Dramatic Child Stars

Seventeen

Ryland,
July 25, 2021,
8:44 pm.

This next part will make me sound terrible, but in my own defense I'll mention that I've never been particularly intelligent. I don't think that's a bad thing. Some people just aren't incredibly bright. I didn't really stand a chance anyways when you consider the fact that I never even went to school.

I was homeschooled, which is really typical of a lot of child stars. Even Percy was homeschooled, although he did an online program with licensed teachers and planned curriculum and regular in person excursions. That was not my experience with homeschool. I was homeschooled by my mom.

My mom doesn't have a degree or anything. She was actually a waitress before she met my dad and had children. Then she was a stay at home parent. I don't have a problem with waitresses or stay at home moms either by the way. It's just that neither of those things tend to breed qualified academics on their own. Bryn went to regular school because she wasn't working like me, but I was subjected to what I affectionately call pretend school. That was just me sat at a blue plastic childs table which was shoved in the corner of our kitchen. I sat there filling out the same workbooks with an expo marker repeatedly, which felt a bit like an acting role if nothing else. I was playing a student. My mom had no idea what we were doing. She taught me to read so that I could read scripts, but even then I was better at memorizing things that had been read to me than I was at actually reading. Anything I knew about math I owed to the knowledge Bryn brought home for me. There was no science or deductive reasoning. There was no art or music. There were no field trips or friends. There weren't worksheets or assignments. My moms homeschool was about reading and pretending. She taught me to read, and then she falsified the required testing that the state needed to prove that I made academic progress. That was it. Everything else I ever learned, I did so on my own accord.

So forgive me if I fail to uphold basic standards of decency. How was I ever meant to make a single educated decision for myself? I had no hope from the start.

Leah and Percy were fighting, and the baby was crying. I could hear him down the hall. He'd been put down for bedtime presumably. I wasn't exactly sure. I just knew he was in his bedroom and Percy and Leah were fighting. They were probably in their own bedroom next door. Their door had to be wide open. There was no other way it could be that loud.

The content of their argument was unclear, but I'd gathered that Leah certainly believed Percy was in the wrong. I was on Percy's side, personally. Maybe I was bias because I was always on Percy's side and would always be until the end of time. Probably.

"That doesn't explain why you didn't tell me!" Leah was yelling.

"I didn't tell you because it wasn't important!"

That was Percy's very consistent reply.

"You didn't think the fact that you were considering a job that would dramatically change our lives was important to mention?"

"Who said I was considering it?" Percy demanded.

"I found the flyer tucked in your sheet music!"

"Why were you going through my stuff?"

"Why were you hiding things?"

They'd been doing this for a while. It was getting really old. I really wished they'd stop ignoring the crying baby.

Nobody had even mentioned that I'd cleaned. I'd literally scrubbed the apartment from top to bottom in their absence. The dishes were done. The fridge was cleaned out. Laundry was folded. The floors were vacuumed. Grime was scrubbed and removed from the bathroom tiles. The tub was sanitized. The pillows were fluffed. The babies toys were all put away. Everything was neat and orderly. Honestly I'd been quite obsessive.