It started off I was working on Andy's present. My dad walked by was like, "Are you giving that to Andy?"
"Yeah..."
"What? Have you no shame? What are you doing?"
"WHAT?!"
"What are you gonna do when he comes and proposes to you? Girls don't give boys presents!"
"OMG YES THEY DO!"
"No they don't!"

And then he walked downstairs. I worked on it for a bit more until he came back and was like, "Let's do calculus."
I was like, "Hang on. In a sec."
Five minutes later, I went.
It was around 6:30.
Couldn't think of how to do an extremely easy problem. My dad flipped out. Like flipped out like he hasn't in a year or so.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM!? YOU PIG BRAIN. NO, YOU'RE WORSE THAN A PIG. EVEN PIGS AREN'T THIS STUPID. I KNOW WHAT THE PROBLEM IS. YOU'RE NOT CONCENTRATING! YOU'RE NOT EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT! YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT ANDY AND HIS STUPID PRESENT. IF YOU CARED AS MUCH ABOUT MATH AS YOU DID ABOUT ALL YOUR STUPID THINGS YOU'D BE GREAT NOW. INSTEAD, YOU'RE JUST A BIG STUPID FAILURE.
He then sends everything on my desk flying. My shoebox of stuff. My photo books, my bio book, the Oracle handbook, stickers, newspapers, everything.
"AND THIS. HARRY POTTER. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO READ THIS GARBAGE BOOK?! BUT NO. YOU STILL HAVE IT."
He tries to rip the book in half, but obviously Goblet of Fire is a pretty sizeable book. So he just chucks it at the floor twice.
All the while still ranting about how stupid I am and how I don't concentrate and how I'm the biggest failure in the world.
And then, "LOOK AT THIS WALL. HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY CONCENTRATE WHEN YOU HAVE ALL THESE THINGS IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES?!?!!?"

And then the ripping began.

You guys have seen my wall. You know how much I love my wall.

The huge Liverpool poster that Matthew's grandma sent me when LFC won the Champions League went first.
Shredded into three. I saw the rip right through Steven Gerrard's face.
All the postcards. All the pictures of England. All the stuff Elsa's sent me through the years. All the stuff Vicki got me. All the pictures of my friends. All the McFly. All the poetry. All the quotes. Even the Les Miserables photo with all our signatures. All of it.

The pictures on my desk. Our group at Bath, England. The Sadies picture. Every shred of freakin paper on the desk.

Ripped and crumpled to shreds and into the trash can.

All because I couldn't do a simple math problem. And because I would rather make one of my best friends a present the day before he leaves for college than do a calculus problem.

I couldn't take it. For the first time in my life, I actually tried to stand up to my dad. I got up and went over and was like, "What are you doing?!"
And he got really REALLY REALLY pissed that I would dare even speak.

Andy's present went FLYING. It split in half, and right now I'm trying to salvage it.
Then I got really pissed. I was like, "WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?! HAVE YOU NO RESPECT? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THOSE ARE?"

"YES I KNOW. YOUR PRESENT TO BELOVED ANDY. AND ALL THE POSTCARDS AND PRESENTS YOUR FRIENDS HAVE SENT YOU. THEY'RE PRECIOUS TO YOU. AND ALL THE TIME THAT I'VE SPENT ON YOU THROUGHOUT THE YEARS! I'VE WASTED MY ENTIRE LIFE ON YOU. WHAT ARE A FEW PIECES OF PAPER COMPARED TO THAT."
He went on a rant about how his house is a learning environment and if I don't want to do that I should just get out. All the greatest scientists didn't give a damn about anything but their work. Marie Curie didn't even have chairs in her house so people had to leave. All they ever think of is their work. But me, I'm the world's biggest failure because all I ever think about is how to enjoy myself.

I'm to put all the math equations on my wall. He would be very proud of me then. I would be a person who could contribute to society. Right now I'm just a failure who can only succeed in what he's fed me. Take chemistry. He never taught me chemistry. I couldn't get an A in it. All my success in life is what he's spoonfed me. And what I am good at, English, history, biology, that's nothing. All you have to do is memorize. I am pathetic. I don't have a brain. I've spent 5 times as much time and work on math than everyone at my school, yet I'm still not the best. I am good at nothing. If he hadn't taught me I'd be working at McDonalds with the rest of my good for nothing friends. Fine, why don't you just go enjoy life like Ashley does? Go get a boyfriend. Your friends are pathetic. None of them will go anywhere in life. Go with them. Go play with them. Go end up at McDonalds like them.

I don't know what he wants. Everyone, including my dad, knows that I'm never going to be an engineer. He evens says it sometimes, "You know, since you're going into the arts you really don't need to know this much math."
He's so freakin perfect. He's like the next Karl Marx. I'm not like him. He always says it. He always says, "It's okay. Don't be immortal like me. I'll live on forever after I'm dead, but while I'm alive no one recognizes me." I'm sorry I'm not the world's next Nobel Prize winner. My dad knows trig equations better than me. If we don't know how to do a problem, he spends the entire night thinking about it. I don't. Then he yells at me because I don't. Who does? Other than him. If he spent one day around even the smartest kids, even Jesse Yang for example, if he spent one day with them, he'd realize that even they aren't what he thinks they should be. We learn as much as we need to to get by. Kids forget calculus equations as soon as the tes tif over. Go ask anyone who Robespierre is and they'll probably just say, "Someone French." I learned geometry four years ago, yet I'm expected to remember that the area of the sector is 1/2 pi r^2.

I loved my wall. It was my favorite thing about the house. Now it's just a gaping white space and loads of pictures in a trash can. I went in and took them all out and took the tape off of them and saved what I could.

And then I'm supposed to say bye to Andy tomorrow. I don't even want to bring it up. He'll flip and he might rip my bedroom stuff. I took the Liverpool poster down already and hid my Gerrard jersey.

Maybe I should just jump out the window or something.