Mr Wyte

"Erm, Cindy..."
I removed my emerald eyes from my perfectly written, however unfinished, English assessment and looked up towards my young teacher, Mr Wyte. I tucked my long dark red hair behind my right ear and raised my nicely trimmed, dark brown eyebrows, signaling for him to carry on.
"Cindy, it's time for you to go home now," he said, typing on his laptop. I looked around the classroom and saw everyone else was gone. My seat was in the back row in the corner, furthest away from the door. I sighed in frustration and looked at Mr Wyte,
"But I haven't finished the assessment." I looked at my work and scanned through my neat writing. "I think I need some help."
Mr Wyte chuckled. I expected him to tell me to go home again but he kindly walked across the classroom, pulled out a chair and sat by my side. However, instead of helping me, he reached over and took my pen out of my hand. I looked up to him questioningly.
"Cindy. When have you ever needed help with your work?" He looked at my paper for a minute and nodded his head. "This is perfect and you know it is. It always is. What's the real problem?" He smiled at me warmly. Looking at him so closely allowed me to see how good looking he was. His shortish brown hair was subtly jelled, his blue eyes were beautiful and his lips looked perfect. He was wearing a well fitted gray suit which only allowed my imagination to go to play.
He looked gorgeous but his question dragged me straight back to my unfortunate reality. It brought me back to the horrible truth of my life. The truth I tried every second of every day to forget about and move on. 'What's the real problem?'
The real problem was returning to an awful home every day after compliments off of teachers because of my 'perfect' work or compliments off of my wonderful friends about my 'perfect' makeup or my 'perfect' hair. Hearing those things being said to me made me feel amazing about myself but also at the same time pushed me to realize how imperfect my life was. It pushed me to remember the home I had to return to each and every day. At that home, waited an evil woman. A woman people expected me to call 'Mother', even though the only names I thought she deserved were 'spiteful', 'cruel', 'evil' and 'manipulative'. I thought 'home is where the heart is' but in my life, my home is a million miles away.

For now, I live in a prison.

I realized the room had been silent for a few seconds so I just pulled on a smile and said, "You're right, Sir. I'm just being paranoid. I'll leave as soon as I finish." Mr Wyte smiled back, went back to his desk and typed away. As soon as he was engaged with his computer my smile dropped and I silently choked back tears.

I carried on writing for another half an hour, oblivious to the time while Mr Wyte sat at his desk and marked my class mates assessments. We both jumped when a few loud, impatient knocks banged on the door. Mr Wyte cleared his throat and said, "Come in!"
The door was gently opened and a small head popped around it. The school's receptionist's eyes darted around the room and widened as they landed on me. She swung the door open fully and stormed towards me, she was a very small woman and she was carrying a telephone in her right hand which she practically threw at me. She pointed to my ear, turned around and stormed out whilst glaring at Mr Wyte. We both jumped as the door slammed.
My attention was brought back to the telephone and I held it up to my ear.
"Hello?"
The screaming I received from the other end made me wince.
"Cindy?! Where the hell are you? I've been waiting for over half an hour you lazy idiot! If you're not home within ten minutes God help me I will rip you to shreds! What the hell did I do to deserve a pathetic daughter like you?!" Then the line went dead.
My whole mind shut down for a few seconds as I tried to blink away the tears. I could feel my stomach turning as I imagined what my mother was going to do with me when I got home. I was still holding the phone to my ear when I realized my mouth was open in shock and pain.
"Cindy... Is everything okay?"
I looked away from the floor and across the classroom to see Mr Wyte looking at me with an extremely concerned face. I didn't feel the butterflies as he spoke to me like I normally did, all I could feel was the fear of returning home. I closed my mouth, put the phone on the table and after looking at it for a few seconds I realized I had less than eight minutes to return home.

Less than eight minutes to run home a distance it took me twenty to walk.

I left my assessment but threw everything else into my school bag whilst mumbling to myself; "I need to get home" over and over again. Mr Wyte tried again,
"Cindy, is everything okay?"
I was too busy panicking to reply. Too busy throwing everything into my bag. As soon as I was sure I had everything in, I grabbed the straps, ran out of the classroom, out of the school and all the way home. Glancing at my clock every few seconds as I watched my time slowly run out.

Tick, tock...