There Must Be Something More

1 | Wasted

I had everything.

Like, literally, I did. I had a family who loved me. I had a hot and popular girlfriend. I had my awesome friends whom I hung out with everyday. I got As and Bs in all my classes. I didn't need anything else. I was all set for life or the future, whatever fate had for me. I was all ready to face the world.

Well, I thought I had everything. I mean, everyone was jealous of me. They even said they wished they had my life. They said I must be the luckiest guy on earth--and that's what I thought too! Man, I really thought.

And then a certain girl arrived. And she was the first step to the change in my life. Forever.

It was a sunny Fall morning. I was a little hungover from last night. It had been my best friend's cousin Pete's birthday, and we must've gotten a few more shots than we intended. Which was inappropriate, I know, we weren't even in the twenties yet. We were sixteen. Though often times we acted otherwise. We liked to, anyway. But in all honesty, we had no idea of how adults were like.

My mom was banging on my door. Kicking was more like it. She liked to wrestle with it--especially when I'm running late.

"Get out of there or else!" she was yelling. I opened an eye to my alarm clock and boggled. 

"Thirty seconds starts now!" she warned.

I practically dashed off my covers, showered, and was hopping down the stairs to the dining table.

My mom and dad were already seated. They looked up at me, stared. I had myself checking the things around me, thinking I must be overlooking something.

"You were out late," Mom said.

"No, I wasn't," I lied.

"Is that what it's going to be like now, Charlie Borlock? Going out late without even leaving  a note?" my mom asked. She was calm, but her tone was giving off a menacing vibe.

"I told you I wasn't!" 

"Then why was your room locked?" Dad asked. His voice was deep and menacing. And his eyes said the same. He wasn't as calm as Mom. And so I knew I was cornered by my two commandos.

"I was studying," I lied.

"Your bag wasn't even in your room!" Mom protested. "It was on the couch. In the living room."

I stared. "It was?"

Mom and Dad exchanged looks. "Just eat your breakfast, honey. We're going to talk about this later." And they never spoke about it again. I sat across from Dad. I pretended to love my waffles. But their voices were ringing. I had been doing my best to hide my hungover.

"You were drinking, weren't you?" Dad asked.

I didn't answer. He exhaled. I knew he knew.

~~~

"Here he is!" Calum grabbed my neck in a headlock as soon as I stepped onto the parking lot. He didn't give me enough time to shut my pickup door close.

"Dude, this is all your fault," I said, shoving him off. "Told you my parents would blow."

"They found out?"

"Of course!" I was screeching. It was the first time I had been caught. But I had no idea my parents knew about my shenanigans all along.

"Well, I told you to lock your room!" he fended.

"I did. But you didn't tell me I had to keep my bag in my room."

He looked at me as if I had three ears. "I didn't think you needed to be told!"

"Yeah. Well, thanks to you, I may not be going out so late so soon," I said. I shoved him. He just laughed and kicked the dirt under him. He doesn't care at all, does he?

We filed in with the rest of the others. We were like fishes caught in nets. All the same. All going to the same direction. 

But where?

Calum was talking about his night last night. He finally got to make out with Tara Stevenson, the head cheerleader. He was grinning, chuckling in every sentence. I secretly wished I were deaf. If this was all I could hear in my ears then I'd rather have none at all. Good thing Amanda came along and I had the chance of cutting him off.

"Pete was wasted," Amanda said. She was laughing, slapping her knees.

"Well, where is he?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Who knows. Going off the deep end, maybe."

"Maybe we should check on him?"

"What are you so worried about? He gets wasted now and then," Calum said.

I boggled at him. "That's what I'm worried about!"

"Well, forget about it," he said. He patted my shoulder. He didn't feel reassuring. "Get used to it. You know, just because you got caught doesn't mean you have to play like you're the nicest guy in our group. Stop it, man. Don't be such a hypocrite."

"Hypocrite," I mumbled. We all walked to our lockers. We opened them.

As I scurried through my things, past my secret stash of Drake CD albums, magazines of girls in motorcycles, I reached for my textbook.

And found a pink sticky note underneath. I read what it said:

But He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. ~2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV)

I looked around. I wondered who slipped it in. And then I heard humming. I looked up. It was a girl walking past me, striding, she had pink sticky notes in her hands.