Dream Smile
Episode 54

The daily needs budget that I have detailed in my notebook does not fit the reality. Not a month has my money been thinning not even enough at all just to eat.

"Where do I owe you?" my murmur languidly drowned my head on the leg I had bent.

It is not easy to live in Jakarta, even though my intention to first set foot here is to hang my hopes on this capital, the capital, which with great hopes I can get a degree is also a more decent profession to improve my future later. But right now I am like a man who has no hope, except to eat and to live.

I've also deferred the cost to Ms. Vina. I told him I didn't have a stash of money anymore, lucky he'd still tolerate it, but the next day?

I feel like I am back to feeling a dead end. I was here to trouble the people around me, not least Rico. He still always gave me a ride to go to the hotel when it coincided with our working hours together, also when leaving and going home from college. Inherently I lately did not even give him a little gas money.

"Yet again you are moody" the voice sounded along with the bathroom door opening. Vina's mom seems to be drying her hair. She walked to her mini-dresser, wearing a series of grooming creams that she regularly wears after her bath as well if she started the night break.

I lethargicly looked at her activity so skillful in taking care of herself. She is very beautiful even though she does not wear makeup. The skin of the band looks clean, when compared to me is very far the difference.

Glowing face, smooth skin, porposional body approaching the word plump and— hair that is as fragrant as I was at a distance of a meter radius from it. Really she is beautiful similar to the artists on television, or maybe if she volunteered to participate in the selection of the artist seems to be immediately accepted.

"Why do you see me that way?" mama asked Vina with her eyes pinched. I have memorized how he behaves, although his tone is not pleasant to hear but he did not mean that. He was acting that way because of his character and so far as I have lived with him, we have become close friends.

I'm shaking. "Beautiful mother," said I who keep directing the look of my eyes at him.

"I am beautiful" she said with confidence. "It's been since birth" he added.

And I only responded by shaking my mouth. "Believe!" I said with a lazy tone.

"But it is not necessary to look at it too" he protested by throwing a used cotton pad.

And I who was watching him even fend off and even catch him and then turn to throw the used cotton into the garbage basket. "Yep straight!" myrag.

"Mis it money again?" guess it's because I don't speak.

I also nodded. "It turns out that life in the capital is more cruel than joining a stepmother" I said with a sigh.

"Have you ever lived with a stepmother?"

I immediately shook my head. "Amit-amit, ma'am!" I said immediately knocking my forehead turning on the floor pat. See Father only I am not willing, especially to live with him or can not imagine also if you have to be with stepmother, not that is not possible and will not happen, my mind.

Vina's mother laughed at my behavior. While Zahra who was asleep was also not the least bit disturbed. I took a deep breath and said, "What if I drop out of college?"

Vina's mother stopped her activities. He was no surprise because this was the first time I said that, but I was very insistent on maintaining to continue my college education which was only half way back. But realizing that my brother really needed more than me, I wanted to focus on work.

Not without reason, because Zahra who has the status of a child with special needs is not suitable if you have to go to school in the place that is now. Just yesterday I received a complaint from him and I went to the school that right, Zahra had become a bully there.

"Zahra has to change schools" I said, now looking at Zahra. "Some days ago he broke down and after I asked him why, it turns out that his classmates did not give him good treatment" I said with heated eyes, my tears just fell without me preventing it.

"Then I kept forcing him to come in, and went to his teacher to be wiser and asked him to rebuke the other students in order to be a little kind to Zahra. But—," I started sobbing, it was hard to swallow the lump of saliva in my throat. "But I still don't know what happened there. I don't know, until— Zahra's attitude has begun to change, he is more silent and often emotional when at home. I'd love to close my eyes, but— but I can't. How he is, Zahra is still my sister. It's appropriate that I protect him, pull him from—from...."

Really, I really can't hold back my tears anymore. I didn't know Vina was beside me, she pulled me to hold me in the middle of a cry I couldn't stand.

I was so fragile, in my heart I screamed, voicing that I could not live this life. But God in fact always extends His hand through his chosen ones like Madam Vina who has lightened my burden in me living life here, regardless of the profession that I really do not like.

To be Continue