Secrets

School

-Derek

As my eyes opened to the familiar sound of my mom yelling, I dreaded getting up from my warm, safe bed. I turned around and reached for my phone.

Shit.

It's the last day of the summer holidays.

Seriously mom, you can't even let me sleep in on the last day of holidays?

I placed my phone back on my bedside table and tried to, as silently as possible, turn around to lie on my back.

I hadn't even turned onto my side when I knew it was over. My old bed creaked with my weight shifting and, a few seconds later, I heard my mom calling me down for breakfast.

I yelled back that I was putting on my clothes.

Slowly, I got out of bed and desperately tried to find clean clothes. Although my mother promised me we'd go shopping two months ago, I was still stuck with last year's tatty, ugly clothes. Thank God the local school had a uniform, because even when my mom actually washed the clothes, mine were still not appropriate for school.

I knocked on my brother's bedroom door. I heard a faint 'yeah' so I opened the door and stepped in.

'Hey, can I borrow some of your clothes? Mom's in one of her moods again.'

My brother nodded and pointed towards his wardrobe. A few minutes later I walked out of Eric's room in a black t-shirt, some skinny jeans and an old pair of sneakers Eric hadn't worn in years. Not really my style to be honest, but beggars can't be choosers.

Eric got the job 5 months ago but my mother doesn't know about it. He wasn't making that mistake again. The last time my brother got a job, my mom forced him to give her almost all his wages to 'support the family'. We only found out after Eric got fired that she used all the money on scratch cards and lottery tickets.

She's been like this ever since the day dad left. He said it was a work trip. He said he wouldn't be long and he'd call every day. When the calls shortened down to 5 minutes every week, I knew something was up. Then one day, I logged onto Facebook and dad had changed his relationship status to 'single'. When I asked him about it, he said it was just so he appeared to have more work time to his potential employer. Then, a few weeks later, he started posting pictures with a young, pretty girl. 2 weeks later, his relationship status changed back to 'in a relationship'. But this time, I'm pretty sure it wasn't with mom. He said a lot of things, but what people say isn't always true.