Of Monsters and Humanity: The Genesis

Chapter 16 - Terra

Fifty-six days before....

I rolled over, tired and drowsy, to be met with blazing, fiery eyes.

"One thousand, five hundred dollars?" she screeched. "You spent almost two thousand dollars on my credit card? My credit card? You stole my credit card and spent almost two thousand dollars on it?"

I thought I expected her to be mad at me, but I suppose I wasn't prepared for it. I sat up abruptly and rubbed my sleepy eyes, pulling my legs away from her in fear that she might have just ripped them off.

My grandma sat next to me with a printed piece of paper on her hand, her tiny wrinkled face in a red twist of anger. I hadn't ever seen her this angry in my whole life, and even though teenage rebellion felt good for the moment, I regretted spending all of that pent up rebellion at once. That might have been a horrible idea.

"I mean.... I needed a dress--" I started, completely forgetting the lines I planned on spouting out. The conversation was all planned out in my head a few days ago before the gala. I was supposed to tell her the day after, but things didn't exactly fall into place as I had planned.

"You could have bought a much cheaper dress!" she screeched back before dropping the piece of paper on my lap. It had a graph on it that displayed the spending on Friday, which included the times at which the money was spent. She pointed at each one with a shaking finger. "In addition, you neglected to ask me about any of this. You basically stole money from me. You could go to jail for something like this!"

She had a point but I thought that she was missing mine. "I needed one in a super short time frame and I wasn't sure if you'd let me go so I just bought it all in one night." My words seemed to make her angrier, as her face blazed redder and her lips pressed down into a thin line. "But I plan on getting a job," I added quickly and put my hands up as if to try to calm her down. "I will pay you back every cent and save up for college."

She was shaking mad and looked as though she didn't even want to open her mouth, but I knew that she was completely ashamed in me. Even though I could predict that she would feel this way upon finding out about what I did, I never really prepared to see it face to face. I knew I would eventually win and pay everything off, but it wasn't like it would be an easy road to get there, especially when she just found out that her only grandchild stabbed her in the back.

Her facial expressions came as gunshots. I looked down at my clammy hands in disappointment, knowing that I crossed the line so far that I was almost in another universe, and I was taking advantage of the best thing that ever happened to me. Without her or my grandfather, I might just have been on the street. They were the only people I had left and I just stabbed them in the back for a few moments of bliss, for a few moments of mindless teenage rebellion. I was the worst granddaughter ever.

Almost an entire minute of painful, aching silence went by before she whispered, "I haven't told your grandfather because I don't want him to have a coronary."

I looked up, pressing my lips together and holding down tears as I faced her, knowing what I had done. I nodded but didn't speak, understanding that I could have actually killed my grandpa just to prepare for a night that would scar me forever.

She looked at me for a moment and her hardened expression softened before she raised a hand to my face and gently caressed my cheek as if I was sick or something. The action displaying her unconditional love only made me feel worse, and the tears that I

.was trying desperately to hold back came cascading down my face.

Grandma reacted quickly and wiped them away, which only made me cry harder. I was seriously the worst granddaughter in the history of granddaughters.