4 – The Problem Child

"This is unacceptable! I bet it's that damn Pokemon Gym you're going to all the time! I don't want to see you going there anymore!"

"Like hell," I replied.

"Don't back-talk me! I am your mother!"

"I'm leaving."

"Where are you going? Get back here!"

"Flint's place."

"You're going to that jock's house again? I bet that pervert will be there too."

"He's not even remotely perverted."

"You stay put! You've got studying to do! Do you hear me? Are you listening? Get the fuck back here!"

I waved her off.

"You are the first Denzi to ever have a shot at making something of himself, I am not going to allow you to waste it so you can fuck around with Pokemon and indigents! Volkner!"

"Fuck off."

"You goddamned child, get the fuck back here!"

"That bitch," I muttered.

Gill gave me a pained expression.

"What?" I asked.

"Why do you cuss so much, Volkner?"

"I don't cuss that much."

"Yes you do, all the time. I know you think people can't hear you because they're not paying attention, but they are, and they do."

"Don't rail on me for being a potty mouth. I don't need another mother."

"No," Gill shook his head, "I don't want to be judging you for it. I just think it's a symptom of something wrong in your life. Can you tell me what's bothering you?"

"It's nothing," I said.

Gill's look collapsed into disappointment.

"It's not like I'm the kind of guy who would judge you or spread rumors. I wish you could trust me."

"No, you're not that kind of guy," I had to admit. "Hey, hand over the power-drill." A pause. "Please," I added. He did.

The whir of the drill started up. It took only a minute to get the screws in place. The finished product was a fully assembled motor engine case. Gill, Flint, and I were doing after-school work for shop class, the project being automobile repair. Other teens got the easy stuff, like oil filter changes and bodywork. Mr. Cameron took one look at our in-class work and assigned us the freaking engine.

"Flint's not back yet," Gill noted. He'd gone out to the store to grab some sealant we needed. Until he got back, our job was put on hold.

"Probably stopped to chat with a girl."

"I'm sure he'll be back soon," Gill insisted.

"Let's go raid his fridge."

His parents weren't home, which was pretty typical. They both worked closing shifts. Well, opening shifts too. That was pretty typical for Veilstone. Only his younger brother and sister were home, and they were cooped up in their room playing video games.

"I don't think we should take food without permission."

"He lets us eat all the time," I argued.

"Still, that's when he's around," Gill said.

I shrugged and conceded. Instead, I got out glasses and filled them with tap water. We sat at the table. I took a sip, swished, and gulped the cold water down. Gill was staring absently at me. Thinking about my profanity, I bet, and whatever he imagined induced it.

I think back on it, and now that I do, Gill's kind of conceited. Oh he acts shy and timid all the time, and his blithe indifference to injury and insult sometimes makes him look stupid and naïve, but under all that, he's shrewd, and insightful, and he likes digging into other people's business. It reminds me of Alice. Except, unlike her, Gill never has that air of manipulation about him. I don't know if it's anything specific, but it feels like he genuinely cares. Maybe it's just the incessant assurances, as if, if he repeated the claim enough times, even the most anti-social cynic would think of him as a true friend.

Which leads me to ask- what kind of guy is so desperate for friendship he'd go to such lengths? And why?

Well, there's that… whatever.

I leaned back and stared at the ceiling.

"I cuss a lot because it's tolerated in my house- and there's a lot of reason to cuss in there," I admitted out loud.

"Oh." Gill seemed surprised I'd be willing to open up about this.

"It's just-" I grasped my fist. "I don't hate them, and they don't really jerk me around too much. All they want is for me to be successful. It's… they're at each other's throats so much, there's a lot of feuding, and it spills over onto the rest of us."

"You and...?"

"My older sisters."

"Oh." Gill blinked. "You have older sisters?"

Ah, figures. He's never met them.

"From my mother's previous husband. They're six and eight years older than me. They've been visiting more often. Mom needs the company to keep her sane."

"What happened between your parents?"

"I'm not at liberty to share."

"Oh. I see. But, if it's affecting them so badly, and you and your siblings, isn't there someone you could call for help? Um, a marriage counselor, for instance?"

I shook my head.

"Wouldn't help."

"Oh. I see." He paused a bit, taking it in, biting his lip. He gulped and spoke up. "The police?."

"No!" I face-palmed. "God, you go off the deep end with your imagination sometimes, Gill. It's not a criminal thing."

"Ah! I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I wish I could help, I really want to, but if it's above my ability, then I wish someone who can help would get involved."

"Why?"

"To help you."

"Help me what?" I snapped.

"Become happy," Gill said plainly.

"… fuck, Gill, really?"

"Well, you sacrifice a lot, and you're good to so many people, and really useful, with all your technology expertise and science smarts you lend to anybody, but they all treat you so poorly. I think you deserve to happy. I don't know how to make it happen, though."

"I deserve to be happy?" I snorted. "Gill, listen, no one in this world deserves anything. Period. It's just the happenstance of molecules colliding, pure luck, whether anyone gets anything positive. Just, cope with what you have. Got it?"

"Why? Why not try to make a difference for yourself?"

"It's impossible."

"It may seem that way, but it's really not. Look at me- I was bullied all through elementary and middle school, but now they leave me alone, mostly, because I made the effort to be friends with everyone."

"No one actually thinks of you as a friend. They just tolerate you because they're afraid of me and Flint."

Gill went silent.

That must have hurt.

I was breathing hard. Heart was beating. Chest was sinking, blood getting slightly colder, just enough to notice. That familiar surge of uneasiness, like I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going in life, crept back in.

"Do you think of me as your friend?" Gill asked.

"Sure," I answered.

"Really? Do you?"

"Yes," I said, more firmly.

"Oh. Okay."

What's he thinking? Something painful, by the looks of it.

He's pitiful.

"My dad cheated. My mother cheated in revenge."

Gill glanced up, surprised.

"My family is messed up."

The fact that I could share this information so casually was a little shocking to him, apparently. He gawked and did not reply. Gill doesn't understand how damn disarming and empathetic he can get, when he's acting all sincere and like.

"There were just little personality clashes that snowballed, I think. He has anger issues and thinks the world has to behave a certain way, and that society owes him something for living by the moral code he invented. Mother didn't give him the respect he thought he deserved, so he went and found a woman who would. Mother's used to men screwing her, and she's taken it to heart. Feels like she has to yank them around and manipulate their emotions to get them to do anything nice for her. In the end, they're both just selfish, entitled asses who couldn't put someone else's interests ahead of their own. It's a wonder they've made it this long together. I think they're getting divorced."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it."

"Well, I will." I raised an eyebrow. He went on. "Because it's hurting you. I don't want to stand by and do nothing if my friends are in trouble. If there's something I can do, I want to try to help."

"Stop. I mean it. Worry about yourself, your home is worse."

"Well…" his voice drifted off.

"Hey Gill, I know it's tempting to play the hero and vacate all your stress by throwing yourself at someone else's problems. But that's tauros-shit and won't work. You don't justify ignoring your own problems by saying you're too busy saving someone else. That's a damn excuse."

"It's not…"

"And don't assume it's easier to fix my household just because you're an outsider. Being objective doesn't make you capable of changing anything. And don't you dare call some counselor or whoever. I'll deal with my parents, you deal with yours."

"Yeah." That wasn't agreement, just acknowledgment.

"Is your mother still drinking?"

"Still," he answered.

The conversation ended. Silence wrapped around us like a curtain of Nightshade, casting everything in wrongness. I got up and went back to the garage to double-check our work. When Flint returned ten minutes later he found two quiet teenagers in awkward antipathy, not speaking to one another, not looking at one another.

"What's up with you two?"

"I'm going home.

"Hey, I just got back!" Flint protested. I was already up and walking. Flint caught up and caught me by the wrist. "What's going on?"

I jerked a head over in Gill's direction.

"Do you got a problem with Gill?" Flint demanded.

"No, I've got a problem with my folks, and Gill's too damn keen on picking out my insecurities, so I'm leaving."

For that answer I got a slug in the stomach. I wretched over in pain.

I tottered about, regained my footing, and looked up. Flint was looking pretty fiercely at me. I stared on, no anger in me to fight back.

"Yeah, that's the look. You never hit back. That always annoyed the hell out of me. Tells me you don't care. You're just wrapped up in your own misery. Let me guess, you told off on Gill because he was prying?"

I nodded.

"And you told him not to waste time on other people's problems when he's got his own parents to deal with?"

Another nod. Another slug in the stomach for me. Not as hard though.

"That's still better than your selfish crap, acting like your pain gives you the right to ignore other's pain. Especially the pain you've caused them."

"I didn't cause anybody pain. I don't live like that."

I expected a third hit and braced for it. Lucky, because this one was serious. I was thrown back two entire steps by the force of it. My belly was throbbing in pain, practically vibrating.

"He cares about you! You hurt yourself, you hurt him too. Same goes for me. We're friends. Nakama. Get a grip."

"I'm going," I uttered between heaves.

"Sure, get lost. See you in class."

I paused at the street and turned back. Gill was standing in the middle of the garage. Looks like he's about to cry. Flint was sprinting up to him and trying to reassure him. I slowly took one step back towards them, and another, and another, and on, until I was at the garage entrance.

"Hey, Flint. Gill."

The former flashed me a glare, the latter a blank stare.

"I'm sorry."

I backed off and departed.

Morty was calmer now, taking all my rambling in without a flicker of emotion. I told him all about- well, everything. Every last detail of my life. Even the nasty stuff, the things I'd never shared with anyone:

Fighting with my father, real fights, bloody fists and police calls. The nasty, disgusting names I called my mother behind her back. The fury I felt when they blamed me for their divorce, as if I had caused the wedge between them by being a spoiled child, a renegade child that never lived up to his potential and never made them proud. The resentment they bore towards me because I was the last link chaining them to one another. The emotional beating I took as they desperately tried to severe that link.

My strange friendship with Gill. How I started to suspect how one-sided this friendship was. The rare times I cursed at myself at how pathetically little I cared about reciprocating his feelings. The more common feeling of just not giving a damn. The times I resented having such unconditional affection- it wasn't something I was prepared to return. How Gill's admiration could turn into straight-up adulation, and how it tore me up because of the expectations it created, expectations I wasn't prepared to live up to.

Flint, and our ancient friendship, and how we slowly grew apart. Maybe it was because I took him for granted. Maybe it was because Gill's eternal optimism and patience won him over. Maybe I just wanted to be alone more often than not. They started spending more time together, without me. Our trio had been as tight as a Magneton in our freshman year, by our junior, it was more of a Porygon Z.

The cold, indifferent relationship I had with everyone else in my high school, friendships motivated by respect, but mostly respect derived from mutual parts disdain and fear. No one really liked me, they just deferred to me because of the dangers of getting on my bad side: the dozen or so jocks that relied on my tutoring to get through science class, the possibility of alienating the truly popular guy Flint, and the surefire knowledge that I could kick their asses in a Pokemon battle. When they talked to me and everyone was nice and behaved, it wasn't out of kindness, but politeness, civic duty and whatnot.

Everyone seemed so… distant. Unrelatable. Blots of nuisance, blobs of organic cells that I never really saw as self-motivated sentient beings, and never believed they saw me as the same either.

It was like that even for my girlfriend, Alice.

"You had a girlfriend?" Morty intervened at last.

"Yeah, but it didn't last."

"Why not?"

I started to answer, but caught myself.

"It's, well… that's all part of what happened senior year. When all our problems went nuclear."