How To Live

Chapter Nine

I leave the house early on Saturday morning and make my way into town, enjoying the silence and serenity of being awake before seven o'clock on a weekend. The sun is already beginning to shine in the sky and I just know today is going to be a good day.

For the first time since Tommy died, I didn't wake up with a feeling of dread clenching inside my stomach, or grief tearing at my heart because I knew when I stepped out of my room my brother wouldn't be there to greet me.

No, this morning I woke up and I was filled with a strange sense of calm, a feeling that I don't ever remember having even before Tommy died. There was always something for me to worry about like school, or grades, or my Father's expectations. Now I've realised that none of those things matter. The only thing that matters to me right now is putting my plan into action.

I was mulling over it all night, thoughts and ideas swirling around inside the confines of my head, just waiting to burst out. Eventually I fell into a restless sleep and woke up at the crack of dawn, my thoughts still as fresh and vivid as the night before.

I am really going to do this, I am going to end gun violence in Bolton and make a difference to peoples lives, to the kids like me who deserve to feel safe and comfortable in their own school.

There is only one small problem with my plan, the detail of how. How the heck am I supposed to do it?

Maybe it's slightly bigger than a small problem, and I mull over it as I walk into town, past Emily's house and the Baxter's barking dog.

I could even create a petition and get as many signatures as possible against gun violence and our current gun laws in Bolton. I guess that's a start, doing something small and then building up towards something bigger, up to something with an ignorable impact.

I turn down the small laneway that leads to the old schoolhouse next to the church on my side of town. Everyone from this side of town goes here for service every Sunday, in this old ancient church that is believed to be the first ever building constructed in Bolton.

The schoolhouse is run down, musty, and draughty in the winter months, but it is where I've spent every Saturday morning for the past two years, helping kids at Saturday school.

I used to love Saturdays, waking up and heading over to the schoolhouse to help people with their homework. Watching kids as they understand and grasp concepts of learning makes me feel good inside, like I am making a difference to people's lives in some kind of way.

Most of the kids that attend Saturday school live near me, or were in the same classes as me at school. Some of the younger students I don't know so well, and there are a few kids who come some weeks from across the tracks that I haven't ever spoken more than a few words with. Kids who have the courage to ignore the stigma about them and their lives across the tracks, kids who are eager to better their education.

The one thing I loved most about Saturday school is that there are no adults, and whoever walks through the schoolhouse doors are no longer from a certain side of town, or social standing. We are all kids, trying to do our best in life and achieve goals that are bigger than social judgment. Our dreams are more important than our societies categorising and here at Saturday school, we are all equals.

I open the schoolhouses old wooden door, which creaks on its hinges. So do the floorboards as I enter the building and make my way down to the front of the schoolhouse. There are no pews or alters in here, instead there are five big round tables arranged throughout the room and chairs scattered around them unevenly.

The schoolhouse is empty, as per usual I am the first one here, and I wander around the room for a moment taking it all in.

It has been weeks since I last tutored here at Saturday school.