The next day, March 7th I awoke groggily, my head was resting on one of the tables in the workshop. I figured that I must’ve collapsed from overworking again. Taking a step into the store front room and looking out the window revealed that the sun was starting to rise. I guessed it was probably around five or six in the morning. Oh no, mom is gonna have a field day if she finds out I fell asleep working…again.
Knowing that she tended to wake up around this time I quickly and quietly hurried up the stairs, hoping I would be able to get to my room before she found me downstairs again. As I got to the third floor, I made sure to walk as quietly as possible, the movements feeling natural to me after years of jeers from my dad. I slowly turned the door handle, entering my room and closing the door behind me, letting out a massive sigh of relief.
Approaching my bed, I was quickly startled by a loud “VOOM” sound as my phone that was lying on my bed lit up. After letting out a less than respectable shriek, I looked at the notification that startled me. I was pleasantly surprised by an email from school being sent out to all the students and parents saying school would be canceled for the next three days as they worked on trying to find the cause of the recent fire incident.
Looking at the message, I grinned knowing that I would have lots of time to work on the sculpture now. Including today, I had twenty more days to work on it. I started to mutter to myself until I heard the creaking of floorboards coming from outside the door. MOM! I stood perfectly still, as I listened how her footsteps walked towards the stairs before stopping right outside my door. I focused completely on making sure to not make a single sound, not even breath. I stood there for what felt like hours but was probably just a couple seconds. Until I eventually heard her footsteps going down the stairs. I let out a massive sigh of relief, now safe. Who knows what she would've done if she found out I worked till I dropped again. She might've tried to stop me from working on the sculpture.
Allowing myself to rest, I laid on my bed and started to check my Instagram account. My account was called “Ink-arving”. I started it a long time ago, maybe about five years ago, when Tyrone got me into it, he said it would be fun, to his credit, it was. I first started by posting pictures of my little miniatures, I was able to post almost every day, since I had already made so many by than. I was able to amass around half a million followers after five years. It took a lot of work; the algorithm never blessed me with one of my posts on the trending page or anything.
I used to try to post something about once a week but lately I haven't been posting since I've been so busy with trying to remake the sculpture. When you look at the comments, about one in every five is asking if I'm dead or not, which I always find funny. I don't know, I guess it's something about how other people have no concept of other people's lives that you just can't disappear from the web for three months without the whole world thinking you're dead and not just I don’t know taking a break because your ex best friend ruined your chances at getting into university. After about half a year of posting, someone reached out to me asking if I would like to compete in a child's art competition to see who could create the best dragon. I created a traditional Chinese dragon and much to my surprise I ended up winning! It was one of the main factors in how we were able to afford this place.
After scrolling through my social media for a while looking at my classmates' various reactions to the “Fire Day", I noticed it was now seven o’clock, and that it was as good a time as any to head downstairs and get some breakfast. I changed into some cargo pants and an old, tie-dyed t-shirt. I headed downstairs to see my mom eating some cereal and reading the newspaper, as she did every morning.
She looked up at me and smiled. “Good morning, how was your sleep?”
“Good, good slept like a log,” I explained as I walked behind her to get a bowl for myself, making sure not to look directly at her. I've learned I have an easier time lying to people if I'm not looking directly at them.
“Really like a log?” I froze. “I don’t know many people who can sleep like a log on the workshop table?”
“Well, um.”
“Busted.” She said with a knowing smirk.
“Look Mom, I just lost tra–”
“Sit, eat your cereal, and listen,” she commanded. I obeyed knowing there was no use in trying to lie my way out of this since I was already caught.
“Look Ink, I understand why you've been pushing yourself so hard these last couple of weeks." Mom explained, as I poured the milk into my bowl. “But even you cannot be so blind to see what working on that thing is doing to, it is killing you! " Gesturing to my pale, thin frame. As I poured my cereal into the milk, neither of us missed that this would've been the most food I would have eaten inn a while. “Now, I know this is gonna sound cruel, but you need to understand I'm doing this because I care about you.” I looked at her nervously, chewing my cereal. “I saw the email from your school about your days off and I'm only going to allow you to spend one of the days to work on the sculpture," she declared.
Stolen story; please report.
“Wah!” I protested, my mouth still half full of cereal.
“For the rest of the time, I want you to do three things. First, I want you to catch up on your schoolwork, since I know you haven't been studying as much as you should be. Second, I want you to get out of the house every day, regardless of if it's the day you get to work on the sculpture or not.” I looked at her and nodded my head in understanding. “You hardly ever leave the house anymore. The only time you leave the house is to take out the trash or go to school. The third and this is the most important above all the rest,” she took a long sigh as she said it both of us understanding her seriousness “Stop thinking about the sculpture and what they did to you, I'm begging you Ming! You spend all your time on it, hardly leaving the workshop unless it's to sleep and even then, you're lucky if you get out of there and not just fall asleep on the floor or the table. Please, I understand just how important this is for you. I get that I really do but at the same time you barely eat, you barely sleep. Heck, your eyebags, have eyebags! So please do anything other than work or think about the sculpture, carve something else, go on a date, kiss a dog on the lips for all I care, PLEASE I'm worried about you Ink. You haven't been the same ever since the original broke and I just want to make sure you're okay.”
Hearing all this I swallowed both her words and the last of the cereal. “Okay Mom I think I'll start on my homework first,” As I got up. “Wait, how did you know I collapsed on the table again?”
“Oh, simple, I heard your little squeal”. She said suppressing a small giggle. “Also, you're a horrible liar dear.” She sassed as she sipped on her coffee.
“Ok Mom, well I'll see you in a couple of hours I guess”.
As I walked into my room ready to get to work, I looked around admiring the craftsmanship of the whole place. I made most of the furniture myself granted with a bit of help and guidance from mom. it was my moms way of making sure I knew that we wouldn't be moving again and that we would never go back to China. Since by making something big and permeant it would only strengthen our claim to our new home. I always liked it took suggestions from my friends on what to add which contributed greatly to my bed frame.
The backboard had several engravings of little miniature versions of characters from my favorite TV show Paranormal Architect. It was a monster of the week show with a small overarching plot line with the characters capturing various monsters or parts of them and using them to make new inventions and better society. Like using dragon scales to make new protective equipment for factory workers. My favorite part of the show was the monsters. since they would use monsters from all around the world, including China. It felt nice to see my culture being represented. It ran through three seasons until they were able to wrap up the story. It's something my friends bonded over and still talk about to this day. Or at least back when we talked.
I stored most of my stuff in a large armoire. It had about twenty or so secret compartments and doors hidden all over. Some secret caches were on the legs, others found by twisting a part of the handle would reveal a secret shelf, and some could only be found by hitting a board with enough force to pop open a secret door on the other side. It was a special creation that I was the inventor of. My mom didn't and still doesn't like the bold concept of my furniture, mostly because she could never find anything in there, personally I find that as a good thing. But I will be one of the first ones to admit it can be confusing, but I promise I do have a system for everything. It just happens to be one I have not fully figured out.
My desk was the first piece of furniture I made which both my mom and I found genuinely good. It was a simple design with a couple drawers for storage and a back board with a nice-looking grain pattern, there wasn't much else to it.
I sat at the desk, grabbed my papers and textbook and started to catch up on what was about a month of math homework. Thankfully even for the two-month period I was depressed, I was barely able to keep up with my schoolwork maintaining a B- average emphasis on the minus. Still pretty good when you consider I work full time at a semi-thriving carpentry business, as well as, managing a fairly successful Instagram account.
Mom made me realize I can't afford to half ass high school, and I need to be able to do well in life or at the very least decent. So that's what I did. I slowly grinded through my textbook relearning all the previous lessons and practicing on the assigned homework. Every question I answered correctly made me more confident and reinforced my understanding in the subject. After an hour or so I had completed a third of my work and was desperately looking forward for anything else to do.
I started to think about what I should do next. Maybe I could work on the sculpture so I could do something where I would be able to focus less on the exactness of an object and more on the look and feel, figuring it could be a good change of pace from graphs and functions. Until I eventually heard a knock on my door. “Come in.”
My mom walked in wearing a purple shirt and a blue apron probably was working in the shop earlier. “Hey Ink, how's the studying going?”
“It’s going well so far.” I'm actually done and was just thinking about what to do next.”
“Well, how bout you go out to eat, maybe take a walk, my treat” she offer as she held out a plastic green twenty-dollar bill.
“Thanks,” I answered, not really having a better idea on what to do. I stood up, grabbed the money and headed out the door of my room saying goodbye to my mom on the way.