Nathan Kingston has been forgotten by the world. A dad that fucked off when he was young and a mother gone days at a time with work he feels alone. Especially since he goes to the most elite private school in the city on scholarship. He's falling do...
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Nathan Kingston
My Ma and I are the only people who live in our two-bedroom shithole apartment. She was already out of the house by the time I went to bed last night and she won't be home for another couple of days so any sounds in the apartment when I wake up for school are alarming and cause for concern.
Silence usually is what greets me in the morning, only the distant sounds of people on the streets yelling and my neighbors starting their days accompany me through my morning routine.
But not this morning.
The dripping sound of water in the main room is the first sound I hear when I open my eyes. The noise echoing through the paper-thin walls of the apartment with every splash the droplet makes. Groaning and throwing myself out of bed, I pray that my mom turned the faucet all the way off before she left yesterday afternoon and we won't have a surcharge on the water bill from the taps dripping all night.
Shrugging on my school-approved clothes, A.K.A. jeans three sizes too big from the thrift store and a black t-shirt with the school's logo printed largely on the back, I throw on a hoodie on top and open my bedroom door to see the source of the dripping water sound.
Pipe water leaking through the ceiling and onto our tiny kitchen's floor. A small puddle of water tells me it hasn't been dripping for long and probably started overnight. Nevertheless, this is a pipe that our landlord swore was fixed and wouldn't cause any more issues to us since the last time it leaked from the ceiling.
Fucking good for nothing leech.
Mumbling more obscenities under my breath, I attempt to dry up some of the water with the rags we keep in our hall closet and grab one of our leak buckets from under the sink to collect any other water that may drip through the pipe while I'm at school and work.
I just have to hope that the bucket won't overfill before I get home from my shift at the restaurant I work at.
I grab one of the bananas in our sad fruit bowl and make a mental note that I need to buy more on my way home. Heaving my backpack onto my shoulders and slipping my beanie off one of the hooks by the door. I make sure to lock the door behind me and make the walk back down the five flights of stairs it takes me to get to the street.
Right as I open the door into the bitter weather known as New York City in late January, my practically prehistoric iPhone chimes in my pocket with a message to the group chat that has me, my mom, and our landlord in it.
From Money Sucking Leech: Your lease is up next month. I'm raising rent another $400 upon renewal. If you can't afford it you have to be out by the end of April.
I can practically feel the steam blowing through my ears at his text. He never does any maintenance on our shithole of a building, never talks to me or any of his tenants with respect and now he's demanding another $400 in rent for our already overpriced shithole that has dripping pipes and walls so thin I can hear the old man next door getting it on with his step-daughter.
