Sheldon, ONE
The first thing you learn in public school is that children, in particular, have no hearts, and no moral conscious. They're just like criminals really, but with free-range and little to no experience. Go anywhere, do anything. The consequence is a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to.Sheldon was homeschooled up until his thirteenth birthday. Just about when his father's disappearance took its toll on his mother, and she decided she didn't want to see his face anymore.
His father left when he was twelve (never around in the first place though). He would come in and out when Sheldon was in bed. Every once in a while. Every blue god damn moon. Sheldon would hear his voice through the crack in his door, and he'd listen. Pillar of light, darkness, his mother's resigned and crackling voice through it. Dishes clanking. Chairs moving. Nervousness brought to sound.
Sheldon didn't hate his mother. He just didn't know her. She was that someone sulking around the house, just as good as a maid. The only real difference was that she could smack him around if she wanted to (and she wanted to). She was allowed to send him away. Allowed to say he was a mistake. Tall and beautiful in her skirts, in her red nails, in her red lipstick. Refined. Her heart dead and dying underneath the layers. She was a contradiction. He never knew her beyond that.
The day they both died in some terribly tragic, and sudden, wouldn't you know it, accident, he didn't mourn. He went to school with the money they left and skipped all his way into the CIA.
continues in Jeffrey