Chapter 4

Four years passed since that dream. Many, many events occurred during those four years. I turned from a 7-year-old to a slightly more mature 11-year-old. My mom and dad were still the same, but Sherwin started to act differently. He played with me less and kept forgetting to buy me birthday presents.

The morning after my eleventh birthday, I ripped the wrapping paper off a box and smiled. It was a Playstation 2! I looked around the living room and saw no one. Mom and Dad were working, and Sherwin was upstairs in his room. No one witnessed the smile I had on my face when I opened the present. I threw the box on the massive pile of presents near the half-eaten birthday cake. I ran upstairs to see what my brother Sherwin was doing. As it turned out, he was in his room--studying geometry!

"Sherwin, you don't have to study now. It's the summer holidays."

"I want to. Top companies nowadays only hire straight-A students. If I don't study now, I won't get a good job, and if I don't get a good job I won't make any money."

"You wanna play Playstation with me? Please! It's my birthday."

"Sorry. I don't wanna waste time."

Disappointed and bored, I jumped on his bed and looked at the ceiling. "Sherwin, do you ever wonder whether anything we do means anything? Well, do you?"

Sherwin paused from his study. "What do you mean?"

"Think about how large this universe is. Think about how small this earth is. Think about how small we are. We're like tiny specks of dust."

"Like I said, Keith, I don't wanna waste time thinking about this stuff. I need to concentrate on more important things like my career."

"Fine!" I jumped off the bed angrily and walked out the room.

Sherwin had changed a lot in the last four years. He and I used to play cricket in the backyard, but now we just stayed in our rooms and kept to ourselves. I felt so much like an adult now.

School was tough. I finished primary school and went to high school. Many of my old friends scattered around the country. Sometimes I wonder why I bother making friends if eventually I'll lose them. Sherwin no longer wanted to play with me at high school. He played card games at lunch with his high IQ friends.

Sherwin's starting to care about his appearance. Every morning he took a comb and parted his hair down the middle. I decided to do the same. But Sherwin claimed that I copied him and warned me never to style my hair like his ever again. I couldn't understand what the big deal was.

I arrived early to class one day, so the teacher told me to open the blinds for her. When the blinds went up, a flood of bright, warm morning sunlight spilled all over me and into the classroom. This sunlight made visible all the small specks of dust flying around inside the badly ventilated classroom. To my teacher's amazement I stood where I was and stared at this sea of dust, completely mesmerized by its beauty. To me, dust particles colliding in air reminded me of people. We humans are like dust particles, drifting aimlessly through life, colliding with each other randomly.

The summer holidays were boring. Dad decided to send the family over to the beach for a whole day. Since my dad worked a lot nowadays, I almost never spoke to him. As we sat as a family in the middle of a nature reserve, Dad tried to start a conversation with me, but I was too angry to talk. Sherwin read a school textbook during the whole trip. I'd rather be in any other family than the one I was assigned to. As I sat by the picnic table I heard other fathers piggybacking their little children. I heard their laughter. I could feel their joy. The only thing I felt between my father and me was tension.

The drive home from the nature reserve was even more depressing. Watching the endless countryside whizzing past made me feel so small.

Everyone has his own method to relieve stress. Some people like to listen to music while others like to take a bath. My method is a little unusual. Whenever I feel stressed out, I take some ice cubes from the freezer and crunch them with my back teeth. When I'm crunching ice in my mouth, the solid ice breaking into many pieces in my mouth vibrates every bone in my face. This vibration eventually reaches my head and soothes it.

I was in the toilet one time crunching ice cubes in my mouth. Whenever I'm in the toilet I always take off all my clothes. It feels very refreshing to be naked. I also have a fear that I might contaminate my clothes if they make contact with the toilet. When I got up to flush the toilet, my feet accidentally stepped on a broken tile on the ground. Kneeling down, I pushed aside the broken tile and found a small hole. Within this small hole was a handgun. What was a gun doing in my house? Whose gun was it? Why was it hidden? I had seen so many guns on TV before, but seeing a handgun for real spooked me. I covered the hole with the tile, flushed the toilet, and left quickly.

The summer holidays went on. One day I woke up late and had trouble thinking of something to do, so I went back to bed and overslept until sleeping became painful.

I got up, walked outside, hopped on my bike, and rode around the neighbourhood. What did other kids do during summer vacation? Did they ride around the suburbs like I did? Why do the suburbs look so dead during the day?

I rode around the neighbourhood for thirteen hours that day. I got back home at night. I saw the family Mercedes in the driveway. When I entered the living room I heard Mom and Dad snoring upstairs. The light was on in Sherwin's room. He was still studying. A fresh layer of birthday presents sat near the couch. I was too lazy and depressed to open them.