I look into the pantry. Empty. I'll just have to wait until I get to school.
As an infant, my mother and father split up, and I live with my mother. My mother didn't have a job, and couldn't find one. She still hasn't.
Sometimes I feel like my mother isn't even trying to get a job. My teacher brought us in a newspaper once, and she read us an article about the school's basketball team. She threw it in the recycle bin, but I snatched it when no one was looking. I knew they had job listings in there, and my mom needed a job. I gave her the newspaper, on the side with the job listings. She looked at it, then took it into her bedroom. I found it in our trash can that night.
That could've just been because she wasn't applicable for any of the jobs, since she was a high school dropout and didn't go to college, and I don't think she's ever even had a job before, so anything requiring previous skill wouldn't be available for her. But there were so many jobs on that paper, I'm sure she could have found one.
I've spent fourteen years like this. Hungry, poor, and my mother jobless, relying on child support. I'm in lots of sports and clubs, since life is better at school than at home. Sometimes I even get food there. I'm not very popular, but I do have friends. At least ten. Only one truly knows me.
Brody Johnson is my best friend. He knows how my life is at home, and he helps me. A week isn't a week unless I spend at least three nights at his house. His mom knows about my family's money problem, and she is very kind to me and allows me to visit often. She says I'm a very nice kid, and that she's very sorry about how I must live. We barely ever talk about my home life, because they know I'm kind of embarrassed about it. They know that sometimes, I wish I wasn't Drew Clark.
But they know as well as I do, that I can't be anyone else.
