10

                                    

                                          

 "Is this it?" 
        "What do you mean?"
        "You know what we expect."
        "Isn't good enough? I did my best-"
        "But you still could have gotten higher."
        "Seriously? Can't you be satisfied with this?"
        "Angel, don't talk back."
        Angel Smith was never an honors student. He wanted to be, he wanted to be so bad. Regardless, the amount of time he put in never seemed to make his grades any better. All of his grades always averaged out to be high B's or nineties. 
        As frustrating as it was, his family never bothered to help him. They were all gifted scholars. His older siblings had grown up and had become successful. Their grades had been above a 4.0 and they had all become the valedictorian of their class. 
        With their prodigy minds and his parents both being doctors, they all expected Angel to follow the trend. Except he was the odd one out. It had been that way his entire life, even before he was born. The older siblings he had were much older. The youngest one was thirty-two and the oldest was forty-five. His parents had the oldest child straight out of high school at age eighteen and had six children in total until they were forty-six; they had Angel. They had two kids in the house at the time, but they were still at least fourteen years older than him. By the time he could really comprehend the world around him, they were gone anyway. He wasn't just different because he was never supposed to be born, but he was also not as smart as the rest of his family.
        When the virus came and killed off every woman, Angel's father was one of the people who had committed suicide. So, he had to live with one of his older brothers until he was old enough to live on his own. The brother he was residing with was the third oldest and actually liked Angel. In some ways, going to live with him was not as depressing as it was joyous. 
        He missed his mother and father in some ways, there were times they had been kind to him. But those feelings were minimal. As he returned to school after the long break, he had been unsure about it. Safety was a big aspect for him as the school resumed only a couple of months after the incident. Angel's brother told him that it was most likely because they needed to educate kids as fast as possible so they could join the workforce to make up for the lost jobs. 
        Angel liked school when it came to the community. He bonded with many of the students and quickly rose in popularity with his charisma. When it came to the work, it stressed him out beyond what was considered normal. 
        This time when he went back, the pressure seemed to be gone. He no longer dreaded going home and he even noticed his grades actually got higher. His brother noted that he must have been so stressed doing the work that he couldn't think straight. It made sense, whenever he would do a test he felt like he knew the material beforehand, but when it got in front of him the anxiety of failing made all that knowledge fly out the window. This made him angry of course, seeing how his parents held him back, but the anger did not last too long. His brain made him sit on the residing conclusion that they just wanted to see him succeed, and he did not change his mind despite the evidence he knew he had against it. The thing is, he wanted to have a positive outlook on his parents rather than a negative one. It was better to live in blissful ignorance over the scalding truth. And having all of the bottle-up resentment would only make him bitter over something that could never be changed. So he made up memories. Angel wrote them down, scenarios to replace what could contradict his conclusion. He made up stories about his perfect, supportive family.