Breaking The Rules: Book 2

Chapter 1: Summer Isn't For Vacation

𝚂𝚊𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚍𝚊𝚢, 𝙹𝚞𝚗𝚎 𝟺𝚝𝚑
Griffin POV

Sometimes I really hate my family.

The humming sound of dads leaf blower is right outside my bedroom window. It's so loud that he might as well be standing at the foot of my bed. Out in the living room, I can hear the pre-recorded laughter of those dumb sitcoms that Roselyn likes to watch. Not even the sound of my spinning ceiling fan, the box fan running on high, or my sound machine can drown out the noises.

What's even worse is that the black-out curtains hanging over my bedroom window are swinging softly back and forth from all of the wind power, letting in slivers of sunshine that cut into my eyes. I groan and roll over, grabbing another pillow from the stack near my head and shoving it over my face.

It's the first day of summer vacation. There's no good fuckin' reason why I should be awake any time before noon.

I hate them. I hate them all so much that my blood boils. For a few seconds, there's nothing but the heat of my boiling fury burning every one of my thoughts to a crisp. My knuckles tighten against the pillow.

There was one point in my life when I started high school when my parents considered enrolling me in anger management classes. Not that I know why. Maybe they started to catch on that something was wrong in freshman year when I screamed at Roselyn for eating the pasta I was looking forward to enjoying after football practice. We still haven't patched the hole in her bedroom wall after that fight.

I did some research on the counselors they were looking into sending me to that night, and it didn't take me long to decide that I wasn't going. Ever. Only the weird kids go to counselors. It doesn't make sense to me how sitting down in a dark room with spa music playing quietly in the corner and spilling my guts out to a stranger will make all my problems magically disappear. Besides, if any of my buddies had caught wind of that, they'd all talk so much shit before I could punch their lights out.

Again, there's an issue here: being the weird kid. There's a lot of shit that doesn't matter after high school. However, dropping down the hierarchy from top dog to emo nerd would fuck a person up and haunt them for the rest of their lives.

That's about when I started to rein in my bad habits. Sometimes my big mouth will slip, or someone's face will happen to find its way in front of my fist. Though, for the most part, I've been doing a pretty good job keeping a cork on it.

Until now.

There's so much built-up fire in my veins that my hands shake as I whip the pillow off my face. It flies across the side of my bed and crashes against the lamp, sending both of the objects crashing to the floor. I don't hear either of them over the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

Throwing the comforter off my legs, I grind my teeth together as I roll over and snag my phone off its charging pad on my bedside table. My eyes flick past all of the social media notifications and land on the time stamp up top. 7:56.

"You've got to be..." I start to grumble under my breath, finishing that sentence with an impressive array of language.

Going back to sleep isn't an option. Not with the sound of the leaf blower getting ridiculously louder.

A few more select curse words fly from my mouth as I get up, and all of them are directed at my moronic family. Seriously, any normal teacher wakes up on their first day of vacation and immediately pours themselves a bourbon on ice to go with their breakfast. Lawn chores are likely the last thing on their mind. My dad, on the other hand? He's out there pulling out the goddamn weed whacker before the sun is over the horizon.