The ride home was the worst part. Worse than being expelled or the school drama surrounding the fight. Dealing with his mother in the car for an entire hour while driving home, and being screamed at how much of a failure he turned out to be, was truly the soul wrenching part.

His mother went through alternating periods of manic crying and then screaming.

“You don’t love me! You don’t care about me!” she howled through tears, with both hands firmly gripping the car steering wheel. “If you loved me you would not have done this!”

“Mom, I—,” Ardwyn tried to speak.

“I don’t care what the other person did!” she screamed. The slightest remark from Ardwyn seemed to make her voice grow even louder. “You do not take justice into your own hands! You understand!?”

Ardwyn nodded.

“And now what?” she asked. “Where are you going to go to school exactly? You know we don’t have the money to send you to a private school, and I already drive an hour every morning to work to have to drive for yet another hour to take you to another school.”

She broke down again in tears and put one of her hands up to wipe her eyes.

“Mom, be careful, you’re driving.” Ardwyn said.

The car came up to a stop light. He unlocked the car side compartment and handed her a tissue.

“You failed math last year,” she said. “You don’t have a good track record. Even if we had the money to send you to a private school they probably wouldn’t take you with that kind of record.”

His mom always did this when he messed up. Not only did she start being dramatic over the situation, but then she also went through the list all of his previous failures together in tandem.

“And for what?” she asked. “You don’t even care about school. I know you don’t. You hardly want to wake up in the morning. You try to skip classes at every chance you get. It’s been a miracle you got this far!”

Ardwyn felt a tear start to form in the corner of his eye but he didn’t want to make matters worse. He needed to be strong. He started to let out a slow breath, and leaned back in his seat.

Suddenly her expression turned more serious. “I know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to call your father. It’s his child after all. He has a responsibility toward you.”

Ardwyn’s mother had been divorced for the past ten years. The last time he had seen his father was five years ago, and just for the weekend. Ardwyn had flown up north to stay with him at his house. His father had a quiet personality and never said much. Even over the course of the weekend, Ardwyn felt like he hadn’t gotten to know much of anything about his father. With his father being out of his life, it was almost as if hadn’t existed until his mother had just mentioned him.

“That’s what I’m going to do,” his mother started to convince herself, as she pushed the gas pedal hard to the floor and the momentum of the car jolted him forward. “You can stay with him. Go to school up there. Figure it out. He can deal with it.”

“Mom, slow down,” Ardwyn said as he noticed another car come up to the intersection.

“I still don’t think you understand what happened,” his mother said. “You got expelled. Kicked out. That’s on your record. How are you going to get into a good college? Get a career?”

“Mom, you’re going too fast,” Ardwyn said as the yellow light changed to red.

The other car at the intersection missed them by a short distance. The driver let out an angry honk that lasted a while.

His mother seemed unfazed. “If you mess up again then I don’t know what will happen. This is your one last chance. Do you understand?”

He nodded.

“Do you understand?” she yelled. “One more chance or that will be the end,” she said dramatically and wiped the rest of the tears from her eyes.

When they got home, Ardwyn changed into his house clothes without saying a word. He heard his mom slam the car door in the garage and then barge into her room, also slamming the bedroom door behind her.

Stolen story; please report.

Finally, he was alone. A relief. Ardwyn let out a sigh and fell backward on his bed. He looked around his room. There wasn’t much that he had and he was already wondering what he would pack if in fact he was going to move up north with his father.

What about his life? His friends? Michael? All gone in an instant. And his job at the grocery store? That was gone as well. In a flash it had seemed like he had lost everything. His entire life.

A part of him gave up. He started to make peace with it all.

Then the phone rang. It was Michael.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked. Was he, okay? After all, it was Michael who had been shoved to the floor by Jonny. Michael was always the considerate type, asking about Ardwyn first before even talking about himself.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Ardwyn said. “No big deal.” It seemed nothing compared to the heat he had received from his mother.

“I got some news. Jonny got expelled,” Michael said, “he won’t be bothering us anymore.”

“Oh, really?” Ardwyn said. He felt a pit forming at the bottom of his stomach. They were both expelled now.

“Yeah, he’s done,” Michael said. “Hey, thanks for what you did back there. I really appreciate that.”

“No problem,” Ardwyn said.

“When you’re coming back?” Michael said. “I noticed you got sent home early.”

“Michael, thanks for being my friend,” Ardwyn said, and tried not to sound emotional. Things were not making sense. The thoughts jumbled in his mind and he felt exhausted with everything. “I’m not coming back,” he said. “I got expelled.”

Hours later his mother finally emerged from her bedroom. She started cooking dinner, mashed potatoes and a meatloaf, still in silence, sulking.

Ardwyn, tired of staying in his bedroom all day, sat down in the living room and turned on the TV to a movie. He put the volume on low.

The aroma of the cooking filled the air, and for a moment Ardwyn forgot about the events of the day and managed to stretch out and relax.

The relaxation was short lived, when his mother was done cooking, she said, “I’m calling your father. Right now.”

For some reason the way she said it, made it sound like a threat. Ardwyn turned off the TV, and laid there on the couch in silence.

After putting the food down on the kitchen table she dialed a number she had written down on a folded sheet of paper.

“Jerry,” a moment later she said. “You’ll never guess what happened… Yeah, I’m doing fine… It’s about Ardwyn. He got expelled… yes, today.”

There was a silence as his mother listened to the phone. Ardwyn wondered what his father was saying.

His mother continued, “He punched the kid and broke his nose. They took him to the hospital”, she said with a blaming tone in her voice. “—I don’t know. You talk to him.”

She walked up to him and gave him an angry glare as she handed him the phone. “Your father wants to speak with you.”

“Hello, dad?” Ardwyn said as picked up the phone. Saying the words dad felt strange, as he hadn’t talked to his father in years.

“Hi, son. How are you?” his father said, seemingly calm.

“I’m okay,” Ardwyn said.

“Your mother told me what happened. You were in a fight?”

“Yeah, it was an accident,” he said.

His mother yelled in the background. “An accident?”

“Mom, can I talk to dad in private?” Ardwyn asked.

“Fine,” his mother said with her arms crossed defensively.

Ardwyn walked through the hallway into his room. “He pushed my friend. He started it. Really hurt him. I punched him but I didn’t realize how strong I punched him.”

“That’s okay,” his father said calmly. “It happens.”

Ardwyn exhaled. “Mom said that maybe I can stay with you and go to school up there since they’ve expelled me and there are not a lot options.”

“Is that what you want?” his father asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s fine by me. I got a new big house here that sits empty most of the year. There are some good public schools around here too. Not a problem with me.”

“Thanks, dad,” Ardwyn said, feeling emotional. He didn’t want to say much else so that his father would not be able to detect the shaking in his voice.

“When did you want to leave?” his father asked. “I can pick you up at the airport.”

“You would have to ask mom,” Ardwyn said.

“Okay, give me your mom,” his father said.

Ardwyn returned to the kitchen and before handing the phone to his mom he covered the earpiece, and whispered, “I told dad that you wanted me to stay with him to go to school up there.”

His mother, nodded with her eyes closed in relief.

“Jerry?” she said. “That’s okay with you? He could enroll in a school there. No one will take him down here and I don’t have the time to drive him to school.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Jerry said. “When would he want to leave?”

“What do you think?” his mother asked.

“Well, if he has just been expelled, then he should return to school as soon as possible,” Jerry said. “I can pick him up at the airport this weekend.”

“Great, thanks Jerry.”

She hung up the phone.

“So you’re going to stay with your dad. Happy?” she said with a half smile. She gave him a big warm hug and tried not to cry but the tears came anyway.

That night Ardwyn spent packing while his mother was asleep. His father said he would be able to pick him up as soon as possible, so Ardwyn wanted to have his stuff packed and ready to go. He didn’t have a lot. An old film camera that he had used over the summer to take pictures, the few clothes in his closet, and a cardboard box, which he called the “memory box” that had pictures of his friends, and other artifacts left over from memorable occasions. He had a note of a mystery admirer girl who wrote him a letter once saying he was her secret crush and to meet him after geography class. He never did. He was too shy just being in the second grade, but he had kept the note anyway.

There was a plane ticket when he had traveled up state to stay his dad, a receipt from the weekend they went bowling together.

Ardwyn put the memory box in a large duffel bag along with his camera, and wrapped his clothes around the objects to keep them safe. He looked around the room. This was the room where he spent his childhood years growing from just a kid into a teenager. Previous memories spent in the house flashed through his head like a movie.

After he finished packing the tiredness of the day overtook him and he fell asleep without noticing. If he could have known what would happen to him in the next few days, Ardwyn might have just considered running away, right there and then.