Astronaut

Chapter Twenty-One: World Shut Your Mouth

Monday 10th October

His alarm clock rings shrillingly in his ears at 7.45 am, he opens his eyes and reaches over toward his bedside cabinet to turn off the irritating high-pitched noise with his right hand; once the alarm clock is silenced, instead of getting up and out of bed straight away as he normally does, he pulls his covers over himself and shuts his eyes again to go back to sleep. He can't bear the thought of going back into school again after Friday's fiasco and be tormented again, probably by the same boy in seventh grade. He eventually goes back to sleep, but a few moments later he can feel someone trying to shake him awake; he slowly opens his eyes and sees the blurry figure of Kenny trying to wake him up by calling his name.

"Harvey?"

"What?" comes the groggy question

"Why are you not up for school yet? Your brothers and sisters, Clint and I have been waiting on you for over 20 minutes,"

"I don't want to go to school!" he whines at the man whilst putting his hands over his eyes in embarrassment

"Is it because of what happened on Friday with that seventh grader?" Kenny questions with interest

"Yeah," he answers in a small voice

"I'm sure it'll be fine today, buddy," Kenny tries to assure him

"I don't know..." he speaks in an anxious tone whilst looking down at his quilt covers and fidgeting with them

"It will be, I promise. Now, come on, you need to get up because we're already running late," Harvey ponders for a few seconds, then defiantly shouts out:

"No!" and throwing his covers back over himself; he hears Kenny let out a sigh of frustration.

"Harvey, get up or I'm going to get your parents and they can deal with you. It's your choice,"

Silence.

Underneath the muffled cavern of his covers, Harvey hears Kenny's receding footsteps out of the room; Kenny exits the room whilst grumbling to himself that his role is to protect and playing the role of "unpaid babysitter" isn't in his job description. A few moments later, Harvey hears the sound of incoming footsteps into his bedroom, they stop at the side of his bed; he then hears the stern voice of his dad.

"Harvey, get up!" He pulls his covers over his head to see the towering figure of his dad standing over him

"No, I don't want to!" He whines whilst he folds his arms stroppily, now sitting in an upright position in his bed

"I don't care, you're going,"

"Fine!" He answers with a huff. He gets up and out of bed, goes over to his drawers to pick out the underwear and clothes that he's going to wear; once he's dressed, he follows his dad out of the room with his shoes on both feet, his bag over his left shoulder and his NASA cap on his head backwards, he descends the stairs to meet up with his siblings out in Kenny's car who have been waiting on him for what feels like an eternity. He leaves the house whilst still trailing behind his dad, he goes over to the idling Secret Service car where Clint, Kenny, Caroline, and John have been waiting on him so they can all get to school. He gets into the car and sits beside his sister, with his brother facing him, and the two agents sitting upfront with Kenny in the driver's seat and Clint in the passenger seat; he waves goodbye to his dad as Kenny starts up the car to begin the short drive to school. Pulling up at the elementary school, Kenny goes to find a parking space and once he's eventually found one, he turns the ignition off and gets out of the car to open the back doors to let the three children out of the car. Once he and his siblings are out of the car, Harvey begins to walk toward the school with Clint and Kenny beside him and his brother and sister just behind; he enters into school and arrives in the main corridor, he stands waiting for everyone else to catch up. As always, Caroline goes off to her fourth grade class with Clint, leaving Kenny with the boys; after dropping John off, Kenny goes into Miss Jones's class with Harvey beside him. Entering into the room, Harvey goes over to his desk with his friends all waiting for him, Iain is the first of the trio to greet him with: