Coming Together

Chapter 4: Hope

"Young man! Are you ready to receive your punishment!?" Those were the first words out of my casual mom's mouth when I entered the house. I immediately regretted it, my brain desperately wanted to run away to Victor's house to play video games since it was a Friday night. No chance with that though, he wasn't even home and that'd probably end up getting me in even more trouble.

I nodded reluctantly, taking a seat at the round dining table in the kitchen where my casual mom was cooking and the other sat across from me, sipping at some steaming hot coffee. "Vanessa, honey, can you tell him? I don't want to burn this food." Casual mom asked her spouse. Vanessa, my professional mom nodded and set her coffee mug on the table. "You sir." She began, her eyes boring into mine as I avoided all forms of contact. "Are grounded for a month," Okay, typical so far.

"And for each one of those days you're grounded, you're going to meet with a tutor right after school." She continued, I nodded again, "You have until Tuesday to find one, we're giving you another chance to redeem yourself, or we choose for you." She finished, I was waiting for the really horrible part to come, like I had to do all the chores for the rest of the month or work at the dump. But, nothing else escaped from my professional mom's mouth except for "Are we clear?" Which I responded with yet another nod.

My mom sipped her hot coffee once more, and after swallowing dismissed me to my room. I stood up and made my way over to my personal space, this seemed so surreal, was there really nothing else?

The sheets on my bed welcomed me as I threw myself onto them, still processing the prior events. A second chance, she said, to redeem myself... I pondered on the thought for a few moments, until my phone buzzed in my back pocket.

I lifted my head to realize the room around me had grown dark even though my alarm clock only told the time as 4:30 pm. I hadn't bothered switching on the lights earlier, I'd gotten used to the constant natural light from the sun over the Summer. The bed sheets shifted under me as I rolled onto my back and grabbed my phone. The phone's screen illuminated the room, causing me to squint at the sudden brightness. On the lock screen, one notification presented itself:

"Hey Gar ;P"

I frowned at the word Gar.

"Was benched again, but we won."

Was Victor happy or sad about this?

"How'd it go with your parents?"

My thumb automatically swiped at the reply button and began to tap away at the touch screen. In under a minute a whole message shown on my phone screen reading:

"First off, we've already explained the whole Gar situation. Don't call me that. Second, it was kinda weird with my moms, I expected something worse but they just grounded me for a month."

Even after proofreading the message I could tell I left something out, but I didn't want to talk about the tutor I was tasked with finding. Everything about that clouded my thoughts with flashbacks on the strange dream. I hit the send option anyway, hoping Victor wouldn't try to pry in any more on the subject.

The little icon that represented that Victor was typing a reply popped up, and in no time there was a witty response in my notifications.

"Why do I feel like there's something you're not telling me..."

I sighed and began the inevitable explanation about my other punishment.

After any confusion that developed from the subject disappeared from Victor's mind he had an epiphany. Or, at least what was an epiphany to him:

"Dude! You should ask that Rachel girl, the one you keep on screwing it up with, to tutor you!"

What great words of encouragement.