Nic's Story

Part 2

I have never been outside 'Loserville', aka my hometown, but I imagined it was pretty much the same out there, so I did not bother staying awake. When I opened my eyes, the car was stationary and a cow was licking the side window where my face was. Nobody thought of waking me up. Lisa and George left me in the car like a baby who fell asleep after a ride to the joy of new parents. I did not know whether to be flattered or offended. I came out through the other door trying to avoid any closer contact with the big animal. The cow got spooked by my noise and jogged away leaving a poop trail.

George's farm was huge. In fact, there was so much land that I never discovered its borders. Luckily for my mom it was not the land she had to work on. George was rich enough to hire people and machinery. I don't think my mom ever worked. Once she spent her parents' inheritance, which was not that big to begin with, she lived off men she was sleeping with. Her boyfriends rarely had stable incomes, so we were always poor. I should be thankful she did not fell for the weird, violent ones. Even though most of the men she hung out with were bums, I was safe. Their top offence was they were messy and smoked too much pot.

George was different. He was one of those self-made men I have seen on the covers of country life magazines. I thought of my mom, the place and George. My mom was definitely the odd one out of the three.

George was married before, but has never had kids. I would not mind having brothers and sisters, but I was secretly happy. I could not bare the thought of explaining why this drunk lady would be "your new mom". I was still trying to get over the fact that she was mine.

To make us feel welcomed George gave my mom his old car and I got a phone. A great move on his part, if you ask me. We got excited about George to a whole new level.

It might be hard to believe, but I never had a phone before, we were that poor. Mom's boyfriend number 4 or 14, I lost count by then, Clive, brought a phone one day. He said he stole it.

"From a museum?" I asked looking at the model.

My mom decided it was hers even though she had no one to call. She had no job, her sister had not spoken to her in a decade and Clive was always home except for when he raided museums. I did not argue. I was not usually ashamed of our financial situation, or the signs of it, like wearing my mom's ex boyfriends' clothes, but even I did not want to be seen with that thing.

Being phoneless at school does have its advantages, but a phone is a modern day weapon. Whenever I saw a pout on Aaron's face, I knew Caleb had been busy posting.

"What is it this time?" I would ask my only school friend.

"He wrote you were abducted by aliens and returned back because 'they do not want weirdos either'.

"What an idiot!"

I could logon onto my school laptop, but both Aaron and I knew it was too late. Time passes much quicker in social media. A two-hour old post is as old as an ancient cave painting. Nobody will care for my witty come back centuries later. I had to be creative and do something else. So I launched a comic strip instead. I called it 'the Adventures of Dumb and Ugly Caleb'. It was issued once a week, and students passed it from hand to hand like a revolution leaflet. It was trending until I was disciplined for it. Our teachers did not find them funny at all. I was labeled "a bully"! Me! A bully! Atrocious!

As a punishment I had to stop the release, destroy all previous copies and, the humiliating part, apologise to Caleb. That was a scene of agony. I did not want to apologise to Caleb. Caleb did not want my apology either, because it would mean publicly recognising the truce. But we played our parts.

I missed "Dumb and Ugly Caleb", the victim of art purification. But, to be totally honest, even though my comic strips were annoying to the real Caleb, they did not have as devastating an effect as I hoped for. Real Caleb was neither ugly nor stupid, and he knew that. His hair was a perfect shade of blond, his eyes were clear blue and he had acne-free skin. He was also in the top 5% in our year. It was an impossible task to bully a boy who got straight As and the most hearts on Valentine's Day.

Luckily, I did not have to think about Caleb anymore. I had more exciting things in my life. My room was furnished, my bed had a proper mattress on it and there was an actual table and chairs in the room rather than a board on top of a beer barrel brought from a dumpster. I could get used to this.

George got up early. He had already left the house for work when we came down for breakfast the next morning. I opened the fridge and looked at the abundance of food inside, sadly realising my mom and George will not last.

"I could try harder, you know, to stay sober". My mom said when she saw me hugging a toaster. But we both knew that at some point vodka would win, and we would go back to our old house, our old life. This had happened before.

But the summer past and we were still there, our keys still fit the door locks. I did not realise George was a fixer. He liked to fix things and possibly thought Lisa could be fixed too. I was surprised how patient George was. He did not get put off by Lisa's motionless body, or the mess she left after smoking, or the amount of money she spent on recreation. I tried to quiz my mom on what George's flaw was, but she said he was perfect, just a simple guy, who was lonely and happened to think she was special and has had hard life.

"George had a hard life", I said, "working and building his business. You are just a parasite." She slapped my shoulder. She was too short to reach my face. It did not hurt but my mom had never hit me before. She never exerted her 'parental authority' over me even when I was small. It was not out of "parental wisdom". It was a byproduct of intoxication. I must have crossed a line or she was true to her word of becoming sober.

"Those words hurt", she said.

"They were hurtful words", I agreed. "And I meant them".

I wondered, if George were to witness the situation, whose side he would be on. In that moment I stood in the most unflattering light, but over a lifetime my mom was more of a villain.