Chapter 1
Oren woke up late.
Not even just alarm-clock late. Late enough where there was no point in rushing. He lay still on the narrow bed, staring at the unfinished ceiling above him. The beam running down the center had a long crack in it that he’d traced with his eyes more times than he could count. The room smelled faintly of dust and cut grass, the way it always did.
The shed he lived in was a few yards away from the main house. Separate enough that he couldn’t hear much from his parents besides the opening and closing of the back door.
He checked the time on his phone. He would miss the first half of his morning class. Maybe more. That fact landed without urgency. He set the phone back down and closed his eyes again.
Eventually, the sound of the back door sliding open carried across the yard. Then his mother’s voice. The smell of coffee drifted through the screen door. That was what finally got him moving.
He pulled on yesterday’s jeans and a clean T-shirt, stepped into his sneakers, and crossed the yard toward the house. The grass fell damp against his shoes with last night’s rain.
The smell of wet earth rose as his shoes sank slightly into the soft ground near the fence.
His stomach turned. Hard enough that he stopped walking. A wave of nausea hit him without warning, his throat tightening like he might actually throw up.
He stood there, breathing through it, eyes unfocused. It passed as quickly as it came, like it always did these days, leaving behind a faint unease under his tongue. A taste of bile.
Inside, his mother was on the couch with a cardboard box open at her feet. Photographs were spread across the coffee table in loose stacks, some curling at the edges.
“Morning,” she said, without looking up. Her short, cropped hair was naturally platinum, almost white, a softer echo of his own.
“Morning.”
He headed for the kitchen. His father stood at the counter, already dressed for work in a collared shirt tucked into tan khakis, the same outfit he wore to the branch every day. He glanced up from his tablet when Oren opened the fridge.
“You’re going in today?” his father asked.
Oren shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You were supposed to be out the door half an hour ago.”
“I know.”
“College isn’t a hobby, Oren.”
Oren poured himself a glass of milk. “It’s community college, not med school.”
“That doesn’t make it optional.”
His father leaned back against the counter, arms crossed. The look on his face told Oren this wasn’t just about today.
Oren didn’t remember failing his prerequisites courses so much as being told that he had.
His father had announced it like a diagnosis, calm and final, sliding the printed notice across the kitchen counter. His mother had stood nearby with her arms folded, already halfway into solution mode.
Course codes. Red highlights. Words like “incomplete” and “not eligible to advance.” It felt impersonal, like something meant for someone else.
That was when his parents decided he needed a tutor—someone from the outside who would come and fix whatever it was in him that kept breaking. They had found her quickly, and she was starting today, another stranger coming in to watch him trip over things he was supposed to know already.
Great.
“We’re not doing this again,” his father said.“You live on this property. We agreed to support you while you figured things out, but that doesn’t mean drifting.”
Oren took a sip of milk. It tasted slightly sour.
“I’m not drifting,” he said, though the word didn’t feel right.
His father sighed. “Remember Grandpa?”
Oren flinched.
He thought of the last time he’d driven Grandpa home from the hospital, the two of them sitting in the car in front of the house a minute too long with the engine off.
“You keep your options open long enough, you end up with nothing,” his grandfather had said. “Pick something. Stick with it.”
Oren had laughed it off then. The words lingered anyway, like he’d signed a contract without reading it. When Grandad died suddenly a few days later, the laughing stopped.
“I don’t think he meant school,” Oren said. “Not literally.”
“What else could he have meant?”
Oren didn’t answer right away. He had loose ideas. A trade. Something he could do with his hands. A job that didn’t involve classrooms full of people who seemed born knowing the next step.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Just something.”
“School is something,” his father said.
From the living room, his mother spoke again. “I found the one from the lake,” she said. “When you were a baby.”
She held up a photograph. Oren could see himself from across the room, round-faced, wrapped in a blue blanket. He was alone in the frame.
She smiled at it and set the photo back on the table with the others.
There were a lot of them. Oren at different ages. Oren on blankets. Oren in a high chair. Oren squinting into the sun. He glanced at it briefly. They’d been around the house for as long as he could remember.
“You should go,” his father said. “At least show up.”
Oren nodded again, out of habit more than belief.
“Yeah.“He grabbed his keys and backpack.
His mother called after him, “Your week’s money is on the counter. Don’t forget it.”
Oren paused only long enough to tuck the small envelope into his backpack, the same way he had since he was sixteen, when they’d insisted on opening a savings account for his earnings. Most of his paycheck went straight into that account. “It’ll add up,” his mother always said. “One day.”
“Bye, Mom.”
Oren held his breath and braced himself for the smell outside. The yard felt wider going toward the front of the house, the shed, and the comfort of his small room beyond the fence, waiting where he’d left it.
Being late didn’t feel like something that happened anymore. It felt like the state he woke up in, like everyone else had settled into their lives while he was still waiting for his to start.
Driving toward campus, he didn’t think about classes or grades or the future. He thought about how everything in his life felt already arranged, like furniture placed by someone else, less like something he was actively choosing and more like something he was expected to keep up with.
He pulled into the parking lot and sat there for a moment, engine running. Something in him resisted the next step, hard and immediate, without offering an explanation.
Then he turned it off and got out.
There was nothing else to do.
I’ve personally been in Oren’s shoes, that sense that everyone around you just instinctively knows where their life is going meanwhile you don’t have a clue. I think you brought out the mixture of lethargy and confusion very well with your writing! Can’t wait to read more!
I must admit that I found Oren frustrating, noting the way his dad was frustrated, but from lack of action. I remember being that young and unclear about what I wanted to do. What I did know was I wanted out of my hometown, maybe Oren does too. But he needs to own that and take action. Lets see what he does next.