Stormborn

Snickering. He knew they were talking about him again. He'd seen the notes they wrote. Today it was a picture. One of the students had finished handing in his test and dropped a pencil sketch on Theo's desk. Theo picked it up to look at it. It was him—not a good rendition, but his name and an arrow pointing to the picture of a thin boy with dark hair over half of his face cleared any confusion—on his knees, with a bulging cock in his mouth and the word "FAGGOT" in bold over the top of the page. His blood rushed to his face.

They were snickering again. I heard you laugh, a song ran through his head, I saw you grin.

He didn't know who was laughing at him, and he didn't give himself the time to look. His fingers locked around his scientific calculator and he threw it at the back of the room. It missed everyone, hit the wall, and landed on the linoleum floor of his math classroom in a loud clattering of buttons and plastic parts.

"Thelonius A. Tamsin!" the teacher shouted.

Her voice rang in his ears, and he knew he was in trouble again, but it wasn't his fault. He wanted to explain everything. To say how the students kept harassing him, calling him names and drawing pictures of him, how much he hated going to school because nobody understood anything about him and nobody seemed to want to, and how much he just wanted someone to take his side for once. But all he managed to get out was a very loud "Fuck!" that echoed against the cement walls of his silent classroom.

The teacher gasped. It came out as a pathetic squeak as stale air pushed its way through her smoke-ridden lungs. She pointed to the door. "Get out of my classroom. Now! Go tell the principal what you've done."

Theo huffed and started to pick up his things.

"Don't take anything with you. You'll be back. Just go."

Theo shook his head to keep from crying and stormed out of the room into the empty hallway.

It occurred to him, as he stood in front of the assistant principal while he chided him for being
violent and disruptive and a failure, that he might have more to say in his defense if he'd thought to bring the picture with him. I know I'll wonder why, he thought, I did it to myself once again.

The lecture ended with the requisite, "Is there anything you have to say for yourself?"

To which Theo replied: "It doesn't fucking matter anyway." It was always the last sentence he thought of that managed to find its way out his lips.

And that's when the assistant principal decided that he deserved detention after school. That meant he'd miss the bus, which meant he'd have to call home for a ride, and he really didn't want to do that. Instead he asked if he could use the office phone and called his sister. Today I screwed up again.

Falene was tall, almost as tall now as his mother had been. Her voice was as warm and soft as her skin. She had bright hazel eyes that made everything seem light and beautiful. She could do nothing but hug Theo, and Theo would feel like everything in the world was all right. Falene always made everything all right.

When she came to Theo's school to pick him up, Theo was still in a foul mood. Then she hugged him, and after a minute he started to cry all those tears he'd been holding in since third period. He apologized to her, but he wasn't sure if it was for breaking the calculator, or yelling obscenities in class, or for making her come to pick him up, or for making her lie to Derek. She petted his hair, and he knew that she didn't blame him, and really this only made him cry more.

"Do you want me to get you ice cream?" she asked.

"I'm not a kid anymore," he said and wiped his tears.

"Is that a no?" She smiled.

"Yeah, sure. Can I drive?"

"Maybe next year." She ruffled his hair as he got into the car.

---

"I heard you got in trouble at school today." Lily smirked.

Lily was pale, bone thin, and completely evil. She fed herself almost entirely from black coffee and Theo's misery. She was older than Theo, but whenever she was home she was Daddy's little girl, an attention whore who sucked the light out of a room to shine it at herself. Her eyes were blue and icy, with heavy, dark bags hanging under them. Whenever she talked, Theo tried to ignore her, for his own sake. Those veins run cold, the tune was slow and ominous, now her evil highness rose.

"I'm talking to you!"

"What do you want?"

"I asked you a question."

"No, you made a comment." Theo began to walk away.

"Does Dad know?"

Theo turned around.

"Do you want me to tell him?"

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.

She shook her head. "You're so retarded. Go away."

That's what he'd been trying to do. He fumed as he walked up the stairs. He tried to listen for Lily. She seemed to be watching TV, so she was busy for at least the next hour. Derek was working at the hotel. It was safe to go to the attic.

The door to the attic was always locked. When Theo had found out that's where Derek kept all of his mother's things, he had looked online for a tutorial on lock-picking. It hadn't been difficult to find. He had used the gas stove to build a little makeshift pick and had tested it out on his bedroom door until he'd felt comfortable giving the attic door a try. The lock had given way more easily than he'd expected, and after picking it a few times, he could almost do it as quickly as Derek could open it using the key.

During the day, while Derek was at the hotel and Lily was off doing whatever it was that she did, Theo would sneak into the attic and sit in mother's dusty chair, read her old books, and try to catch her scent from her moth-ridden clothes. It's too far away. This is the closest he could get to her now. She had died when he was six after a fight with his father. Well, not his father. Derek.

He was there when it happened. He saw Derek and her yelling. Lazuli screamed at him, said she was leaving him and taking her children with her. Derek grabbed her, shook her. We'll forget the past. She lost her footing, tumbled backward like a stack of playing cards, crashed, collapsed. Her body, a mess of broken limbs, bent in impossible angles, watching him—staring—eyes wide open in a sticky blend of apology, pain, and terror . Or maybe it was his terror, because from that moment on he was afraid of Derek. It had been an accident, he'd been told. But Theo could not stop that image from repeating in his head, almost every night. His mother's eyes haunted him. But maybe I'm not able. Those green globes floated in his head.

The attic helped him to remember his mother like she had been. Her loving smile, her touch, her voice. Like Falene's but older and more soothing. Her hair draped over her shoulders. He liked to squeeze it in his little hands when she held him. He liked the way it smelled of aloe and sweat. He liked how it was always warm and a little wet.

Her clothes were dry and smelled of dust and years of abandon, but he could still smell the faintest trace of aloe and sweat. Maybe it was just him imagining it, but he could swear that it was still there. And if it was still there, then maybe she was still there too. In the attic. We were here and now. He wanted to sleep there and wait for her, to see if she'd come back and hold him like she used to, but he was afraid that Derek would know. Derek didn't want anyone up here messing with her things. Theo had to be very careful not to get caught. And he knew that if Lily ever caught him, she'd tell, and that'd be the end of it.

Theo made sure that everything was the way it'd been left—just in case Derek ever came up here. Derek didn't care, Theo knew, but he didn't want to risk it. He could just be looking for a reason to get rid of him like he got rid of her. But we will never be again.

On his way out, he heard it. A low rumbling like rolling thunder coming from inside the attic. He moved to the small circular window at the end of the attic and looked outside. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, and now the sound was coming from behind him. Theo walked around the attic. The rumbling grew louder as he walked past his mother's things. He pushed aside his mother's clothes and thought that the sound must be coming from behind some boxes. He started to move then one by one, carefully at first, but as the sound grew into the growling of a rampaging storm, he started to throw things aside feverishly, digging to find its source. The light in the attic buzzed and flickered, and then he found it.

A single, locked wooden chest, five feet wide. The lock looked old. Theo had to get inside. He had to know what was there. He took out his pick and was about to work the lock when he heard a car drive up. Derek.

He looked at the chaos he'd created. Boxes and clothes lay strewn along the attic floor, and now the secret chest stood exposed. There was no way he could hide it or put everything away in time, and Derek was surely on his way up the driveway now. Then he'd come up the stairs, and he'd know—somehow—that Theo'd been in the attic. That Theo had destroyed the order that he'd created. And that'd be it. And I break at the bend.

There was no time. Fuck. Theo ran through the attic door and locked it. Then he ran to his room and jumped into bed. He faced away from the door and pretended to sleep. He heard Derek's footsteps go down the hall. He felt his door open, then close again. I have found all that shimmers in this world is sure to fade. His heart pounded in his chest. Away. He shut his eyes and tried to stop hearing and feeling. Again. He didn't feel himself fall asleep.