Truth and Dare

CHAPTER 1- HAROLD DONOVAN

Can't say I'm good at too many things. I am a person who lacks in almost everything. I study for exams halfway, the stories I write are half, my portraits are never really complete. Even at tea times when I accompany my family or friends thousandths, always leave tea halfway through the cup. My life is so full of halves that my soul is probably half too. Ever since I was little, I felt that I had an empty side at all times.
There's only one thing I truly believe I'm capable of doing, running. Maybe if I had the opportunity, from the moment my feet touched the ground, I would always run far away. Unfortunately, never set foot outside Malton Township, North Yorkshire for as long as I can remember.
In fact, our town is quite beautiful, we almost never come across people who don't like it. Of course I am also attached to the place where I was born, but sometimes I feel like can't fit in here.
It was another day when my heart was overwhelmed with boredom. I was sitting on the window sill of my room, located behind our house, overlooking the apple orchards of our neighbor, Mr. Jonathan Evans, trying to relieve a little bit of the effect of walls as if they were coming on me. There was a coolness in the air heralding the arrival of autumn, and evening sun was losing its last radiance by painting the Derwent River pink. A light breeze that filled the room made white curtains dance restlessly, causing them to hit my face.
I was feeling so fed up and overwhelmed that I'm in a state of anger at even a stupid curtain.
I don't understand why everything is so pointless. Does one live only to sleep, eat or earn money?
I'm so devoid of human enthusiasm that I don't remember getting excited about a toy as a kid, for the day I started school or for new snowshoes to wear for Christmas. Things that a normal child or young person would probably die for when they saw, almost never aroused my curiosity.
My mother says that the day she gave my birth, I was too lazy to even cry, a baby who did not smile even in his sleep.
There was a time she got scared because I didn't speak until 7 years old and thought I had a disease moreover took me to the doctor. I, who had not deigned to speak until that moment, started to talk like a cheerful bird when I saw books on the shelf behind the doctor's desk. Doctor couldn't make a proper diagnosis after my attitude, but the only reason I didn't speak was because I didn't want to. I just spoke without hesitation that day because all those books intrigued me. Yet, my life wasn't even as interesting as the books. Anyways my mother's heart was somewhat relieved, because if I can talk now it doesn't matter why I couldn't been able to talk until that day.
I've never had friends in elementary school, frequently read simplified versions of Charles Dickens' books in the backyard of school. Although I'm starting the third year of high school tomorrow, this situation hasn't changed much except for the titles and thickness of the books but I don't mind that even a little bit.
For a long time, my mother was obsessed with me for not being friends with anyone and not laughing once in 17 years. She thought I might be sick from brain but I just found all those things pointless. My being was living proof that you don't need people or stale positive emotions to live.
Although it took quite a while, my mom finally put aside her complaining attitude. My father never cared about my lifestyle anyway and I am grateful to him for that. Now, as long as I respect the townspeople, do well in my studies and visit the church once a week like a good Christian, I'm a good son to them.
Whereas, the Sunday rites where the priest of the church preached values such as love and respect, frightened people with the hell waiting for them at the end of jealousy, greed and other sins, and talked about nonsense like real Christianity and our father in heaven, was an informal sleep ceremony for me. It was a very pleasurable weekend activity to slumber in the back row rather than join the rotten piety of the townspeople who's drooling and hypocritically listening to Jesus' absurd miracles even though they would never heed his counsel. I mean, I wouldn't want to betray my dear mother but in this way I can not actually feel like an exact Christian.
As the sun was well out of sight, my mother's chirping voice echoed through the walls of our three-room country house.
"Harold! Dinner's ready, come to the garden and join us for meal."
My mother's voice is reminding me that I'm hungry. On wooden floor of the narrow corridor, the stone walls of which were lit by gas lamps, my bare feet were dragging my body into the garden. I grabbed my cardigan hanging behind the heavy wooden door and searched for my slippers.
"Mom, where did you put my slippers?"
"Yesterday you got into the mud with them and polluted the terrace with those slippers, Harold. When I got up in the morning, there was dung and dirt all over ceiling. Besides I washed your slippers and then clean all this place! So put on my slippers for this time and come to dinner as soon as possible."
Her voice sounded so angry that I was pretty sure, her round face beneath her blonde hair looked like a reddening peach by summer sun.
"Just 'put on my slippers' was enough, Charlotte!"
"You little goat, don't call me by my first name again. I'm your mother, not some random woman in the tavern!"
"But I decided to marry you, when I saw you singing in a tavern Charlotte." Dad took her unawares.
"Shut up Abel, you slanderous sinner!"
My mother was holding her crucifix in most thight way and coloring up as I guessed. Also my father was doing nothing but laughing heartily. Their cat-and-mouse behavior always amused me.
I don't have much of an idea of what love is, because it's not an emotion that I'm usually related to. Yet, I knew that I had to protect my mother and father from everything and I was trying to have whatever is the closest thing to love for their sake.
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