THIRTY-SIX

I knocked on Leo’s room door, and when I didn’t get a response, I opened it myself. He had his earpods on and had his head bent deep into what he was doing, of which he wasn’t aware of my presence.

He was studying, I thought.

I hovered around his study desk to take a look at what he was doing, and to my surprise, Leo was drawing. I quickly grabbed the notepad he was scribbling on to take a good look.

“Mom!” Leo reacted. “Give it back,” he demanded. Leo’s voice rose, which came as a shock to me.

“Leo, I just want to see what you are up to. I don’t care if you scribble all over your paper for as long as you are reading, and at the end of the day, this is just a silly hobby to you; it is not like you will be doing this all your life." I dropped the notepad on his desk and said, "Anyways, I heard that you called Rocky and told him you were sick and that he shouldn’t come."

“I did,” Leo answered as he straightened out the page that had been roughed out. “I am not ready to see his face,”

“T