Malcolm in the Middle: one-shots

Where Are They Now? Malcolm

I'm glad that I said no to getting the job I was offered at the software company after I finished high school, because going to Harvard had been my primary goal for a few years. Though obviously, Harvard was far out of my family's price range, I wanted to go there because I had already been accepted there, I wanted to study molecular biology and they had one of the country's best programs in that area, I would finally be able to enjoy schoolwork now that I wouldn't have brothers to mess with or a reputation to attend to, and it was far from home, which made it even more intriguing.

I had the grades for it, because after all, I graduated as valedictorian, not to mention that I got good scores on my SATs (including the verbal one), was in advanced classes, and had gotten a bunch of scholarships, one of which Mom wasted on an antique dollhouse. Though she and Dad tried to get the money back because they realized what they had done, their prophecy of me not being able to spend the money wisely came true because I wasted it on fancy yearbook photos that showed me as a rock star, on an island with pretty girls, and with a falcon in my hand. Once I felt bad for wasting the money on photos that only made me look like a weirdo in the yearbook, I decided to make sure not to waste any future scholarships and to work a bunch of jobs once I got to Harvard so I could continue to pay my way through.

However, just as we were about to leave to go to my graduation ceremony (and Reese's, because he had to repeat his senior year after purposely failing his exams, which he probably would have failed anyway), Mom told me what her plan for me was: to still go to Harvard, but with the end goal being that I become President of the United States so I could help families like my own.

When she told me this, I was disappointed because politics were something that I didn't really think about and as someone who was about to leave home, I didn't want anyone controlling my life at this point. I was still a few months away from being old enough to vote and I didn't even want to run for student council because it was full of selfish people who were only doing it to throw free parties and bulk up their college applications rather than to make changes, or at least real changes that didn't involve having a second spirit week, so I was by no means ready to start on the route to the presidency. I had learned my lesson about politics when I was forced onto the booster club and I hated how everyone just wanted to spend the budget on balloons, but no one listened to me, so how could I be able to run a country with over 300 million people?

Despite my complete lack of interest in the plan, one thing Mom told me really stuck: "You know what it's like to be poor, and you know what it's like to work hard. Now you're going to learn what it's like to sweep floors and bust your ass and accomplish twice as much as all the kids around you. And it won't mean anything because they will still look down on you. And you will want so much for them to like you, and they just won't. And it'll break your heart. And that'll make your heart bigger and open your eyes and finally you will realize that there's more to life than proving you're the smartest person in the world."

Though I only had ONE true friend at school (Stevie) and I was bullied by peers and brothers alike, I somehow never realized how selfish I had been all these years.

I thought I was smarter than everyone and I had done all kinds of terrible things to others for the benefit of only myself, such as when I left my family on Thanksgiving to spend time with schoolmates I barely knew, only to end up vomiting in the turkey Reese had cooked, when I literally threw Dad off a fishing boat so I could spend time with Reese and Stevie, and worst of all, when I stole Reese's girlfriend, which made him lie about his age to join the army, and though I had realized they were mistakes, I had never truly learned from them (do most teenagers?) because each mistake I made seemed to be worse than the last one.

This being said, there were times when I helped out others, such as when I tried to help Dad get out of house arrest for something he didn't do by creating a machine that deactivated his tracking device (that device was mistaken for a bomb, but at least I had good intentions) and finding a pattern on the calendar proving his innocence, when I tried to get Mr. Herkabe to stop humiliating Reese in front of the class by defending him as best as I could, and when I tried to find alternative ways to take Stevie home from the arcade safely after his wheelchair was stolen.