Clockwork Crazy by Elle Strauss

Author:Elle Strauss [Strauss, Elle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-927547-49-6
Publisher: Lee Strauss

Fifteen

I’d experienced several versions of my family unit: Parents together, parents apart, brother as a Goth, injured but reformed, an arrogant jock.

But I’d never dreamed of the one I was faced with now. Father dead, brother never born.

This was the nutshell version I got out of a perplexed and impatient supposed best friend.

“Blimey, Casey, you’re acting like you didn’t know your dad passed on. You should see your face.”

My blood flooded to my feet and I felt faint.

“I feel sick,” I managed to say. I darted into the nearest bathroom and retched into the bathroom sink. Jessica followed me inside. “I told you not to eat that sushi yesterday. I mean, who eats raw fish? It’s so barbaric.”

I ignored her ignorant tirade. The only thing I could think of was that I was in a world where my brother and father didn’t exist. Mom’s overprotective statements made sense to me now.

There was no way I could accept this reality. I had to get back to my own, even if it meant Nate and I would never be together. I had to get my dad and brother back.

I cupped my hands, filled them with cool water, and slapped it gently to my face. Jessica leaned over the sink next to mine so she could get closer to her reflection in the mirror. She methodically applied lipstick to her lips and smacked them together. “Austin loves this color.”

The door swung open and the girl who entered gasped at the sight of us. I gasped back. Instead of Lucinda’s usually stylish flair, she wore plain ill-fitting clothes and her beautiful long hair had been cropped to her ears. Not a very flattering look on her. She froze momentarily before darting into one of the stalls. She actually looked frightened of us.

Jessica leaned up against the stall door and tapped. “Where’s my essay?”

“I’m not doing that for you anymore.”

“Really? I guess I’ll be posting that special picture of you on Facebook, after all.”

“Jessica,” I said, feeling appalled. “Leave her alone.”

Jessica shook her head. “Don’t you get all weird on me now.”

The second bell went and we were all good and late. “I’m skipping,” Jessica said. “Wanna come?”

I shook my head. “Not this time.”

“Fine.” Jessica paused to take one more look at herself in the mirror. She still had her lipstick in her hand and wrote with a flourish on the mirror. “Lucinda is a Loser.”

I recognized Jessica’s big loopy letter “L” from when she wrote the same word on my locker in my sophomore year.

“I better have that report by Friday,” Jessica said, before disappearing.

“Oh, God,” I muttered. “I can’t believe I’m friends with her.”

“I can’t believe it either.” The toilet flushed and Lucinda exited her stall. She glared at me and then her gaze landed on Jessica’s lipstick graffiti. I quickly wetted a paper towel and started to scrub it off.

“I’m really sorry about her,” I said.

Lucinda turned on the taps and scoffed. “Since when?”

“Since whatever it was that happened to keep us from being friends.

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