This is the third installment of a 100-day challenge to write a new vignette every morning.
If my calculator had a history it would be more embarrassing than my browser history. I passed algebra because the kid next to me did. I passed trig because Mr. Eaton was too preoccupied with his divorce to grade anything—thanks, Jill!
I graduated—but just barely. No one has ever called me smart, and no one ever will. But I do know one thing: I’m being ripped off.
“There’s no way I owe that much,” I tell him, and I try to puff up my chest like they do in the movies. “I got a thousand bucks from you last week. There’s no way I owe two thousand now.”
“You owe what I say you owe.”
Mr. Wells is standing at his desk, leaning with one hand like he’s expecting some photographer from “Country Studs Monthly” to bust in. He’s got this black handlebar mustache that would make him look like a cartoon villain if it wasn’t so thin and splotchy. Maybe I’ll put him in my next comic.
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
He shrugs. “If you don’t pay me today, I’ll have to send someone to motivate you.”
“Who? Mr. Snuggles?” I point at the taxidermy rabbit on his desk. I say it as a joke, but looking at the beady glass eyes, I think maybe that’d be a nightmare. Uncle Lou got a glass eye last Christmas, and I still can’t look at him.
Mr. Wells doesn’t laugh. “Are you being smart with me?”
Miles Away 