popularity || sanders sides [DISCONTINUED]

4 | Patton

This may be a bit emotional. Enjoy!

Chapter Four: Bacon and Emotions!
  Patton Valentine

To say the absolute least, everything hurt as I got up out of bed to start the day. I guess staying up until 2 am practicing routines for cheer wasn't the best idea. Could you blame me, though? There was a game today and I wanted to be perfect. The only thing I could think about was how I was representing my school, representing my cheer team when I did the routine with them. It's a lot more pressure when I put it like that.

Just five more minutes, that's all I wanted. But of course, I couldn't get that. My brother Peyton came in, banging two pans together obnoxiously. I groaned. I had taught him to wake people up like that.

"Alright, alright, I'm up!" I yelled over the banging of the pans, causing my brother to stop the noise. I got up and figuratively painted a happy expression on my face. I had to get my act together. My family knew me as the "glue." My peppiness was what kept us from breaking. If I wasn't happy, then nobody in my family was.

Get it together, Patton, I told myself. Your family is counting on you.

My mother and father weren't close at all, and that's why they never got married. Not even after they had Peyton. They fought all the time when they did talk, and my entire family hated my father. After Peyton was born, we found out that he had gotten 3 other girls pregnant, 2-3 times each. Much like everyone else, I grew to hate him after that. I hated my father starting when I was 11. It was awful.

After he found out that we knew about the three other ladies, he disappeared. We theorized that he went to Europe or somewhere extreme. As far as we were concerned, he wasn't welcome in Florida anymore.

I had asked my great-aunt Linda the day after we heard about my father's disappearance, "Am I a mistake? Do you hate me?" Because I didn't know if, since they hated my father, and I was partly his genes, they hated me too. She had assured me that they didn't, that they loved me and Peyton, but I was never really sure.

But that wasn't important.

What was important was that I needed to begin my day now if I was to pull it off the right way. I got dressed in my normal attire and made my way into the kitchen, where I found my momther, trademark, Kate standing, frying some bacon. It smelled amazing, of course.

"Aw, for me? Thank you!" I said, grabbing the entire plate of finished bacon and starting to walk off with it. She smiled and looked at me, "You know better, young man. That's partly for you, Peyton, grandpa and aunt Linda," When she said grandpa, she meant my great-grandpa Bill. We lived with him and aunt Linda, who was Bill's daughter, since we had no better place to live right now.

I sat the plate back down and flashed my mom a smile before skipping to the living room to put on my shoes. Then I had an idea for a conversation starter, "Hey Mom, do you think I could drive the Chev to school today?"

She gave me a funny look and asked, "Hey Patton, have you gone absolutely insane? Of course you can!...not. You don't have a license. Nice try, though."

We liked to joke around like this a lot. It helped us to forget about...him. Because he wasn't important.

"Darn," I said with a laugh. By then, Peyton was out and ready to leave for school. I wandered why he was ready so early—I hadn't even brushed my teeth yet—and then it hit me when I looked at my phone's clock: the bus would be here in two minutes. It was a last minute decision, but I decided that I would skip the process of brushing my teeth today.

My mom must've seen the time, too, because she gave us both two pieces of bacon and shoved us out of the door to wait for the bus to arrive. When it did, we got on and picked our seats. Peyton picked a seat by one of his classmates (he was in Kindergarten, just so you're aware) and I chose a seat next to this kid with a dark jacket, which covered his face entirely.

He seemed fun! What a way to kick off a bus ride!