"Do you have any idea...... " He began to speak has he separated the glass bottle from his lips and swallowed. ".... how much of a failure you are?" He gave a sarcastic little chuckle and continued. "The fruit of my loins..... You know, I have to take that as a personal insult."
"Whatever Dad." Dante remarked as he rubbed his eyes and sat up. "I really don't have time for this today, it looks like I'm running late enough for school as is."
"Why bother?" His father replied after taking another swig of his cold one. "I don't take it you're learning anything there anyways."
With a stressful sigh, Dante paused and looked at his father sincerely. "Okay Dad, I'll bite. What's it all about today?"
His father tossed into Dante's lap the pieces of what looked to be and what once was a paycheck from work. The pieces were torn, crumpled up and looked to have been dried up from being previously soaked. Dante's hands went straight to his face in shock as he gave a devastated gasp. "Your mother found this in your laundry this morning. I told you to cash that for me, didn't I?"
"Just like our lazy, good for nothing son, isn't it?" A feminine voice remarked from outside the doorway as Dante's mother happened to pass by.
"Shut up, wench!!" His father shouted angerly. "I thought I told you to go fix my breakfast!!" His mother jolted in alarm and hurried away. He then focused his attention back to Dante. "Look right here son." He remarked, pointing to one of the torn pieces of the check. "It's worn, but it's still there. How much does it say?"
Dante calmed down a bit and let out another stressed-out sigh. "Dad, I don't have-"
"HOW MUCH!!" His father interrupted with a roar of anger, making Dante jump a mile. With a sigh, his son complied. "One-thousand, two-hundred."
"That's right" His father continued with another swig of his beverage. "One-thousand, two-hundred. That's how much money your lack of intelligence cost me. One-thousand, two-hundre-!"
"I don't have time for this!" Dante remarked as he tried to ignore his father and get up out of bed. His father, however, forcefully shoved him back into it. "Who said I gave you permission to leave!!" he shouted in the act of doing so. "Maybe.... " he continued as he began to survey the room. "Just maybe.... if I beat you over the head..... " At that point Dante threw himself out of his bed and made a dash for the door. But not before his father found his object of choice - a leg off of a broken chair his father had busted in his room the day prior. "I can get some intellect in there!!" He shouted with a swing of the chair leg, which caught Dante in the eye, knocking him to the floor. Dante rushed away back up to his feet all the way into the laundry room with his father charging after. In a rush of anxiety he slammed the door shut and locked it, and with a sigh of relief that evolved into sobbing, grabbed his bruised eye in pain and slid down with his back leaned against the wall into a fetal position where he continued to sob into folded arms around his knees. He continued this all while his father started beating on the door with the chair leg like some neanderthal. "What's the matter son!? I'm not done educating you yet!! Don't you want a quality education!! You're not getting one in school, that's for sure!!" His father continued to shout as Dante continued to sob heavily.
Later at school that day Nathaniel noticed Dante as he passed by sitting in the hallway in another fetal position against a locker with tears in his eyes. Instead of sobbing, however, he was starring off into space with a look of anger in his bruised eyes. Nathaniel took a seat right next to his friend in an attempt to console him.
"You know... " Dante started, whipping tears away from his eyes. ".....sometimes I wish I could just kill that son of a bitch!" He continued with the most sinister glare and the most ferocity in his voice he could muster before breaking out into a full sob again. Nathaniel looked at him somberly, wishing he could do more for his ailing friend. But he was never good at this whole comforting thing in the first place. Instead of saying anything, he just put his hand on Dante's shoulder, making it evident that at the very least, he was there for him.
But this gloomy mood wouldn't last very long for Nathaniel. For soon would he be off to his gym class. Now, how would one make any sense of a high school teenager looking forward to going to gym class? Nathaniel certainly did have his reservations about it no doubt. The boy's locker room is never kind to an adolescent young man after all, and it never had been particularly kind to Nathaniel through his gym-attending days. But he was above their cliches, stereotypes and cliques. While it was no secret he was ever any sort of athletic jock type of any sort, he had more of a nerdy kind of respect for sports, as much of an oxymoron as that would seem. He loved to follow and watch them, and while he was never particularly good at them or even enjoyed playing them with some of the more hardcore jock types of the class, he still found it as time to kick back, have fun and forget everything else. It was a lot better than having to take the alternative body-conditioning class with all of those neanderthals, after all. This was something Nathaniel learned in time to keep to himself, however. There was never any way their closed minds would possibly understand how beyond their way of doing things he was.
This had nothing to do with the joy he felt in his heart at the moment though. The reason why he was looking forward to it so much was because Mary Ogilvy was in his class. Sure, they were pretty shy around each other, and as such had a difficult time getting to know one another on the level of depth Nathaniel would have preferred. Nathaniel of course felt the way he did about her, but at the same time Mary was just simply that shy a person all around. She carried herself with all the confidence she could muster, but in spite of that fact she always made it evident in one form or another that she had some pretty serious personal issues, especially in the form of self-confidence. Nonetheless, the two had enough alone time in this one class, away from everyone else that associated themselves with either of them, that they actually had been able to build a fairly solid and mutually understanding friendship.
As he made his way through the gym doors, Nathaniel and Mary immediately laid eyes upon each other and greeted each other with a friendly smile. Nathaniel made his way over to hang with her a bit before class started, as he usually did.
"Hey Nathaniel! Come here, I have to show you this poem some guy wrote about me in my Creative Writing class." Marry started off casually.
"Ah, Creative Writing." Nathaniel remarked, trying to hide the fact that he was a bit put off by the idea of the poem. "I've really been wanting to take that class, but I needed to take up other credits instead."
"Yeah." Mary replied, putting him off. "Look at some of these lines though - 'she shines like the grace of heaven sent to bring rapture to my wretched soul'; 'why must I be confined to the bondage of sitting and starring as I watch her look away, refusing to acknowledge my existence..... '; 'I wish I could just hold her and embrace her lips with mine forever...... '"
"Well he sure is a poet, I'll give him that." Nathaniel replied lightheartedly, though inside wishing he could say those same things to Mary himself.
"He's a creeper is what he is!" Mary responded with disdain. "I swear everytime I see him he's eyes are glued to me with this..... this look....."
"So you just randomly decided to steal his homework one day?" Nathaniel teased, hiding away his discouragement at the statement. As if it wasn't hard enough to tell her how he felt.......
"No," Marry replied with a shy little chuckle. "we're supposed to exchange assignments, take them home and give criticism. He certainly wasted no time making sure I got his...... "
Out of curiosity, Nathaniel reached over to take a look at who it was who wrote the assignment. He clenched himself through his teeth, seething in disdain when he discovered that the name in the upper-left hand corner was that of Dante Weathers. Nathaniel managed to keep it to himself however, and proceeded with a fake, yet fairly believable tone.
"Ah, Dantie! Yeah, he's actually a really good friend of mine." He replied.
"Yeah, I've seen you two hanging out before." Marry continued with a sort of acknowlegingly shy yet distinguishable disdain.
Nathaniel looked away with a discouraged shyness, then looked back at Mary, proceeding uncomfortably. "You know...... he doesn't look like it, but.... he's really not a bad guy."
Marry scoffed and looked away, and there was a momentary uncomfortable silence between the two before Mary continued. "Paul's right about you, isn't he? Always seeing the good in people...... "
"Are you two..... " Nathaniel reluctantly attempted to ask, but never completed. Enough was inferred however to earn a response out of Marry. "What, with that busybodying jerk? No way!" She protested.
"But, you guys are always...... " Nathaniel continued, even more reluctantly than before.
"We're more like siblings than anything else I guess." Mary continued with a more somber tone. "Sure, he has a knack for sticking his nose in places it doesn't belong, but considering how similar our family situations are...... " Mary proceeded uncomfortably with the same somberness. "I don't think I'd be alive today if it wasn't for him."
Once again silence struck the two momentarily until Nathaniel decided to randomly break it. "So you know about him being adopted then, right?"
Mary was in a state of puzzlement as to why Nathaniel would say something like that before she responded with a bit of a confused chuckle. Nathaniel looked away in embarassment, wondering how he could be so stupid as to let something as crazy at that slip his mouth. He supposed he just wanted to keep conversation flowing seeing as how he actually quite enjoyed talking to her, as awkward as it was sometimes. Embarrassingly, he continued.
"Well.... you know.... don't tell him I told you this, but..... As the story goes his current parents found him abandoned on their porch one day. He still to this day has no idea who the real ones are..... "
"Sounds like a scene right out of a movie or something...... " Mary continued, still puzzled but awkwardly giving in to the conversation.
"That's a true story." Nathaniel responded in honesty as he looked away, still feeling stupid about himself. Taking note of this, Mary responded with a smile. "Well, I guess I understand a little better now why he doesn't get along very well with his parents or his older brother."
At that moment the coach walked in calling for everyone to line up in their warm-up blocks, thus breaking up the conversation. "Hey Nathaniel?" She caught his attention as the two went on their way. "I'm looking forward to our date this weekend." she continued with a smile.
Nathaniel's face turned bright red in response. "Me too." he replied, shooting her a kind, gentle smile.
Nathaniel's face turned bright red in response. "Me too." he replied, shooting her a kind, gentle smile.
Later that day Mary would come home to a familiar environment, as displeasing as it always was. Her parents were yet again in the other room having another heated argument. Sometimes she wondered whether or not she would feel more uncomfortable if they were ever able to actually get along for once. The unfamiliarity of the silence might possibly drive her mad. In the living room sat her older brother who was watching television, seemingly unphased by the fighting. It seemed like that's all he ever did - sit on that couch watching television, listening to their parents argue as if it was some form of art.
"You think they'll actually get divorced this time?" He asked his sister cynically, eyes still glued to the television.
"Sometimes I wish they would." Mary responded with a straight face as she made her way to her room.
"Oh-ho-ho-ho, nice response!" Her brother responded teasingly. "Look who's got the appetite for destruction all of a sudden!"
Mary continued on into her room, ignoring the condescending teasings of her brother until she closed the door. "Loser." She sighed with a roll of her eyes in his general direction. She tossed her stuff on the floor without care of the messiness it contributed to before proceeding to do what she always did - plug in the ear-buds full-blast to drown out the sound of the shouting, collapsed into her bed and curled up into a protective ball so as to shield herself from the penetrating vibes emitted by this distopian zoo she called a home.
