Oh boy. She'd already caught sent of the whiskey? That was quite the irritating little factor, and all of this was beginning to bug him more and more. She was using guilt. Guilt was one thing that people could not escape from often, but there was a different way to approach it, and Joe did what he always did. He stuffed it away. It twisted and wrenched inside of him, stressing him all the more.

"So what if I've been drinking. If you've got no room, you've got no room, and there's no point in coming to get me," the teen snapped, as he approached the car that he recognized as his aunt's. Leaning up beside it, the boy was unsure of whether or not it was locked. Or even armed with the alarm. Using his hand, he nonchalantly brushed some of the hair that had settled within the front of his face free, behind his shoulders. Again, he moved to hike his pants up, wondering why exactly he had to do this, when they had fit fine just earlier this morning.

"Either way, let's just go... Either that or I'm walkin' back to pa's place," Joe demanded, growing more irritable by the moment.

she disarmed the car alarm and electronic lock making that distinctive signaling click sound the young boy would recognize telling him she had given him permission to enter and sit. she didn't have to say a single word, but just looked at him with sad eyes biting her lip. she wasn't going to stand there arguing with him. his ears weren't tuned to that frequency to hear it anyway. he would have heard that as the usual cacophony and static noise he heard when preached to so often in the past by hounding parents who had themselves become alcoholics. unlike them though, Julie would speak to the young man's heart. the heart was an element of the communication equation most were oblivious to. Joe's heart had to be mollified and made tender to accept her plans for him to be righteously transformed into an obedient boy.

Julie was aware that silence usually spoke louder than words. deeds too, the Christian deeds she had been raised up with and trained as a little girl thru adult womanhood would speak to him loudly in a similar manner.

as she started her car, she glanced in the rear view mirror to see yet another of those black and white Sheriff's buses carting a another load of prisoners to be arraigned in court thru the revolving door of the justice system. one thing she noticed was they all knew well the drill, as if they had done this over and over before. similarly she silently glanced over at Joe who like those caged prisoners had committed himself to his own cage he couldn't recognize. she would love him to his freedom, regardless of how much he'd defiantly protest. she would pursue the expectations she made clear in the police station where she reunited with her nephew.

The sound of the lock disengaging was enough for Joe. The door was pulled immediately open, and he slid into the passenger's seat, leaving the buckle undone. He hardly saw the point in this bit, and he simply relaxed. Tried to at the very least. His aunt's silence was more than enough to keep him on edge. He was wary of what in the world she may just say.

So many things that would be symbolic to anyone who'd just gotten out of their first visit to the station, but those hadn't been there the first time, so what would be the point in taking meaning to it now? He had no idea what in the world would be awaiting him at the end of the destination. Regardless, he was already reaching one wall or another.

"Why won't you yell!? Why won't you scream?!" Joe snapped aloud, already screaming. He was more than unhappy with this situation, his aunt being so... quiet. Accepting. It wasn't right.

Julie firmly held her demeanor and refused to play into the guilt trap Joe was setting for her. she silently smiled as her inner self confidence was surfacing, manifesting itself in a maternal control that came so naturally to her. often times at her business and work, she had experienced similar scenarios with potential clients of merging corporations, vying to bargain for a lower price playing their guilt trips; vociferous shouts and screams by bargaining clients across the table. she knew how to quell their little temper tantrums, and she did it very effectively,

"Joe, has anyone ever told you that you have a healthy set of lungs?" she said, in motherly gentle melodious voice, glancing over sweetly smiling at him.

That very tone was growing bothersome, the moment she let it escape from her mouth. Joe just couldn't understand this approach too well, his dad having been one to let the belt do the talking, and his mother was always more than ready to tear his ear off verbally, before she left. She feigned innocence. Innocence was something that didn't exist at this point. Snuffed out by life. For anyone, no matter how holy they were.

"You know you've got a screw loose, right?" Joe growled, clearly unable to think of a taunt worth response along the same lines as her quip about his healthy lungs, doubtful as the very idea was that they were. Why wouldn't the damn car come to a stop? The small spaces/ His now apparently crazy aunt. It was so irritating. Why did he have to be stuck with this woman of anyone else?

she firmly held her sweet smile, while she waded thru his thick nasty display of anger.

"Joe, you must buckle your seat belt before we move the car any further. now i know a big, tall, healthy boy like you with such a powerful set of lungs can manage to do a simple thing like that. or should i do it for you?" she said in a cooing way still with that ever present determined sweet smile of hers.

Again, the eye twitched behind the shades. The demand for him to be buckled was a catch twenty-two, from what he could tell. Either, he buckled in and submitted for them to go, or she was going to attempt to humiliate him. He was stuck, and there was no clear win. Grudgingly, his hands slid the buckle over his shoulder and fastened it. Already it was bothersome, the strap digging far up into his neck. That hadn't happened for a while now, so why now?

"This car built for some kind of freak?" the boy growled, turning his head, so he would simply be viewing all that passed him by. He wasn't going to be happy with this.

"that's a good boy Joe. i knew you could manage that little detail," she smiled lovingly at him approvingly patting the buckled seat belt seeing that he was safely strapped in.

"but Joe...i must say that you sound a bit cranky today. does that little buckled seat belt pose such a threat to a big boy like you?"

Joe was hardly paying any attention to the woman, catching only a glimpse of her smile in the mirror on the side. It was so condescending. Her tone too. What in the world was wrong with her?

"What's wrong with you? Can't find a sap to make a baby, so you're just trying to make everyone else feel like one?" Joe snarled. The tone she was taking insisted that she was seeing him as a small child, which he clearly wasn't. "Just drive." A simple demand upon his part. This was not going anywhere but sending him off some mental cliff of sanity.,

"tsk tsk tsk tsk Joe," she scolded shaking her index finger at him teasingly, still keeping her smile in place.

"my, my, we're a cranky one today! are you always this cranky or do you have bad days when you're happy about everything?"