Scruff Redo

Moments

Daft, old, hilarious, clown-like. The words race around my mind, zooming past every five or ten seconds. I take off my school bag and place it on the wet path, removing a black ink pen from the first zip. I close my bag and continue walking home before it gets dark, whenever I remember words like crazy or weird I scribble them onto my left arm. My skin looks too pale, almost as if I'm a vampire. Normally it's creamy and not filled with blue and purple bruises. An old lady from a jewellery store named 'Moments' looks at my clothes, head to toe, her kind green eyes grow wider as she moves down to my dirty, ripped black shoes. She smiles and walks away as quickly as her short legs would take her.

I walk past a series of beautiful homes, some with newly mowed lawns and others with large driveways which could fit nearly three cars inside their area. A few kids stare at me as if I'm a man from one of their terrifying nightmares, others laugh and point. I stare at each one of them.

"Of course, laugh at the boy with ripped clothing. You wouldn't survive a day even if your life depended on it." I hissed.

My bag feels heavy on my shoulders and my arms are covered with goosebumps, I begin running down towards my house at the end of Lincoln Avenue. It stands alone, facing every other house on the street. The lawn is small and has overgrown grass sprawling onto the path. The driveway fits only one car, however, it would be empty for a while as our black ford was being repaired. I doubt we were getting it back though, my family faced too many financial problems to worry about keeping a car. When Mum's about to break the news, she'll try to think of the advantages of not having a car. She tends to say things like "we'll get more exercise if we walk, our health matters more," or "we were polluting the air too much, this will do good towards our planet."

Eventually, she breaks down and will tell me how none of it will help and that I'm going to get fat when I'm older anyway. My dad, on the other hand, is too busy to talk. Most of the time I have no idea what he's doing, he just comes up from the basement from time to time to grab a drink, eat dinner or go to sleep.

Before entering my dwarf-sized home, I look at my face using the front camera on my phone – wiping off any dirt from the school playground with the back of my hand. I smile wide and open the door, hiding all my worries.

"How was school, Xavier?" Mum asks with a too British accent. She does this every day just in case I bring a friend over. My parents have no idea that the people at school only laugh at me, not with me. They're unsure if I really talk to people or not, if they paid more attention to me and went to the parent's meetings that several teachers have tried to schedule for them, they'd know how "fantastic" school really is for me.

"It was okay, we've got some more homework, though, so I'll see you at dinner," I reply.

I walk up the white carpeted stairs and look at the family photos that are put up neatly across the hallway wall. I glance at one where I was nine and I found out that we were going to move. I had tears all over my face and I wore all maroon clothing. I blended in with our maroon coloured walls quite well. Our house before looked extravagant. We had a clean lawn; a comfortable car that didn't have junk all over it; a large garden; enormous living room and cosy looking bedrooms. Everything was perfect.

A loud sigh escapes from my body and I quickly walk away towards my room which was opposite my parent's. Once I get in I slam my door shut and lock it. Then I unzip my bag and dump out all the items onto my single bed that had grey sheets on it. Two letters, one for Jenny Marcs (Mom) and the other for Julius Marcs (Dad), fly out and land in front of my feet. I rip open the envelope for Mom, reading what's been given from the school. The words 'bully' and 'problem' come up several times and I scoff, ripping both letters into thousands of pieces and disposing of them into my red mesh bin.

I don't bother doing my homework, knowing someone at school will get a hold of it and destroy it before class begins. Instead, I lay on the white carpet with soda and chocolate stains on and I allow myself to get lost in my thoughts: If I ever really did learn anything during the fourteen years of my life, it's that there are good people and bad people. There are also good and bad actions that you can commit. Also, never trust the appearance of something: especially old women with breathtaking forest green eyes.

I make myself productive by drawing or looking for new songs that aren't pop or rap. I do whatever simple task I can possibly think of doing before dinner. Then I do the exact same sort of activities after dinner. At one point I stare at myself in the mirror, stretching out sections of skin and looking for any blemishes. Once I do that I begin to really focus on my appearance. I have jet black hair that needs a haircut as strands of it fall onto my eyes often; my dark chocolate eyes only show how lonely I am – they hold no other emotion; my nose is large and narrow while my lips are stretched to the sides and aren't extremely full. I can't examine the rest of my body as the mirror ends at my shoulders. I am too skinny, I looked as if I was dying.

When I get to the bedrock of boredom I push the school supplies off my bed, all of them making a loud clatter, and then I go away to a place where we have money and where I have a sibling and dad talks. Money is the root of all my problems.

Crashing objects and sobs are what I wake up to before I'm actually supposed to wake up for school. Dad yells, "If you didn't have this moron, maybe, we'd still be in London. Not in Leicester looking like leeches going after money!"

Mom just cries louder and then mentions that it's not her fault he got fired. She tells Dad that money is the problem but then he goes back to insulting my existence and it becomes a whole repetitive cycle that doesn't stop until I'm downstairs for breakfast. I wear a boring olive t-shirt that smelled of dead animals and washed out black trousers that were ripped on my right knee after a fight at school. My shoes are the same as yesterday and every other day.

Neither of them talk so I just walk out the door, ready for school. When I arrive, a boy named Robert Smith pushes me into some mud and somebody else drags me along it using my bag as a handle.

"Weirdo!" Robert shouts intensely. He sounds furious at me but carries on laughing alongside everyone else on the playground. Everybody stops when the bell rings and I quickly run to the boy's bathroom to clean myself off, hence making me late for class again.

While walking to different classes I'm constantly nudged on the shoulder or aggressively pushed into lockers. A few people make jokes about the fact that I can't afford things while others spread rumours: "Xavier Marcs tried stealing the gym clothes that are meant for people that forget their own." and "his dad doesn't even like him. I heard him shouting "weak idiot" once." Only one of those are true.

At the end of the school day, I'm confronted by Robert Smith's taller, in shape, body. His blonde hair is snipped to the perfect length and his face holds no blemishes. Robert's clothing is free of holes and stains and his shoes aren't the same every day. He sneers at me before asking whether or not the rumours are true. When I say nothing he pushes me back with so much force that I nearly tumble backwards. If I say no, he's going to beat me up and remind me of how weak I am. He will make me remember that I am too much of a sensitive person to be a boy. He will tell everyone that I'm actually a girl, even though I am not. – but they'll believe him anyway because he's rich and money is power.

"Yes. I did try to steal the gym clothes and my dad did call me a weak idiot." I lie.

He glares at me, nose flaring, "that's what I thought."

I push my way through and begin running home. I pass by several stores and nearly get run over by two cars. Everything was being drained out of my perspective. I run past the jewellery store, 'Moments', and see the old lady. She looked weaker than me. All of a sudden I turn around and land in front of the store. Each accessory costs a large amount of money. She probably has thousands of pounds already stored in the cash register. Nobody is around and she'd be too slow to call the police or scream for help because I would've knocked her out.

I stand in front of this plain but fancy jewellery store. There are good and bad people. There are also good and bad actions that you can commit. You should never trust the appearance of something. Do not label a person as weak or crazy or good without truly knowing who they are and what they are capable of...