Still

A Drive

"Can you turn the radio up?" Harry asked, staring out the window of the car.

It was raining cats and dogs outside, and he swore he saw lightning five minutes before. They had to drive to Odgon for his mom to get new paintbrushes, even though it was an hour long drive from where they lived in Gopher. He couldn't blame her for wanting to make the drive, since the art stores near them were shit. Still, he had began for get a bit ansty as they made their way back home.

"You can do it yourself, can't you?" His mom snapped, which made Harry jump a bit. Harry's mom sighed, and rubbed her eyes with one hand. "I'm sorry, honey," she apologized. "I just can't believe they closed our store! That place had been running for twenty years; it was where I worked as a teenager, and now it's just torn down? It's absolute bullshit."

Harry reached for the radio dial, and cramped up the music. It was something poppy which he didn't really care for, so he began to switch through the stations. He didn't necessarily have a specific music preference, but he didn't want to listen to Katy Perry.

After a couple minutes of searching, Harry found a station playing 90's rock music. He let his hand drop from the dial, and continued to stare out the window. The sun had disappeared completely an hour or two ago, just as they left Odgon. They didn't mean to stay as long as they did, but their car had broken down in thr ArtsnCrafts parking lot, and his mom had to tinker at it for another two hours before it began working again.

The car was absolutely atrocious, and he had no clue why his mom kept it. Maybe it was out of spite of his grandfather, who said Harry's mom would never get it to work. If she didn't love art as much as she did, she could have become a mechanic. Harry loved cars almost as much as his mother did, but even he knew the car was a wreck.

"Did you ever talk to your English teacher for extra credit?" Harry's mom asked, as she fiddled with the car's headlights again.

"I didn't have time to," Harry lied, watching the window wipers as they swiped across the window in a hypnotic motion. "The bus would have left without me, you know."

"Oh, but Idris could have given you a ride, you know. She's got that shiny new car and everything."

Harry didn't like Idris at all, and had always thought she talked too much. Idris had babysat him as a kid, and loved to remind him that she will always think of him as her baby boy, despite the fact that they were only three years apart. She would have been thrilled to give him a ride home, and probably would have offered to get him after school snacks like cookies and crackers. Then Idris would let herself into his house, and tell him that he was doing his homework wrong, and remind him that he used to be a straight A student. He still would be, if it wasn't for the fact that Mrs. Criss lost all of his paperwork from the last quarter and decided to give him an F instead of fixing it. She had even admitted to losing it, and wouldn't do anything about it!

"So how's that special art class going? I bet all the students were surprised that a Freshman was in their advanced class," Mrs. Connolly joked.

"Yeah, totally," Harry pretended to agree. "The teacher keeps acting like I'm some prodigy, though."

"That's still really cool!" Mrs. Connolly pushed. "How did that magic picture turn out? The one that you woke up early yesterday morning to do?"

"I actually ended up not turning it in," Harry admitted. "It didn't really fit the theme."

"What did you do with it, then?"

"Some girl in English was asking about it, so I just ended up letting her keep it. It wasn't very good, anyways."

It was obvious his mom was disappointed, and Harry had to make himself turn away. There was a rule of thumb in the house about art, since his whole family was full of artists. All art was good art, they would say, even if it strayed away from the final idea. She would have wanted Harry to show it to her, anyways, and she would keep it in her house office like she did with everything else he ended up not caring for, but he really wasn't proud of his last world. He was awful at world-building, and should have left it to professional authors.

Harry waited for his mom to say something-- anything-- but she just kept quiet. There was nothing left to talk about anymore, really, unless Harry wanted to talk about grades. His mom's work personal life was never a topic that was on the table, since she always avoided those types of questions. If he wanted to learn more about what his mom did, he would have to ask his dad in a private setting, and even that was nearly impossible to do.

"Looks like your uncle's texting me," Harry's mom said as she picked up her phone.

She had always been one to text and drive, and Harry had never been bothered by it before. This time though, he felt uncomfortable with her continuing her bad habit during such a bad storm. The rain seemed to be coming down harder then than it had before, to the point where Harry could barely hear the music on the radio.

"Mom, I don't think you should be--"

There was a loud honk from a car that was not theirs, and Harry was blinded by the bright white lights of a truck heading towards them. They had stopped suddenly, as the truck came ramming towards them.