I am a socially awkward mandork."
"Nicholas Ambrosius Gautier! You watch your language!"
Nick sighed at his mother's sharp tone as he stood in their tiny kitchen looking down at the bright orange Hawaiian shirt. The color and style were bad enough, the fact it was covered in l-a-r-g-e pink, gray and white trout (or were they salmon?) was even worse. His sister, Marie, sat at the mismatched kitchen table stifling laughter. Her clothes weren't nearly as bad, in old jeans and a ruffle grey shirt that tied in a bow at her hip; she actually looked like she could fit in at school.
"Mom, I can't wear this to school. It's..." he paused to think real hard of a word that wouldn't get him grounded for life– "hideous. If anyone sees me in this, I'll be an outcast relegated to the loser corner of the cafeteria."
"You already are, why worry?" Marie questioned with a giggle and a friendly nudge. He sneered at her jokingly and elbowed her in the arm.
As always, their mother scoffed at his protest. "Oh shush. There's nothing wrong with that shirt. Wanda told me at the Goodwill store that it came in from one of those big mansions down in the Garden District. That shirt belonged to the son of a fine upstanding man and since that's what I'm raising you to be..."
Nick ground his teeth. "I'd rather be a delinquent no one picks on."
She let out a deep sound of aggravation as she paused while flipping bacon. "No one's going to pick on you, Nicky. The school has a strict no bullying policy." The twins shared a look. Marie may have dressed the part, but by association to him she was also considered a loser. They knew that the 'policy' wasn't worth the "contract" paper it was written on. Especially since the bullies were illiterate idiots who couldn't read it anyway.
Jeez. Why wouldn't she listen to him? It wasn't like he wasn't the one going into the lion's den every day and having to traverse the brutality of high school land mines. Honestly, he was sick of it and there was nothing he could do.
He was a massive loser dork and no one at school ever let him forget that. Not the teachers, the principal and especially not the other students.
Why can't I flash forward and bypass this whole high school nightmare?
Because his mom wouldn't let him. Only hoodlums dropped out of school and she didn't work as hard as she did to raise up another piece of worthless scum– it was a harped on litany permanently carved into his brain. It ranked right up there with:
Be a good boy, Nicky. Graduate. Go to college. Get a good job. Marry a good girl. Have lots of grandbabies and never miss a holy day of obligation at church. His mom had already road mapped his entire future with no diversions or pit stops allowed. Marie didn't get that because she was less likely to screw up, but she was still expected to graduate, go to college, marry and have lots of kids- after everything else had passed.-no teen pregnancy for her.
But at the end of the day, he loved his mom and appreciated everything she did for him, he knew Mar did too. Except for this whole, do what I say, Nicky. I'm not listening to you because I know better thing, she said all the time.
He wasn't stupid and he wasn't a troublemaker. She had no idea what he went through at school and every time he tried to explain it, she refused to listen. It was so frustrating.
Gah, can't I catch swine flu or something? Just for the next four years until he was able to graduate and move on to a life that didn't include constant humiliation? After all, the swine flu had killed millions of people in 1918 and several more during outbreaks in the seventies and eighties. Was it too much to ask that another mutant strain of it to incapacitate him for a few years?
Maybe a good bout of Parvo...
You're not a dog, Nick.
True, no dog would be caught dead wearing this shirt. Whizzing on it would be another matter...
Sighing in useless angst, he looked down at the crap shirt he wanted desperately to burn. Okay fine. He'd do what he always did whenever his mom made him look like a flaming moron.
He'd own it.
I don't want to own this. I look like epically stupid.
Man-up, Nick. You can take it. You've taken a lot worse.
Yeah, all right. Fine. Let them laugh. He couldn't stop that anyway. If it wasn't the shirt, they'd humiliate him over something else. His shoes. His haircut. And if all else failed, they'd insult his name. Didn't matter what he said or did, those who mocked would mock anything. Because some people were just wired wrong and they couldn't live unless they were making other people suffer.
His Aunt Menyara always said no one could make him feel inferior unless he allowed them to.
Problem was he allowed it a lot more than he wanted to.
His mom set a chipped blue plate on the side of the rusted out stove. "Sit down, baby, and eat something. I was reading in a magazine that someone left at the club that kids score much higher on tests and do a lot better in school whenever they have breakfast." She smiled and held the package of bacon up for him to see. "And look. It's not expired this time."
He laughed at something that really wasn't funny. One of the guys who came into his mom's club was a local grocer who would give them meat sometimes when it expired since all the guy did was throw it out anyway.
"As long as we eat it quick, it won't make us sick."
Another litany he hated.
Picking up the crispy bacon, he glanced around the tiny condo they called home. It was one of four that had been carved out of an old rundown house. Made up of three small rooms- the kitchen/living room, his mom and sister's bedroom and the bathroom- it wasn't much, but it was theirs and his mom was proud of it so he tried to be proud too.
Most days.
He winced as he looked at his corner where his mom had strung up dark blue blankets to make a room for him on his last birthday. His clothes were kept in an old laundry basket on the floor set next to his mattress that was covered with Star Wars sheets he'd had since he was nine– another present his mom had picked up at a yard sale.
"One day, Mom, I'm going to buy us a really nice house." With really nice stuff in it.
She smiled, but her eyes said she didn't believe a word he spoke. "I know you will, baby. Now eat up and get to school. I don't want you dropping out like me." She paused as a hurt look flitted across her face. "You can see exactly what that gets you."
Guilt cut through him. He and Mar were the reason his mom had dropped out of school. As soon as her parents had learned she was pregnant, they'd offered her one choice.
Give up the baby or give up her nice home in Kenner, her education and her family.
For reasons he still didn't understand, she'd chosen them.
It was something Nick never let himself forget. But one day he was going to get all that back for her. She deserved it and for her, he'd wear this godawful shirt.
Even if it got him killed...
And he'd smile through the pain of it until Stone and his crew kicked his teeth in.
Trying not to think about the butt-whipping to come, Nick ate his bacon in silence, watching as his sister tried to get a brush through knotted brown blonde hair. Maybe Stone wouldn't be in school today. He could get malaria or the plague, or rabies or something.
"Marie stop that right now, you're gonna rip out all your hair if you keep that up. Here give me that," their mom pried the brush from her fingers and proceeded to split her hair into multiple sections. She eased the brush through them individually using slow, easy strokes that showed patience his sister didn't have. He chuckled as she winced and jerked when Cherise hit a particularly nasty tangle.
Yeah, may the smarmy freak get a pox on his privates.
That thought actually made him smile as he shoved the grainy powdered eggs in his mouth and swallowed them. He forced himself not to shiver at the taste. But it was all they could afford.
He glanced at the clock on the wall and jerked, flicking Marie's arm he jumped up. "Gotta go. We're going to be late."
She dropped the brush with a sigh, Marie's hair shown bright but as she flipped her head down and rounded up her locks in a sloppy ponytail, Cherise shook her head and grabbed him for a bear hug.
Nick grimaced. "Stop sexually harassing me, Mom. I gotta go before I get another tardy."
She popped him on the butt cheek before she released him. "Sexually harassing you. Boy, you have no idea." She ruffled his hair as he bent over to pick up his backpack. He grabbed Mar's while she fought off another hug and then and they both hit the door running. They launched themselves from the dilapidated porch and sprinted down the street, passed broken down cars and garbage cans to where the streetcar stopped.
"Please don't be gone..." Nick muttered. Marie glared at him.
"So help me Nick, if it's gone Ma is not going to be your biggest fear."
They both knew what would happen if they were late again. "Nick? What are we going to do with you, you white trash dirt?" lecture from Mr. Peters, he didn't even want to think about what the man would say to Marie, he was always talking to her alone in his office. It worried Nick sometimes, but then he'd remember watching her punch Stone's lackeys and he'd laugh the worry away. The old man hated their guts and the fact that they were both scholarship kids at his snotty over privileged school seriously ticked Peters off. He'd like nothing better than to kick them out so that Nick and Marie wouldn't "corrupt" the kids from the good families.
Nick's lip curled as he tried not to think about the way those decent people looked at him like he was nothing. More than half their dads were regulars at the club where his mom worked, yet they were called decent while he and his mom and his sister were considered trash.
The hypocrisy of that didn't sit well with him. But it was what it was. He couldn't change anyone's mind but his own.
Nick put his head down and ran full speed as he saw the streetcar stopped at his station.
Oh man...
He picked up speed and he broke out into a dead run. He hit the platform and leapt for the streetcar. He'd caught it just in time. Mar gripped the pole on his right and swung herself up on the step behind him just a split second after him. She grinned dusting herself off and shoved him forward.
Panting and sweating from the humid autumn New Orleans air, he shrugged his backpack off as he greeted the driver. "Morning Mr. Clemmons." He didn't even bother glancing at Mar, he knew she was fine. Running didn't bother her; she loved to run and was on the track team. She was only slightly sweating and when she let her hair down and held it out the window. He knew it would be perfect when they got to the school.
The elderly African American man smiled at him. He was one of Nick's favorite drivers. "Morning, Mr. Gautier." He always mispronounced Nick's last name. He said it Go-chay instead of the correct Go-shay. The difference being Go-chay traditionally had an "h" in it after the "t" and as Nick's mom so often said, they were too poor for anymore letters. Not to mention, one of his mom's relatives, Fernando Upton Gautier, had founded the small town in Mississippi that shared his name and both were pronounced Go-shay. "Your mom made ya'll late again?"
"You know it." Nick dug his money out of his pocket and quickly paid before taking a seat. Winded and sweating, he leaned back and let out a deep breath, grateful he'd made it in time.
Unfortunately, he was still sweating when he reached school. The beauty of living in a city where even in October, it could hit ninety by eight a.m. Man, he was getting tired of this late heatwave they'd been suffering.
Suck it up, Nick. You're not late today. It's all good.
Yeah, let the mocking commence.
He smoothed his hair down, wiped the sweat of his brow and draped his backpack over his left shoulder.
"Go to the bathroom inside, wet a paper towel or something. You'll die of heat stroke if ya don't." He grinned reassuringly at Mar. She worried a lot even though he wasn't sick like she was.
"You sure you're okay?" She waved his concern away, pressing two fingers to her back pocket, silently telling him she had her meds if she needed them.
Marie had been born with a rare disease that resembled TB but wasn't actually. Her lungs weren't failing but there were times when her heart would slow too much too fast and her lungs wouldn't be able to get her enough breath. She would collapse for fifteen to twenty minutes, an hour at most. As long as she had her medication, someone could give it to her or she could take it at the beginning of an attack and it would reset her body. The only problem was that the meds she took weren't registered at hospitals; it was all their Aunt Menyara's own creation. Marie had only actually been to a hospital once when she had her first attack. They couldn't afford to go back again. She could have been getting worse by the day, and they would never know.
Shaking the thought away, he nudged her with his shoulder and held his head high in spite of the snickers and comments about his shirt and sweaty condition. They walked across the yard and through the doors like they owned them. It was the best he could do.
"Ew! Gross! He's dripping wet. Is he too poor to own a towel? Don't poor people ever bathe?"
"Looks like he went fishing, in the Pontchartrain and came up with that hideous shirt, instead of a real fish."
"That's cause he couldn't miss it. I'll bet it even glows in the dark."
"I bet there's a naked hobo somewhere wanting to know who stole his clothes while he was sleeping on a bench. Gah, how long has he owned those shoes anyway? I think my dad wore a pair like that in the eighties."
Nick turned a deaf ear to them and focused on the fact that they really were stupid. None of them would be here if their parents weren't loaded. He was the scholarship kid. They probably couldn't have even spelled their names right on the exam he'd aced to get in.
That was what mattered most. He'd much rather have brains than money.
Though right now, a rocket launcher might be nice too. He just couldn't say that out loud without the faculty calling the cops on his having "inappropriate" thoughts.