Apple Core

Twelve: Oppurtunity

I stopped going to Ralph's house and spying on his family. I stopped watching him get out of school, even though there was still a week until graduation. I stopped eating, sometimes getting through one meal a day, and sometimes nothing. I stopped liking apples. I stopped going out beyond the front yard.

I just stopped.

It was like somebody had paused my life. My lessons made no sense, and I would exercise for five minutes before giving up. All I did was lay on my bed and think, think, think, till my brain hurt. Then I'd sleep and dream about what I was thinking about. I would dream about Ralph.

The point was that if his mother murdered my father, so what? It was certainly not his fault, or his father's. Why did I want to kill them, then?

The truth was that the past years spent without Ralph created an illusion in my mind of him. It's like meeting an old school friend, years after graduation, whose voice and facial features you have completely forgotten. Of course, it's even weirder when the period of separation is between childhood and adolescence. Everything changed about Ralph: his height, his hairstyle, his boyish voice and so on.

The illusion of Ralph in my mind was evil. It wanted to kill me, and murder everyone in sight as well. He had red eyes instead of real Ralph's bright blue ones, and devil horns poking out of his bushy hair.

But Ralph was different, I thought. Ralph was not like that character at all. He was.. well, more human.

I spent two years there, isolated in my bedroom. I came out for meals, of course. I exercised. And most importantly, I carried on studying with determination. I wanted to make my mother proud, but the dream of killing the Redd's began to fade. They had lives, lives that I could not take, not simply, just like that. Besides, Mrs.Redd regretted killing my father.

I wanted to become happier, I really did. I tried to smile daily. But the person who was minimizing my chances was my mother. She got angrier and older, shorter and snappier. She would complain about anything and everything, and she got much worse everyday.

"Why do you even exist?!" she would say, as I watched television, "to watch that stuff? What are you even watching? You have to study!"

"I told you, mother," I would reply, "my computer won't let me study for more than twelve hours a day, I've already done that."

"Then go do some exercise!" she said, "You fat little-"

"I exercise for two hours a day!" I yelled, "why don't you go exercise?!"

She would then look really shocked and say, "How dare you! I am your mother! Go to your room, now! You useless little-"

Not wanting to hear the rest of the sentence, I would rush up the stairs, shutting the door behind me. I walked around the room, begging myself to stay positive, trying to spot a rainbow in a storm, or a needle in a haystack.

My determination increased. The world around me meant nothing to me. I saw less and less of it. I spent more time inside, and ate less but didn't starve. I mostly exercised and studied, wanting to make my mother proud but not daring to tell her. It took my mind away from my mother's hurting words and from the fact that I would never see Ralph again.

One afternoon, instead of studying in my room, I was studying in the living room with my laptop. I sometimes did that when it seemed the dim, messy, familiar room was too gloomy and depressing, or when I couldn't pay attention there.

My mother was upstairs, taking a nap in her room. It was better when she was there. I didn't have to stand her useless, hurtful comments.

I sat there, typing and reading, understanding and nodding my head to myself. It was my second term of college courses, and though they were a bit harder and different from high school courses, I had the determination and time they required. I was studying criminology, but I didn't want to kill anyone anymore; I wanted to work in something crime related.