The Lone Nerd

Chapter 5 - House

Our house was a petite, red brick cottage in the middle of the woods and just on the outskirts of town. There was a 1/4 of a mile windy, gravel track leading to our house and we had no neighbours; it felt like we owned the woods.

I would only ever cycle to and from school on my beloved, baby blue bicycle; my mum had offered to buy me a car but I refused saying Bert (the bicycle) was all I needed. Plus, nothing had ever possessed me to go shopping and I didn't have any friends to go with anyway, I didn't mention the part about no friends.

Mum was always telling me to get out more and she worried about me having no friends. Sometimes just to get her to stop worrying about me I would go out on a bike ride saying I was going to hang with a friend. I think she always knew though, seen as I always avoided the subject and went really quiet, it must have been obvious. So eventually she stopped asking, knowing the subject would just trigger my defensiveness and ruin whatever we were doing. I still went out to 'hang out with friends' and looking back, I think it was more to lure myself into a false sense of companionship than my mum.

I would also avoid the subject of feelings and school unless it was about grades I just became really closed off.

My relationship with my mum was still strong though because mum would pour out the latest gossip or boss Josh's latest offence or annoyance. You could always catch us watching Netflix together or chatting about conspiracy theories. We made it a tradition to have some sort of debate every night and we had a tally board of who won and whoever lost at the end of the week had to do the majority of chores the next week. Overall my my mum and I could not be closer.

My mum was a lawyer and so, earned a lot of money but we'd never really been the type to spend loads on ourselves and we just saved it in the knowledge we could use it later. We were satisfied with our small house in the woods and it wasn't like there was going to be any additions to our family soon. My mums boss was called josh but for some reason, we had a weird habit of calling him boss josh, mum was always ranting on about him but I think she secretly liked him and was trying to hide it. My mum was a hard worker and often she would be out late working on a case, I said that she would be a politician if she wasn't a lawyer, she was really persuasive and had this weird ability to turn a no into a yes.