Timothy`s boarding school

Saturday morning, It`s 6 am already. I would like to say the last week was the worst best week of my life but you would just  call me crazy as there is no such thing as the best-worst, you kind of have to pick one isn`t. I can`t believe this is the last year as a junior of my high school career and all I have achieved so far are a dozen merit certificates, among them  top of the class and so forth. I was really a teacher`s pet as I quote my haters as to say or were they? As for my social life and so forth, I totally had nothing to show for it. As I spent most of my time reading and studying in a pursuit of a dream, shiny it was but lonely it was definitely going to be. As I lay in my sheets on my bed, my deep contemplation of my awfully lonely life was cut short by a sharp voice “Do I have to remind you, of what you are supposed to be doing?”. A question it seems but trust me that was a full on order of I will whip your ass boy if you don`t get out of the bed this minute. My mom was quite hard on me sometimes but I do believe it was for the right reasons mostly. Like any kind of a mother she always wanted the best out of her son. Although sometimes she took it to extremes, like the time she banned me from leaving my room until I had memorized the whole first 40 elements of the periodic table including their masses and properties. I have to say that was quite extreme, game of thrones extreme as I was only 8 years old then. I lift my head to look at her, her face looks contained but quite strained. I can see the puffy bags on her eyes complimented by red veins all over the white. If I didn`t know better I would say she was a drug addict. She wipes the flour off her brown skin with the back of her hand. She reiterates “Do I have to repeat myself young man?” I quickly jump out of my bed as she turns to leave my room leaving my door a little ajar, so she could keep an eye on me to see that I don`t get back to sleep. I shout “This is supposed to be my summer break” but she only waves the back of her hand at me in her departure.       I head to the bathroom first so as to avoid the full on encounter with my brother in the kitchen. He was such a douche bag. Every time he was always complaining about something, if it was not my laziness towards house chores then it was politics about how my mom always seemed to favour me. He was quite a competent debater winning almost every argument we had even if he was in the wrong sometimes.  He always wanted to be a lawyer and I would have to say, he would have been one brilliant lawyer except that he failed his final A-level exams so he had to settle for something less in college. As I look myself in the bathroom mirror my eyes suddenly flash as I remember the events of the past school term. I can`t stop smiling as I remember how my life had gradually improved and I can`t wait for the summer holiday to end, so I could go back. But dread suddenly filled me, twitching me up-straight as I contemplate the consequences I would have to face for what I had done. Suddenly I begin to tremble in terror and horror. I take a quick bath, brush my teeth and head to the kitchen; this was going to be one long holiday. My mom is flipping pancakes on the kitchen gas stove. A rare specialty she seldom gave us. As a single mother, she had so much to do and rarely enough time to do it. I loved her to bits. Just so she could afford our fees, she would hustle up more jobs than she could manage, borrow more than she could pay back. I definitely hated seeing my mother struggle like this. Her first husband, that is, her only husband had died from malaria when my brother was like 2 years old. I was born probably a year later. After her husband died my mother was at her lowest, with resulted in her sleeping with a married man at some party and guess what; they didn`t use protection. Therefore my father naturally wanted nothing to do with me, never paid maintenance, never called basically never made any effort towards me. I have only seen him on one photo when I was like 3 years old, with his Mazda 323 in the background and my mother desperately holding me in her arms. I think that was the last time they ever talked. From the foliage in the background it definitely seemed there were in some abounded road or something.   As I pull myself back to reality “That smells great”, I say towards my mother. She turns to look at me, smiles through her sleep deprived face; “Thanks Hun, I hope the taste goes along with the smell” she turns away. My mom was quite insecure about her cooking, she was a great cook I have to admit but she always shot down herself on that subject. One of her dreams was to become a great baker and exotic cook but because of us she had to push those dreams right to the back. It made me feel a bit guilty as I always thought myself as her dream crusher. Having been in boarding school for the past 5 years I hardly had any friends left in my hometown. Most had moved and those that were there, we now had very little to talk about, therefore we ended up just avoiding each other. Boarding school was not as bad as it sounds; I actually preferred boarding school to day school. For my first year in high school I actually begged my mother to take me to a boarding school. It was better than seeing the sad and strained face on my mother everyday and it also made me forget about the poverty we were so close to, as in boarding school everyone was the same in respect to where you came from. Everyone wore the same uniform, had the same food at the dining hall and no one had any smart phones (although this rule was often broken in secret); so I rarely felt out of place except when people started talking about what they had left at home. This last term or more specifically the last week of the term had been the best in my whole life. I had not felt that way my whole eighteen years. As I remember the events of the last term a smirk appears on my face. My brother walks into the kitchen, slaps the back of my head with the book he is holding and says “Be sure to clean up the bathroom next time you use it”. He was such a clean freak. It was not my fault that puberty had messed my body up. Now every time I use the bathroom, I leave hair everywhere, in the shower, on the floor, in the bath basin. Technically I totally don`t blame him for calling me a dirty slob although it was not my fault I  grew up without a father. No one guided me through these things and definitely not my brother as he always thought I would find my way around it by myself as he had. My mother definitely ignored this topic altogether, saying it was not her problem it was to be a boys` thing. To think that was the end of it, my brother starts going on about how I needed to take up more responsibility around the house and how I needed to get a job for the summer and not siphon money from my mother. For love of God, this was the first day of my summer, couldn`t he give me a break.       My mom does not respond she just puts the pancakes onto the empty plates in front of us and heads towards her bedroom. Over the years my mother has learned to not get involved in the patty fights between me and my brother as it always resulted in her getting a back lush from the losing party on how unfair she was. As I pour syrup onto the steamy pancakes and chuck a load in my mouth, I begin to look around the kitchen. I had truly missed this place. Nothing has changed really. We still use the same two plate gas stove and to my mother’s hurt, we still have no oven. Even the window I broke last holiday has not been repaired, there is still the dark plastic bag covering the space. I have to admit our kitchen was not that big neither was it very small, it was just the right size for this fatherless family of three. As I gaze on this small round table we are sitting around, I begin to notice how lonely this family was. My brother basically was always on his phone laughing off at the latest varsity jokes and paying no particular attention to what’s in front of him what so ever. My mom mostly was trapped in her own thoughts and I wonder what it was probably about. I think it would be about how she is going to pay back the latest loan she has borrowed or how she now has one more mouth to feed, truly I do pity her. Suddenly we hear a knock on the front door. As the youngest it was by default that I was responsible for the door but so early, who could it be, I wonder. As I make my way to the door, my brother suddenly shouts over a whispered voice at me “If it`s for me, tell them I am not around.” Of course how could I forget, my brother hated visitors and going out. He was one of those kids who liked to see the world through the screen, that is, his phone or the rarely subscribed television. Going out always seemed to exhaust him. As I open the door, my whole body turns to stone. What is he doing here? Who gave him my address? I told him not to visit me? I am totally paralyzed to what is in front of me. How all this began it’s a long story, I can`t stop thinking about.