#school was hell

“Hey sweetie?” he heard his mother call out as she approached his room. “You get your homework done?”

What did she care? Sky slumped back in his chair. She was never home anyway. Neither of his parents were.

“Sky?” his mom said, poking her head into his room. “How’s the homework coming?”

“I’m not done yet,” he said tiredly.

“Well how much do you have left to do?”

Sky hesitated. “A lot.”

Sky winced at his mother’s all too familiar sigh. “Well, you know you can’t go to the family reunion this year unless you get all caught up,” she said.

“I know.”

“Did you take your medication today?”

“Yes.”

There was an awkward pause. “Well, alright then.” She started walking away from his room. “Better get working on it if you want to go this year!”

He did want to go. He desperately wanted to go. But no matter how much he wanted to go, he simply could not get himself to focus. It was like his mind was rebelling against him. He could do the work; that wasn’t the problem. If he could just focus he could knock these assignments out in no time.

Sky rubbed his face, then picked up his pencil and looked at the first problem. If he didn’t get all of this done by tomorrow, he couldn’t go. He had to focus.

A thought drifted in into Sky’s mind. The reason he wanted to go to the reunion so bad was because his favorite cousin would be there. Sky was an only child, and he didn’t really have a friend group at school. There were a few people he could hang out with, but they were all part of different groups. Sky typically sat by himself at lunch and didn’t really go to school events (outside of those required by his classes) because he was always so busy trying to get his homework done. He hadn’t been able to go to a family reunion in two years—or was it three?—because he’d been given the same ultimatum: catch up on his homework, or he couldn’t go. Sky wondered if his cousin Billy even remembered him. He smiled. He remembered having a lot of fun hanging around Billy. He wished they could hang out more often, but they lived so far away from each other.

The garage door opened again. Sky blinked, then glanced at the clock. He groaned, planting his face on his hands. Half an hour. It felt like thirty seconds, maybe, but it had been sixty times that. That was probably his dad getting home. His dad had to leave town a lot for his job. His mom worked locally. Sky spent most days by himself.

It wasn’t long before his parents’ bickering started. It didn’t matter what the subject was, really. Sky tried to tune it out and actually, finally, please, focus on his assignment. The bickering progressed in into yelling and slammed doors. Sky stood up and shut his bedroom door, then sat back down. It muffled the sound some. With every ounce of willpower he could muster, Sky forced himself to read the first problem. Every half second a new, interesting thought would assault his mind, and every single time he’d have to fight it to get it to go away.

Twenty minutes went by like this. It was enough time for him to get one past-due math assignment done. Sky set down his pencil and slumped back in his chair. He was already exhausted. Not from the math—the math was easy, he could do that in his sleep. He was the brain in class that the teacher opted to leave off the bell curve out of kindness to the other students. No, it wasn’t the math.

It was the concentrating. Having to fight off every. Little. Insignificant thought that flitted into his mind.

Sky took the finished assignment and placed it very carefully inside his math folder. If he didn’t do this now, he’d lose it, and it would all have been for nothing. He had to have rigid organization and rituals for everything, otherwise his life would just dissolve into chaos.

He noticed that his pencil needed sharpening. He dug around in his backpack for his pencil case. Opened it.

Where was the pencil sharpener?

Sky looked around his cluttered desk. Looked through the drawers. Sighing, he got up. He knew there was a pencil sharpener in his dad’s office he could use. He picked up his water cup, figuring he might as well fill that up since he was going out anyway.

His parents’ argument had died down, but he still tried to be as invisible as possible to avoid being dragged into another one. He walked to the kitchen sink and refilled his cup. On the way back he caught a glimpse of what was on television. His mother was watching one of those reality shows. Sky didn’t really care for them anymore. The cast members were all getting ready to participate in some kind of group challenge. The course looked interesting. Sky wondered what he would’ve done, if he had been there. As the countdown began, Sky started coming up with strategies, how he’d go about it, who he’d have do what job, which part he’d focus on first—

“Sky.”

His eyes re-glued themselves to the screen. Everyone was starting to move. Some teams were rushing to one task, some teams to another—

The sound from the TV suddenly died. “Sky!”

Sky, finally in control again, blinked, then looked at his mother, embarrassed. “Yeah?”

“I asked you how the homework’s going?”

“Oh, I’ve got one assignment done.”

She scowled at him. “Just one since I’ve been home?”

Sky shrank. He nodded.

“Alright, well, you know what the consequences are.” She turned back to the TV.

Sky hurriedly left the room before she could turn the sound back on.

Sky set his water down on the desk before plopping down into his chair. He checked his list of assignments. Looks like he had a worksheet to fill out about a book he was supposed to be reading.

Where did he put that? Sky turned his chair around and scanned the room. Was it by his nightstand? He got up to check. No, it wasn’t there. Maybe his bookshelf? He walked over to the bookshelf. He didn’t see his assigned book, but he saw another book he’d been meaning to read. He pulled it from the shelf and flipped it open to the bookmark. It was a fascinating read, all about these mutant kids who’d escaped from a lab and had to go after an evil sorcerer.

Some time later, Sky heard a knock on his door. “Yes?” he called.

“Dinner’s ready.”

“Okay.” As Sky turned his gaze away from the door, he caught sight of his desk.

Oh. Right.

Whoops.

Sky shoved the bookmark back in the book and put the book back on the shelf. Suddenly he remembered: that’s right, he’d put the assigned book in his backpack. He’d have to check there later.

Sky went out to the kitchen. “How’s the homework coming?” his dad asked.

“I got a math assignment done,” Sky said as he grabbed a plate.

“That’s good,” his dad said. “How much more do you have to do?”

Sky grimaced. “A lot.”

“You mean you got another math assignment done?” his mother asked.

Sky kept adding food to his plate. It gave him an excuse to avoid eye contact as he shook his head.

His mother launched into her typical spiel. Sky knew the basic gist: what was taking him so long, didn’t he know it was better to get his work done before he relaxed, clearly he didn’t want to go to the family reunion, didn’t he understand how important his grades were. And then, the doozy: “You’re so smart, but I swear you act so stupid sometimes!”

Sky walked silently to his room. He could feel his cheeks getting hot. He closed the door behind him, sat down at his desk, and cried.

Yes, he knew how important school was. Yes, of course he wanted to go to the family reunion; what was the point of using that to supposedly motivate him if he didn’t want to go? And yes, he was smart. He knew he was smart. He just couldn’t focus to save his life.

Sky brought himself up to his elbows and wiped his eyes. What assignment had he been doing again? He checked his assignment list. Right, the book worksheet. He rummaged through the designated “books” pocket of his backpack.

The book wasn’t there.

After a few seconds of mild panic, Sky found the book in a different pocket. Right, he’d had to rush out of class, so he didn’t have time to put it back in the right pocket. Sky pulled the worksheet over and began going through the questions. The first one seemed simple enough. Sky grabbed his pencil.

Right. It still needed to be sharpened.

Sky checked his backpack again to no avail. Finally he relented, stood up and walked out of his room. After sharpening his pencil, on his way back to his room, he got stuck watching the TV again.

“Sky?”

Sky barely even registered that someone was speaking to him.

The sound on the TV died again. “Sky!”

Sky jumped. “Oh, yeah?”

“Do you need something?” his dad asked.

“Oh, no,” Sky said.

“Then go do your homework!”

Sky nodded, then left quickly.

Back at his desk, sharpened pencil in hand, Sky sat down, determined to focus. As he was re-reading the question (he’d forgotten it since getting up to sharpen his pencil), he began absent-mindedly bouncing his pencil on the desk. He started watching his pencil, surprised at how high it bounced off the eraser rubber. Sky wondered how high he could drop it from. How high could he get it to bounce?

After a thorough ten-minute study of the bounciness of pencil erasers, Sky’s pencil fell on the floor and rolled out of reach. Sky stood up to grab his pencil, which jolted his mind back to what he was supposed to be doing.

Homework. Right. But first, he was hungry, and everyone knows it’s not good to try to think on an empty stomach.

When his parents checked on him half an hour later, he still hadn’t gotten any more work done. He ended up staying up almost three hours past his bedtime, desperately trying to catch up on his homework. Finally he got so mentally exhausted that he just couldn’t think anymore. He tried to push himself past even that point, but doing so was clearly, obviously getting him nowhere.

Getting up in the morning was going to be a pain, he thought as he set his alarm for the next morning. He really hoped he didn’t accidentally turn off his alarm in the morning before falling back to sleep. He hoped his alarm would wake him up at all!

He dutifully packed his backpack, then took his plate to the sink and finished getting ready for bed. One day. That was all the time he had left to get his homework done. He tried to think of time in class or during lunch that he might be able to get a few things done. The more he could get done at school, the better. He found it easier to focus there for whatever reason.

As he drifted off to sleep, Sky thought about why he was so adamant about going to the family reunion in the first place: his cousin, Billy. Sky didn’t really have anyone else he felt like he could talk to. Maybe he couldn’t talk to Billy anymore, either. Maybe his cousin had changed since the last time they saw each other. Worry began to creep in. What if he thought Sky was stupid now? What if he thought he was weird, and avoided him, just like everyone at school did? He’d had friends in earlier grades, but it was like they grew out of him, or something. Sky didn’t really understand it. He thought he was a pretty nice guy. But he felt awkward in groups, like he was out of the loop. Like he was always missing some crucial bit of information, some social handbook that everyone else had access to.