’re sensing is extreme fatigue. I’d been jammed in the smallest economy class seat one row in front of the toilet so I heard every person who needed to use the bathroom. You could have gotten me a seat in business class!”
“Ha! We were lucky to get you that seat. Flights were full right through till Friday,” Dad said.
“Even business class?”
“Well, we didn’t look at those seats,” Dad conceded.
“I may have been wrong,” Mom said with a wry smile and a ruffle of my hair, “I don’t think our girl’s changed at all, Clint. Still moaning and as feisty as ever.”
“Just the way we like her,” Dad said with a wink.
I scowled and pouted, then smiled as I remembered how Jade wanted to book business class seats and come with me.
“I’m just glad you’re here,” Paris said. “It feels right now.”
It was obvious I wasn’t going to be able to get any more sleep and I jumped out of bed. “Have you had your breakfast yet? Let me get it. What food have we got?”
“Mom and Dad are useless,” Paris said as I joined him in the small kitchen of the apartment. “Look at these bananas.” He pointed to a bunch of bananas with a few spots on them. Most people would consider them fine but I knew they were too ripe for Paris’s taste.
“I’ll have to go shopping. Jade said that their grocery stores are different here and that if you can find a fruit and veg market, the food is so much better.”
“Oh,” Dad said, “we’ll see if we can find one then. That’s right, Jade did an exchange here, didn’t he?”
“Yep,” I answered, and turned back to Paris, “I’m guessing they didn’t soak the oats overnight?”
I always made Paris my own version of Bircher muesli, oats soaked overnight in almond milk and Greek yogurt with grated apple, cranberries, raisins and a dash of cinnamon. It wasn’t hard to do.
“No, I’ve been cooking them,” Paris said.
I tutted at Mom and Dad’s incompetence.
“We’ve been traveling,” Mom said in outraged defense. “It’s been very difficult to get exactly what he wants.”
“We haven’t been as precise as we would have liked,” Dad admitted meekly. “Paris has had to make adjustments.”
“Yeah, because they’re both pathetic,” Paris muttered in my ear.
We both sniggered, causing Mom to cast a stern glance at us. “And by the way, young lady, what’s this art exhibition you’ve been selected for? And why didn’t you tell us about it?”
I shrugged, unable to resist a snarky reply. “I thought it would be a distraction.”
Mom narrowed her eyes at me, like I was being insolent, but then her mouth twisted into a smile. And I realized that Mom and I had our own unique relationship. We were different, like chalk and cheese, and we sometimes—or oftentimes—clashed, but it didn’t lessen the love we felt for each other.
“Well, those pictures were amazing, Valencia,” she said. “They just blew me away.”
“Yeah, and who was that good looking guy with all the muscles?” Paris quipped.
“A figment of my imagination,” I said, squeezing his bicep. “Because my proportions were obviously not correct.”
