America 1982

At five o'clock in the evening, Tommy Hawke took out the key, unlocked the door, and walked into the old-fashioned apartment he rented. As soon as he opened the door, he saw the 27-year-old Aunt Melonie applying an ice pack on the sofa in the living room. Watch TV with your cheeks turned, Providence TV’s ever-changing free programs, old-fashioned documentaries.

Hearing the sound of the door opening, Melonie turned around just in time to see Tommy Hawke standing at the door. Then she turned her face away, put down the ice pack in her hand, tried to pretend that nothing had happened, and spoke in a mean and old-fashioned tone:

"Shouldn't you be working part-time at the laundry? You already owe me two weeks' rent."

Tommy Hawk closed the door, walked up to Melonie, and looked at her red and swollen cheeks:

"What happened?"

"Nothing, just a beauty treatment. Ice compress can make the skin tighter." Melonie stood up from the sofa, as if she was too lazy to continue discussing this topic with Tommy Hawke.

Tommy Hawke picked up Melonie's cheap Kimberley cigarettes on the coffee table, lit one, and looked at the TV screen, which was showing "The Great American Cowboy," a documentary that had been shown hundreds of times: " Well, I guess your ex-boyfriend helped you prepare for the beauty treatment by using the action of a cowboy taming a buffalo?"

"Hey! You can't smoke! At least you can't smoke before your eighteenth birthday, which is coming in half a month!" Melonie frowned when she saw Tommy lighting up a cigarette.

Tommy Hawke replied: "If you go to the school to report it, I will say that you, the adult, provided me with the cigarettes as a minor. Forget it, Aunt Melonie, no one in our high school cares about minors." Can adults smoke and drink?”

"So, you didn't go part-time, just to come back and smoke a cigarette?" Melonie stared at Tommy Hawke: "What happened?"

"I heard that a group of white bastards destroyed the laundry where I worked part-time in the afternoon. By the time I rushed there after school, the poor Chinese owner Sonny had been so frightened that he took his whole family and ran away to Boston. I had to find another part-time job." Tommy Hawke said with a somewhat irritable tone.

Melonie covered her slightly red and swollen left face and nodded slightly after listening: "Well, compared with that Sonny, it seems that what I experienced is not worth mentioning."

Tommy sat on the sofa: "Don't those bastards understand that Asians are not equal to RB people! They think RB people make them unemployed, so let the US military drop a few more atomic bombs in RB."

"Dong dong dong~" The door was knocked from outside.

Melonie wanted to open the door, but Tommy Hawke stood up: "If it's your damn ex-boyfriend, I'll handle it. Please, give me a chance to vent my dissatisfaction."

"If you fight, you will be in big trouble, Tommy Hawke." When Melonie heard Tommy's words, she was not grateful, but warned with a cold face.

Tommy Hawke walked to the door and opened the door. Outside the door was his brother Tony, who was one year older than him. Seeing Tommy opening the door, Tony showed a friendly smile:

"You didn't look very friendly when you opened the door, Tommy. Hi Aunt Melonie."

"Hi, Tony." Melonie breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it was Tommy's brother, and managed to respond with a smile.

Tony walked into the living room and said as he walked:

"haven't seen you for a long time."

"I haven't seen you for two weeks. I guess you didn't come here to visit me specially. After all, I said I didn't want to see you again before the SAT exam." Tommy said with an ugly face.

"I know, I know you don't want others to influence you to become a great scholar, Einstein, but we are family, and we need you at home now." Tony looked at Tommy and shrugged with a half-smile.

Tommy looked at Tony: "Are you renting your house to those bastards for an ethanol party again? Do you want me to be a guest waiter?"

"No, it's Dad, our dear Dad. Now at the police station, although there is a bail bond company that can help guarantee it, the down payment still requires two hundred yuan. I only got one hundred and ten yuan, so..." Tang Mi pursed her lips, suppressed her smile, and looked at Tommy Hawke seriously: "Ninety yuan."

"What did that idiot do?" Tommy Hawke exhaled depressedly, closed his eyes and turned around, facing the wall, not wanting to face this problem.

Tony puffed out a puff of cigarette: "Nothing. He led a dozen poor workers who were as angry as him because of unemployment, and smashed up a laundry owned by RB people. After the destruction, they were told that the boss was not from RB."

"Bullsh!t! This is the best news I heard today. The father destroyed the store where his son worked part-time, and then needed his son, who was under 18 years old, to come up with money to pay his bail. There is no better news than this. Yeah." Tommy Hawke laughed and said:

"I left home a month ago and came to rent a small bedroom in Aunt Melonie's house. I had to work part-time for four hours a day to earn less than thirteen dollars. The weekly rent for my bedroom was thirty dollars, and my weekly living expenses were reduced to two dollars. The registration fee for five AP exams is US$100, and the SAT registration fee is US$20. I also want to save money because I need to wait for the summer vacation to pay to attend some summer camps and complete some extracurricular activities so that I can apply. When I was in college, the information looked better. Do you know how much money I saved this month? No, not a penny."

After saying that, he walked into his small bedroom, took out a wad of loose banknotes from it, and handed it to Tony: "No need to count, it's exactly ninety-three dollars. You took away the two weeks' rent that I should have paid to Aunt Melonie." , and the registration fee I saved.”

Tony took the money and said to Tommy in confusion: "Can't you just drop out of school like me? Find a real job. What can you learn from college? In addition to paying high tuition fees, besides having to bear the burden of decades to learn Apart from repaying the loan? What can you learn? On the contrary, you can learn a lesson and teach your children in the future not to be deceived by the US government and take on high college loans. I can introduce a job with a good weekly salary..."

"Enrolling into a good enough university can prevent me from becoming a low-level trash like my father and you. That is a prerequisite for me to change my destiny!" Tommy Hawke emphasized his tone and shouted at Tony.

The sound was so ferocious that Melonie in the far corner couldn't help but shrink her shoulders slightly.

"Sorry, brother." Tony saw Tommy's angry expression and nodded understandingly: "No problem, of course no problem, don't become trash like us. I wish you ranked seventh among the 21,000 high schools in the United States. Thousand four hundred and thirty-one Lincoln State High School in Rhode Island achieved outstanding results.”

After he finished speaking, he pushed Tommy hard, his face instantly filled with anger: "You should show some respect to father and me! Boy!"

"If you two don't just take away his poor savings from your brother or son, he might have a little more respect for you." Tommy smiled mockingly at Tony.

Tony's facial muscles trembled slightly, he nodded slightly, opened his arms and stepped back: "OK, feel free to laugh at me and my father, but you have to remember that if you fail one day, I will only comfort you, I won’t laugh at you, because you are my brother and we are family. Also, the reason for smashing the RB man’s laundry is not because dad is an asshole. Of course he is an asshole in your eyes, but the union will reward him 500 yuan for this. When he gets it, I’ll ask him to return the money to you.”

After saying that, Tony walked out of the room with the wad of change in his hand, and slammed the door from the outside.

The force was so strong that it knocked off the Protestant Bible calendar hanging on the door.

Tommy leaned against the wall, punched the wall hard with his fist, and cursed depressedly: "Fu*k! Fu*k you America!"

"If you need a test registration fee, I...I may receive a substitute tuition fee in a few days." Melonie stood in the corner of the living room, looking at Tommy Hawke, who had his eyes closed and a stern look on his face, and said in her voice He spoke coldly.

Before she could finish speaking, Tommy opened his eyes and shook his head: "I can handle it. I can definitely sort out this shitty life."

He straightened up, looked at the calendar that fell on the floor, picked it up, hung it back on the door, and stared at today's page in silence.

"What are you thinking about?" Melonie noticed that Tommy had been silent for a long time and asked from behind.

Tommy withdrew his gaze and showed a gentle smile to Melonie: "Nothing, please help me call the school tomorrow and ask for a day off, okay? I want to solve the problem of food and clothing first before fully preparing for the college entrance examination."

Melonie took a few steps forward curiously and followed Tommy's gaze.

The calendar page contains today’s date of May 6, 1982, and a biblical proverb:

"In life, you will encounter adversity, just like the soaring sparks."

New author and new book, I hope all readers will support me.

All information comes from American movies and TV series. Please do not compare it with historical data. Just treat it as fun in your spare time.