𝙈𝙖𝙢𝙢𝙖

Once I arrive at my house after school, I put my car in park on the driveway. I grab my keys from the car pocket I always keep them in along with a bunch of rubbish and my coffee from the drink holder, then get out the car.

As I walk up to my front door, I notice there's only one other vehicle in the driveway out of the three that share it (mine, the car my older twin siblings have to share and my parents). My dad takes the bus to work so the car in the driveway, a silver Volvo, means my mother is miraculously home early for a Wednesday.

When I enter the house, it's surprisingly almost silent. The only noise is the sound of plates someone is moving about coming from the kitchen. Mamma. I sigh. I'm glad that I will be able to get some peace for however long that may be.

I am one of five siblings. There are the twins Luca and Sofia who are eighteen; me, who's seventeen; a fourteen-year-old younger sister Eva; and finally, a little three-year-old brother, Isaak, who I'm pretty sure was an accident. Look at the rest of our ages. Our parents weren't even contemplating another child. Especially not with them being so old.

My mum was 38 years old when she gave birth to my little brother, and my dad was 39 years old, so I count that as being older than usual to have a child that young. Not that I'm judging, though, because I love my little brother to pieces, and so do the rest of us. We call him the life of the party, as he's always so hyper. And although he's only three and can't fully perceive that he's doing it, it still seems to help us when we're having a down day.

Eva was also glad to know that she wouldn't be the youngest when we found out that mum was pregnant. I think that's the main thing she's grateful for regarding Isaak. My little sister used to go on about how she hated it, as she always got treated like a little kid. I mean, she was eleven when he was born, so what she doesn't realise is that we were treating her like a kid because she was one.

Today's one of those rare days where I'm the only child out of the five home.

I have no idea where my older brother is. Sofia is most likely out getting drunk with a bunch of guys and probably smoking weed. Eva is with her friends doing shopping or whatever fourteen-year-old girls do with their girly friends. I know for a fact Isaak's at an evening playgroup thing. Dad's at work. The only other person home is my mother.

"Matthew, sei tu Tesoro? (Is that you, sweetheart?)" I hear her call in Italian from the kitchen, her voice echoing through the empty house.

My mother's from Italy. She likes to speak to us in Italian, meaning we're all pretty much fluent in the language apart from my dad as he's a proper Brit and couldn't be bothered to learn it. After twenty years of marriage, he still hasn't been able to pick up a word of it apart from ciao, so he just sits there dumbfounded while the rest of us have conversations with each other in the language.

Sometimes just to mess with him, we whisper random words such as 'duck' or 'rowing boats' to each other as though we're talking about him, leaving him begging for us to tell him what we're saying about him, and us in fits of laughter. He still doesn't have a clue we're not talking about him. It cracks me up just thinking about it.

Instead of replying to my mum, I make my way into the room to greet her. She smiles at me and kisses me on the cheek. "Ciao. Um, I just came back from work, but I'm going out tonight, and I'm leaving in an hour or so, so I bought some Chinese. You can sit and eat it with me now, or I can put it in the fridge, and you can heat it whenever decidi tu (up to you)."

"I'll eat it with you. I don't want you to eat alone." I answer, wanting to spend some more time with my very busy mother, as I bin the empty coffee cup.

"Oh, I'm alright. You don't have to do that. Especially if you're not hungry." She replies, her Italian accent less thick than it used to be.

Out of all my mum's offspring, us boys are the ones who inherited the stereotypical Italian traits. It includes the olive skin, being on the shorter to medium side when it comes to height—both Luca and I are 5 foot 9, darker but not too dark hair and eyes, narrow nose, and the list goes on. My sisters look more like our dad, with lighter brown hair and hazel eyes. Neither of them is short, though, which they do get from our mum.

People like to point out how I look the most Italian out of my siblings yet have the least Italian name. My dad picked my name, and him being British, didn't think to pick anything Italian. My mother chose my middle name, though.

And here we are now, my full name being Matthew Roberto Jenkins.

I shrug and rummage through the bag to see what she bought. I find my favourite, pulling it out and grabbing two forks out the drawer. I sit down at the table and pull out a seat for my mum. "Oh, è così gentile da parte tua (that's so kind of you)," she says.

"So, what's been going on today?" I ask as I begin to eat.

As she talks about her day, I can't help but notice how tired she looks. She has bags under her eyes, her tan skin is a bit more pale than usual, her forehead creased from continual worry and stress but above all that I can still see the laugh lines at the corner of her lips and the faint crinkles at the edges of her eyes ever so slightly when she grins.

My mum is a happy person, but as I said, she's stressed. She's a paediatric nurse, so I can understand the strain she has on herself. She has to work nearly every day with long hours and hardly ever gets a break. She tries to spend as much time with us as she can.

She's still wearing her scrubs. Today, she's wearing my favourite ones; they've got turtles on them. Little kids are always happy when they see them, which is cute, especially when Isaak sits and laughs at them, and that's the reason why they're my favourite. My little brother always seems to keep us smiling. So does my mum. She tries her hardest, and I love her even more for that.

She's strong, but she's come across many hardships throughout her forty-two years of life. Although born and raised in Italy by two very Italian parents, she had to move to England with her severely strict mother, a country in which she had never been before and hardly knew a word of the language, at aged sixteen. This move was the result of her parents suddenly divorcing without warning.

Her father got custody over her younger sister. My Zia (aunt) reunited with my mother when they were 18 and 20 years old. However, my Zia remains in Italy and visits every other summer.

She's never felt the motherly love every kid should feel. Her mum was 'too busy' for her and hardly spoke to her at all, despite living with her. My nonna used to get someone else to look after her instead of doing it herself. I could never imagine life without a gossip session at least once a week with my mum.

My mum never knew what she did, yet her mother didn't like her one bit and she never once heard her say the words 'I love you'. She always wished she was back home in Italy with her loving father and sister, but my mum knew she couldn't be. If we didn't move to America for my dad's job, we most likely would have eventually moved to Italy.

When nonna died a few years ago after a short illness, she left nothing in her will for my mother or Zia. Everyone else in the family got something, including me, except her two daughters. Mum found out not long after from her dad that it was because nonna always wanted a son, not a daughter. Especially not two. All that because of the gender of your child? How disgusting.

Due to that, my mum tries her absolute hardest to show us that she loves us, and we're all so grateful for that. We try our best to show our love back, to ensure we the love she missed during her childhood, but we know we can never heal the wound it must have left.

"So, what's been going on with you?" I hear her say around a mouthful of egg fried rice. I shrug, shoving a piece of chicken into my mouth. I'm reminded once again with the fact that I have to be tutored by the worst person I could be for however long it will take me to get a B. I try not to groan.

"Nothing much. I have to be tutored in chemistry by someone I do not like."

"Who? Have they done anything bad to you?" She asks worriedly. She's overprotective. I like it, but sometimes I don't. In some cases, it can be suffocating and just makes me feel as though I'm a little kid again. I never say anything as I don't want to hurt her. She's just worried about me. "Is it that nasty boy Alex?"

"Sì."

I know I shouldn't be, but every time Alex is brought up, I become embarrassed. Of course, I told my mother about him, but it just makes me feel a bit ashamed. I could try a bit harder for him to stop what he does, but I don't. I'm letting it happen, though I guess I'm beyond care. I've got to grin and bear it. People have it worse than me, so I need to stop being so sensitive.

"You could ask your teacher to change tutors. You need the extra help if you want to get a good grade and that's not going to happen if he's going to tease you throughout the session. You won't get anything done."

"I think it'll be fine. I'll see how the first session goes, and if Alex still acts like a stronzo (asshole), I'll ask to change tutors." I say. She raises an eyebrow when I curse but doesn't mention it. My family is more laid back than others, so we're allowed to curse as long as it's not to each other.

She smiles, although it doesn't quite reach her eyes. I know she doesn't agree with me, "OK, Tesoro (sweetheart). Just remember to tell a teacher, or just come to me if it gets bad. I don't understand people like that."

Two hours later, after my mum has  left to go to out with some friends, I find myself sitting on my bed watching vine compilations on my laptop due to being utterly bored out of my mind and having nothing else to do. In the middle of the 'I'm a chicken nugget!' vine, my phone goes off telling me I've got a text message from Alex.

His vocabulary makes me cringe. He's supposedly this really smart guy, yet he finds it difficult to write full words. This is someone who is supposed to be my new tutor, as well.

Before replying, I realise I never changed his name to something appropriate and switch it to a simple Alex.

After sending me his address, he just had to ask:

I scoff and go back to watching YouTube, disregarding my phone on my desk chair.

I can't focus on the video, though. What he said to me plays in my head. Why on Earth would he have to do this tutoring thing? All that's going to be happening is that he's going to teach me some chemistry crap, and that's it. There's nothing more to it so it's beyond me why it's something he 'really needs to do'. I also have a right to know, as this does involve me.

I eventually brush it off. It's not the end of the world if I don't know, so I go back to focussing on the YouTube video.

Not long after the video ends, I hear the front door close, so I make my way out of my room and down the stairs to see who it is, groaning at the fact that my moment of peace may now be over. It turns out it's an out-of-breath Luca coming back from wherever he was.

"Are you alright? You're out of breath," I ask, pointing out the obvious as I jump off the last step and walk towards him.

"Yeah, I just thought I'd jog home." He answers, taking off his bag and putting it on the train rack my dad bought a few years ago because he thought it would look cool and start up a conversation. The plan failed. "Where's mum?" He asks, walking into the kitchen.

"She's out with friends somewhere. She didn't specify," I reply.

Luca nods as he grabs a snack out of the cabinet and rips the packaging open. I refrain from having a go at him for eating it as I specifically bought it for myself. I would put them in my room to stop people from nicking them, but my mum doesn't like us eating in our rooms if we're not ill and bed-ridden.

"Where were you?" I ask after a moment.

"Soccer practice. It's Wednesday, remember." He replies. Ever since we moved to America, Luca likes to refer to things the American way. I hate it. I have to refrain myself from correcting what he said to 'football'.

"Oh," I respond. "Mum bought Chinese for dinner, just thought I'd let you know." I hear him say something but then realise it's not to me, but to someone he's talking to on the phone. I shrug it off, telling myself he'd find it later, then proceed to go upstairs.

As I make my way upstairs, I can hear him talk on the phone. "Yeah, I know, he's like so gay."

Like always, I freeze once I hear the word 'gay', briefly scared that he's talking about me. I then realise that he's not going to openly talk to a random friend on the phone about me being gay when I'm two steps in front of him. I still don't know why I react this way, and I'm getting more and more annoyed with myself.

"Are you OK there?" He asks behind me, snapping me out of whatever trance I was in momentarily. I nod, so he shrugs and hurries up the stairs past me, going back to his phone call.

My brother and I have don't have a close bond. We've never really had a big argument, only small quarrels now and then like standard siblings, which is something, but we just don't have anything in common at all. Our complete divide in personalities and struggle with finding things to talk about means we hardly have a conversation with each other.

The one thing that annoys me about Luca is his jokes. I don't think he's consciously insensitive, but his jokes usually are. I know they're just jokes, but it still doesn't make them OK to say, and it gets me frustrated with him a little more whenever he uses the word gay as an insult.

Luca swears he is neither homophobic, sexist or racists but his jokes would make any person who didn't know him think otherwise. The way he doesn't think about who's around before joking about controversial things shows the opposite of what he says about himself. Other than that, Luca's a great guy. He just doesn't think sometimes.

As I begin to walk up the second flight of stairs to my bedroom, I hear a noise coming from the room Sofia and Eva share. Concerned someone might be in there, I walk back down the stairs, and I slowly open the door. No one is inside, but the window was left wide open, and the wind from outside had knocked a few things from Sofia's desk onto the floor.

I reassure myself that no one was in there and it was just the wind making noise. There was no way someone would be able to jump out the window from that height without injuring themselves anyway.

I bend down to pick up the knocked over things and put them back on the desk, but then I noticed something — a bracelet I know for sure belongs to Cami. She wears it every day. It is made up of fake diamonds with a string to tie it around your wrist instead of a clasp because she accidentally broke it. But why the hell is it in my sister's room?

I reach over and close the window, then pick up the bracelet. I was going to have to ask Cami about it later.

Did Sofia steal it? It is quite a pretty bracelet, but I had never known my sister to take things from people. Or did Cami let her borrow it then? I couldn't think of a reason why. Maybe they had a similar bracelet? I turned it over and saw Camilla engraved in the back. Now I knew it belonged to Cami for sure. How weird.

I pocket the bracelet and leave the room.

To clear my mind of Cami and Luca stress, I decide to draw. So, going to my room and switching on the multicoloured lights hung up along the walls around my room and my bedside lamp, I pull out one of my many sketchbooks; the one purely for black and white shaded pictures.

I get comfortable on my bed, legs crossed and leaning right back on my headboard. I go to start drawing but, strangely enough, nothing comes to mind. I can't even seem to sketch like I do when I'm stressed, absentmindedly.

The only thing on my mind is gay. After being insulted and called a derogatory remark today at school, I can't stop thinking about: being gay. How do I translate that into a piece of paper? It's not like I'm going to draw a massive penis and stick that on my wall. Maybe I could sketch someone who I deem attractive, the first aspects that come to mind and from there, I'll see if it's a boy or a girl.

So that's what I do. I spend the next hour of my life, drawing and shading a person. I don't let myself stop and take a look at what I've done until I've finished. And when I do, my breath hitches