Free Super (Book 2): Super Duper by Princess Jones Page B

looked
when I got an unequivocal win from her.
Miss Fine didn’t offer me a seat. In fact, she didn’t
say anything. Her face didn’t register any emotion at all. She
just took the check from my outstretched hand and looked
at it silently. Then she turned it over and inspected the back.
Finally, she looked me right in the eye, and ripped the check
into as many pieces as she could.
“What the fuck are you doing?!”
Miss Fine calmly swept the pieces of the check into
the trash can under her desk. “Audrey, your Council dues are
not for your parents to pay. They are for you to pay. These
payments are your contribution to the cause.”
“But it’s not against the rules for my parents to help me
with them. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from,”
I pointed out.
“True,” she agreed. “But it should be. Your lack of
responsibility with these dues is just one symptom of the
overall disease. You don’t care about your oath. You don’t care
about the community enough to help shoulder the burden of
financing it. You don’t care about anything but yourself.”
Miss Fine stood up and took a step toward me. “You’ve
slid through life without any consequences, Audrey. I don’t
know how but I know it’s going to end here. Consider your
audit over. I’ll see you at your hearing.”
    BAM! BAM! BAM!
I need a sign , I thought, as I dragged myself from bed
and made my way to apartment door. A sign that says the super
is not available until noon. All violators will be evicted and/or shot. Too bad I didn’t have the means to evict or to shoot anyone.
I opened the door to see my mother standing there.
“Mom? What are you doing here? How do you know where
I live?” None of my family had been to my apartment before.
I always went to them.
“You’d be surprised at how much I know.” She stood
in the middle of my tiny living room and waved her hand
around. “This is cute. Better than I expected. Not as much
dirty laundry as I expected.”
“Thank you.” I have a policy of taking my compliments
wherever I can find them.
Mom clapped her hands together. “Get dressed. We
have to get to Macy’s to look for an outfit.”
“An outfit? Why do you want me to help you shop for
an outfit? Isn’t this the type of thing you take Ella to do with
you?”
Mom put her hands on her hips. “It’s not for me. It’s
for you. ” I stared at her. I really had no idea what she was
talking about. “For the family photo,” she finally said.
I hadn’t thought about that thing since the vote. “Mom,
I don—”
She cut me off. “You owe me. I haven’t forgotten about
the vote.”
I threw my hands up in the air in disgust. “Fine! I’m
coming.”
As I disappeared into my bedroom to get dressed,
Mom called after me. “And hurry up! Because we have to do
something about your hair, too.”
* * * * *
“Owwww!”
    Mom didn’t even look up from the magazine she
was reading in the salon chair next to mine. Behind her, a
stylist was setting her hair in giant curlers. “Stop squirming,
Audrey.”
    “It’s not my fault. She’s the one burning me.” I pointed
to the woman straightening my hair.
All of the women in my family have the same tightly
curled hair. Mom’s was dark but Ella and I shared the same
reddish brown that my dad has. And yet, they always seemed
to have figured out a way to tame their hair. My hair had a
mind of its own. It was kinky, curly, and wild. As long as it
stayed out of my way, I usually just let it be. My go-to style
had always been pulled back in a puff or forced into a messy
bun on top of my head.
But after shopping at Macy’s, Mom said she had made
an appointment with her salon for the two of us. When we
got there, it turned out she had already planned for me that I
needed to have a blowout. So here I was, sitting in the salon
chair while the stylist tried to force my hair to behave with
a flat iron set on the demon setting and an arsenal of hair