I hate Mondays.
With a passion.
A burning passion.
For the most part, my day was boring as hell. Like I had told Frank, I liked learning, but I'm not a fan of the whole "sit and read from a textbook" thing. I think that's part of the reason why I miss public school so much- I miss actually having people to have discussions with. I mean, sure, Mikey, Mom, and I talk a lot, but otherwise, I don't get to debate about books with multiple people, or have group projects with a million different ideas spewing out and turning into one coherent theme like I used to.
No, my days were a bit more bland than group-collaborations and debates over the use of a certain metaphor in Shakespear's poems.
Lessons, coffee break, and then more schoolwork.
That was my life, now. Every school day I started school at nine, took a break at twelve, and then worked until four. After that, I read or painted or wrote a song, and then went to bed at nine. Weekends consisted of the after-school things, the creative time-wasters that I only did because I had to do something besides stare at a wall while I thought.
But, I guess that wasn't exactly right. Frank had been a part of my shedule for the past few days- he had replaced the time-wasters with something that actually made me happy.
"Gerard," Mikey sighed, plopping down in his chair next to me at the kitchen table. "Explain the math again. Mom explained it good but I don't think I did it right."
I sighed and reached over, lifting his paper. "She explained it 'well,' Mikey. Not 'good.'" I glanced over his work for a few seconds, nodding slightly. "You did it right. Just find the square root of your answer and you're done."
He blinked rapidly, pushing his glasses higher up on his nose. "Really?"
I nodded, giving the kid a smile and ruffling his short, brown-blonde hair with one hand. "Yep."
He was smarter than he thought-
"Are you sure?"
"Positive.
-but as much as I loved my brother, he doubted himself far too much.
"Oh, okay, then..."
And we both went back to our work.
Mikey and I had grown up to depend on each other- he wouldn't be confident enough to do anything if I weren't here, and I would have no one to talk when I felt bad. It might not sound like a fair trade, confidence for words, but it was. I gave him the ability to believe in himself and he gave me a reason to not think too much, which was sometimes a life-saver.
If one thinks too much, one discovers things about one's self that one doesn't like, and that was a bad thing, for me. Mikey helped me stay away from that- he provided a distraction from all of the bad things hiding deep inside my head.
I think Mikey looks up to me a little too much, sometimes. He's only thirteen, four entire years younger than me, and has always been convinced that I hold all of the answers to every problem.
And most of the time, when it came to academics, I did. But when it came to real life problems... I'm more or less a classic example of what not to do when in a social issue.
I could still remember the first time Mikey had his first crush. He was seven, and I was eleven, and he was head-over-heels in love with this girl named Julie Foster. She was a pretty girl, and was always fairly nice to me, but she had the nastiest attitude when it came to people she didn't like, or when it came to people annoying her, and her dad was a professional boxer.
