A Change Of Mindset (Green)

The second major breakthrough happened just in time.

I had been growing to hate my last few years of middle school. My grades were dropping in all subjects, it didn't help that my math teacher was in their first year of teaching as well. My grades would have continued to fall this way had it not have been for what had happened.

One day when my mother had dragged me out of the house to help with shopping. I saw A puzzle sitting on display, it had looked back at me as if nagging me. Part of me felt that I could discover its secrets.

When I returned home, I looked at the puzzle. There were six sides, all of them different colors, and a three-by-three grid on each side. When it was scrambled, I quickly realized what I had gotten myself into. Every move made it more and more scrambled.

At first, I was able to learn pretty quickly that if he moved the piece out of the way first and then moved it back into place afterward, I would be able to finish one side.

'Now the other sides... wait what?'

The colors didn't match up, meaning I would have to redo the first side and put the pieces in specific places. It took me a while as well, but I was able to do it after discovering a pattern to follow. It took around five hours to get to this point.

I then spent an hour messing around before I had realized something else, I wouldn't be able to solve the sides once at a time. Because of how pieces were connected, the five remaining sides would be solved at the same time.

'No matter what I try to do if I want to move the last layer in place I would have to move everything else out of place, I give up.' I then looked back at its packaging. 'What it had an instruction manual?'

It had a line of code of what to do for multiple sequences of the last layer and a key for that code. It also had a few paragraphs explaining what to do for the first few layers.

I had, at this point, spent half an hour trying to figure out the code. After I was finally comfortable moving the cube while reading the code, I then tried matching up what I needed to do with the specific code.

After 30 minutes, all of the colors slid into place. 'I'm done I did it, but it took so long it's not good enough.'

I did it over and over, becoming entranced by how my mind was getting better and better with each try.

'All I needed was that code.' I thought as I looked at the paper, whose contents were now permanently ingrained into my mind.

'My teachers refuse to give this code, probably thinking that I should already know how to do it all on my own. I must have missed it in one of the many times that I accidentally dozed off in class.'

At some point, I couldn't get any faster, no matter how much I tried. I had heard of people solving it within 10 seconds, but I could hardly imagine how many codes they had had to memorize in order to do that.

'Maybe later, for now this is the best I can do unless I invent my own codes.'

'what it's 4 in the morning?!' I thought as I panicked about how I would doze off in class the next day.

'What was that it felt like it was only an hour or two?' I checked after solving the first time; it was just before midnight.

I didn't know it then, but I was hyper-focused, I had and still have ADHD, or at least I think so. In the past, I only got advanced in math because I put my whole heart into it.

I had been learning a lot about science in my own time, either at the library or by television at my grandmother's house, and at school. It was the closest thing to helping with my affinities, and most students have high grades in science due to that same reason.

There was a change in my mindset thanks to that puzzle, I looked fondly at it in my memories. After it entered my life, my grades returned to their previous places and were even higher. I had learned how to study, how to use my brain, and how to become quick with my mind.

I didn't want studying to mess with my training, so I spent all my spare time during school studying and finishing my homework there. Math and science were the easiest as all I had to do was remember the basics and upscale them as new methods of using them were introduced, and with that, things like language, history, and others which were mostly just grunt work that required time to complete rather than new knowledge like the other two, just got done in the spare time that had opened up in math and science.

I looked on fondly as I slowly climbed out of my own misery. I was not the only one watching though, eyes everywhere and every day seemed to find their way to me. I looked down below at my younger self, who seemed happier, and saw a dark cloud growing. My mind was always pessimistic, I doubted everything.

The teachers were nicer, and my "friends" talked with me more which caused me to doubt their sincerity and if they were truly my friends or if they were two-faced.

But there was a plan for that forming in my mind, I would wait and weed out all that I found out their true face, and then I would avoid them like the plague.

——————

"Time flew by fast didn't it well I hope high school is good." I said as I sat at the table.

"Oh it will be, that is where we will all get girlfriends and jobs." Replied Damon.

He had been spewing out the common beliefs of what high school was truly meant for.

"The classes are gonna get harder and harder, but we should sign up for the same classes." Said Clay.

He was a big chubby friend of mine that was always competitive. If he had awakened an affinity and ended up doing what I had done, he would've become great.

"Yeah, but unfortunately, I'm signed up for the mage classes, so that would be impossible." I said before going quiet, a part of my personality that was apparently so outstanding that I was labeled as the quiet kid.

"You still haven't told your mom, have you?" Questioned Clay as he finished up his tray.

"No I haven't, and I really don't want to. My brother got a job over the summer, and she has been taking a majority of his money, just imagine what she will do when she finds out I have an affinity."

'The money is just the surface of what she has been doing, if I share any more... I can't.'

"I won't even have a say before I'm a slave stuck in here working to give money to a black hole with no bottom."

"That's going to suck." Said Damon.

Damon was often lost in his own mind, his own fantasies. As the most social of the group, he often said the most words but added the least to a conversation. Especially when I brought up something about myself.

"Yeah," Clay chimed in.

The conversation fizzled out there, and we parted ways as we went to class.

My mom had gotten a new boyfriend at some point as I aged, but since she was just draining the money like usual, not much had changed. She had had a job for a while, but at the first chance, she quit. It was hard to watch as the days passed by, how did someone like her managed to reach her age.

'One day I can get away, I guess I could just go away now no one would be able to catch me, but it's still not right I'll have to put up with everything for four more years.'

Over the summer, I got a part-time job in order to get a phone. A phone would be necessary to use in high school. I also told my mother that he would be saving up the rest of my money for a laptop and calculator just so that she wouldn't bother me for money, but she still did. Excuses such as I took care of you for your entire life, so you owe me, or just a simple you live in the house, so you have to help pay for it, piled up and would not cease.

In the end, I only had enough for the phone.