🍄 A weekend at Nathan's
Part 1: My life
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My name is Sam, and I am 11 years old! But in fact, my name is Samuel. Since I don't really like this name, I go by Sam.
For two months, I have been in middle school, finally! I couldn't wait to leave elementary school. I didn't feel like I belonged there, I felt like I was with little kids.
So far, everything is going pretty well. Well, that's not what my parents say. They think I don't work enough at school and on my homework. It's true that I prefer playing with my friends after school than going home to do my homework.
My parents never come home before 6:30 PM, so when I finish at 3 PM, it gives me a lot of time without them nagging me.
I enjoy doing cross with my bike and playing Fortnite. I play on the console at home or at friends' houses who live nearby. By playing a lot, I've become pretty good. My friends always come join the games I play because they know they have a chance to finish in the top 1.
A month ago, I got in trouble with my dad because I stole 20 € from his wallet to buy V-Bucks at a tobacco shop in order to buy a battle pass on Fortnite. I admit I went a little too far. I didn't even get punished, well, I just had to go to bed a little earlier that night, nothing serious.
Two weeks ago, even though school had already started a long time ago, a new student arrived in my class, his name is Nathan. He is 11 years old too and pretty cool. We quickly became friends. We sit next to each other in class, and we play Fortnite together. Well, he doesn't have much chance to play. At his place, it doesn't seem like fun. He is only allowed to play for 30 minutes a day, and even then, not every day.
I introduced him to my friends and several times I invited him to come with us after school but he said he couldn't, and he had to go home right away. He's not a very good student yet I don't think it's to go home to do his homework and study. He got a 9/20 in math yesterday and I really think he was afraid to tell his mother.
I got an 8/20, it may seem little but I don't like math. You have to be precise in your answers, you can't make mistakes or place the decimal point in a number, in short, it's not my thing. My parents asked me to make an effort, I said yes, and that was it.
Nathan lives on a street just next to mine, so we sometimes walk home together, mainly because I take the bus and my friends are not available to hang out after school. In two weeks, it must have happened twice maybe.
This morning, when Nathan arrived at the bus stop near us, he didn't seem very well, and even quite tired.
"How are you Nathan?"
"I'm okay..."
"Tell me, what's wrong? I can see that something's not right."
"I don't want to talk about it."
I respect that, if he doesn't want to talk about it, it's his right.
"Okay, no problem. If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here."
All morning, Nathan seems a little worried. He's usually quite reserved, but now he's even more, hardly responding when someone talks to him. Even a teacher found him "absent".
Lunchtime happens in the cafeteria like every day. The meal was really bad: green beans and meat in sauce. I only ate the starter, dessert, and bread. The smell of beans makes me want to vomit.
The afternoon of classes finally ends. I was fed up with this last class, music on top of it, as uninteresting as possible. The teacher made us sing, what horror for our ears.
Even faster than usual, Nathan hurries home. As soon as the bell signaling the end of class rings, he quickly packs his things and starts running. I go down with him in the schoolyard but he rushes towards the bus stop. I don't want to rush, I'll just wait for my other friends.
When I arrive at the bus stop too, I see him getting into a car. It seems to be his mother at the wheel. I saw her only once so far. We talked briefly and I can't say she seemed very nice, quite the opposite really.
That didn't stop me from becoming friends with Nathan anyway. He never invited me to his place. On my part, I would have liked him to come to my house so we could play together for a while, but he always refused my invitations, whether after school or even last weekend.
Tonight it was agreed that I would go to Antoine's, he has a new Switch game to show me. By the way, he finally arrives at the bus stop too.
"Where were you? We missed a bus!"
"Yeah sorry, my German teacher didn't let us leave right away," he tells me.
We chat for a few minutes about his new game before the bus arrives. After a 20-minute ride, we finally reach his stop and head to his place. He lives in a house quite similar to mine, with a small garden in front and a larger one in the back.
Antoine, he's an only child, and I've known him since elementary school. We've been in all the same classes. I can say I know him pretty well and we have often slept at each other's houses.
Last year, his parents got divorced and his dad left the house. It was a bit hard for him, and he admitted to me that he cried several times. He recently warned me that his mom had met a new man and that he now lived with them, with his 3-year-old daughter.
"I'm going to meet your little sister then! What's her name?"
"My step-sister, corrects Antoine, and her name is Anna."
"Yeah, sister or step-sister, it's the same," I say. "And so, how has it been since they've been living with you?"
"With my step-dad, it's a bit complicated. Like Mom says, we need to find new routines and get to know each other. With Anna, it's fine. She's a bit annoying because she's happy to have a big brother, so she sticks to me. The problem is mostly that she doesn't have her own room and sleeps in mine."
"Oh yeah, that sucks."
"Especially because she wets the bed, so her dad puts a diaper on her at night. And in the morning, it stinks in my room."
"Haha, funny, are you sure it's not actually you who wets the bed?"
"Laugh it up. You'll tell me your opinion when you come into my room, you'll tell me if you don't find an odd smell."
We have now arrived in front of his house and his mother is waiting for us at the door.
"Oh there you are, I was wondering where you were. Hi Sam."
"Hi Pauline," I reply. "Antoine took a long time to come out of school, and we missed the bus."
"I understand," Pauline replies. "Come in, I've prepared a snack for you. Anyway, it's been a while since you've stayed over at our house Sam. At the moment it would be a bit complicated, I think Antoine explained to you."
"Yes he did," I say.
Both of us put our bags in the hallway and head to the kitchen to have a snack.
"No more than 30 minutes of video games, boys, then it's homework, understood?"
"Yes mom," Antoine replies.
I know he says yes but we'll go over those 30 minutes, it's always like that.
Once we finish our snack, we go up to his room, taking our school bags.
"You're right," I say as I enter his room, "it smells bad."
"You see, I told you."
While sniffing the air, I look at what has changed in his room.
"You have dolls now," I say amused as I look at a Barbie on the floor. "I didn't know you liked that. I'll buy you that for your birthday."
"Stop please, that's really not funny."
Antoine is turning on his console and TV. He's really lucky to have that in his room. Me, my parents won't allow it, and I have to play on the living room TV. However, sometimes at night, I bring it to my room and play before falling asleep.
"It's ready, are you coming?" he says.
As I go to sit on his bed as I usually do, I see a pack of diapers on his dresser where he keeps his clothes.
"Oh but your diapers are there, look," I said to Antoine, "stop looking for them. They're even Pull-Ups, they say on TV you're a big boy when you have those."
"Alright, Sam, did you come to play or what?" he says in an annoyed voice.
I'm teasing him a bit, and I'll stop bothering him. It's true that what he's going through might not be very fun.
"Okay, I'll stop, for now at least."
We spend over an hour playing before Pauline comes to see that we're not doing our homework. She asks us to get to work, and I pretend I have to go home so I don't have to do my homework either.
On my way home, I pass by Nathan's house and the car is not there, they must have gone shopping when his mom picked him up. I finally arrive home and my parents are not there. Great, I can play Fortnite.
About 20 minutes later, a car is heard and a quick glance out the window allows me to see that it's mom who's arriving. I quickly turn off the TV, rush to my room, and pretend to work on my homework.
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