Page 57 of Eyes Like Angel
“It’s eight in the morning,” I reminded her softly. “There’s no reason to shout or lecture me. I’m bringing good new—”
She slammed the silverware again, louder and sharper as the noise recurred in a spacious building, a building that used to own by my mom’s relative, who recently died from a severe lung cancer, which my parents snatched the place quick due to loving a calm scenery and aesthetics without a second thought, as if they wanted someone’s vineyard all along and patiently waited for someone to die and slip the property in its grasp, as if my parents had won a lottery.
“Yes! It’s eight in the fucking morning! You’re the one who’s shouting, not me! Honestly, why can’t you just shut the fuck up for once and go do something useful for once in your goddamn life?!”
Her frail brows furrowed, outlining a darker shadow casted over her eyelids, like her eyes were glowing, ready to attack me.
The clench in my chest tightened, unable to breathe.
“I was just…telling you about…tennis…” I pleaded, expecting the unconditional support she used to do. “Aren’t you happy for me? Aren’t you happy I got into a new sport? You and Dad like tennis.”
“I don’t care, you stupid fuck. I can’t deal with your voice,” she seethed, eyes sharpened in venom. “Ah, shit. My appetite is ruined. Now I don’t feel hungry anymore.”
She slumped, huffing and puffing, crossing her arms, shooting her gruesome pout and a disgruntled mood personally aimed at me. “Honestly, what’s the point? You won’t make it far; you’ll cry, like you always do every time you search for a different sport to pick,” she ranted fast with a groaning, overly dramatic loud huff.
At that time, I wasn’t starving for food. I was…empty. Hands shivered when I picked on my cuticles, bleeding as I plucked the skin downwards.
Then I left and headed straight back into my room, not knowing whether I should cry or not.
Before I do so, my steps halted in the middle of the staircase and the sound erupted.
The ruffled noise of the newspaper was set aside and a pair of his reading glasses placed beside the used plate he ate his meal on.
“Honey, what do you think I should do? He’s been…so miserable,” she whined. “I can’t say anything right to him. He’s been too demanding. It’s like…I don’t know him anymore. What happened to our good little son of ours?”
Dad scoffed. “Let him do what he wants. He’s going to fail miserably, anyway. What’s the point on cheering to a losing side? He won’t make it. He’ll never make it, and I know it. He cried like a girl. He’s too high on his emotions. Let him cry all he wants hours on end. Oh, and Linda, cut your hair. It’s solong it fucking annoys me, you look like a murderous bitch in heat.”
Mom made no attempt to join with a comeback, and her shaky fingers tangled in between frail strands.
The following days, I stopped, slumped and shut down on my system as the bed and the layered sheets crumpled over me. I didn’t cry, and I didn’t say much to my family; and they’ve been chirpy since I hadn’t spoken to them in several days, sometimes weeks. My presence wasn’t acquired, absence overweigh it. I attended at the tennis court, having a tennis coach at a prestigious school taught me all day in a month, all in preparation and no breaks. None of them were concern or asked me how I’ve been. Dad had been optimistically about me crying, while Mom cared for her new long nails at a nail salon and a short hair she chopped off, and Bjorn is Bjorn, being a quiet busy-body to himself, with an unreadable, uncalculated expression.
Yet their criticism kept ongoing, until the day I bested someone at the tennis match, tennis outfit drenched in hot sweat dropping from brow to chin and my skin scorched in red and blistered from running and passing the neon tennis ball.
By the time I struck the tennis ball, the crowd cheered.
I look at the score behind me.
My first victory.
My very own victory.
I emerged in a grand fashion like an Emperor, uprising and usurping my enemies’ territory and looking down the rest.
Perhaps I was enjoying it in a ballistic way. Maybe I liked being a savage beast, ready to shreds other’s self-esteem. This glorious victory, beaded sweat coated my hairline and descended to my fair complexion.
A landmark of a remarkable moment has my body sent to a great shock and disbelief, mentally pinching myself if I was dreaming or not.
I scored more points than my opponent.
And the crowd cheered. Even the girls, having their own pom-poms in their possession to add an elaborate cheer, grand yet simplified.
Another opponent, his name was Leonardo Dakota, was younger than me, bright-eyed with ginger-colored hair and freckled skin and stoic, but he’s taller and strong built, appearing much older than me, but his agility and perseverance was undeniably amazing to witness, he could’ve been a potential and an idol into the sports world, like Roger Federer or Andy Murray, but I outdone him in the best way I could, a starting position for me rise to the top.
Girls ran after me, and hopped, congratulating me, even the coach, who had given a proud ruffle on my sweating head, his arms swung over my shoulder, yanked me for a head lock, ruffling my hair.
“I’m proud of you, son,” the coach said joyously, wearing a Dad smile shined on me.
My eyes cued at the smiling crowd, only to find my family was absent, due to their unspoken rule of predetermined disinterest at a breakfast table.
