One Good Thing
Sitting on his bed alone waiting for his father to get home, the boy knew it was going to be another long night. Grade cards had come out and that always meant a lot of yelling and screaming. It was almost like a ritual for them. His father would be presented with the grades at the front door; he would kick off his shoes with a disgusted growl, and head for the boys room, setting aside his sister’s grades until he was finished with this regular task.
It was not like the boy meant to get bad grades, he thought to himself. He did his homework for the most part, passed the tests, and never skipped school like the other kids he knew. There were just so many other things to do when he was home alone in his room for those long months over the past year that he was grounded. He already understood Math and English and the rest, but it was just all so boring. The words all ran together after a while and made him want to do something else, anything else besides studying.
He looked around the room at the books on his bookshelf, the other worlds he had found outside his room. Then there was the airplane cockpit he had built out of bits and pieces of parts his father had brought home from work, the switches and knobs and gauges arranged on cardboard where he had spent hours pretending he was flying over some unknown land he had read about. The old model airplanes he had put together when he was younger still hung from the ceiling, and the tanks and cars lined his headboard. All of these old friends were always there to keep him company when he got bored.
It was his own fault, he reminded himself. If he could just be a better kid like his Daddy wanted him to he would get better than the B’s and C’s he usually got, and get the A’s he was supposed to be getting. If he was just a better son his Daddy would let him come out with the rest of the family more often, and he would get to go out and play again with other kids in the neighborhood. He watched them now out of his window as they played basketball down the street at Bill’s house, and felt sad because they had finally quit coming by to ask if he could come out and play with them. He knew it embarrassed his mother to tell them “no,” so maybe it was good they had stopped coming by. He did wonder what they were laughing about so hard though, as they pushed and shoved each other around under the garage hoop.
The footsteps of his mother and sisters as they quietly walked from room to room meant his father would be home soon. Glancing over at the clock on his headboard, he wished he could just turn it back a few days, but no, a few days would not have been enough anyway. Maybe he could turn his cockpit into a time machine and go back a few months or maybe even a few years like that guy in the book he read. Then he could go back and try harder. He could pay more attention in classes at school and study harder so his Daddy would be proud of him and not have to lecture him all the time at the dinner table while his mother and sisters had finished and were watching TV.
Hearing a car go by outside he turned again to the window, but it was not his father’s car yet. It still was not time. So he waited alone in his room alone as he had so many times before, waiting for his father to get home. Waiting for the anger and disappointment he was used to seeing on his father’s face, waiting to see how much longer he would have to spend in his room alone while the other kids played outside without him. Wondering how long it would take him to do the one good thing his father wanted so his father would love him again, the way he did when the boy was little. Maybe he could concentrate harder this time in school. The boy was getting older, and eleven was old enough to start being a good boy again