The World's Aftermath [ON MAJOR EDIT]

Chapter 7 [Cleo]

No one wants to put themselves in my shoes. Another day to the next, I'm dying to rip off every report card that has my name on it.

What will I tell mom? She's seen so much of my performances at school, I couldn't stand showing another one. She doesn't complain, nor throw a book to release the fury of her anger–which is most commonly told by other students receiving bad grades–but, looking deeply into her, there's always a flinch, it's so small, I almost feel like I'm this mind reader of her.

A sudden knock hits the front door, with immediate reflects, I shove the book, report card, and the snack bars into the douche bottom of my backpack. My bedroom is small, so noises slams straight into the walls. I stumble out of the bed and into the front door. The opening gap shows Eric's physical features. His big pointy nose, a mess of black hair on his head.

"Mornin', douche head!" He smiles brightly, a fresh tench of excitement as I could already tell.

"Morning," I say, grinning. "You look bright and happy," I say, turning away as I let him in.

"I look," he laughs, "Not exactly, it's just that you're–as predicted–always looking miserable, you needed physical help for just a tiny smile from someone else."

"I am not in the state of depression right now," I deny him, pointing my hands to show my face. Well, these eyes do feel a bit heavy.

He mumbles a few words, then zone out of it to unpack things from his bag. "Aunt Emily drove her car like something too important just came up," he plops down into the sofa, "Fast as The Flash she was."

"Oh, did she?" I ask, agreeing all at once.

He nods, "You know why?"

"Yep," I reply, not even ready for an exact answer. "She's... Probably busy, either projects, meetings, stuff like that I already know in the back of my mind, even with that same voice of her mouthing it all up."

"The woman needs bills so bad, I've never seen anyone work that hard, and yeah, as someone that watches her everyday, driving her car from paths after paths, I know she's busy," he says, never leaving his eyes on the laptop.

"Yeah," I mutter unwillingly.

It drives me even more crazy that Eric himself can handle this situation with a few words, as if this puzzle just had been solved. Not logically, but constantly throwing the wrong things out and move on to next right step. Sometimes I wish I was born with that tinkering personality of him, not anyone else who's better at handling than him, but only Eric, because... I guess the only person who I know that can take easy steps is Eric. Besides that familiar scent, there's no other human existence that matches it.

Mom says that with him, I could take good examples, use them for my positive charge when I'm down. Again, she's only saying things like that so I'd be convinced to move out of her business and go to Eric's instead. But it isn't bad, spending times with my only cousin can get annoying, but things aren't as empty and haunted afterwards.

I sit on the spot Eric left out beside. His laptop is on, and the only thing I can guess is that there's that same old usual coding work he's about to do. Often times, he'd talk to himself as he types some stuff down, and I even would understand–well, not always–as he continues the odd self explaining.