Preface.
It was a well known fact in the town that Isaac Lahey was someone that has had it hard all his life. Everything started getting bad when The Lahey's lost their mother when Isaac was only seven years old. Mr. Lahey had begun drinking then and after his father had hit Isaac when Isaac had asked his father to stop drinking one night, the beatings had reoccurred almost every day. Things became worse when Isaac's older brother had left to join the military when Isaac was 12, but nothing, nothing compared to when his brother died in combat when Isaac was only 14 and his father had gone mad with grief.
Getting drunk was his father's only escape from the pain and Isaac served only as an outlet for the anger that Mr. Lahey felt. It was a normal thing to Isaac coming to school with every inch of his body covered up, even during the hottest days or to see him working as the school janitor after hours. He also worked in Whittmore Inc., the company that was owned by Beacon Hills Highschool star lacrosse player, Jackson Whittmore's father and because of that, he was bullied badly in school by the jocks. Isaac barely said anything to anyone and when he did, it was always quite, always careful and never more than a whisper.
His father had drilled into him two rules that he would never forget: Everything that Isaac owned was his father's and that he wasn't worth the dirt under someone's feet. Isaac worked quietly and accepted his father's beatings without complaint. He had learnt long ago that fighting back only made his father worse and when he had sought out help; his father had made sure that everyone knew that Isaac was not to be helped. Isaac still had the scars to show that.
So this was Isaac's life. School, work, giving his father almost every scrap of money he earned and earning beatings for things that he hadn't done. It was hell on earth and it was something that he had resigned the rest of his life to be.
People had stopped trying to help him, knowing full well the wrath of that Mr. Lahey could bring. When he walked on the street, people didn't look at him, or stared with pitying eyes. Some of his schoolmates gave him a sympathizing smile, but everyone knew that Mr. Lahey had ways of knowing who interacted with his son and who talked to him. It was a lonely life that Isaac had known, keeping to himself and to the front porch where he usually slept because his father continually kicked him out of the house.
He would talk to the plants that he tended in the garden and no one on his street on in Beacon Hills for that matter could say that they had a garden more in bloom than the one that Isaac Lahey tended to. Whenever summer came, the Lahey's garden was the only one that didn't yellow as badly and the flowers always made it through the heat.
This is was the life of Isaac Lahey. Living on the porch of his own house, eating once in two or three days if he was lucky, interacting with no one but himself and nature around him, beaten by his peers and his own father. Lonely. Unloved. Overlooked. Uncared for.
And then one day, Isaac woke up to the sound of a truck rumbling down the road and crouched by the porch stairs, peeking around the post. He saw a woman standing by the house two doors down and across the road from his own. She seemed to be talking to someone, but he couldn't see who it was. Isaac crept down the porch stairs and went to the edge of the garden, lowering himself down so that he was hidden by the rose bushes that were in full bloom. He looked through the bushes and his breath caught in his throat.
The woman was talking to a boy who looked like her son and he was smiling at her and when she laughed and punched his shoulder playfully, he turned and laughed with her. That was when he saw his face. His jaw line and his smile. His strong arms reaching around his mother to hug her and his playful brown eyes suddenly looking at him. Isaac recoiled and hid himself in the bushes, ignoring the pricks of thorns and there he sat for the next ten minutes.
And all Isaac could think was: "You're beautiful."