I've traveled many places in my life, all of them for my dad's stupid job as an owner of a very large hotel company. We've never actually had a place to call home. Once I feel a close connection to the place we are staying at, one phone call can rip my hopes of becoming a normal kid, with normal friends, at one normal place. I have always felt shy around my peers at my school. Kids would always call me names like "Ritchie Rich" or "Spoiled brat." No one treated me normal, I felt isolated, cold, and lonely in all of my schools. One day, my dad got a phone call saying that we had to move to Tuscany, Italy because one of his hotels caught fire when some drunken man set the hotel in flames. My father was devastated and angry because that was the hotel that brought in most of the tourists. This time, I was very happy to move to Tuscany because it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
My school was ranked maybe a 72 out of a possible 100. It was fairly new, but the school was a real fixer-upper, the gutters needed replacement, the grass needed mowing, and the walls were vandalized by some Italian pranksters. Other than that, it was beautiful; our playground was a whole vineyard to run around in. The inside of the school looked a lot better than the outside, each room you were in, it felt as if you were in a Leonardo Da Vinci painting. This was going to be a great school.
Finally! I got my class schedule for the sixth grade. My school was called Italian Heart Grade School. It had all the regular stuff an American school would have: Math, Social Studies, Science, Language Arts, P.E., Music, Art, Computer, and Library. My homeroom teacher was Ms. Prosculi, was a very inviting woman in her mid thirties. Ms. Prosculi taught math. I was the only American out of the 21 people in the classroom. Two thirds of the class was Italian and I saw two Asian children, three British children and one Native American child.
"Class please sit down, we have a new student in the classroom." Ms. Prosculi said in a mellow tone. I was asked to stand up in front of the classroom and talk about myself. "Hello, I am Toby Manson and my father is the owner of Comfort Hills Hotels." My voice sounded so rough I felt like I was losing my voice. The only one who looked interested in what I was saying was the Native American boy; I learned earlier his name was Thomas. Thomas was a skinny boy who had hair come down to his eyes. He wore a hand-me-down polo shirt with glasses. His shoes seemed too small for his feet and his pants were so small they looked like capris. The weird thing was that he had no last name. It shocked me because everyone else had a last name. "Everyone pair up to study for the math test we have next week!" Everyone paired up like lighting, one student wanted to study with Ms. Prosculi.
The last pair was the Native American boy and me. "It looks like you and I are paired up for the math test," Thomas said, still practicing to speak English. The math test was over fractions, my specialty, but it was very difficult for Thomas. I helped him with the fractions, he was very thankful I was teaching him. "Thomas, what is one half plus one half?" I said, questioning Thomas. "1 whole!" Thomas shouted. "Correct! Dude! You're gonna ace this test!" I could never describe the look in Thomas's face, a mixture of self confidence and accomplishment. This was a start of a new friendship.
Thomas called me on the weekend to meet him in town square. I rushed over and met him by one of the buildings. "Man! Ain't it a beautiful day?" I blurted. "Sure is," Thomas sighed. "Thomas, you wanna go get some pizza? It's on me." We walked over to the pizzeria. "12 euros for a pizza," a flabby man in an Italian accent grunted at us. I handed him the money. As we waited for a pizza, Thomas and I talked about ourselves for awhile. I realized that Thomas was the only kid who respected me for who I was. I learned he lives in a bad neighborhood and that he is at Italian Heart on a scholarship. His father was thrown in jail for rebelling against the Italian government and his mother has seven jobs at the night shift.
"I never get to see her, I visit my father every two months but he is never glad to see me. I wish I had your life Toby; you are the richest family in Italy. You don't know how it feels like; you could never know how it feels like." He began crying, I tried to empathize and said "I know how you feel." "No! You will never know how I feel," Thomas ran out of the pizzeria five minutes before the pizza arrived. There was a weird thought in my mind that I was partially responsible, I just may have lost my one and only friendship.
When I arrived home, my parents were sitting next to each other on the couch, staring at me when I walked in, something was wrong. "We have some news for you Toby dear." She always has that tone right when we are about to move again. "Son, the issue with my hotel here is over, we have another crisis on our hands, my hotel in Tokyo, Japan is being sued for possible food poisoning, we'll have to move." "Dad! Whenever you have a problem with one of your hotels, you always drag us along! I'm sick of it! Can't you just fly to Tokyo and come back here to Tuscany later? Have you ever thought that you are ripping me away from my friends?" "But Toby you don???t have any friends," Dad retorted back. "Well you're wrong!" I went to my room and slammed the door behind me, I was feeling ultimate rage, my mind was racing, I couldn't control myself, I shut my eyes and fell asleep.
Monday came along and I didn't feel like seeing Thomas. He looked different, he had a crew cut and his clothes looked fairly new. He never mad eye contact with me for about an hour. "Class, please get with your partners you were with last week to do a quick review on the fractions." Ms. Prosculi said. I gave a heavy sigh. He still sounded upset I tried to make some small talk. "Hey Thomas, I like your new hair." "Stop talking to be Toby!" He was still angry so I just backed off. The only time he let me talk was when I answered and asked fraction problems. "Boys, I couldn't help but notice that you too have been a little upset with each other. If one of you did something that hurt one of your feelings, just forgive and forget. It will be easy and you will find that you will be best of friends again. So I will leave you two boys alone to talk about it." Ms. Prosculi left, Thomas just stared at me, so I started the conversation. "Thomas, I know we got a little rough at the pizzeria and all, I just wanted to apologize. You're right, I would never know how it would feel to be poor, my dad has over 1 billion dollars. I'm sorry, and if you are listening to this, it's coming from my heart, I am truly sorry." "I guess I was being a little of a jerk, it's just I'm sick of people calling me poor all the time." Thomas sobbed. "So can we be friends again?" "Friends until the end!"
