Sunday Lunch

Lunch with Donna was... well, interesting, I suppose is the right word. She seemed apologetic about asking me to be friends with her kid for money, which is good because she should be. I'll spare you the details of the conversation, but here's the gist of what went down:

• Donna says she's had trouble connecting with Luna lately and thinks Luna needs someone closer to her own age to talk to. (Which is more or less what she'd already told me.) She thinks that someone should be me because, according to her, Luna likes me. Also, Luna doesn't relate well to her peers, so the solution is clearly to stick her with an introverted and somewhat misanthropic fifteen-year-old such as myself. 
• She's "a bit tight on cash at the moment" but "understands that this is an inconvenience" for me (which it isn't, it's just weird), so she's going to "do her utmost" to make sure I am fully compensated for my time. She asked me how much I thought was a reasonable salary. I told her I'd ask my parents what they thought as I've never done anything like this before, and she laughed nervously and said she doubted my parents had done anything like this before either. (At least she has a sense of humor, I suppose...)
• Hours, according to her, will be flexible. She understands that "school comes first" and that "if anything comes up and you can't come by, that's fine". Of course, it doesn't matter because 90% of the time I have little to do anyway. "Just for this week," she suggested, "why don't you come by a few times after Luna gets out of school?" (Which is at three o'clock.) I agreed to coming over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but asked on what pretense I would be there, since it would seem suspicious if I was there just to visit a girl I barely knew. Donna suggested that maybe I would be there because my parents weren't home, which doesn't make much sense given that I'm fifteen and old enough to be home alone. After I told her that, she seemed stumped on ideas. "Come over early on Tuesday and we'll think of something," she told me.
• She gave me her email address in case I need to contact her.
• She paid for lunch.

Donna also suggested that "maybe we can do this again next week, you know, so I know how it's going with you and Luna". I agreed to this because at this point I've already sold my soul. What's one more crime against human decency at this point? Poor friendless Luna. I've never felt quite so bad for a twelve-year-old, excepting, of course, myself at age twelve. (That's a story for another blog post.)

The greatest tragedy of all is that this is really going to happen. I am going to become a twelve-year-old's paid BFF. Jesus, I need someone to talk to about all this.