the boy on the bridge ✔️

3. school boy

Chapter 3 — school boy

"What are you still doing in bed?" Josie, Josh's younger sister, yells at her who brother who is staring mindlessly at the ceiling above him.

The blank white ceiling seems to be more interesting and mind-occupying for Josh than his frantic sister who is already calling for their mother. After getting no response from the desired parent, she turns back to him.

"I'm not going late on the first day of school just because of your lazy bum," she hisses at him, grabbing a pillow and chucking at him.

Josh takes the hit unbothered, "Cool then, I'm just going to go back to sleep," he proceeds to pull his sheets up.

However, Josie is quicker, pulling the sheets away from her brother's grasp, "Joshua, there's no time to fool around. It's 7.30 already for God's sake and the first bell goes off at 8,"

"Yes, I'm aware, Josie. I have only been attending the same school for the past three years now,"

"Well, get up then," she pulls her brother's hand although to no avail — he is much heavier compared to her. "Joshua, please," she groans when she notices how he is not making any movement to get up.

Josh glances his sister's way and heaves out a sigh, "Alright, fine," he slowly sits up, scratching the back of his neck, "Go ahead, I'll be downstairs in a few,"

"You better be," she tells him warningly, walking out of his room.

With another consecutive sigh, Josh looks around his room dejectedly, trying to think of one good reason he shouldn't attend school that day. Frankly, he can come up with a few:

a) I just sort of tried to kill myself last night and although I ended up not going through with it, I reckon I can be given a day off or two or even more than that.

b) I broke up with Valerie with no good reason, other than I don't hold any sort of romantic feelings for her, and I did it over a text no less, so I don't think seeing her right now would be a good idea, and going to school means I most probably will run into her.

c) That boy from yesterday; he seems new in town, and looks my age, which can mean he goes to my school, as it's the only high school in this town, which also means high possibility of running into that guy as well. Um, no thanks.

d) There's also a possibility that the said boy might have spread word around town about the golden boy trying to kill himself off, although I don't think he has yet since the roof of our house will have blown off (figuratively and literally) if so, but there's a high chance and a lot of time still for him to do so.

e) I just don't wanna go.

Josh lists off the reasons in his head, and he realises he can go on and on without stopping. However, he knows he can't possibly use any of these reasons with his parents, not if he was deliberately willing to put his sanity at risk.

He remembers staying at home one day, not going to school, because he had this unbearable headache. Neither of his parents were around that day, already gone to do whatever it was they had to do before Josh even woke up and he forgot to call and inform them. He took an aspirin and went back to sleep.

But later that day, close to noon, his father barged into his room, shouting and berating him as if he had caused the apocalypse itself; in the end, it had only made Josh's headache worse.

Josh has never consciously chosen to not go to school from that day onwards, no matter how sick he actually was — he prefers to stay at the nurse's room in his school instead.