Toni's story - Chapter 1

Toni's story - Chapter 1

Toni lifted the last moving box from the van, which he had rented, to the street, shut the van’s door and picked up the box to take it to his new, rented apartment. His mood was cheerful despite being exhausted from carrying all his belongings from the van to the third floor where his new flat was located. The apartment building was old enough not to have an elevator, so he had had to make five trips from the van to the apartment in order to get the job done. 

Toni wasn’t in a bad shape though. He did lots of sports with his friends and even visited the local gym on a daily basis.  Personally he would have preferred playing his Xbox all day long, but unfortunately his friends loved sports and he didn’t like either of the activities alone. Things might be about to change a little, though, as Toni now lived a bit further away from his friends having moved away from home at the age of eighteen. After the summer it would be his senior year in high school and his stepdad had basically told him to piss off now that Tony was responsible of himself according to the law.

Toni’s mother had passed away five years ago in a car accident and ever since then his stepfather had been starting to be more and more mean to him, perhaps due to drinking more and more beer or maybe because he never really liked Toni. The only reason why they could live together had been Toni’s mother, who had been a lovely personality. Toni had never understood what she had seen in this loud, grumpy man, who was actually almost twenty years older than Toni’s mother had been. When it came to Toni’s father, Toni had never met him as he had ran away with another woman when he had learned that Toni’s mother was pregnant.

 Either way, now Toni had to live by himself and thus he also needed a source of income. He did receive his student’s allowance, but the small payment of roughly 300 Euros a month was not even nearly enough for him. Thus he also needed a job and he was very lucky that a local clothing store had employed him. He had to work a few hours every day after school and full-time on weekends. He knew that combining his studying, work and social life would be hard but in the end it was well worth it as he knew that he never had to see his stepfather again. Also, it was June and he wouldn’t have to go to school before August so he didn’t worry much about the stressful winter. On the other hand, his work would start the next day. 

Toni had other worries, though. As a Finnish man he would have a year of military service to do after he would graduate from high school. He disliked the idea of going to the army as that prevented him from continuing straight to college and as far as he knew, the military service could postpone his college studies by up to two years. As a practical person Toni hated such a useless delay and he was constantly thinking of ways how to avoid it. There were only two lawful ways of which he knew: going to the civil service (which wouldn’t help as it would make him waste a year as well) or being unable to do the military service due to health reasons (which didn’t help him either as he was perfectly fit and healthy). Toni hadn’t talked about his problem with his friends, as he knew that his best friend Aleksi, who was travelling abroad for the whole summer, was fanatical of joining the army, which was rather obvious as he was always talking about it.

Pushing the unpleasant thoughts aside, Toni looked at his new one room flat now that all the furniture was in place. He was really happy to afford living there. The kitchen was fully renovated, which was good because Toni loved cooking. The walls were also recently painted and the floor was made of hardwood. The only problem was his furniture. He had been able to take his television, Xbox and sofa from his stepfather’s place as they were gifted to him by his mother. He had bought a small table and a few chairs, but he hadn’t been able to buy a proper bed so he would need to sleep on a mattress instead. Even though the mattress was far from an ideal bed, it seemed very inviting after the moving day. It was almost midnight as well, so Toni decided to get some sleep.