Page 76 of Poetry of Flowers

“Yes, and we will watch it whether you want to or no,connard.”

He drew in air and started grinning mischievously.

“You just said a bad word.”

“Yeah, I did,” I shot back with a smile on my face.

“Matilda Avril, I’m doing a good job with you,” He grinned to himself while he leaned back and looked slowly from me to our TV.

“You know if my mom heard that, she would be angry with me.”

My mom hated curse words, but she loved cursing in French when she got frustrated. If I cursed, I liked to do it like my mom,connardmeans moron, it was my favorite curse word.

“But Joy isn’t here right now, so you can curse as much as you want, Tillie.” He had this dumb grin on his lips as he side-eyed me.

“Now start the movie, I have to be home in half an hour, so maybe we can finish it tomorrow.”

I shook my head and took a bite from my delicious sandwich, but I didn’t tell Kayden how amazing it was, that’s what he got from insulting my food.

“No, Mom and I will visit Aunt Cecily tomorrow, maybe on Thursday?”

“On Thursday I have guitar lessons, Friday?” he asked, and I nodded. Friday was perfect because my cousin would come back on Saturday, and we wanted to go to the park and search for flowers for my mom’s birthday the following week. She was constantly complaining about turning thirty while Dad was still twenty-nine. She was as beautiful as three years back, I didn’t know why she hated the number thirty so much.

We watched the movie for a solid ten minutes before our telephone rang, and I slipped off the sofa, running over to pick up. It was Kayden’s mom, Olivia.

“Hello Olivia!” I answered the telephone and gestured to my best friend, who looked annoyed. That usually meant that he had to go back home because he broke something, or his parents had a fight again.

Poor him, his parents always fought.

“Hi sweetie, can you tell Kayden to come home immediately?” she sounded like she was crying because she hiccuped while speaking.

“I will, is everything okay? You sound sad.”

She hiccuped again.

“Yes, just the hormones, you will learn about it when you’re older, Tillie.” Oh, Mom got lots of those too. Sometimes I thought I never wanted to grow older because of those hormones.

No, thank you.

“Oh, okay.”

“Goodbye sweetheart.” Before I said bye too, she ended the call.

I put the phone back on our table and walked over to Kayden, who slowly slipped off the couch, walked over to my kitchen, and grabbed his school bag and half-eaten sandwich.

“I wonder what I did wrong this time,” he mumbled.

Seeing him so sad made me sad too.

“Your mom was crying,” I told him, but he didn’t even flinch.

“It’s the third time this week, yesterday it was because she lost a sponsor or something, and Monday it was because Dad fought with her. She’s a crybaby. Nothing new to me.”

“She said it’s the hormones.”

“I sure hope she’s not pregnant again, I don’t want another sibling. The two I have are more than enough.”

I got it, Faith was in some annoying phase right now.

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