Nothing was ever as it seemed.
His eyes are narrowed. He mindlessly twists between his fingers the wooden stick containing the avenue between his intellect and shared thoughts. 'Write about the idea: Not everything is as it seems'. Reference to the poems from the weekly syllabus for each example given. At the end, use your own personal experience to explain in your own words, how not everything is as it seems.'
The assignment before him was daunting. The concept pulled from his discrete mind, to question his belief system and integrate it with a series of poetry from the text book. Putting words onto the page came as no challenge to Daryl. If there was one thing in his life that he could grasp without a doubt and excel at –it was writing. Writing was a hidden talent of his that few knew of. The type of writing he excelled at was mostly expository, analytical, or persuasive. Ideas and arguments could be birthed from lead without trying. When the pencil touched his sensitive fingertips at the end of a day, he could make sense of thousands of issues and integrate them onto the pages. It was when he was far from his writing space during the day, only then, things became confusing.
As this thought crossed his mind, the receipt for a full years tuition at the University catches his attention. It had purposely been pinned on the cork board to serve as a cloud over his head, looming above each time he sat at his desk at night to work on assignments.
His father removes an abandoned white thumbtack and uses it to stick the pink paper to the board. It's covered in years of evidence of it's use where little pin holes are splayed about. He stands upright, as if proud of his handy-work. His son adverts his dark gaze -the kind that demands a reaction. His voice is dark and to the point. "This here, Daryl, is a reminder that while I pay your tuition, your grades belong to me. You wouldn't be here, if it weren't for me. You'll thank me, one day."
Daryl had come from a background that from early on, made him question the system in which he'd been brought up in. His mom died when he was a child, leaving him, his drunken, work-addicted father and an anti-society brother to cope with one another. He grew up learning to sleep with pillows atop his head to drown out the sound his father fucking office assistants. He grew up able to detect the scent of liquor on another man's breath like a sharp burn to the pit of his nose. And whether that be on Merle's or his dad's breath, he knew to take off for the woods to escape any sort of trouble in which he could possibly avoid. Not even he could escape that fate –binge drinking on a daily. One big fucking pattern. The only thing to pull him from his ascribed future was being sent to college where he found a focus and was able to put his mind towards the future.
And here he sat now, at University, where he was to follow in the footsteps of his dad and get his 4 year degree in business. Merle had flunked out of college only to work at the factory. He'd told his father to fuck-off when he was told he wouldn't inherit the business without a business degree. Daryl's father, pissed and irate that his first born couldn't hold the family wealth in his own name was determined to keep his business within the name. Their business had been growing, and he was far too cautious to let an outsider in, (in which he couldn't fathom having any sort of control over). It was then, the dark eyes of his were set on Daryl. Daryl was offered a full-ride to the college if, and only if, he perused to continue the family business.
In the small town he came from there weren't many jobs. Generally most students graduated and immediately began in the family farm or small business unless they moved elsewhere. Left feeling pressed against a wall without a decision or a dime to his own name, Daryl agreed to the only thing that could put him through school. Otherwise, there was always the factory.
Yet, he sits here now, in his own dormitory with the communications and statistics books to the side, and instead places his writing assignment forth-front. Most students chose electives such as art, sports, or 'easy-A' classes. Daryl chose English.
His English Professor had been one of the most admirable teachers Daryl had come across. Instead of learning strictly what the school system had taught him his whole life, the class was instead pushed to think otherwise of the materials. Poems were re-born, and literature became rich with substance rather than consuming the reader with hidden meaning. Professor Grimes began to show the bigger picture instead of handing out magnifying glasses and instruct students to search between the diction of a prose.
The first day of class, he'd felt the sweat glisten in his palms as he came to terms that this –writing, was his passion. Anyone would think of him nothing but the wealthy redneck from a small town -only going through school because of his drunken father's greed. Truth. His father was greedy, and a drunk –probably one of the worst. And with the dry gin came the blunt connection to a fist.
But he'd been out of that tomb for over a year now since attending college and living on campus. Though the memories of it all were still fresh in his mind like the nip of cold when one thinks of snow. Or like the burn Daryl had received when their house had caught on fire, and he tried to go inside for his mom. To this day, when he thought on it hard enough, it still burned like the day it was birthed on his arm.
That in fact, was something not even Merle knew of even though they spent countless hours together before adulthood. He essentially knew little of his own brother Daryl other than what Daryl portrayed for him to see. Such as when Merle had been off to college, their fathers new anger-management focus had turned to Daryl. No one knew of the scars he carried, defining the times that not even he as a young teenager could fend off a drunken man. Everyone saw him as the spoiled rich kid, sitting with an inheritance in his future, easy access to a business, and a free tuition. And that's one of the examples, that Daryl can think of now, of how not everything is as it seems.