Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

6 - The Eyes Were All Red

"Alex? Was that you?"
Alex ignored his mother's calls from the living room and instead stomped up the stairs like he was running from a monster that had been following him home.
Once he was finally safe and sound inside his familiar four walls, he jumped into bed head first.
The sudden urge to scream into a pillow overcame him, and just when he was about to, his bedroom door opened to reveal his mother.
"Jesus!", Alex snapped. "Don't you usually knock?"
"Don't get angry with me, I'm not the one carrying all the dirt from outside into the house and slamming doors, Alexander."
Shit. She was serious whenever she called him 'Alexander'.

Alex sat up on the bed and Penny took this as an invitation to join him, closing the door - possibly provocatively delicately - behind her.
"Look", she began, folding the clothes displaced messily on her son's bed. "You know I'm not really angry with you right? It simply worries me whenever you act like this because you usually don't. I've known you all your life, Alex. I don't mind dirt on the stairs, what I mind is you running up to your room like this and avoiding to talk to me or your father. On second thought I do mind the dirt actually, you know you're going to have to clean that up, right?"
He tilted his head in annoyance.
Penny didn't acknowledge this and just carried on.
"You've been acting a bit strange for some time now, is it because of the gig?"

God, Alex thought, was he really this bad at pretending?
"I'm fine, what are you even talking about?", he tried nevertheless, even though he knew it was too late.
"I think you know better than I do."

She had that look on her face that only mothers could get and it made Alex very uncomfortable because it felt as if her eyes were drilling holes into him, further and further until they would eventually get to the source of what was causing this strange behaviour. He felt defeated, almost like he had to speak at this point before the damage of the drill couldn't be undone anymore.
"Fine. I'm nervous about it. But that's all there is, what's so bad about that?"
"There is nothing bad about that. What's bad is that you keep bottling this up and spend your time dealing with it alone in this, by the way, very messy room."

She ruffled his hair and he pulled away, patting it back down.
"Of course you don't have to talk to me about everything that's going on with you, you're at that age where everything is changing, you might fall in love for the first time - god knows, it might have already happened-"
"Mum!"
-"but whatever it is, I just hope you know that you can talk to me. I'm always here and quite cooperative as long as you are as well. So, is it really just that?"
"Just what?"

She was asking in a way that was clearly implying she didn't believe a word that he said and wouldn't stop asking until she got at least some of the truth out of him.
"Just the 'nervous about the gig' - thing?"
Alex nodded. "Yeah?"
His answer had come out like a question rather than a statement and this bothered him deeply because he knew that his chances of accurately keeping up his act were lessened by huge amounts now.

He looked over at his mother like he was scared of what she would say next. He was, probably.
She gave him a fond smile and started a second attempt at ruffling his hair, slightly more successfully this time as her son only pulled his head away half as angrily.
"As I said Love, whatever it is, I'm here."
With those words, she got up and left, not turning around to look at him one more time, leaving him sitting there and absolute mess.

As soon as he heard the sounds of his mother and father talking in the kitchen, cutlery clattering and muffled voices, he couldn't hold it in anymore. Whether it was the actual anxiety about the upcoming event, what had just happened - or what hadn't happened - at Miles's or just all of it combined, Alex couldn't pretend that he was okay anymore, at least not to himself.

So, instead of screaming into a pillow, tears started rolling down his cheeks and he found it hard to breathe, suddenly, everything around him seemed to be having an effect on him. The walls were closing in and perhaps there had indeed been a monster chasing him all this time. Now it was reaching for him with its enormous claws, growling and feeling amusement at his desperation.

He had never cried like this before. The whole time he kept thinking how fucking ridiculous this was; it wasn't like his life depended on that gig. And as for Miles, it wasn't like they'd had a fight or anything. He tried to convince himself of all that, again and again, but something inside his mind just wouldn't buy it.

All the while the tears kept on coming and so did the walls.
Alex briefly considered putting on some sort of depressing record to feel complete in his misery but then decided that that was only going to make matters worse. Then again, it couldn't really get much worse than this, could it?

What with all the sniffling Alex didn't even notice that somebody had approached his bedroom door again.
Penny was standing outside, just about to knock to let Alex know that dinner was ready when she heard the sounds coming from inside the room.

She realised immediately that he was crying and it broke her heart but she lowered her hand, turned around and went back down to join her husband at the dinner table.
Whatever battle he was fighting, she knew he had to do this part of it on his own.
She had meant it when she said she would always be there to talk to but this sounded like Alex needed to get quite a bit of emotion out before he could begin to voice his concerns.

"What's wrong?" Asked David, Alex's Dad, as he saw her approach him with a frown. "Does he not want to come down?"
Penny shook her head. "I think he wants to be alone."
"Well", David sighed, "he still isn't doing better then, is he?"
"He was crying."
"He was? Did you talk to him?" He hadn't expected this.
"No, I heard it through the door." Penny rubbed her eyes. "Whatever it is that's going on with that boy, it's more than nerves."