Expectations

Mrs. Green's yells echoed in the room but both Toby and Eva didn't care. They were afraid of how their guardians would react. Toby fell into thought, he was already stripped of most of his freedom, what would happen now? 

Toby's mother was fastidious and strict. She would rarely hit him, but in exchange she tortured him mentally. Toby's mother never intended for it to go this way, she thought that it would help him, but she was wrong. Every day she would criticize him, and if he fixed the issue she'd simply find another flaw.

"Your handwriting looks like it was written by a preschooler. I can't even read it." Toby's handwriting wasn't the best, but it was readable, unlike Eva's. 

"You should be more like -------, their work is so neat. Try to be more like them." Toby was compared to everyone, the neighbor's sons or daughters, any person his mother could think of. 

"Why don't you be like Madilyn, she helps her parents do ---. Why can't you be like Daniela? She puts so much effort into her schoolwork."

Toby hated it, but he never made it clear, he wanted to make her happy, but that seemed impossible. His mother would buy him books for studying and she'd always ask,

"Why don't you study more? You have the resources, it's as if you want to get bad grades." 

Toby would use the books to study but he never enjoyed it, or at least when he was forced to. He prefers to read fantasy books and conspiracy theories about the land above. All his grades were all A's or A+'s. Toby didn't need to study, he already knew most things. 

When Toby started to leave the house more to be with Eva his mother would say,

"Why don't you read more? You don't read as much as you used to." But before that she said that he needed to stop reading and go out. After one problem fixed itself another appeared. 

As the two kids were conveyed to the office, they were only able to wait for the inevitable. Mrs. Green and Ms. Lyvia were sitting across from them inside the main office, and both kids just finished listening to a lecture. The door opened and a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties stepped in. He had short, straight, black hair identical to Eva's but his skin was a lighter shade and his eyes were a deep green unlike Eva's brown eyes. As Toby looked down he could see Eva shivering in place, she was also pale in the face.

The next person who came through the door was Toby's mother who looked at him as if he did something diabolical. He put his head down and imitated the exact behavior as Eva. Toby would not be ready for what would happen inside this meeting.

fastidious- very attentive and concerned about accuracy and detail

diabolical- disgracefully bad or unpleasant