Love's A Real Thing Right?

Chapter 18: The longest seven seconds; Part 2

But this time his cousin did better than him, by only two percent, but still better. As such, Ace's mother was ashamed of him, and she let him know as much as possible, even when he got straight A's the next term, so did his cousin, so his mother didn't see it as any form of special accomplishment on his end since he was always smarter than his cousin, but now his cousin was on equal standing if not better standing. Ace tried to reason, saying his cousin went to lessons, but his mom stopped him saying you never needed any lessons, you were always smarter, you just need to apply yourself better and stop wasting your potential. His mother was stressed though, because her and his father were always arguing with each other, so Ace just shrugged it off as his mom being stressed, and he knew him always being the best seemed to make his mother less stressed, so he focused on being the best.

Then came the fifth year of school and the murder of his uncle, although now he was better at suppressing his sadness, because as his mother and father always said, "Mourning over the dead won't bring them back, it just wastes your time." So as such he promised he would never cry over pointless things, since crying and mourning over things that were gone was just a waste of time. So he just continued with his studies as regular. His new teacher was a short lady with an interesting temper, but caring in her own nature and Ace began growing a likeness to her after a day a student threw his lunch kit on the floor and when Ace confronted him about it Ace accidently poked him in his eye. Later that day the boy's mother confronted Ace and began scolding him telling him he could've damaged her son's eye and if Ace had money to pay her son's doctor bill and that she should poke Ace in his eye to make it fair. Deliberately overlooking the fact that her son was not only taller than Ace but bigger in size than him, and he was the one that threw Ace's lunch kit on the ground. Ace's teacher saw this and stood up to the lady on Ace's behalf saying that Ace wasn't wrong and that the lady's son was in the wrong. Ace stood there in shock, it was the first time stood up for him and took his side, his teacher bent down and wiped away Ace's tears saying that it was ok there was nothing to be afraid of, the lady wouldn't do him anything and not to cry. Ace didn't even realize he was crying, but he stopped immediately, however Ace wasn't afraid because of the lady, he was afraid that he was gonna get in trouble and be scolded by his mother again. Yet his teacher took his side and saved him from being scolded, he thanked her and went to wait by the school guard for his mother.

The next day came and to Ace's surprise the school decided to seperate the class into boys and girls. Luckily for Ace however his teacher turned out to be one of his mother's cousins. His uncle while teaching Ace, slowly recognized Ace had an affinity for spelling and entered him into a spelling competition. His mother who had given up on him once again looked at him as though he was capable of something. He was estatic, he studied as much as possible with her help, when he made it past the qualifiers his mother said he was doing good and when he past the quater finals she boasted about it to her family. But at the semi-finals he slipped up and because of that his mother looked at him with the same disappointed look he grew to dread yet was already so familiar with. A month passed and then came the biggest of betrayals Ace was yet to experience his 'friends' decided to go into the teachers desk, although he protested against it, his friends convinced him it was his uncles draw, so if he was with them it would be ok. They found a box of matches inside the draw and began striking them and throwing them out the classroom window which was on the top floor of the school. When they got caught by a teacher however, they blamed the entire thing on him, saying he said it was his uncle's draw so it was ok and he convinced them to do it, that he was the mastermind behind it all. His principal called his dad in, and Ace knew this and dreaded coming home, since he knew his parents had to come to school the next day, but when he came home his dad wasn't home and his mother didn't know about what happened. He wasn't going to tell on himself since his mother obviously wouldn't believe him and it was the weekend, so he wanted to watch a TV series called Vampire notebook, it had a really beautiful girl named Elaina that Ace had developed a crush on, her name was so unique to him, he had never heard of a girl with that name, and the storyline was really enjoyable. So he let the weekend pass and didn't utter a word of what happened in school, and his dad didn't tell his mother since he wasn't home that weekend he had gone out with his friends that weekend. Then the weekend came to an end, and it was Lundi morning, he went to school not thinking about the incident that occured on Vendredi. But he was reminded of it when his teacher called him down to the principal's office, as he entered the office he saw his mothers back and immediatly shrunk, but he didn't do anything wrong, so he'd be ok, or so he thought. The meeting ended and he was sent back to class and his mom stayed with his teacher and principal. The day passed and his mom picked him up in the afternoon, she didn't say a word, she was all smiley and happy. That was until they reached home, Ace took his uniform off as usual, but his mom ambushed him with a whip she had cut from a tree outside, "You're playing with fire in school? And they told you to tell me since Vendredi, but you didn't, instead you waited until the weekend passed and had me called into school to hear how mischeivious and bad you are. I had to leave your sister with the neighbour since I didn't know about this, you embassed me today, having to hear my son is a liar and doesn't want to admit it."