Gabriella

I'm thirteen. In life skills class, they're supposed to teach us how to act like adults, but no amount of tests and studying could prepare me for this. I'm thirteen, surrounded by a bunch of adults who think I'm eighteen, and am impersonating my sister and only had her driver's license to prove it. I was not taught a life skill to handle this.

The more I repeated the information in my head, the more clear it became. We were a bunch of criminals. No, I was a criminal. Annabelle and Mack were just witnesses. Underage driving, identity theft, and I'm sure there's several other laws I'm breaking and not even knowing it because I'm only thirteen!

A overworked looking lady stood before me at the front desk. She gave me an exasperated smile. "Are you the owner of the black Toyota SUV?" The desk lady asked me in an overly-sappy tone.

"Yeah," I answered in my best eighteen year old voice.

"Well, your car is parked extremely crooked and the headlights are on. We must ask that you fix that, or we will have to ask you to leave."

I smiled a little bit and laughed for the first time in minutes. "That's it?" I sighed of relief.

"Yes, is there a problem?" Desk Lady gave me a weird look. I figured she'd never had anyone excited about having to leave their meal and park their car correctly.

"No, no, no. I just thought it was something serious." I felt the tension melt away from my shoulders as I said this.

"Now, if you didn't know how to drive, that would be a problem." Desk Lady laughed it off, but I felt my whole body tensen right back up.

"Yeah, ha ha ha." I tried my best to give up a fake giggle as I pulled my (sister's) keys out of my pocket and headed out to the car.

As I walked up the sidewalk, I realized I did do a really lousy job of parking. It looked like a demented mix between someone who is really, really bad at normally parking their car and someone who is really bad at parallel parking. It was clearly taking up at least three spaces, so it was understandable that they would want me to fix it.

I hopped up into the car and pushed the push start. The engine roared and all the interior lights came on, to my delight. I put the car in drive, and pulled forward. Putting it in reverse, I twisted and turned the steering wheel until I finally got into a rather straight parking position. I turned off the car and jumped out, accidentally missing the step and falling onto the pavement. "Ow!" I murmured to myself and pulled my body up off the pavement. I looked around, making sure no one saw my little clutz scene. The parking lot was vacant.

Walking back into Quincella's felt like a major accomplishment. I parked my own car! I remembered seconds later that it wasn't technically my car, but I was in the family so I was part owner and was bound to inherit it someday.

I gave a small closed-lipped smile to Desk Lady on my way back in, feeling good about the whole thing. Wait until Mack and Annabelle hear about this, I thought to myself.