Chapter 1 People are alive, but they must meet tribulations
At five o'clock in the evening, Tommy Hawke took out the key and unlocked the door, and walked into the old-fashioned apartment he rented. As soon as the door was pushed open, he saw 27-year-old Aunt Melonie applying ice packs on the sofa in the living room. Cheeks watching TV, Providence TV's perpetual free show, old-fashioned documentaries.
Hearing the sound of the door opening, Melonie turned around and just saw Tommy Hawk standing at the door, then turned her face away, put down the ice pack in her hand, and wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, and said in a mean and old-fashioned tone:
"Shouldn't you be working part-time at the laundry? You already owe me two weeks' rent."
Tommy Hawk closed the door, walked up to Melonie, and looked at her somewhat swollen cheeks:
"What happened?"
"It's nothing, it's a beauty treatment. Ice compresses can make the skin firmer." Melonie got up from the sofa, as if she was too lazy to continue talking about this topic with Tommy Hawk.
Tommy Hawk picked up Melonie's cheap Kimberley cigarettes on the coffee table, lit one, and looked at the TV screen, which was showing the documentary "The Great American Cowboy", which has been shown hundreds of times: " Well, I'm guessing your ex-boyfriend prepped you with a cowboy-taming bison move?"
"Hey! You can't smoke! At least you can't smoke before your eighteenth birthday, which will come in half a month!" Melonie frowned when she saw Tommy lighting a cigarette.
Tommy Hawke exhaled smoke: "If you go to the school to report, I will say that the cigarettes of me, a minor, were provided by you, an adult, forget it, Aunt Melonie, no one in our high school cares Whether minors can smoke and drink."
"So, you didn't go to a part-time job, just to come back and smoke a cigarette?" Melonie stared at Tommy Hawk: "What happened?"
"I heard that a group of white **** smashed up my part-time laundry in the afternoon. By the time I rushed over after school, the poor Chinese owner Sonny was scared and took his whole family to Boston. I had to find another part-time job." Tommy Hawke said in an irritable tone.
Melonie covered her slightly red and swollen left face, and nodded slightly after listening: "Well, compared with that Sonny, it seems that my experience is not worth mentioning."
Tommy sat on the sofa with a cigarette in his mouth: "Don't those **** understand that Asians are not equal to RB people! They think RB people make them unemployed, so let the American army drop a few more atomic bombs on RB. "
"Dong dong dong~" There was a knock on the door from the outside.
Melonie wanted to open the door, Tommy Hawk stood up: "If it's your **** ex-boyfriend, I'll deal with it, Please, give me a chance to vent my dissatisfaction."
"If you fight, you will be in big trouble, Tommy Hawk." Melonie didn't appreciate Tommy's words, but warned with a cold face.
Tommy Hawk walked to the door and opened the door. Outside the door was his brother Tony, who was one year older than him. Seeing Tommy who opened the door, Tony showed a friendly smile:
"You didn't look very friendly when you opened the door, Tommy, hi, Aunt Melonie."
"Hi, Tony." Melonie was relieved to see that it was Tommy's brother, and she forced the corners of her mouth to respond with a smile.
Tony took the cigarette biting off Tommy's mouth and took a sip, then walked into the living room and said as he walked:
"haven't seen you for a long time."
"I haven't seen you for two weeks. I guess you must not have come to visit me specially. After all, I said that I don't want to see you again before the SAT exam." Tommy said with an ugly face.
"I know, I know you don't want to be influenced by others to become a great scholar, Einstein, but we are family and we need you now." Tony looked at Tommy and shrugged with a half-smile.
Tommy looked at Tony: "You rented your home to those **** to hold ethanol parties again? Want me to be a guest waiter?"
"What did that idiot do?" Tommy Hawk exhaled depressedly, closed his eyes and turned around, facing the wall, not wanting to face this question.
Tony puffed out a cigarette: "It's nothing, he took a dozen poor workers who were as angry as him because of unemployment, and smashed a laundry run by RB people. After smashing, he was told that the boss is not RB people."
"Bullsh!t! This is the best news I've heard today, a father smashed the store where his son works part-time, and then needs his son under the age of 18, take the money out to pay bail for him, there is no better news than this It's gone." Tommy Hawke laughed and said:
"I left home a month ago to rent a small bedroom in Aunt Melonie's house. I had to work part-time for four hours a day to earn less than thirteen dollars. The weekly rent for my bedroom was thirty dollars, and the weekly living expenses were reduced to two. Ten dollars, the registration fee for the five AP exams is one hundred dollars, and the SAT registration fee is twenty dollars. I still want to save money, because I need to wait for the summer vacation to come, pay for some summer camps, complete some extracurricular activities, and let me apply When I was in college, the data looked better, do you know how much money I saved this month? No, not a penny."
After he finished speaking, he walked into his small bedroom, took out a stack of loose banknotes, and handed it to Tony: "No need to count, it's exactly ninety-three dollars, you took away the two weeks' rent that I should have paid to Aunt Melonie , and the registration fee I saved.”
Tony took the money, and asked Tommy puzzledly: "Can't you drop out of school like me? Find a serious job, what can college teach you? Apart from paying high tuition fees, in addition to shouldering decades of talents What can I learn besides the repayment of the loan? I can learn a lesson. After the lesson, my children must not be deceived by the US government to bear high college loans. I can introduce a job with a good weekly salary..."
"Admitted to a good enough university can prevent me from becoming the same low-level trash as my father and you. That is the prerequisite for me to change my destiny!" Tommy Hawke emphasized his tone and shouted at Tony.
The voice was so fierce that Melonie in the far corner couldn't help shrugging her shoulders slightly.
"Sorry, bro." Seeing Tommy's angry expression, Tony nodded understandingly: "No problem, of course no problem, don't become trash like us, I wish you the seventh place among the 21,000 high schools in the United States Thousand, four hundred and thirty-one Rhode Island State Lincoln State High School excelled."
After he finished speaking, he pushed Tommy violently, and his face was instantly covered with anger: "You should show some respect to father and me! Boy!"
"If the two of you don't just know how to take away his poor savings from your brother or son, maybe he will respect you a little bit more." Tommy smiled mockingly at Tony.
Tony's facial muscles trembled a few times, he nodded slightly, and stepped back with open arms: "OK, even though you laugh at me and my father, you have to remember that if you fail one day, I will only comfort you, I won't laugh at you because you're my brother, we're family, and you didn't smash RB's laundromat because Daddy is an asshole, of course he's an **** in your eyes, but the union will reward him with five hundred bucks, When he gets it, I will ask him to return the money to you."
After speaking, Tony walked out of the room with the wad of change in his hands, and slammed the door from the outside.
The force was so great that it knocked down the Protestant "Bible" calendar hanging on the door.
Tommy leaned against the wall, punched the wall hard with his fist, and cursed depressedly: "Fu*k! Fu*kyouAmerica!"
"If you need an exam registration fee, I... I may receive a substitute tuition fee in a few days." Melonie stood in the corner of the living room, looking at Tommy Hawke with his eyes closed and his face full of anger, her voice was cold opening.
Before she finished speaking, Tommy opened his eyes and shook his head: "I can handle it, I can definitely sort out this **** life."
He straightened up, looked at the calendar that fell on the floor, picked it up with his hands, hung it back on the door, stared at today's page in silence.
"What are you thinking?" Melonie asked behind Tommy when she noticed that Tommy had been silent for a long time.
Tommy withdrew his gaze and gave Melonie a gentle smile: "It's nothing, call the school for me tomorrow and ask for a day off, is that okay? I think, before fully preparing for the university exam, we must first solve the problem of food and clothing."
Melonie took a few steps forward curiously, following Tommy's previous gaze.
The calendar page shows today's date, May 6, 1982, along with a quote from the Bible:
“Life is bound to encounter adversity, just like sparks soaring.”
For newcomers and new books, I hope readers will support me a lot.
All information comes from American film and television dramas, please do not compare it with historical data, just use it as a fun in your spare time.
(end of this chapter)