‘You didn’t, did you? Not really?’ She was looking at me with that face, that face that meant I’d done something very, very bad.

 

‘He’s a brat, mum. He was talking shit about me and my friends!’ My anger was rising fast.  

 

‘So you punched him!?’ She stared me down from the other side of the kitchen. 

 

‘He deserved it!’

 

‘I don’t care if he deserved it or not! Do you have any idea how bad this is for your education? You’ve been suspended 3 times in the last term alone!’ 

 

‘I don’t care!’ I was too angry to think of a retort that made sense. 

 

‘Well, you’re going to have to start caring. Without a good education, you can’t have a good future.’ She’d lowered her voice, making an effort to be reasonable, but I was past the point of reasonableness. 

‘You just don’t get it! You don’t get me!’ I said before storming upstairs to my room. We’d been having a somewhat similar version of this argument a lot recently, but I’d given up trying to explain my reasons to her. She was impossible. Downstairs, my mum was probably thinking the exact same thing. That child is impossible.