b e n ' s c l o n e
My clone was a huge disappointment.
School let out hours ago, while still daylight out. I slouched in my living room recliner, sipping scotch, pacing myself as not to drink away my anger. My fury and disappointment were dangerously close to becoming self-loathing and despair, and I steeled my resolve when I finally heard his key tinkering with the front door lock.
He noticed me in the candle light once the door closed behind him, a moment too late. I savored the nervous expression my angry glare evoked from him. He stood on the foyer doormat as if it were a life raft, and one step onto the hardwood floors would lose him to the sharks.
I knew the feeling. "Got a call from your guidance counselor today," I said. He came to attention satisfactorily, "Said you've missed so many days of school you automatically failed the year."
He didn't answer, not wanting to make things worse.
"There's gonna be some changes next year," I continued. He folded his arms protectively, avoiding my eyes in that familiar way, "No more partying with your friends on weeknights, not until your homework is done, and you're quitting your job at the gas station—―"
"There won't be a next year," he blurted out suddenly and pursed his lips into a white line.
I was too angry for the incriminating gesture to register. I leveled my forefinger at him, "Don't even think you're dropping out--"
"I don't have to," he interrupted me again. He knew better, "Mr. Gregory called me into his office this afternoon."
"What'd he say?"
"He said I'm eighteen," there was a long pause and he finally met my eyes, squinting as if my anger‘s intensity was too much, "I'm not the school's responsibility anymore."
"What?" I shouted, leaping out of my chair. The snifter of scotch shattered on the wood floor, pine, a soft wood, leaving a dent like a scar in the surface. Junior took a step back, coming up against the door, "What do you mean you're not the school‘s
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