You are not your father.
The door smashes into it's frame behind you as you storm out of the house. Your hands reach to grip the peeling and splintered wood of the porch railing, forcing you to an abrupt halt. Your white knuckle grip on the poor condition of the railing hurts your hands. Your muscles are tense and your jaw clenched tight. Again, it hurts, but there's nothing but fields for miles, nowhere to go.
It should be obvious by now. Maybe it's because you have Dad's sandy hair ("He looks so much like George") and Dad's lazy grin ("Such a shame") and Dad's whole face, really ("That boy's poor mother"), and how as each year passes, people seem to push more it and more. ("Your dad would be so disappointed in you, Jim")
You take deep breaths, chest heaving, in an attempt to calm the insides-pushing-out feeling. Your hands grip impossibly tighter for a moment, before easing, nails still digging into the soft wood. Pent up energy thrums through you, and you focus hard on inhale, hold, exhale, to keep your legs from kicking the rail or taking off running.
When you were younger, you used to wonder why sometimes Mom would just stare at you and cry.
Grasping your large plastic ships in your small hands, you would across the galaxy of your living room, stopping when you heard a loud sniffle. Hands dropping to your sides, you turned to see your mom standing in the doorway. She looked away before your gazes could meet, tears streaking down her face. You frowned, confused, and took a step towards Mom. She didn't move, her shoulders just began to shake. The ships dropped from your fingers, forgotten until they clattered to the ground. Mom flinched back, head snapping towards you.
Her face contorted into a sad, scared expression you didn't know a word for, and she drew in a heavy, shuddering breath. A broken sob, then she turned and fled.
You tried to follow, but found her bedroom door locked.
"Mom?" You knocked on the door.
The only answer was tearful sniffling and the occasional sob. You started crying, too. You didn't know what you did or what to do. You would stay like that, crying with her, until your older brother, Sam, came, scooping you up in his arms. He'd gently shush you as he carried you to room you shared, while you clung to him, face pressed to his chest. Either that or Frank would find you at the door, hear Mom's crying, and send you off with another look you couldn't name-it was more angry-before disappearing into her room himself.
You're too much like your father for her, and not enough like him for everyone else.
Frank isn't your father either.
That's probably why Mom married him. From what you've heard about Dad, Frank isn't anything like your brash-with-a-heart-of-gold war hero father, George Kirk, preferring to keep his feet on the ground. But you knew your Mom didn't want to be reminded of the husband she lost, and Frank was there, stable, not George, and really did care about her. You glance back at the house, cringing when you see him lumbering up the stairs through the dusty window.
You're so sick of her leaving you here with him. It was bad enough the first time she left, on your seventh birthday. Her trip, a simple transport mission, only lasted a couple weeks, but things got tense between Frank and Sam quick. For the first few days things were fine. It was a bit lonely without her, but Sam played with you more to make up for the fact that she missed your birthday, so you didn't complain too much. Then Frank started to make comments, frustrated with having to care of the two you by himself. He'd call Sam a lazy good for nothing if he left his school bag out, or you an idiot for forgetting to do the dishes. But they were few and far between enough that they could be brushed off in a matter minutes.
The day Frank's comments reached beyond toleration, it was like a dam broke.
Your mom started taking on more mission, longer ones, and her absence became like a black hole, an inescapable reality as long as she was gone that pulled the everyone at the Kirk household deeper into the dark. Between that and Frank's growing irritation, school work seemed too distant a problem. So when science fair was over, you reluctantly brought home a D, Sam behind you. The second Frank saw it he scoffed.
"Shame that you look so much like your Dad, but ain't nothing like him."
Sam exploded ("You don't get to say that,"), putting himself in front of you ("You didn't even know Dad!"), getting right up in Frank's face ("Jim isn't him, and doesn't have to be!"). There was no going back after that.
Sam was unleashing everything he had at Frank, who threw it all back. You scrambled upstairs to the bedroom you shared with Sam, darting under the covers of your bed. It went on and on, and you did your best to not listen to any of it, until it didn't anymore. It stopped so suddenly that it took you a couple seconds to notice. Carefully removing your hands from your ears, you listened intently for answers.
It was not a long wait.
A few moments later Sam walked in the room, drained.
"Are you okay?" you asked, eyeing your brother as he shuffled towards your bed, slumping down next to you, sides brushing. "I mean, Frank's kinda scary when he's mad."
Sam slung an arm around your shoulder, pulling you close. "You don't need to be afraid of him. He's a coward, and besides, you've got me here. I'm your big brother, and the only one can pick on you is me." He shook you a bit, getting a laugh out of you.
"He's a jerk, and you shouldn't listen to him. But you really gave it to him good."
"Yeah, you think so?" Sam smirked, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Yeah I do!"
The last five days of Mom's vacancy were much calmer.
But during the absences to follow, it was as though you could feel the tension like hands pushing down on your shoulders, your chest. You couldn't breath or move properly, and as the line of Sam's shoulder got tighter with every disapproving look and comment from Frank, the hands pressed harder, backing you up to the walls, out of sight. There were the nights when the sound of glass shattering and thuds against walls joined the shouting You just tried to keep your head down, grades up, and room clean.
Frank kept getting on Sam's case for everything he did and Sam would always push back. Pushing and pushing until you were thirteen and Sam left.
You ball your hand into a fist, slamming it down on the railing with a deep thud. Regaining your grip on the railing, you lean whole bodied over the rail, a primal growl threatening to rip out of your throat. You screw your eyes shut, body shaking with the effort to keep everything contained, to maintain control of yourself. You can't fly off the handle. Inhale, hold, exhale. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
You know now it doesn't matter how well behaved you were. After Sam wandered off to who knows where and Mom still didn't stay, you gave up on that little fantasy. You started skipping classes whenever teachers gave you that "If only your father could see you," look. You beat up Shawn Carlson for picking on some sixth grader, Roger Newport for talking about your dad, and John Larson just because. You mouthed off to Frank, not longer willing to take whatever he dished out lying down.
None of this changed even when Mom was home. She was exasperated with you, at her wits end whenever she had to come home to find you'd been suspended from school again, or driven Dad's antique car into the quarry.
You try to keep breathing, briefly turning you gaze outward. Moonlight glints off the of the assortment of rusty automobile parts that little the yellowing lawn, and you can see stars through the missing planks in old barn across the yard as you start to think about what a mess everything had become. God, she won't even look you in the eyes anymore. You started to do the same, even if you can't admit to yourself why: It's the only way to get her to look at you at all.
"Do you like nearly ending up in Juvenile detention every other week?" She demanded.
"Maybe I love it."
You got in a bike accident when you were fifteen. That had been the day Frank put his fist where is mouth is, finally making good on his threats to beat your ass. Despite knowing damn well now what Sam had been through back then, you just ran. Hopped on the bike you kept hidden in the barn, and all you remember after that was a loud screech, a feeling a weightlessness, and black before you woke up to blinding white. Your head felt like someone had taken a jack hammer to it. The rest of your body didn't fair much better. You flinched away from the stinging brightness, blinking until your vision cleared. You wanted Sam.
With a groan, you rolled your head to the side, surprised to see Mom slumped over in one of the chairs by the too white hospital bed. She wasn't supposed to back for another week.
"Mom?" you rasped out.
She stirred quickly, hastily straightening in her chair. Her eyes locked onto you-scared, relieved.
"George!" She gasped out, face instantly morphing to shock.
Numbness pooled in your legs and arms, mind going utterly blank. You looked at each other for seconds or hours, there was no way to know.
Oh.
You have Dad's eyes.
"Jim I... I-I should-" She stuttered, stumbling out of the chair, making a beeline for the door.
You stared at the empty doorway, aching and heavy, and the back of your eyes stung. She never apologized, and you never brought it up.
Even as your breaths even out, you continue to lean over the rail. The solidity of it in your hands grounds you. You just want her to see you, not the ghost of your dead father. You wish you could storm back into the house and yell right in her face, "I'm not George! I'm Jim! It's not my fault he died! I didn't ask to look like him, I didn't ask for any of this!"
But it wouldn't change a thing. Mom would still leave in the morning, and Frank would be furious that you upset Mom. She didn't even tell you she was leaving until all of five minutes ago!
You straighten up, raising your head to the stars. A sudden pull of want and need nearly knocks you off your feet. A need to go there, out into the unexplored universe, free from the oppressive gravity of Earth and everything on it. The knowledge that you belong there, that there's no point if you don't go.
A cold breeze blows through your air and across your face, pulling you back below the horizon. Frank's voice booms through the walls, shouting for you.
You can't stay here, but there's nothing but fields for miles, nowhere to go.