I Don't Do Sadness // Jyrus

despondency

It was progress report day. It came right out of nowhere for Cyrus, who hadn't realized that it was almost June. And finals were the week after. They only did finals for honors classes, so Cyrus only had an Algebra final.

It was an eye opener to Cyrus to see his report and all of the poor grades littering it. When they distributed the cards and the schedules for finals, the girls gushed over them. They praised each other for the good grades and whined about the bad ones and Cyrus just stayed silent. Andi turned to him and asked, "What'd you get?"

Cyrus just handed her his paper, which Buffy snatched from her hand. "Cyrus!" She yelled after reading it over. "You're failing!"

"I know," he mumbled. His highest grade was a D+ in Social Studies.

"Your parents are going to kill you," Andi said.

It was true. Cyrus didn't know, though, that they knew that it was true, too. He just knew that once his mother had this paper, she'd hit him so hard.

"You need to get your grades up," Buffy said.

"I know, I know," Cyrus mumbled again, throwing his hands up in the air before going to his next class.

"Ugh, you shouldn't've said that," Andi groaned.

"Why not?"

"Now he might go and like-cut himself," Andi mumbled to the ground.

"No he won't," Buffy told her, wrapping her arm around Andi's shoulder.

They walked in silence for a few moments. Andi felt tears in her eyes. "I hope he'll be okay," she mumbled absentmindedly.

Buffy nodded to herself, without really listening but just focusing on her concern for Cyrus. She felt guilty, for not focusing on him and letting him out of her sight.

"We need to tell someone," Andi said.

"I know."

"Can we?"

"I don't know."

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---   ---

Cyrus cringed as he silently closed the door being him. He went around the house, checking to see if his mother was there, which she was not and sighed in relief. He decided that he wouldn't tell her about his report and would keep it tucked into his bag until he went back to his father's house where he could ask his step-mother to sign it.

He sped through his chores, giving it minimum effort, as usual, and went to get started on his homework. He knew that if he went into his room, he'd just get sucked into a hole and wouldn't work so he sat at the counter with his pile of missing work and a glass of water that he forced himself to drink to get rid of the headache and possible chance of dying from dehydration.

He couldn't remember most of the material and so he vaguely answered questions and didn't do all of the required work, feeling like he'd rather have a bad grade in than a zero.

When the side door slammed shut and his head whipped up, he saw his mother walking right over to the kitchen. He slouched down into his chair and tried to feel invisible.

"How was your day?" She asked while she got herself situated.

"Good," he lied.

There was silence while she hung up her keys and purse and things. Then she said, "So I saw on the school website that progress reports went out today?"

He gulped. "Can I see it?" She asked him with her creepy grin crawling up her face.

He refused to look at her as he slid it out of his bag and handed it to her. He looked when he heard a gasp escape from her mouth. Her face twisted while still looking at the paper, and the moment she was done reading, she slapped her son across the face with anger boiling up inside of her.

Cyrus fell right off of the chair he was sitting at, and landed hard on the floor. His face was burning and now so were his arms. His left cheek was tingling while his arms ached, especially the one with the few cuts. But, Cyrus quickly jumped up, being down this road too many times.

"What the hell is this?" She yelled at him.

"Well, it was just some missing work," Cyrus started to say. "I'm working on some right now." He reached for the stack to show her, but she grabbed his arm and shoved him away.

"I don't care. This is unacceptable."

Cyrus looked down in silence. His mother lost her words and simply said, "Go to your room. I'll talk to your step-father about this."

Cyrus scrambled to his room with his stack of papers and wanted to cry. But he didn't. He didn't deserve to cry. He knew he brought this on himself and that he deserved to be punished.

When his step-father came home, Cyrus heard yelling. Then stomping to the top of the stairs. When the door to Cyrus' room flew open, Cyrus turned from his desk, terrified, and saw a belt hanging from his step-father's hand.