Simple Truths of Life - стр. 16

It was the first floor of the school, and on the opposite bench, but closer to the aisle to the dining room, the same blonde girl sat down, from whom I could hardly take my eyes away. Her red-haired friend was with her too.

At some point, one of Vova's acquaintances looked at me and with a crooked smile told his friend some unflattering words about me. I immediately realized what the reason was, and I almost as quickly stopped daydreaming. When the other guy looked at me, he said that everything was fine with me.

At that time, I had such a character trait that I could not change myself after the vile statements of someone about me, as this would mean that they, people who contemptuously treated me, were right, and I myself would remember my life’s bad episode with them for the rest of my life – which I did not want at all back then and in every possible way tried to forget everything negative, immersing myself in my inner world.

Also, I could not live in reality back then, since I could not be the person I could be if I did not stutter. And I often began to think about justice in life. How is it that I not only never harmed anyone in my life, moreover, I was a friendly and cheerful person who loved nature and life in general, but in spite of all this I had to suffer so much from the age of five? Why do those people who commit the wildest crimes live happily ever after if they are never caught by the police? Where is justice in this life?

Soon my grandmother died. I was so immersed in myself that I could not feel any emotions. I understood what had happened, but everything was as if in a haze, and as if it did not directly concern me, it was something distant. I wanted to get rid of constant stress – and I managed to do it, but at what cost…

The school year was drawing to a close, and it was time for exams. Without hesitation, I decided to continue to study in school for the tenth and eleventh grade. I had good grades, except for the second quarter where I had two 3s because I first started skipping school, but since studying was not a big problem for me, I was able to catch up with the curriculum and close almost all bad grades I got during that period. There were two strict teachers who decided to put 3s in the annual standings, but this was not a problem, and I was taken to the tenth grade.

Speaking of truancy, my mother and I started quarreling in the ninth grade due to the fact that I started not wanting to go to school, because my life was crumbling, and so studying wasn’t the top priority for me. Once we quarreled so much that at midnight I went to my father's apartment with a full rucksack of textbooks on my back, but at a quarter of the way I realized how far I had to go and decided to return to my mother's apartment. I remember how then the police car made a circle around me at the turn to the Lokomotiv stadium, but then it drove further along the highway, where it was driving originally. Our quarrels began to decline, when after a couple of years we quarreled again, I looked at her and I was amazed to realize that she had clearly aged. She was missing some teeth. I do not know how, but I did not notice this before. Then my eyes began to open up slightly, and I tried to avoid quarrels with my mother so that she would not be nervous.