Islander

Chapter 2: Unfriendly

"Quit following me around" I screamed at the top of my voice.

"Or what? Your dead daddy's gonna sue me?" George kept taunting.

"Have you no respect for the dead?" I asked him.

"I have no respect for you, that's for sure". He spat in my launch and walked away.

Since my parents died, my torments in this school were maximized. The mockery, the punishments. It felt like committing suicide and joining my parents would be a very fine thing to do, but who knows if my mother would still nag about everything and my father would still be strict?
I knew I had to survive this temporary hardship on my own. After all, it was just for this term. I wouldn't be able to afford next term's fees so I'll drop out of school- something I always really wanted anyways. But I never thought it would end up like this. I had no home to go back to, no family to call mine, no friends either. I lived under the bridge with a bunch of other destitute people. Adam, the son of a rich petroleum engineer, I mean dead rich petroleum engineer.
My father had no will, at least that's what they told me. My uncles said all belonged to them, my father's other houses, our landed properties, his business. I was too young to understand, or maybe, I was too stupid. Father did have a will, and I did have properties of my own. I had enough money to cover my education and build me a house. But my uncles bribed the lawyer to shut up about the truth, and he did. So I was left with nothing.

"Uncle, please, I really require your assistance" I started.

This was one of the occasions where I went to ask my uncles for some money to cover some of my needs. The other two had turned me down already.
He was eating a chicken. After that sentence I watched him finish his food and gnaw on his chicken. When he finished the chicken, he threw the bone on the floor before me.

"Pick it up" he ordered.

I hesitated. Why did he have to throw the bone at me? If he did it by mistake, why ask me to pick it up when his waiters were there, attending to him?

"Did you not hear me? I said, pick..it..up" he said again, really stressing on the "up".

I picked up the bone from the floor. Having to touch his saliva disgusted me greatly, but I had no choice. I really needed his help.

"Hehehe.." He snickered. "You know a few years ago I was in your position, and your father was in mine." He rested on the chair. "But he was a good man, I'll give him that. He helped me set up my business, helped me employ all the good workers I have now. He even paid them their first six months' salaries while I was still settling in as MD."

I smiled when I heard this, there was hope.

"But you, you've been a baaaad boy." The smile vanished from my face.

"Please" I pleaded again.

"You know what your neighbours say about you? That you're proud, disrespectful and stupid. Hehehe. And I do believe them. Your father was rich, meaning you must have had a bank account stocked with money, unless you're stupid enough to have spent it all."

"I never had a bank account uncle" I complained.

"Oh. So you're even more stupid to not have a bank account. How do you save money?"

"Father never opened one for me. He said I had to go to college first."

"And now he's dead. How does that help you? No college anymore eh? For the records, I'm not giving you any money. Go and fend for yourself, make money like the rest of us did."

"Uncle please." I sobbed. "I don't want to drop out of school. Remember how my father helped you?"

"That was your father, my brother. You're not your father. You're a different person entirely, and you've been a very baaaad boy. So learn from your mistake a few years. When you've learned, I'll consider helping you".