Crazy World

Welcoming Eyes

Lex

"You told me I could go to the party in the evening, after attending the gathering for the whole day. Why did you change your mind?" I asked my father after reaching home from the bookstore. Ideally, I would have gone back to the hostel because I did not want to see this house at all, but since my parents had broken our deal, I had to talk to them in person.

Franklin D. Holland was in his suit, his hands tied at the back, looking at me (his son) with disappointment and complaints in his eyes. His dark beard and dark eyes already made him scary, the frown on his face looked like my death. He must be thinking about how I am a disgrace to the family name.

Well, what can ya do anyway.

"I simply realised how letting you go to your friend's place was worthless compared to you attending the seminar. Its called a seminar, by the way, son. I did not want you to spend time with clumsy teenagers instead of-"

"They're my friends!" I complained but that was enough to lash out my already unapproving father.

"They're a waste of time!" He spat, "now go back to your hostel this once! I do not wish to hear another word about this, you're coming with us tomorrow and thats it."

I looked at the floor and sighed. This wasn't new of course, but hit different every time. Before leaving, I looked at my mother with pleading eyes and no hope. She was sitting there all this time, just reading a business magazine.

"Your father's word is final, Lex." she spoke in a dragging voice without a hint of love or even pity, "come in the morning, we have your suit."

Without listening to anything else, I got out of the jail-like mansion.

Deciding to have a nice lonely walk to the hostel, I sighed. It was time to go to my only escape from this cruel environment.

My life had always been like this. Getting bossed around by my father and my mother turning a blind eye to everything. My parents were blatantly business minded, sometimes I feared that I wasn't born, I was bought. And that too, just to get tormented. My family moved around a lot so I never really had any friends. Some people would want to be around me because of my family status, and the others would go away because of it. Everyone knew my parents were people to be scared of, which caused them to wander away from me.

I just wanted to tell them that there's nothing to fear about me, I would rather enjoy having their company. But of course, I could never. My parents never approved of any kind of openness or friendship, at least not when it didn't benefitted them in any way. I, on the other hand, was completely opposite. My loneliness had gotten to that point where I would just be happy in some other person's company, didn't matter if they were with me for selfish reasons.

I know, pretty pitiful, right? That was my life summed up: pitiful.

My current friends, didn't know much about them. All I knew was man, these guys were awesome! Not being around many people made me a bad judge of them, I could have been wrong. But I knew I was myself around them, which was enough for the time being. But still, the five of them made me feel home, if I knew what that felt like.

My friends were the definition of "bad company" in my parents' dictionary, that's why I kept lying about who and how they were. It physically pained me to lie about those amazing people, but I had no other option. If they knew how free-spirited these guys were, I would have been dead by now.

Ariana was just pure wild, that was the best way to describe her. My parents might have liked Andrew and Anne if they weren't so casually happy and off-hand.