He walked into his room, and with a heaving sigh, flopped onto his bed with a heaving sigh. Ryan could still hear his parents shouting at each other from the living room. Ever since the beginning of the school year, it seemed like the fights happened more often than usual. Perhaps it was all the stress from moving to California. School wasn’t that great at all either. Ryan was clueless what his parents were talking about, probably financial issues. Ryan thought that laying about was a waste of time, so he went to his desk to do his homework. In the middle of looking up the types of earthquake waves from his science textbook, he noticed the small yellow piece of paper he had received. His mood instantly worsened as he remembered what happened in school. He had an excellent 1st period since he sat together with his few new friends, but everything bad happened in 2nd period, which was science. This one guy, he didn’t know his name yet, started looking at him and whispered to his friend as if to make fun of him. Ryan had tried to look away and ignore, and thought, “hey, not everybody in the school is gonna like me.” Soon, the whole back row behind me was giving me strange looks. It was not long until they started throwing paper balls at his neck. He didn’t know what was going on, but he had to react. He was collecting the paper so he could throw them away, but he grabbed a handful of balls and sprayed it over the people behind him. The teacher hustled over to Ryan’s direction, scribbled something on his yellow paper pad, and handed it to him. It read, “Lunch Detention.” Great. He was trying to calm himself down. He wasn’t mad about the lunch detention itself. It was that the teacher didn’t listen to his full story, and didn’t give the people in the back detention, and they deserved it. Being jerked back to reality by a call from his mother, he hustled out the room to answer his mother’s summons. The next day, he was walking down the hallway to get to his Language Arts class in room 308 when he was suddenly shoved into a locker. When he looked up to see who did it, it was that guy from science class yesterday. The guy snickered, and went along talking to his friends like nothing happened. He quietly dusted his shoulder, and went to class. He had a sinister feeling that next time, it was going to be something worse than being shoved into a locker. When he got home, he was greeted by his mother. He went to his room, finished his homework, goofed around on his laptop, and waited for dinner. On his way out from the bathroom, Ryan heard the deep rumble of the garage door opening. He groaned. With the huge fight yesterday, there was no doubt something bad was going to happen. The three were silent on the dinner table. Ryan finished his food as soon as possible, and swiftly stood up, almost tripping in the process. His father grabbed his arm. “Son, sit down for a moment with us.” The silence hanged in the air like an impending storm. Ryan’s mother finally broke the silence. ”Ryan, we love you very much as our son, but we have something very important to tell you.” As soon she said that, she placed her hand on Ryan’s. She said in a quiet voice, “we’re getting divorced. Your father and I love each other, but… we just can’t live together anymore.” Ryan just sat there, just purely shocked, to shocked to even being sad. After a few minutes of just sitting there, with the parents crying silently, Ryan opened his mouth. In a hoarse whisper, he said, “One more month, Mom and Dad. Just one.” The parents did not understand right away, but eventually did. They agreed that just one more month of living together, and they would decide to have a divorce. The following evening, the house was very silent, except for the occasional footsteps or the rustle of blankets in Ryan’s room. The next 15 days were harsh. It tortured Ryan from the inside. In school, Ryan had become the laughingstock. He was considered a social outcast. Nobody wanted to be his friend, nobody really talked to him, and everybody would just whisper with whoever’s next to them when Ryan passes them in the hallway. Everyday, he became more gloomier and depressed, then simply began to stop doing anything. He just laid in bed, staring at the ceiling. The worst of the two storms has only just begun.