The Art of Corruption

I Like Him . . . I Think

If there was one thing in this world Eli loved more than himself, it was books. He'd always remembered as a kid that he never seemed to be content without one. His room was always full of shelves of literature: fiction, non-fiction, how-to books, anything, and everything. Yet, despite having around twenty shelves taking up an entire red-painted wall, there seemed to be a limited amount of space for all of his books. So, Eli would stack them up and put them in the corner of his oddly-shaped room, where they would collect dust.

Soon, one stack became three, three became seven, until he no longer had space in his room for books. Then, he'd started putting them in the pantry at his house, thus starting its life as a storage room. Nobody ever used the pantry anyway. What better purpose for it than to store the books that Eli's room couldn't anymore?

But that was a long time ago—seven years to be exact. Today, it was September of 1980, and Eli would be starting his first day of sophomore year. Even though he felt significantly older, he remembered that he was still only a kid.

Maybe it was his room that made him feel so much mature than everybody else. Yes, it was colourful—painted red with books of many different hues decorating the walls, but he'd never had any drawings as the other kids had. He never had any toys or chocolate or really whatever it was that children had in their rooms. Colourful chairs or white tables with crayon scribbles, he never knew.

Now, that, Eli could blame on his parents. His parents that were never home, his parents who would smoke in the living room when he was only three, his parents who had to run away from Colorado because they were caught cooking meth in the basement. Those parents never let Eli live a normal childhood, that he knew. He did, however, try his best to find happiness in dull situations, but just how much could he ignore when his parents kept fighting in the other room?

Eli shook his head and finally got out of bed, even though his alarm went off ten minutes earlier. He never cared for being on time. He didn't bother making his bed, either. The bed creaked in protest as he flopped back down. He absolutely hated school.

After another minute or two of contemplating if he should just skip the day entirely, he opened his brown, wooden closest and took out his uniform. God, how he'd hated that uniform. He understood the concept, though. He understood why it was necessary to wear one, especially after all of his principals' assemblies drilling the information into students' brains, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

As Eli started changing out of his sweats, he realized that he was only looking forward to one thing: seeing who his English teacher was. Eli had a history of having pretty insane English teachers. That, and maybe seeing this year's new girls, even though they never showed any interest in Eli. Not that he wasn't good looking—he was easy on the eyes, but not too attractive, as all his past girlfriends made sure to let him know.

He walked to the washroom across the hall and started brushing his teeth. His gaze fell on the shower behind him through the mirror. He never understood how people could wake up in the mornings and shower. He preferred showering incredibly late in incredibly hot temperatures. Midnight showers . . . he'd loved them.

In the mirror, he also saw his unruly hair. So curly, so difficult to control to the point where he'd just given up on trying to gel it down like other guys. He doubted that getting his hair tamed down would even make him look more attractive, so there wasn't a point.

He walked down the stairs with his bag slung over his shoulder and walked into the kitchen, getting an apple from the counter. His mother still wasn't awake, she'd been fighting with some electrician all night since the dishwasher broke down seven months ago. She refused to buy a new one. His dad hadn't come home in four days, Eli and his mother weren't sure where he was and didn't care, either. It wasn't like his father worked or brought home money . . . that was all Eli.