Rich Boy Rules

MY FINGERS QUIVERED as I clutched the paper between my hands. Its faint rustle was the only sound in the room's otherwise total silence. That, and my laboured breathing. I couldn't hold onto a single thought, much less sort any of them out. Whenever one surfaced, another would elbow it aside - or, more often, shove it right out of the way. I felt the mattress give as I eased down onto it. I still couldn't believe it, and knew I wouldn't for the next several minutes, truly grasp what I was reading. Things like this simply didn't, like ever, happen for people like me. I liked to imagine the universe finally paying me back for all the miserable stuff that had crowded my life, but then I remembered that no, it wasn't luck or fate that had put the line 'We are delighted to officially accept' on the page, but my own work. And I'd poured everything into earning it. I felt elated, almost giddy. Nothing was going to take that away. The sound of my mother's hacking from the room across from mine yanked me out of my delirious haze. Except that. That was the one thing that could strip away my contentment. I didn't need to stick my head round the corner to know she was dragging herself toward the bathroom by then, the creak of the floorboards and the routine repeating and repeating and repeating telling me all I needed. She'd be hunched over the toilet, in her frayed, discoloured dressing gown, with fabric tied around her head. I waited for my mind to quit whirring. Selfish as that sounds, I focused on what I'd achieved, on myself. My thoughts drifted to where I'd be staying, what the lessons might be like, what the professors might be like, what the students might be like. It was nearly enough to blot out the sound of her vomiting her guts up. Nearly. Sometime after reading the letter, I must have drifted off, because I woke heavy-eyed, a little disoriented, and swallowed by total darkness. I say opened rather than received because the letter had been tucked safely away in my bedside cabinet for several days. It was battered and scratched, and the drawers snagged whenever you opened them. Getting things in and out was difficult, and for once, that helped. Mum was far too weak to wrench it open, and I told myself she respected my privacy after all, or so I pretended, so it stayed tucked away for now. Only me, in this house, knew. Still holding my letter, I stumbled towards my door. Like the bedside table, it caught a little and let out a loud creak that could probably carry halfway down the street. The one, maybe two, friends who'd ever been to my house and asked whether I wanted something different, I'd always said no. Why did I need new things when they weren't necessary, weren't essential? I'll freely admit I despised my mother whenever she told me I couldn't have this toy or that, but perhaps it shaped me into a better person because I wasn't handed things the second I wanted them. Maybe. She was in bed, angled toward the window, when I nudged her door open. It creaked a bit, though nowhere near as much as mine. I laid a hand on her shoulder. She woke after a moment's hesitation, but I waited, patient. After a few quick glances around the room, she pieced it together: where she was, who I was, who she was. The lamp by her right side clicked on only after a few clumsy tries, bathing the room in a soft, honeyed light. "What is it, my love?" she murmured.