(Life) Wakening

I had a very solid plan, finish high school, attend a good university, come back home and work as writer/illustrator. Of course in-between I wanted companionship, sex, love, a nice little cottage by the lake and two dogs, preferably golden retrievers. You may think it’s odd for a seventeen years old little town boy to have a well established life plan, well strange was my middle name, or so everybody kept telling me. I, for once, never saw myself as a strange person, nonconformist rang more true to my ears and this was pushing the envelope since I never liked labels.

My life philosophy set me apart from the other 6000 habitants of our town where, according to my point of view, everybody strived to belong and ended up being nothing more than clones. I on the other hand, since I was old enough to make my own decisions, always did what I liked and not what everybody expected. I dressed with what my mother called ‘clothes not even the homeless would want’, which were other words for comfortable worn jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, oversized sweatshirts, three quarter trench coats, long scarves, leather wristbands, combat boots, you get the point more laid back clothes, and all of them in dark shades, since black is one of my favorite colors.

Another cardinal rule I broke was church service which I stopped attending since fourteen when I came to the conclusion that God wouldn’t hear me better if I was in a church full of people, so why waste time there?

In a way I also didn’t have friends, oh I wasn’t antisocial and I even talked to neighbors, classmates, my parents’ friends and the elderly but there was no real connection. So my daily routine was wake up, go to school, a daily visit to the public pool, return home where I read, wrote, draw and sometimes went for a good hike to the lake or in the woods that surrounded our town. Most people would consider this routine as a lonely one, but I preferred it to the senseless parties where being drunk was the goal and the gatherings at the parking lots for a smoke, bear or dating.
Don’t get me wrong, I did want to date but besides the occasional physical attraction I didn’t mentally clicked with anybody and to make things worse, I was gay.

My life suffered a slight alteration with the arrival from the big city of Timothy and Janet. After meeting them I came to the conclusion they shared my view of life and that we had common interests, so I gave them my friendship along with the hiking and nature experiences they brought me the interest for rediscovering my town and look at it with different eyes, an upgrade on my computer skills and a need to use a cell. But since they started dating our time together was cut short, not that I didn’t understand and even supported them.

As for my parents, mom’s the proud owner of the city only event planner/catering company and dad’s a manager at the bank. In other words, extremely busy and socially requested people. So we came to the conclusion that we love each other but it’s better to keep our noses in our own businesses.

A phone call! That’s right, an impersonal verbal conversation through a solid technological machine shattered my organized life and sent my careful thought plain in the drain. That Friday marked the start of summer vacation, so you can imagine how my state of mind was at the moment I arrived home. Mom and dad where already there and had news, so I was informed that my great aunt Constance died and my dad was her sole heir thus they were going to take a plane that night to attend on Saturday to her burial service and reading of the will. So who was Great Aunt Constance?

Well, your guess is as good as mine since I never heard of such family member. While my parents frantically told me their story the only words I actually registered were ‘plane’ and ‘back Monday’ which translated to ‘home alone all weekend’.

During the weekend I slept in late, ate whatever I fancied, had undisturbed me time and prowled the house only in boxers, I was the king of the house. Looking back, maybe it was the calm before the storm since late Monday afternoon I was wake up by my father who told me to join them in the living room to hear the ‘good’ news. And, oh boy, what a bomb they dropped, Great Aunt Constance was one of the social matrons of the old capital Lisburgh and left her house, billions of dollars, car collection, jewelry, stocks and bonds, hell dad was now a proud owner of 20% of the bank he worked for, to her only living familiar, father.

But to receive the inherence there were two clauses; first one was that the house couldn’t be sold and the staff fired as they also lived there; second one stated that only if dad family moved in would the heritage be available.

To my utter shock they had accepted the conditions, without consulting me I might add, worse mother had already contacted possible buyers for her business, dad requested the main office a transfer which was promptly accepted and my school was in the process of sending my transcripts to Tearlach High School, all this with the help of the new family lawyer. We were moving to Lisburgh the following week. It’s needless to say that my reaction was far from happy, in fact I screamed, yelled and finally begged them to let me stay behind till I finished my senior year but they were immovable, I was going with them.

The following days were marked by me pouting in my room and by my parents trying to cheer me up with facts of new life ahead of us. That’s when I snatched a small victory, our present house was not to be sold and I would finish my summer vacations there alone. That summer passed like a breeze and soon I had said my goodbyes to the little town of LakeWood and my two friends, Timothy and Janet.