Slate | ✓

Bonus Chapter: A Day in the Life

A/N: This is a short story that's been bouncing around my head for like four years now. I finally got around to writing it. It's set around the time of Will's accident, which is about 7 years before the events of the novel. John is 15, Charlie is 17, and Will/Athena are 10-ish. Please enjoy :)

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Mr. Asshole

John Slate

ENG(need 2 look up class #)

??? April, 2012

Great Gatsby English Essay Ughhhhhhh

In The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the green light imagery represents the American dream and greed?? Or something??????

John scribbled out his last few words, groaned, and pressed the back of his head against the cool tile of the bathroom wall. The move caused his notebook to spill out of his lap and onto the blankets he had cushioned the bathtub with two days before. A shot of pain jolted through his knotted muscles, feeling like his neck and shoulder had been welded together overnight.

    The saddest copy of The Great Gatsby to ever exist lay open on the edge of the bathtub. The front cover, which sported a C.C School Library sticker, peeled up at the edges, and the inside was annotated with the notes and dick drawings of many high schoolers over many, many years.

    Rather than risk moving his neck again, John lifted his wrist to face. His watch read 6:15 AM.

    Six hours until the essay was due, and five since John had hunkered down in the bathtub and locked the bathroom door with every intention to just write the fucking thing.

    Instead, he'd fallen asleep, ruined his back, and only had half a sentence down on paper.

    Amazing.

    How did Darcy actually enjoy this stuff? If it were anything but an English essay, he could've hammered it out in two, three hours. But nooooo. His average was about to plummet because a hundred year old dude decided to write about rich white people partying and John couldn't explain why a fictional light was green.

    Honestly, who gave a fuck? The light wasn't real. It didn't mean anything.

    If the wi-fi was working, John would have Sparknotes-ed the entire essay and called it a night. If Dad had paid that bill on time, if the house hadn't been so unbearable all week, if he could sleep in his actual bed, if–

    He forced himself to stop. To breathe. He was doing that thing. What had Darcy called it? Spiraling? Catastrophizing? Whatever. He tried to swallow down the anger that seemed to be creeping up on him more and more lately.

    It wasn't Dad's fault that he had to work all the time. John knew that his Mom got into her moods sometimes. He couldn't blame that on her, either. He should have started the essay sooner. And Charlie–Well, Charlie was kind of John's fault.

    Frantic knocking on the bathroom door jolted him out of his thoughts. "John, honey." It was Mom, sounding so, so awake for this early in the morning. "Come to breakfast, sweetheart. I made breakfast!"

    "Coming!" he called back, screwing his eyes shut. He forced himself to run through his checklist.

    I will get my driver's license next year.

    I will go far away to university in two years.

    I will study architecture.

    I will move out with Darcy.