Kash and I were almost back to my place when I finally stopped. I kept turning back to see Kash hesitantly scanning the trees and brush around us. This had to be at least the fifth time I caught him checking out the vicinity, like some kind of soldier in enemy territory. The minute we turned down the  harmlessly average dirt road, I could hear his steps behind me instantly becoming slower--more cautious--like a startled fawn wandering through people's backyards. But I couldn't see anything that might indicate danger, and so couldn't make much sense of Kash's hesitance.

Did he just see a wild animal? Weird... What's he so worried about?

"Dude, what's up with you!?" I just had to get to the bottom of this. More than anything, I was annoyed by how much longer the walk was taking us, I started to feel uneasy by how rattled Kash was acting.

"Huh... Oh... nothing," he blurted out, breaking from his daydream and quickly shaking his head. We had finally made it to my house. I led us around to the back porch and up the small flight of stairs to the screen door. I could hear Kash almost skipping up the steps behind me. It was like I'd broken him from some kind of trance, his mood shifting on a dime, strangely uplifted.

"You sure, man?" I wasn't going to let Kash off that easy, but then I didn't want to probe too harshly. "I mean, you seemed hella nervous the whole way here. They got bears out here or something?"

"No‒or wait, I mean yeah‒bears! We've got bears here. I mean I guess you've got to keep an eye out for 'em," Kash babbled sloppily in response as if he'd been caught off guard. "No‒everything's fine. I was just... umm... checking out the neighborhood, ya know? Can't say the last time I've been out this side of town."

His eyes seemed to dart around‒between the trees, the mailboxes, the few trash cans left out on the street from the day before‒searching almost manically for any other serviceable thing to talk about. Bless his heart, Kash was such a nervous wreck, and yet somehow didn't budge whenever I had more than a two-word question for him.

"Sure, whatever man," shrugging my shoulders as I turned to open the back screen door.

"I've never been this close before," Kash murmured under his breath.

This close? This close to what?

Shaking off Kash's random antics, I invited him inside.

"Anyone home?" I called out into the house at large. I could hear boxes being shuffled around somewhere past the kitchen. "Mom... Uhh, I have a guest and I was just‒"

"In here, honey!" It was Beth, hollering from the living room, "Sorry, what was that? I'm back here. Could you come and give me a hand real quick?"

Kash and I stripped off our backpacks and he slowly followed me as I showed him through to the back of the house. Beth was squatted next to some dusty old moving boxes, sorting through a mess of yellowed old books and papers.

"Umm, Mom I brought a guest home if that's alright." I stepped aside revealing a bashful and blushing Kash behind me. I put a hand to his shoulder thinking maybe that would comfort him, "Kash, this is my mom Beth. I'm not really sure where my other mom is right now, but‒"

"Ohh, we brought a friend over, did we," Beth exclaimed, shrill with glee. Beth (the quintessential Southern belle she was) welcomed any opportunity to exercise domestic hospitality. Aside from her current mess in the living room, she kept the house at a constant ready for any small amount of guests that might drop in. She was eternally happy to do so, and at that couldn't be happier at the possibility of meeting someone I knew‒one of my friends.

"I'm sorry, kids. I wasn't expecting anyone for another few hours! But here, let me just drop this for a second and I can go whip y'all up a few turkey sandwiches or something. Y'all must be hungry, what from that long walk home."

She jostled her wrist upward so her smartwatch displayed the time. "One-thirty? Now that's a little premature for a normal school day. I thought last week's newsletter said the early release would be on Friday." She dusted off her hands and shoulders before finally raising her head to get a good look at us. She began to make her way towards Kash, but her eyes went wide and white when she saw me in her periphery.

"Sweetie!" She brushed past Kash like he was another of the lifeless book stacks on the floor. She cupped my face in her hands, inspecting my cuts and bruises. "What in the high holy hell happened to you?" She began to literally helicopter around me, lifting up the edges of my shirt collar checking for wounds around my neck and shoulders.

"Mom, it's fine." I hadn't exactly thought this far out. Any parent would probably want to know why their kid came home looking this beat-up, and naturally so; but to Beth, I was like a precious piece of heirloom China (cracked or chipped, and she would fill me in with gold if she could). I glanced at Kash, finding quick inspiration for a passable excuse. "Mom, I just tripped over some big branches on that shortcut through the woods. Kash even warned me to watch my step, but I guess‒"

"Remy, don't you lie to me," she wasn't buying it for a second. "You do not look fine! Did you get in a fight? Are you being bullied?" She started shaking me slightly. "Oh my gosh, do I have to take you out of school? Or we can move back! No, it's not too late". Beth's anxiety knew no means of gradual escalation, going from zero to sixty, faster than a rocket into near-earth orbit.

I know she cares, but this is just too much right now.

"Mom! I'm fine." I attempted to break Beth's manic vice grip on my shoulders as she quickly began devolving from structured motherly concern to partial nuclear meltdown. Tears were welling beneath her eyes, the heave of her breathing becoming more audible every second.

I had to figure a way out before things got even worse. The last time this happened, I told her I wasn't in the mood for "game night" because board games don't aid my mental wellbeing; Beth responded by python-hugging me for an uninterrupted twenty-three minutes and sobbing a small waterfall down the back of my shirt.

Yeah, we're not going there right now.

"Mom! Please, really," I said, carefully peeling her off of me. "I'm fine... And I have a friend here," I motioned Kash into the living room, though I doubt he felt even the slightest bit comfortable waddling nervously over to me.

He cautiously made his way over next to me and gave as charming a smile and wave as he could manage in front of my rabidly loving mother. "Hi. I'm Kash." He scratched the back of his head, his charming grin replaced by a quivering nervous simper. Beth merely looked him up and down, but her glare quickly returned to searing the backs of my cornea.

"Honey, I know you don't like to talk much, but could we at least revisit homeschooling?" The warmth of her hands on my face, her thumbs rubbing over my eyes as if I were the one with tears covering the entire bottom half of my face. Stressful as she was, there would always be something endearingly delirious about Beth; her cup runneth over with so much love, she knew no other way to offer but in chaotic heaps.

Kash cleared his throat to interrupt. "I mean, I don't think one rough game of dodgeball is gonna put him out for good, Misses... Umm, Misses Remy's Mom." Point to Kash for effort, I guess. There wasn't really any trying Beth when she was all riled up like this, but then I couldn't really fathom a way out of this myself. Beth shot him the fiery glare of a mother protecting her only cub, and yet strangely said not a word. She just continued to wipe nonexistent tears from my face, not letting her eyes break from Kash's for a second. I'd almost never seen her act so hostile. It was uncharacteristic.

We all three of us stood for an awkward moment in a silent standoff, when Kash seemed to tap into an unknown well of bravery: "He just got hurt in P.E., that's all." Beth squinted harder, her disbelief still firm and unshaken. "I mean yeah, the other seniors went a little hard on him I'd say. But he's just the new kid in town! And sure, some of the seniors are assholes, but--shit! I mean, whoops, Misses‒uhh... I'm sorry, Misses..." Kash could only string so many lucid thoughts into concrete sentences before he started stumbling and mumbling. I had to give it to him, though: he was trying.

"Beth! And that's Miss Beth if you love me." She winked at Kash and let me go, her mood pivoting on a dime. She finally took a moment to wipe the non-imaginary tears from her own face before brushing some of the old book dust off her pants and walking briskly towards the kitchen. "A game of dodgeball, you say? And I suppose that's why you're home earlier than expected?" Beth still didn't sound quite convinced, but the sight of me having an actual human peer over at the house seemed to sway her from motherly panic. Whether or not she fully believed us, I couldn't tell, but she now seemed moreover delighted at the prospect of me having a new friend in town.

"Mom," I chimed in, "It's really no big deal. Like, nothing hurts or anything."

"Oh really," she retorted, "But the school would send you, along with your completely uninjured new friend, home‒early!? And without a doctor's note, at that?" She re-emerged from the kitchen having magically procured a neat arrangement of turkey swiss pinwheels atop a pressed pattern glass saucer. Either she'd had that plated and ready to go, or she was the witch of Better Homes and Gardens. I hadn't made up my mind yet about Beth. She had also just caught me off guard: I had no doctor's note to speak of. I could only nervously stammer in response. She was so good at baiting me in like that. Thank goodness Kash regained his footing.

"I did it!" Beth reactivated her glare through to the back of Kash's skull, her eyes slightly tinged with confusion now. Kash seemed a little more poised for a response this time, though.

"I mean, I didn't do it. Like, I didn't hit him. I usually sit P.E. out altogether, but I knew Remy might need some protection. I saw him getting pummeled out there--no chance for this kid!" He reached over and gave me a light brotherly jab to the shoulder. He really was a weak kid, the jab feeling more like a tap than anything remotely forceful.

"I've been there too, Miss Beth," Kash continued on. "First week of school. The big boys just wanna see what you're made out of. They don't mean anything by it... Or, well, they do, I guess."

"Hmm," Beth let out curtly, shoving the sandwich saucer in front of me to have, still waiting for more from Kash.

"Listen," Kash seemed to be reaching the end of his Oscar-worthy performance, "you don't have to worry as long as Remy stays with me. I've been steering clear of those guys for... Well, since elementary school I guess. They're harmless long as you just completely avoid them at absolutely all costs." That last part raised Beth's eyebrows a bit, but she ultimately sighed and meandered back down to the floor and her piles of books.

"So, you're Kash," she was multitasking now, back to alphabetizing and organizing while we stood in the background‒still too uneasy to leave the room, "You must be the one I've been hearing all about." She dropped the stack of books in her hand, the resounding thud on the wood floors made Kash and I jump slightly.

"Well, this is just too exciting, Kash! So nice to finally meet you! Come to the kitchen, let me make you something," she took Kash by the arm and left me to follow them back to the kitchen.

"Mom," I said, "You literally just brought us those." I pointed at the neat stack of turkey hors d'oeuvres resting untouched on the coffee table. I tried to look as dumbfounded as I knew how to.

"Oh, I just thought those could be appetizers, ya know. Just simmer down and get in here for some proper fixins. I'll wrap those backup and put 'em in the fridge later." The absurdity of her hospitable nature knew no earthly limit. And though I didn't like lying to her, the truth always seemed to upset her in a way that I could never handle. For now, it was easier to just follow her into that kitchen, indulge in a little late lunch, and watch as Kash hilarious got sucked into a vortex of chicken salad, sweet tea, and some pecan pie leftover from the night before. We were going to be here for a while.

A/N Short chapter but another update is coming this week! How do you guys like Beth? I really had fun writing this chapter, especially introducing Beth's personality. Thank you for the 100 subscribers and for all of the comments and likes! I read all of your comments and it means a lot to see you guys enjoying the story.  Make sure to subscribe for the latest updates!