All the Other Days. Jack Hartley
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head leaned against the window looking at the road. All the cars in their neat rows driving to work. All the people walking along the sidewalk. The shop doors opening for the day. With my head against the window looking out at the streets listening to my music, I feel like I’m in a film. I’m that kid who’s not quite like everyone else. I don’t think I’m special or anything. I just don’t quite fit in with everyone here. Everyone who lives here seems to stay here for life, do the same jobs as their parents and relive their lives for them. But I don’t want that. I don’t want to be my father and I don’t want to live here any longer than I have to. Until I finish school and can leave, I’m stuck here, running around in circles never feeling like I truly belong in this place. The bus pulls up outside school and I get off.
I’m in my senior year of high school, so I blend into the crowd more than I did when I first started here. I used to be short but then I grew and disappeared into the rest of everyone here. As I walk through the hallway, I become a part of the chaotic sea of bodies rushing to class. I make it through the first three periods of the day until lunch when I can finally breathe. I walk to the field to sit down out in the open, away from everyone playing around, where there’s less noise. Some days, I’m here on my own and sometimes Arthur sits with me. We’ve been friends our whole lives. Some might say this is the most unlikely friendship because he’s African American, wears the oddest clothes and is quite extroverted while I’m this plain white kid who seems to blend into the background most of the time. But that doesn’t seem to matter, and he knows me well, so I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not. He hasn’t turned up to the field today to sit with me, and I’m guessing that’s because he’s got another meeting with the student body or something. He likes to get involved with the school, and I think it’s pretty cool. If I wasn’t so quiet, I’d like to do that too, but I am.
I get my sketch pad out and finish off the drawing from the night before. The sweat from my face has smeared the pencil lead, but I like the distorted look it gives the drawing. It looks as though there really have been tears falling from the eyes. The perfect blend between reality and fiction.
I get off the school bus and start walking home. The sky behind me is getting darker as the clouds take over the sun, but I still feel the warmth against my face from the fading daylight. I walk through the front door and I can smell the dinner my mother is cooking. She’s a really good cook. I smell the chicken cooking in cream, mustard, onion and garlic, so I know she’s making her famous Dixie Chicken.
‘Hey, sweetie. How was your day?’ she asks.
‘It was good, Mom. School wasn’t too bad, which is a bonus too. How was yours?’
‘Oh, things aren’t too great at the moment. Mr Emerson had to let another person off. Everyone seems to only buy crap off the internet from China so it’s starting to affect us now too.’
‘Does that mean anything for you?’ I ask.
‘I’m not sure sweetie, it’s just a waiting game. The workers seem to be dropping like flies right now. All I can do is turn up and hope for the best.’
I give her a big hug to try and distract her from her day. It can’t be nice going to work like that, and I feel selfish because she goes there to make my life better so they can afford to put a roof over my head.
Once the grip of our hug loosens and she changes the subject I run upstairs to get changed. I hear her yelling to not be long because dinner will be ready soon.
I come downstairs to the table set out with our dinners.
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘It’s a Tuesday. He’ll be at the bar. Anyway, what are you doing at school at the moment, darling?”
‘Well, we’ve started to read Romeo and Juliet in English now.’
‘Oh, your father used to read all kinds of stories like that. I remember when I was in high school with him, he’d read that to me because our parents didn’t like us being together, so he thought he and I were Romeo and Juliet.’ She smiles.
‘Dad? He liked that sort of stuff?’
‘Oh yeah. He was a big romantic back then. Used to ask me out every day for over a year until I finally said yes!’ She laughs.
‘Why’d it take you so long to say yes?’
‘See, the thing with your father, he was the biggest charmer, could have any girl he wanted. But he only wanted me, and I liked that. But I knew as soon I said yes to him, I’d never be able to walk away from him, and that scared me a little.’
I never really thought of Dad being like that, mainly because I’ve never seen that side of him, the loving type. He’s always been this tough guy to me, the one who would yell at me when I did something wrong or just say good job when I actually did something he should be proud of. I feel kind of cheated that he isn’t like that anymore and I know Mom does too.
My Dad staggers in through the front door slightly drunk in his work gear, his face covered in grease. I don’t know exactly what he does. I just know that he works in a factory with machinery and he always comes home late stinking of cigarettes and has something to complain about.
‘Why have you started without me? I said I’d be home for dinner!’ Dad yells, and the vein on his forehead bulges with anger.
‘Honey, I knew you’d be at the bar, so I’ve put yours in the oven.’
He walks over to the oven and I can hear him calling Mom a useless bitch under his breath. I don’t get what his problem is, how quickly his fuse can blow over nothing. This is how their fights start: something little and stupid, where Mom has done nothing. Then his temper takes over him like a raging bull, and that’s when I leave to go my room. He grabs his dinner and sits at the sofa watching TV. I want to leave the awkwardness, but I stay for Mom’s sake and finish my dinner with her. As soon as I can get away, I go upstairs to escape my father.
Most nights, I just sit in my room by myself. I escape from it all into music, films and my drawing. The good thing about my father is his ridiculously large music collection. Between him and Mom, they have everything. I guess that’s another reason I’m stuck in the past because all I ever listened to growing up was their music. I always have to have some sort of sound playing, or my finger on a pencil, because the silence is the most deafening sound of all. I go through my usual evening routine of picking out an album and sitting on my bed and drawing. Tonight, I’ve decided to go for Bob Dylan’s Masterpieces album and put disc 1 into the CD player. I change the track to Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. I can’t stand what Guns N’ Roses did to that song, and especially how people think it’s theirs. I lie on my back facing the paint-chipped ceiling and stare at the wall paper peeling off the walls. I start to think, and then my mind becomes a river as ideas flow through my head. I can never just relax. There’s always something ticking away in my head. I don’t have ADHD, but I can imagine what it’s like for those who do — the constant inability to be still. While my body doesn’t move, my thoughts do. I hear my parents yelling downstairs through the thin walls. I wish they were sound-proof, then maybe my mind would be quiet. I hear my father call her a bitch again. I hate this. If I could just run down there and smack him dead in the face. Watch him fall to the ground. And then we could escape. I’d let out all the anger inside of me and make him feel that through my fist. He’d feel the pain that I feel for once, being at the mercy of my anger instead of me being at his. But I can’t. I’m scared of him, and I know my mother couldn’t survive without his financial support.
Money. That’s another thing that plays in my head. I hate how it controls everything. It starts most of their fights. I can only imagine how different things would be for Mom and I if we didn’t have to worry about it. She would actually smile for once, not feel like a prisoner in her own home. We could walk about the house not worrying about how his day at work went. Things would be just different.
I can still hear them yelling downstairs and then I hear smashing. I don’t know if he’s hit her, or a wall, or what, but I start crying. I hate it. I can’t control the tears that fall down my cheeks.