He plopped the backpack onto the floor next to the door, giving an audible sigh of relief. From the pain in his back, the thing might have weighed a ton. "
At least I won't have to worry about carrying around 6 periods worth of books when I go off to college
", he thought naively.
"Hey!" His mother said loudly as she walked out the kitchen. Instead of coming straight to him, she turned and picked up three envelopes from the coffee table and walked to him, holding them out to him. "Open them." She said excitedly.
He smiled, taking the envelopes. "What are these?" he asked calmly. Knowing that they were responses for the college applications he had sent in.
"Just open them!" she said. "I have been waiting all day for you to get home to see what they say. I almost opened them half a dozen times."
He smiled and opened them slowly, reading each one slowly, only adding to her anticipation. He finally finished the third and pulled it away from his eyes. He had been a bit overzealous in his applications. He had applied to 10 different schools, and with the 2 acceptance letters he was holding in his hands, that brought the total to 3 acceptance letters and 3 rejections, with 4 not having arrived yet. He was a bit surprised he had gotten accept to even 1, let alone 3.
"I was accepted to Havenbrook and Hamilton, but I was rejected from Fieldwater." He stated flatly.
He was a bit surprised by her response. She literally squealed and threw her arms around him. "I knew you could do it! What have I always told you? You are the smartest guy I know!" she said loudly, planting a kiss firmly on his cheek.
He smiled and blushed at her delight. At 18 years old, he still got embarrassed when she complimented him. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's still 4 schools that I was rejected from." he said, smiling as she kissed him on the cheek.
"Who needs those school anyway? You're much too smart for them! Now, you only have a month and a half of high school left, so all you have to do is pass all your exams with flying colors, which I of course know you will do, and you will be home free!" she exclaimed.
He laughed out loud at her enthusiasm. He was still waiting on replies from 4 more schools. The differences in distance ranged from the next city over, to all the way across the country.
He hadn't decided which one to go to yet. His mother wouldn't give him any advice on which one to choose. He knew that his father had the money to send him wherever he wanted to go, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to rely on his father's money yet. He was waiting to see what scholarships he could get before he decided for sure.
"I am going to cook you a feast tonight, in honor of your acceptance!" she exclaimed loudly.
He laughed again, "Thanks mom, but a simple dinner will be fine."
"You are my son and I can spoil you however I choose. Now you will shut that mouth and eat whatever immaculate feast I give you." She stated. Making it obvious that this was not up for discussion.
She turned to go to the refrigerator and pull out some meat. "Now go to your room while I start dinner, I'll be up there in a little while."
He smiled as he walked up the stairs to his room. Her daily visits had turned into such a routine that she could say something like "I'll be upstairs in a little while" and it seem like the most normal thing in the world.
He sat down at his computer and began to browse the internet. Normally, he would have been doing his homework, but they didn't give many assignments to seniors this close to the end of the year.
He decided to spend a few hours playing games on his computer, until his mother walked in. He smiled as she walked in, standing to remove his belt and take off his pants...
----------------------
He got to the front door with a smile on his face. Only a month left before he was completely done with high school. He couldn't stand the cliques, the cramped and dilapidated public school buses, or the sad, underpaid teachers for another year. The fact that it was Friday and he had the weekend off only added to his good mood.
He had received the final 4 letters. He had only been accepted to one other school, in the next city. Now all he needed was to find out what scholarships he could get and he would finally be able to make a decision.
He stretched as he walked into the kitchen, glad to be home and spend the weekend doing something fun instead of listening to bored teachers give lectures they didn't really care about anyway. He grabbed a bottle from the refrigerator and began to drink. He looked around, checking the back yard and the living room, wondering where his mother was.
He walked up the stairs to her room. Her door was open, and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands and crying.
"Hey, mom." He finally said in a low voice.
She jumped slightly, surprised to hear him. "Hey, you" she said. Her voice sounding nasally and weak from crying.
He walked into her room sat next to her on the edge of the bed. "What's wrong, mom?" He asked, sympathetically. She wasn't the type of person to cry over little things, so walking in on her like this meant something was very wrong.
She put on a fake smile. "Nothing." She said, shaking her head and rubbing her eyes again. "I'm fine, just one of those days. You know how it is. How was school?"
"It was alright... same as usual... tell me what's wrong." He said.
"Nothing's wrong. I'm fine. Please, don't worry about it." Putting extra emphasis on the please.
"Alright." He said, nodding. He wanted to push and prod her for the answer, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. If there was something she didn't want to say to him, it most certainly wasn't going to be said.
"Your father won't be home tonight, he left on a business trip this morning. He won't be back until next Sunday."
"Alright..." He said, trailing off, thinking to himself, and then smiled. "Well, in that case, I've got the perfect thing for us, you'll love this."
He quickly got up and raced to his bedroom, coming out and back into her room a few moments later with something in his hands. He promptly handed it to her.
She looked it over quizzically. It was a large assortment of DVD movies. "What's this?" she asked.
"Two different box sets. One that has the best horror movies ever made, and the other has the worst ever made!" He said, with a smile on his face. "I picked them up at the mall last weekend, and I figured since dad's gone, we can have a horror movie marathon."
Ever since he had become a teenager and she had started letting him watch scary movies, it had become a custom to watch them together. Sometimes they would get scared together, sometimes they would just spend the whole movie laughing about the poor acting and the low quality effects. He had thought immediately of his mother when he saw them, remembering the times they watched low-quality and downright bad horror films when he was younger.
She smiled genuinely. "There are at least 20 movies here!" She exclaimed.
"Yep, and it will probably take us all weekend to watch them all if we start as soon as possible." He said with a smile.
"Alright. You get settled and out of your school clothes, I will start some popcorn." She said as she stood and walked to the kitchen with an almost genuine smile on her face. He smiled as he saw that, happy that he was able to make her smile again as he went to his room, changing into a T-shirt and pair of sweat pants.
----------------------------
It had gotten dark outside a long time ago, they were already on the 4th DVD in the boxed set. This one was one of the bad ones. They had laughed through most of it and were spending the entire film pointing out where they saw strings or where the rubber masks were coming off.
He smiled, seeing another string and turned to her to point it out. His almost childish enthusiasm was immediately quashed as he saw the tears streaming from her eyes once again. He paused the movie, not saying anything this time, hoping she would tell him what was bothering her so much.
She just stared off for several agonizing minutes before she spoke softly, not looking at him as she concentrated on each word. "I'm going to ask your father for a divorce."
Time immediately stopped as she spoke the words. The idea of his parents separating had never even occurred to him before. Sure, they had their ups and downs like every other marriage, but he just assumed they would always get past it. He didn't know how to feel about this. "W... What?"
"Your father and I have been having a lot of problems for the last year or so... or... I should say we haven't had any problems at all..." She took a breath, readying herself to explain everything to him. "Aside from brief greetings, we haven't talked in 2 years. I can't remember the last time we had an actual conversation."
"And... well... sorry for telling you this... but we haven't been intimate in over a year... and the year before that... well, let's just say that he wasn't overly interested in
my
enjoyment.
It was a bit awkward listening to his mother tell him about his parent's sex life, but it was unbelievable that this had been going on. He had no idea about any of this. They seemed civil when they had dinner occasionally, but he just assumed that they were more open when he wasn't around.
"This morning, after I made breakfast, I went into the bedroom to let him know that the food was ready, and he told me he didn't have time to eat because he had to hurry to catch his flight. He had a packed suitcase with him. I asked him where he was going and he just "Oh, I forgot to tell you?" and then laughed it off like he had forgotten something trivial." She said, tears falling down her cheeks again.
"He had known about the trip for 2 weeks, and he had forgotten to tell me about it. That was when I knew for sure. I had hopes that maybe things would get better, I had tried so hard to get his attention and make him interested in our marriage again, but when he forgets to tell me about something as major as him leaving for an entire week... I knew that he really didn't care anymore."
"What a bastard!" he exclaimed loudly, his anger boiling inside him.
"Hey!" She said loudly, trying to wipe her tears away as she began to speak. "Just because he doesn't want to be my husband does not mean that he isn't still your father. Don't talk that way about him."
He was too angry to listen to her. "No! That's totally messed up! How could he do that? I wouldn't even forget to tell the mailman that I was leaving for a week, let alone my own wife!"
