Blob Fish!

PB Sandwich

After unpacking all the boxes in the car I took a look at my new room. It was decked out, to say the least, and I was proud. Globes stood scattered in different places. Books upon books overflowing the shelves and posters of different places around the world were tacked onto my wall. Global Studies was always my strong point.

I stalked through the house and peaked around corners searching for Mom. I checked her bedroom, the two bathrooms upstairs, the living room, the creepy ass basement thinking she might want to perish or something, and the bathroom downstairs, finally finding her sitting at the (quite dirty) dark counter in the kitchen.

I breathe quietly and take light steps towards her, reaching my hands up ready to pounce. I peak over her shoulder, ready to see her expression when I poke her sides but stop before I lunge. I stare at the counter before her, a blue shoe box lying on the wood. I watch as she picks more and more photos out of the box and observes them between her thin fingers. A man is holding my mother in the picture, his eyebrows thick and eyes light blue like mine. There's a little boy in the picture identical to me. I stare at the photo, watching as little droplets of water fall onto the film.

This floorboard is old and unpredictable and the wood creaks under my weight. My mother jumps a little at the sudden sound and whirls around. "Oh, honey!" She gives a small smile, her voice struggling to sound enthusiastic. She looks into my eyes, her maple irises staring into my cloudy blue ones. I could see the light streaks of tears down her tan cheeks.

She turns around, shuffling for the right words. "I was just, um, looking at these." She holds the picture up in her hands and waves them a little, giving a trying smile. I plant myself next to her and we look at the pictures together until Barnes barrels in from outside.

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"So when you heading to school, man?" Barnes takes a whopping bite out of his jelly sandwich and looks out the window beside us. We've been sitting  in the living room eating lunch while Mom is showering upstairs.

"What?" I take a bite out of my PB sandwich. I hate jelly. I can barely watch Barnes shove the overwhelming amount of goop into his mouth. He's really just going ham on a jelly sandwich and I'm not here for it.

"You know, education. Are you going? 'Cause if you are I'm warning you now the kids are W A C K there. All caps. Some of them were sent to that school because all of the other schools couldn't handle them. They sent them to a school that's used to kids like them. A weird school in a weird town. If you're going I wish you luck, man." I pull my eyebrows together. I hadn't thought about school since we moved. I mean, it crossed my mind once or twice but I never really thought about it.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

I spend the rest of the day thinking about school. Mom never really made it a priority for me, she says that school isn't where you get your knowledge. "Knowledge is from experience, not things that are handed to you. You shouldn't waste your time learning useless shit." I always liked the way she thought.

I stare at the ceiling above my bed now, the hanging stars I hung swaying in the breeze.

It would be nice to have a way to spend my days here.

With the constant moving around, it's too much of a pain to keep in touch with people and if I end up meeting people, I come to care about it's gonna be too hard to leave them. I already learned from my mistakes when we first started moving around. I don't need to make the same mistakes again.

But maybe if I don't talk to many people and stay under the radar... school might not be so bad.