Young Wings

Chapter 1

   My hands sweat as I step into the car. I’m nervous. I know right away that if I don’t tell him now, it will be too late. I have to tell him now, I think. At the last minute I decide to tell him. I go up to him and blurt out, “I - I cant do it right now. I think.........I’m not ready yet.” I hesitate on the next sentence I am about to say. “Can I…. can I try tomorrow? Or maybe next week?”

   “Sure,” says Mr. Powell. As I walk away from Jeopardy high school, I hear him yell out, “Get some rest Everdeem! Maybe you will feel better tomorrow, and then you can try to complete your driving test.” I walk as he says this, and I hear his voice fade on every step I take away from him, the driving test, and the school.

   It’s a thirty-minute walk from my house to the school and back. So, fifteen minutes going to school, and fifteen minutes coming home from school. When I get home, it’s the same routine as always. Get home, eat, wash the dishes, take out the trash, check if there is anything in the mail (which there usually isn’t, except for the bills every two weeks, but I still check anyways. Hey, it’s worth it.), and do a pile of twenty pages or more homework from that day. So I do everything I do.  

   Today when I check to see if there’s any mail, there is a bunch of envelopes shoved into our small, squared mailing box, and when I open it, envelopes of all sorts scatter around me like leaves falling off a tree and surrounding it. I curse under my breath, picking up the now-brown envelopes. I stop when I see my name written on one of the envelopes. I gather up the rest of the envelopes. Standing up, I dust myself off and go back inside. It seems to me like the front door is a mile away. When I finally reach the front door, I go to the kitchen where I sit down to open it.

     A huge smile crosses my face when I see what’s inside. I scream with joy and excitement, and jump up from happiness. I think to myself, I need to call mom, then I need to call Mario, and then I should call Aunt Mar, and then..............wait, I’m over exaggerating this...

“OK, I’ll call mom first.” I say to myself as I walk over to my black counter in the kitchen.

I have an awesome mom. She works at a dentist’s office, and we can get free check-ups every two months. Once, she took me to “see” a very famous museum, but I couldn’t really see anything at the time because, well, I was in her stomach. She says that she even asked the receptionist if she could have a ticket for me to go into the museum. Very nice of her, right? (0.0 sorry if that doesn't make sense...)

I call her and she answers on the first ring, like always. “Hello?”

“Hi mom! Guess what I got in the mail today?!”

“Hey honey can you give me a minute? You got me like in the middle of something important.”

"Yeah sure mom," I say, as I hear her ruffle and shuffle some things on the other side of the line. I hear her pick up the phone again.

"Sorry about that..Now what were you going to tell me?" she says quizzically.

“I got an invitation to get transferred to another school!” I scream into the phone.

“Ohmygodohmygod! My baby got an invitation to go to another school! This is SO exciting! We have to celebrate somehow. What do you want to do? We can go to a restaurant if you want.....  We can go to a spa, or we can do a girl’s night! Maybe we can even go to....” I read on in the letter I got as she babbles on and suddenly my eyes fall on a sentence that I know will sound terrible to her. In that moment I decide to tell her mom what happened at school too.

“Hey, mom, I have some bad news for you. It’s about school....and the letter I got.”

“What is it?” I can hear the disappointment in her voice. I notice right away that her happiness meter went down a centimeter, but I feel like it went down a whole foot for me when I hear the tone of her voice.

“I-I…I didn’t do my drivers test today. I’m sorry mom. I’m so sorry I disappointed you. And on the letter it says I can only transfer to schools out of the state.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. At first I think she hung up on me, but then I think better of it. I know she would not be able to do that to me. I knew in that moment that she was not upset about the driving test. I decide to cut the silence.

“Mom? Are you still there?” I know she is there, but I ask anyways. My mom says I have this problem of asking questions, even though I know the answer to it. I call it a habit, and she calls it a problem.

“Yeah, I’m right here,” she answers.

“Mom, I think I might as well not accept it. Since I’m really busy with school things right now and everything. And our family stuff with…” I don’t finish my sentence, and I think I cannot finish it.

My dad died of cancer last month. The doctors said he had a tumor in his brain, in the center of his nervous system. So they couldn’t really do anything about it. They gave my dad the option of taking out the tumor with the second effect of him being paraplegic, or they could just put him to sleep. Forever. I think you can guess which one he chose. The doctors gave him a month until his final day. My dad was good, nature loving, and a major plant geek. He always talked about how companies were a huge part of why nature was slowly dying. When he found out about his tumor, he told me about it when I got home from school. I remember that that day we were talking about plans for going out and using the rest of his time alive doing things and going to places he always wanted to go to. When his time was up, I guess I wasn’t ready to let him go yet. When they put the needle inside of his arm, I couldn’t hold in the tears. I was holding his hand when he died, and right before he died, he whispered, “I love you...” Then, his hand went limp in mine. That night, I cried myself to sleep in his work office. I felt like when he died, a part of my heart went with him.

“Hey, honey, I need to hang up now. Are you going to be okay? Until I get home?” I can read the tone in her voice, concern mixed with sadness.

"Yeah, I'll be fine mom. Thanks for asking. What about you?" I ask, with some worry in my voice. I notice it a minute too late.

"Are you sure? If you want to talk I can go home and we can talk about it when I get there."

"I'm sure. Thanks anyways mom." I answer, trying to comfort her.

When we hang up, I look at the screen of the phone and see that the call lasted half an hour. Gosh, those long, somewhat awkward silences must have been pretty long after all, I think to myself.

Today, I go to bed one hour earlier than I usually do on other days. When I am finally safely under my covers, I think of the events of my day. I should wait for mom to get home so we can talk about the school exchange program or invitation, or whatever it was, I think. But before I know it, my eyes are slowly closing, and I am pulled into a long sleep, shutting me out from the outside world.