The Cafeteria Wars.....Conclusion and Information

The content on this website and in this Chronicle is intended for adults, 18 years and older.

(The Chronicle is after this lovely message if you’d like to skip all of this mushy stuff and get right to the Bradford boys bringing us to the next stage.)

For those of you who are able to get it, please enjoy. For those of you who will not be able to get it until December please understand that this was no slight to you. When ibooks gave me help is when I needed it more than ever. I am a single mom with two children and at the time we’d just survived our own personal hell and were struggling to get back on our feet. Without iBooks taking a personal interest in my books, I honestly don’t know where we would be right now. I realize that it was you, the readers, who saved us, but I can’t ignore the fact that iBooks took a big chance on me and for that, I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

This is the letter that can be found in the first Honeymoon from Hell novelette, which will be released tomorrow, June 1.

Dear Reader,

I’d like to start off by saying thank you for all your support and kind words over the years. It’s because of you that I am able to do be there and take care of my children by doing what I love. So, on behalf on my children, I wanted to say thank you.

Now, moving onto to this mini-series. I never planned on writing the Honeymoon from Hell series. It started off as a Chronicle or two on my website, which is how I continue giving life to the characters that I’ve created and fallen in love with. When I wrote a teaser about Jason and Haley’s honeymoon I was hooked and immediately wanted to write the whole story out as well as the honeymoons for the rest of the Bradfords, but I wasn’t sure how it would turn out or if it was even something that you would be interested in reading about.

Well, while I was trying to decide what to do I wrote the Chronicle to let you see how Haley broke the news of their impending family to Jason. After that I really couldn’t stop thinking about this series, but time was a factor.

So, I decided that I would write the series and release it in December 2015 after I was able to get out the books that I promised you. At the same time iBooks was doing what iBooks does best, helping self-published authors like myself get a chance to show readers what they could do. iBooks helped me out, gave me my real break and honored me with the first title of Breakout Author, so I decided to make my already busy schedule even busier and write this series early so that I could say thank you to iBooks for everything that they did for me and release this mini-series early through them.

Some readers are upset about the wait, and I am sorry about that, but I wouldn’t be who I am if I didn’t step up and show my appreciation and gratitude to those who have helped me and my children when we needed help. With or without this early release through iBooks, this series would not have been released at Amazon.com or anywhere else before December because of my workload, so please don’t feel slighted, because that was not my intention.

Now, as for this HFH, you will notice that the prologue is one of the last chapters of Playing for Keeps. That was done so that you wouldn’t need to go back and re-read the end of the book to figure out where we left off. It also leaves you with the choice to skip it and move on to the rest of the story.

Both Chronicles that you were introduced to for the HFH series are in this novelette. They were treated as sneak peeks on my website and now you can see how they come together.

With that being said….

I hope you enjoy the Honeymoon from Hell mini-series.

Yours,

R.L. Mathewson

The Cafeteria Wars….

(I lost count! Lol, so let’s just finish this, shall we? This Chronicle is a little more serious than my usual ones, but I am going somewhere with this.)

An R.L. Mathewson Chronicle

            “Cole Bradford?”

            “Yes?” he said, trying not to fidget in his chair while his cousins sat beside him, looking bored.

            “Your parents are here,” Mrs. Benet said, still looking just as furious as she had an hour ago when she’d been forced to call every available teacher to clear the cafeteria while the police stepped in with the EMTs and tried to talk the cafeteria staff into leaving the walk-in freezer where they’d barricaded themselves once things had gone….south.

            “Think mom will homeschool us this time or do you think they’ll hire us a tutor?” Sebastian asked, sounding unconcerned as Cole sat there, wondering how things had gone so bad, so fast.

            “They might have Aunt Jodi tutor us,” Jonathan said, sounding hopeful, most likely because she loved to cook and it usually didn’t take much prompting or pouting to get her to whip them up something delicious to eat.

            “She’s got the twins to take care of,” Sebastian pointed out with a shrug.

            “We could help,” Jonathan said, pulling out what Cole already recognized as his grandfather’s iPhone.

            “That’s true,” Sebastian agreed with an absent nod as he leaned over to look at whatever it was that his twin was looking at while Cole sat there, staring at his cousins in horror, wondering why they weren’t panicking.

            They were seconds away from getting grounded for the rest of their lives and his cousins were sitting there, looking bored as they checked out stock quotes. Slowly exhaling and wishing that he’d never invited his cousins to join him at his lunch table, he dropped his head in his hands as he struggled not to pass out.

            How was he going to explain this to his father?

            Oh, God…

            How was he going to explain this to his mother? His father would get angry, probably yell at him, threaten to lock him up in his room for the rest of his life, but his mother…

            She would just look at him through those sad eyes as she slowly pushed her glasses up, her little chin trembling as she stood there, trying to give him one of her reassuring smiles to let him know that everything would be okay and that they’d work through this when they both knew the truth.

            There was no fixing this.

            He’d been expelled.

            For the first time in his life he was in real trouble and sadly, he couldn’t put all the blame on his cousins. It had only been a matter of time before this happened, but he never expected it to happen so soon or for SWAT to have to be called in.

            “Get up,” he heard his father say tightly, sounding angrier than he’d ever heard him before.

            Swallowing hard, Cole stood up as he fisted his hands by his sides, digging his nails into his palms as he struggled not to pass out. His legs actually trembled as he stood up, threatening to drop him on his butt as he looked up, risking a glance and immediately wishing that he hadn’t.

            His parents and Uncle Trevor stood in front of them, looking angrier than he’d ever seen them before and considering some of the stupid things that he’d done along with his cousins, that was saying a lot.

            “D-Dad,” he started to say, hating the way that his voice broke, but he couldn’t help it.

            “Don’t,” his father said firmly as he gestured with a simple nod of his head for them to move their butts.

            Swallowing hard, he nodded jerkily and did just that as his cousins both yawned, looking seriously bored as they walked past him and headed for the double glass doors that would take them away from this school for the last time. Somehow he managed to make his legs move and take him through those doors, but it was difficult when all he wanted to do was to turn around and apologize, and beg his father not to kill him, but he stood firm and continued walking, pretending that he wasn’t struggling not to puke or pass out.

            “Which one of you boys is responsible for this?” Uncle Trevor asked, making his stomach flip over, because in about ten seconds his father was going to kill him.

            Taking a deep breath, he admitted, “I-it was me.”

            “I see,” his father murmured, sounding thoughtful as Cole focused on his father’s truck and forced his legs to take him there. He was barely twenty feet away from the truck when he felt his father’s hand come to rest on his shoulder.

            Before he could say anything, he felt his mother’s small hand wrap around his and give it a reassuring squeeze.

            “I’m proud of you,” his father said, giving his shoulder a squeeze as he looked up and met the eyes of Martin, the little boy that the cafeteria staff had refused to give any food because his account showed that he owed more than five dollars, who was standing next to his parents still crying while his father mouthed, “Thank you,” to them.

            They’d refused to give him anything to eat, even the bread and cheese sandwich that they usually gave the kids who didn’t have lunch money. When the little boy had started to cry, he’d just lost it…

            His cousins had as well, but not like him.

            For two years he’d been forced to watched as kids whose parents could barely afford to send them to school in clean clothes had to go through the embarrassment of being placed at the table in the corner and given two slices of bread with a piece of cheese slapped between them, a milk and an apple, which was bad enough, but not as bad as everyone knowing exactly what sitting at that table meant. It meant that their parents were too poor to send them to school with lunch money, but not poor enough to qualify for free lunch.

            Seeing that little boy cry had been the final straw, one that he wished that he could regret, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He was fortunate, he knew that, because he’d never had to go a single day of his life worrying about where his next meal was going to come from, but those kids forced at that table every day…

            Weren’t.

            He should have never involved his cousins and wished like crazy that he hadn’t dragged them into this, but now they were all in this together.

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