Short Story - Getting To The Top

NightJay
by NightJay · 2 posts
5 years ago in Off Topic
Posted 5 years ago · Author
This is a story I made in high school, its called "Getting To the Top". Maybe some constructive criticism?

Getting To The Top


Growing up without supportive parents is hard, and can lead to bad things in life. I know this because I was one of those kids who grew up without both parents. My mom wasn’t exactly the best mother out there, but she tried to make an effort for me and her. I was born in 1985 and life for me was difficult growing up, let me take you back to 1995, when that one cup of “water”, almost screwed up my whole life.


I was getting my Saturday sleep in, and my mom barges through my door with a smoke in one hand and lipstick in the other and tells me “Ray! We’re going somewhere, put on something nice. Vamos!” I say “But ma, I’m sleepy…” She says “I don’t want your sass today, get up!” I get up, make my bed and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I was always a victim of secondhand smoke, and when people came over our house, they never stayed for that long, neither ever came back again. I brushed my teeth and hurried to my room, I put on a white polo and some black slacks. My mom was yelling to come to the kitchen, she was not the type of mother you want to keep waiting, I rushed to the kitchen and she hands me bread and milk, sounds like a little breakfast, but my mother didn’t have a lot of money, and we were limited when it came to food. I put on my shoes my mom grabs her purse and we head out and catch the bus.


It was a long drive and there were people shouting and arguing with each other, talking about how Selena had died, people drinking on the bus, was a busy bus. We arrived at our stop and walk 2 blocks to the party, we arrive at the front and my mother knocks on the door. My aunt opens up and greets us and leads us to the backyard. I greet all my family and cousins and they ask if I want to play tag with them, it was a big backyard after all. After 10 minutes, I got tired, went inside, poured myself a cup of water then drank some, put it on the table and I continued to play tag.

After another 10 minutes we all got tired and I went back to the table and I noticed that my water was a little darker than white, but I thought it was just me so I grab the cup and drink it whole, instantly. It tasted funny, my mouth and throat started to burn and then I realized that this wasn’t water, but to me it didn’t taste that bad. As a matter of fact, I wanted more, before you judge me, in my defence, I didn’t even know what it was. But to this day I still wonder how did my cup of water, turn into alcohol? I ran inside while everyone was outside, to see where I could get more of this liquid, I started sniffing bottles until the smells matched and I found the bottle I was looking for. I take the bottle marked: “Tequila” and pour most of it in an empty sprite soda can and I hide it. Even I knew this was too good to be not dangerous, but I thought it was just me.


I walk outside and everything gets a little dizzy, as I almost reach the final stair, I trip, fall to the ground, and black out. I was moved inside, onto the couch, 3 hours later my mom wakes me up, saying that we have to go, I get up slowly, and remember I had to get my drink that I hid. I tell my mom I’m going to go get a bottle of soda for the ride home, I get my “drink” and my mom calls a taxi. She rides up front and I sit in the back. We arrive home, I take the bottle and sneak it into the house, take it to my room and I hide it in a box and go to sleep.


My addiction started on that very day. After about 4 weeks I finished the bottle and so I thought it was the end of that. 5 years passed and I was already in high school. I still didn’t know what I had drunk on that day, my mom never told me about it, neither did my past schools. One day me and my mom go to the grocery, same one we’ve been going for about 10 years. So I noticed they added a section labeled “WINE AND ALCOHOL”, I was curious and I told my mom I’ll be right back. So I approach the section and I see glass bottles with red and clear colored liquids inside. I didn’t recognize any of these drinks except for the one labeled “Tequila”, I quickly remember what this was and how it tasted like.


I look around for cameras but none appear to be in the area, so I take the bottle and swipe it into my coat jacket and I return to my mom. She pays for the groceries and we head out. I forgot there was the barcode detector at the entrance and it went off when I stepped through it. While scared and panicking, a guy from behind says “Hey!......Don’t worry about that, it has been glitching all day.” I let out a sigh of relief, we wait outside and my mom calls a cab and we arrive home.
We take the groceries inside and my mom and I put them into the fridge and the counter and I run to my room. My mom said “Hey! Nino, why are you in such a rush?” I reply “Uh, nothing ma, I need to finish my homework.” She says “Oh okay.” I finishing rushing to my room, unbottle the alcohol and chug a quarter of it. I get so energetic and I punch my wall and make a hole on it, it happened so fast and my mom barged through the door and saw alcohol in one hand and a hole in the wall. She says “Why the hell do you have alcohol!? WHY IS THERE A HOLE IN THE WALL!?” I say “What is alcohol?” She says “Tonto! You don’t drink that you fool! It’s bad for you, and it screws with your head and you lied about doing your deberes huh?” She snatches the alcohol from me, slaps me hard on the head and storms out and closes the door behind her.


I sit down and think about what just happened. I’m addicted to alcohol, a bad drink that I’m still years away from being age legally to drink. That didn’t really matter to me, my mom went to sleep and I sneak into the room and grab the alcohol, empty it out into a cup, replace the bottle with water inside it and put it back where I had it. I realized what I’ve just done, but the best way to deal with temptation is to just give in, right? One year later me and my mom went to New York because of a meeting of her new job I was still addicted to alcohol and stole bottles of shelves all the time, my mom found out that I’ve been doing this and I guess she just gave up on telling me to stop.


My grades were starting to go down, I would get really angry sometimes in school and get suspended a lot, me and my mom would have arguments very frequently and my life was just going really bad. We spend 2 months there and we book a flight to go back home, it’s September 10th, 2001, one more day until our flight was suppose to happen. We pack our things and we head to the airport, my mom is telling me to walk faster, and I eventually lose her, I spent several minutes looking for her until I found her sitting down with her face palmed. She looks up disappointed in me and says “Our flight already left.” I was surprised she didn’t hit me, she lost about $2000 after all. She goes and books another flight to L.A which is about a 2 hour wait. And while we’re waiting there's an emergency broadcast saying that the Twin Towers were just attacked on 8:45 a.m of today, it was the plane that we were suppose to board, the plane we missed. My mom is just in shock and she leans of my shoulder and starts to cry. She says “I’m sorry if things haven’t been so well between us these years, I’ve been trying to make the best for you and I’m sorry again if I haven’t been the best mother. But Hijo, we just could of died, maybe this was a message from God telling you to change, you need to give up this habit, it’s not right. We can find help for you.” I nod.


It’s hard to believe that we could've died that day. Maybe it was a message that God was telling me to change, he knew that I could die of this addiction and he’s telling me to change and to be somewhere in life. Two months later we’re back to L.A and my mom sends me to rehab. The people were very nice and told me the negative effects of drinking and how I’m really lucky for have been drinking it for 6 years and haven’t had any major effects on my body. They give me these tips on how to fight the temptation and ways I don’t need to be dependent on it anymore. Gradually overtime, about 2 years later, I’m not as tempted to to go a store and get alcohol, or even look at it. My mother and I are proud of me and she got this new job and it paid a lot of money, the most she’s ever earned in a job. She tried the lottery every week to test her luck and eventually, she won the jackpot of $2,000,000. We hugged each other and cheered. She bought a brand new house that was out of the bad neighborhood and she hired people to work around the house and stuff.


Two months later, it was graduation day, I tell my mom the news and she says that she’ll be there when it starts. I arrived at school, people were cheering and putting their caps and gowns on and we went to the auditorium for the graduation ceremony. I get my diploma and I feel a ton of satisfaction for finishing high school, my mom never finished high school, so it made me feel kinda special. I look at the crowd for my mom can’t find her anywhere. Then my English teacher, Ms. Lane, came up to me and whispers words into my ear that almost made me have a heart attack. I fall to the ground, drop my diploma and black out. My mother had died, she was killed on my graduation day.


Her funeral arrived, all of my cousins and family was there and I saw her cold, lifeless body and I kissed her on the cheek one last time before they took the coffin away and bury her in the ground. She had about 1.2 million dollars left and I received the money. Apparently, she went to the park for some peace and quiet and she didn’t have her purse and she was shot repeatedly on the chest. I went to college and studied harder and harder, more motivated than ever to make my mother proud. I graduated college 4 years later and I used the 1.2 million dollars to start my own company for an alcoholic beverage named “Swine”, I wasn’t addicted or interested in alcohol, it's just since I’ve had some experience I thought it would be better.
In a short period of time, the company gradually increases in both popularity and financially, and I start making a ton of money. Every Sunday, I would go to church and thank my mother, and God, the two most important people in my life, for the chances and the opportunities I was given, which I still do. It always think, wow, I did all of this, I became someone, I could of became someone else, a failure, everyone has a shot to do great in life. Take that shot and don’t take it for granted. Just look at me, if I can succeed in life after all I’ve been through, why can’t you?

-- Mon Feb 18, 2019 9:30 pm --

I have another one from high school.
This was for a competition and I won $15000

Prompt: What should high schools change or add to be better?

High School is very important when it comes to contributing and making the pathway for one’s future. For me, so far even though High School is supposedly a challenge and harder which it typically is, for me it has been quite smooth and fun for all the time I have been going. Even though I am grateful and quite fortunate to be going to the high school I am currently enrolled in, I feel that it needs quite a lot of changes, specifically to how it can affect my future.

The school that I attend is a strictly academic high school, students on average receive homework that typically take 2-3 hours to complete every night, excluding studying or self-practicing. Students must have at least a 2.5 GPA or higher in order to remain at the school or they will be removed and must transfer into a different school. Cell phones are also prohibited from entering past the entrance, there we have lockers to lock our phones in, in which we get them back after school. We also must do at least 270 hours of community service, 45 for both freshman and sophomore year, and 90 for our final 2 years. Our school has a 100% college acceptance rate, but that is the problem, we don’t really receive motivation to go to college. I know my expectations as a student at that school and what I must and must not to in order to ensure my success, I strive to do all my work and turn it in on time, but it seems like that’s all I’ve been doing, and it's the only thing I have the time and willpower to necessarily worry about. Our huge workload in homework and classwork is given so that college can be a breeze, is so what they say. They try to help us get a sense of what college will be like by having speakers and alumni come and talk to us, but the standards differ between us and those people, since the times and standards are now different, so we really do not know if college will really be the “breeze” they say that it will be. That being said it would be helpful if the school and the principal could dedicate study halls, assemblies, or even periods of electives to have some one-on-one time with students on college applications and give us the bigger picture of education, just college prep classes. This is very crucial because students are mainly focused on keeping their grades above C’s, and maintaining good GPA’s at all costs.


Another way my school can make our experiences more relevant to our futures is if we had field trips and college visits/tours. So far since our first year of high school, my class has only had 1 college visit, and although I have gone on college visits on my free time, but I feel that schools are to prepare you for college and life, so schools should be having more field trips and college visits. With these visits, we can see and determine which colleges along with their campuses are the most fitting and most comfortable to our likings and beings. Some of these visits should as well be outside of the district in farther areas and states, so students can also see if going far away is more suitable and so they can see if they want to go somewhere else and explore many other possibilities that may not be possible where they currently are. Besides the college visits, I suggest field trips, but field trips based on future and possible career and interests. For example, if someone or a group of people are planning on studying science or specifically biology, field trips on specific museums or facilities that correlate with what they want to be would be nice, and give them a bigger picture of it after one finishes with school. These field trips can also give people the time and opportunities to network and help their reputation by meeting new people who see that you have an interest in what they do for work and can aid you and show you many programs or opportunities that can get you more involved and prepared for college and your future job. So if schools were able to have more educational field trips and college visits, it can help many and many students feel more comfortable and get a better idea of what college and career they want to go to and study.

Another way that schools can make the student’s experiences more applicable to their futures is if there are abundantly more electives students can take based on their choices. At my school there are only about 4 electives that everyone is required to take, Computer Applications, Physical Health and Education, Music, and Art. I feel that there should be way more electives, at least 10, and not all of them should be mandatory, students should be able to choose what they have an interest in and there they can find themselves and the talents that they possess. Some ideas for electives could be Creative Writing and Journalism, Business Law, Psychology, Computer Arts and Design, and so on. With more and more options like these, students can see which electives out of all possible ones can be good for them, or somehow correlate with the career they already have in mind. If there were more classes like these I believe that the minds of the students could really expand and they can learn and pick up on many more possibilities.

There is not nothing wrong with my school really, it, just like any other school, can just use some improvement and new touches to it to make the experience more applicable to the future. Currently, I’ve been focused on getting good grades and worrying about now, because worrying about the future isn’t really gonna get me anywhere currently at my current position. Schools should really consider adding more and more flexible electives, have more field trips and college visits, and more college prep classes or sessions.

-- Tue Feb 19, 2019 5:44 am --

Also do you guys believe that fortnite is the best game? That game doesnt really occur to me that much and my favorite battle royale game right now is realm royale, its full off cool weapons and i like the concept that you turn into a chicken when you reach a certain health and I recommend that you try it, but leave me your opinions.
Posted 5 years ago
Nice short stories, it was interesting to read them very much

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