Insert Coin to Continue

Press A to Start

Arnold

Arnold Zimmermann was a regular boy of 12 years of age, he had blond hair like most of his family and hazel eyes. He lived with his family in a small apartment over his father's furniture shop, this shop was close to the centre of town. Most days he would have to help in there with sales, making the furniture they sold or putting their deliveries away. The apartment they lived in only had three bedrooms, so he had to share with his three brothers whilst his sisters shared a room and their parents and grandparents took the last one for themselves. They only had one bathroom to share between the ten of them, so you had to be quick in there. They also had a kitchen/dining room where they prepared and ate food, his mother and grandmother did most of the cooking but sometimes they would have to help, peeling potatoes or other vegetables. They had a living room as well with a small TV in it, they could watch it on the weekends or if the weather was bad but that was it. He went to the local elementary school that was about twenty minutes from where he lived and on the edge of the residential area of the town.

Arnold was glad it was the last week of school, he hated going there, not because of the lessons which sometimes he found quite interesting and fun but because of all the other children who went there. They all liked picking on him to varying degrees, some just called him names, others refused to sit next to him in a class, fearing to catch something off him, what he didn't know. A few were crueller like Harry and his goons who would punch him in the gut every time they passed him in a corridor and would sometimes do worse than that when they felt like it. Sometimes he managed to outrun them and escape their punishment, but this was hard to do as they were older than him and could run faster than him, so he had to be smart about where he would run to get away from them. Most of the kids though just ignored him, which was fine with him as he liked being on his own as he didn't have much space of his own when he was at home. Whilst he was thinking about the school he was staring blankly at the wall and not eating his breakfast, he sat at their massive table that was in the kitchen/dining room that was big enough to get all of them around it.

"Hey, Duffus, what you are thinking about?" Asked Jacob with a sneer.

"I was thinking about how ugly you were and whether or not I would look like that when I get to your age" Arnold replied with a chuckle, Jacob punched him for that, but it wasn't a hard punch.

"Come on, we had better head to school," Jacob said. Arnold nodded his agreement, quickly shovelled the rest of his cereal into his mouth and swallowed it, almost chocked but managed to recover himself and then got his backpack on. Jacob was his older brother, he was 15, he had green eyes and was tall, he went to a different school than Arnold, but it was in the same directions as Arnold's, so they would walk together with Freda, Brendan, and Rudy who went to the same school as him. They had to keep an eye on Rudy who was the youngest of them and their parents would kill them if anything did happen to him, they took it in turns to walk him home after school, and he would be doing it today. They are in different grades, he's in grade 6 whereas Freda who is 13 is in grade 8 and Brendan who is younger than him is in grade 3, Rudy had only started school that year and was in grade 1. The walk to school wasn't so bad, the five of them would often joke about things both at school and at home, he and Jacob had gotten closer this year and he respected his older brother who had a lot of pressure on him by their parents and his school work. Freda was ok for a girl, but she wasn't quite as silly as all her brothers and as soon as they got to their school she would go off and find her friends. Brendan and Rudy who were quite close in age often stuck close to one another and played on their way to school, they would sometimes hang out together whilst there, but both had formed their own friendship groups within their respected age groups. Arnold was pretty much the only odd one out in the group as he had no friends, whether it was because he was shyer than the others or for some other reasons, he just didn't get on with many of the kids his own age.