Lesson one …MG beginning

Ethan’s suitcase lay open on his bed, taunting him. Next to it, clean clothes piled like mountains to climb. His hands shook with anger. You’d think he could control this constant feeling, it had been with him for weeks, months. Bubbling, boiling under his skin.  

‘Ethan, are you packed yet?’ His mum called up the stairs. ‘We have to leave in thirty minutes. And don’t forget to take that pen knife from your pocket, they will take it from you at the airport and throw it away.’

He slammed his door shut and clutched the knife in its sheath in his pocket. He pulled it out and slammed it onto his table. Ethan didn’t know why he kept it with him. A gift from his traitorous dad.

‘No, no, no.’

With each no he chose a pile of clothes and flung it across his room. He kicked and stamped and crumpled every item his mum had carefully prepared. Pants hung from his now lopsided light shade, socks clung to the books on his shelves, t-shirts cowered in the corners, a jumper smothered his summer campaign notes. He dragged it off and tore the paper into shreds that littered his room like white dead flies. This summer was going to be the best, the reward for staying calm while his dad tore their family apart, the reward for keeping his sister occupied, for letting her cry on his fav t-shirt, even letting her help him create his character for the six week dice adventure game he was going to play with his friends. He’d planned out this summer perfectly. His first summer as a teenager with the freedom he thought he’d have. Raye was going to a summer camp, and he was going to enjoy a quite house where he could read without Raye annoying him, a mega campaign of adventure, swimming at the open-air pool, and enjoy just messing around in the park with his friends.

‘Ethan, what have you done?’ Raye peered around his bedroom door.

And there she was, his little sister, ready to go, all packed, and he was having a toddler tantrum. Way to go, Ethan.