You might not know it, not if you watch Jerry Springer, Maury, or any other daytime program, but most people actually have happy childhoods. Maybe not perfect, but happy. Take Delilah, for instance. Sure, her dad died last year. She cried for a week. But before that? She went horseback riding with him every weekend. She flew to Paris with her mother for shopping sprees. Every Christmas they put up a big ass tree and then flew to Aruba. And Stan's parents were divorced, but they lived two streets down from each other. Stan's dad was the one who taught him to play football. Stokely's parents have dragged Stokely to every parent-teacher night since the beginning of creation. Stokely's mother gave her a copy of 'The Feminine Mystique' when she was thirteen and didn't bat an eyelash when she dyed her clothes black in the tenth grade.
They had a family. They had a home they wanted to come back to. They had happy memories.
Zeke? He wasn't like that. He didn't have a dad to play football with -- he didn't have a dad at all. He had a mother who was too busy jet setting around the world to give a damn about anything but herself. The only reason she kept the house in Herrington was so she could stick Zeke in it.
But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, Zeke was lucky. Lucky, because he has a cool car and a trust fund with enough money to buy a small country, because he could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. It didn't matter that he didn't have any parents, or friends, or that he couldn't remember a time when he wasn't alone. That he couldn't remember being happy.
He didn't have a place. He couldn't stand the in-crowd -- the popular kids, the rich kids. Like miniatures of his mother, thinking clothes meant everything and sex meant nothing. Zeke lies as well as the next person, but hypocrisy is a personal pet peeve.
No one else accepted him either. He became their dealer; he sold them porn and fake IDs and scat, but he didn't come out of that with anything except more money he didn't need.
Before the invasion, Zeke had seen Casey around. Of course. And he's always knows that someone had damaged Casey, had hurt him enough to obliterate any self-esteem the poor kid had. Zeke just always thought it was the other students. There are few things crueler than high schoolers, God knows, and the jocks could teach Spanish Inquisition panels a trick or two. All those times people beat up on Casey, and all those times he just let him... Zeke never thought it was because Casey's parents were as worthless as his own.
Oh sure, Casey's were there. He guesses that counts for something. But the way they made his life miserable sort of detracts from the appeal. They ran his whole life for him, for "his own good," all the while trying to mold him into something he could never be. Casey's dad wanted him to play football, for Christ's sake. Had Casey's dad ever looked at him? 5 foot nothing, 110 pounds dripping wet. Asking Casey to play football was like asking him to step out in front of a Mac truck, only with more humiliation.
It only makes sense, Zeke thinks, that he and Casey stick together. Stan and Stokely are doing well enough on their own, carving out their high school niche. Delilah's the type who doesn't need anyone. Not really. And Zeke and Casey? They've got parents, sure. But they don't need them. They don't have a family like other people have families. They don't have homes they want to come back to, or happy memories. Zeke thinks they've been alone for way too long. And he's going to do something about that.
