Sick James
Ten years later, to the very day, a boy was napping peacefully under a droopy willow tree beside a small pond in the neighborhood park. The skies above were overcast and looked ready to burst into a terrible thunderstorm in an instant. Then again, the Weathermen had been forecasting that for a week now and it hadn't rained a drop of water. Of course, luck had it a fat drop of water splashed down the tree waking James up from his dream. He didn't quite remember what his dream was about but did remember it was kind of happy. Unfortunately, real like kind of wasn't.
James yawned loudly, placing his glasses onto his face watching his reflection in the pond. He was short, skinny and bony. His unruly black hair stuck to the back of his head like a small bush. Try as he might, neither he nor his most fashion conscious aunt Ursula, (mostly his aunt) couldn't get his hair to stay flat. She used all the strongest gels and hair creams money could buy to tame his hair.
Her wonderful daughter, Princess (her real names is Aphrodite but no one calls that) had just recently come up with a solution that held some real promise. She took a bottle of glue and poured it on her head. His Aunt and Uncle commended her for her ingenuity and perseverance and James got to get treated like a prison convict. And after the barber shaved his head off, he got to look like one too. His hair grew back mysteriously that night and he got a terrible thrashing for it. As if he controlled his own hair.
James sneezed loudly; his face was covered with snot. That was another one of his problems. He was always sick. He wasn't allergic to anything but his nose was still always congested. He was always coughing up a lung with the rest of his respiratory system and sneezing loud enough to be mistaken for a foghorn. And if he stayed out in the rain he probably would get even sicker. So he grabbed the book he was planning on reading for school, (It was so boring he fell asleep after page three,) and walked home. He had decided that he would get his summer reading done later. Home was only a short walk away and he reckoned he could get back before it started raining even harder.
Normal sickness wasn't the worst of his problems though. His cousin had diagnosed him as having a severe case of the cooties in the second grade. Since then, he'd been treated as if he carried the bubonic plague. And even after Princess decided cooties were 'so second grade', people still acted as if talking to him would cause them to glow green.
In addition to having to deal with Princess, he had a much bigger, less subtle problem. Hector, her twin brother. Hector was big, tall and mean. He was a troll among boys, and just about as smart. He once during gym class slammed a boy he didn't like into an oak tree giving him a nasty concussion claiming he had gotten the rules of Rugby and Cricket mixed up. That boy just happened to be James. Several other 'unfortunate accidents' had happened in front of teachers before and James was almost always the victim. There were other victims too, but James was always his most favorite person to harass. And anyone who didn't share his most enlightened views would be cordially treated to a knuckle sandwich and punch.
Thanks to his terrible twins, everyone either thought that James was radioactive or were afraid Hector would turn them more black eyes that he could count, (somewhere around two). That was another problem James faced, or to be more accurate, was on his face. Most people had brown eyes. Some people had blue or green eyes. James was stuck with gold eyes. Through some kind of genetic mistake, James's eyes were dazzling golden orbs that glowed dimly in the dark. His eyes didn't impair his vision at all; indeed he had better than twenty-twenty eyesight. What they did do was make him an ever bigger freak. Who wanted to have anything to do with a funny-eyed freak with no friends to only be threatened by his older cousin bully? Even worse was the fact that his Aunt and Uncle hated anything that dealt with strange and unusual. Anything odder than a black cat was dangerous in their eyes and even James's opinion was bizarre.
Thunder roared in the distance, and by the time James reached his home it was raining cats, dogs and all sorts of other domesticated animals.
Like all of the surrounding houses, the mansion he lived in was simply massive. Graceful marble Corinthian pillars lined the streets providing the mansions with support. Sprawling lawns with professionally manicured bushes hid the professionally kept gardens inside. The gaudiest, most expensive sports cars infested the streets like fleas on a rotting carcass. This was one of England's oldest and most wealthy neighborhoods. Everyone here was just a step bellow royalty, his Uncle often boasted about being two hundred and twenty fifth in line for becoming the new king of England. The houses were so perfectly maintained that they almost screamed 'KEEP OUT' His oily hands would leave fingerprints on the freshly painted houses; his dirty feet would crumple the perfectly kept lawns. The rain that was following was really muddying the area up that even the most formidable house had to deal with.
On a tall grassy hill stood the largest, most elegant of the houses. The garden was extremely well trimmed with beautiful rose gardens. It was also the most forbidding. The windows were always shuttered even in the nicest of weather. During the summer, little kids never ran amuck through the yard. They knew better than to even get near that house; pity James had to live their. The place was known as Goldman Manor, home of the Goldman family. James was a Potter though. James carefully knocked on the door praying he wouldn't get yelled.
His clothes were absolutely drenched in water. He sighed to himself remembering the last time his clothes got dirty. They stopped buying him clothes. Maybe they'd stop feeding him now.
The door slowly creaked open, as Princess opened the door. She was dressed in an extraordinarily resplendent gown worth more than a small house. She was in the same grade as James was, but several dozen steps higher on the grade school food chain. She was about his age and about his height. She had short strawberry blond hair and watery blue eyes.
"I'm making sure you get into so much trouble," she sniggered, "Of course you could always be dressed the way you are right now. Then again, you could pretend to be the swamp monster for dinner with the Gadfly's. It would suit you personality perfectly."
James groaned loudly complaining, "Do I really have to deal with those stupid Gadfly's."
Edmund Gadfly was the owner of a large conglomerate that dealt with Midas's business a lot. As a result Midas and Edmund had become close friends and both shared a general sliminess of spirit. He was in James's opinion of the rudest most patronizing people in the world. He was always commenting about how terrible everyone's morals were while he went through wives like cigarettes. They had come over to dinner from time to time and normally they simply hid him inside the broom closet like he was some kind of family embarrassment. Wonder why they wanted him to sit dinner with them this time.
He regretted his words as soon as he noticed Aunt Ursula walking down the stairs. "I would expect-," she started imperiously, but suddenly losing her voice seeing the state James was in. "JAMES, HOW DARE YOU GET MESSY ONLY AN HOUR BEFORE THEY ARRIVE!"
I have an hour to change my clothes muttered James to himself but that was entirely immaterial. All the Goldman's had been talking about for the past few weeks was the meeting with the Gadfly's. Lord Gadfly was the owner of a huge chemicals conglomerate and he was giving Uncle Midas a massive offer for his company.
"GO TO YOUR ROOM AND CHANGE INTO SOMETHING ACCEPTABLE," she screeched hysterically. She was a large woman whose waistline seemed to be growing wider and wider every year giving the impression that she was under some kind of slow motion pregnancy. She had a tiny surgically shrunk nose that made it look like she was always wearing a mask. He ears on the other hand were nearly as massive as an elephant's ears. She was always decked in the gaudiest most expensive jewelry money could by and did absolutely nothing to earn them. She didn't have a job outside of the home and paid servants did everything inside the home. The only things she ever seemed to do was eat, watch T.V and tell the twins how wonderful they were.
James was glumly walking up the stairs when he saw Hector burst into the room far dirtier and muddier that he was. His clothes were ripped and tattered; brand new clothes that were bought for him only days ago for the dinner.
"Playing Rugby outside," he yelled as soon as he walked in, "Rainy weather's the best for playing out."
"Hector dear," said Aunt Ursula sugar sweetly, "I know a young boy like yourself can't stand to be cooped up in a room but please hurry to get changed before the Gadfly's arrive."
James was the villain for getting his clothes a little wet while Hector was having good clean fun when he destroyed his brand new clothes. One of the important moral lessons the Goldman's seemed bent on teaching was hypocrisy and the James would always and should meekly accept being the victim of hypocrisy.
James walked by Hector's room; it was essentially a museum celebrating everything violent and destructive. Stickers skulls and crossbones plastered his door and a massive sign saying 'NO WIMPS ALLOWED' Inside, the room was filled with toys that Hector had broken. The miniature rockets that he had wanted so badly last year lay unopened. The latest Play Station 5 was sitting broken beside his TV because he wanted to see what would happen if he poured syrup into it. Everything inside was either brand new or broken. There were a couple other rooms designated as repositories for his old stuff. Actually, that would be most of the twelve bedrooms in the house.
James used to have a bedroom. But then Princess decided to paint it pink because she thought pink was a pretty color. The next morning, to everyone's surprise, the room had been whitewashed. No one had whitewashed the room and no one was hired to whitewash the room. Obviously, it all must have been James's fault whom they then moved into the attic. James climbed up the only rickety part of the house, the staircase leading to the attic. Two of the floorboards had come loose and he had to walk up carefully otherwise fearing his foot might crash through the rotting board. Dry rot was about as welcome he felt at home.
He was never told quite exactly why he was here. They didn't want him asking too many questions and he avoided asking them either. All they ever told him about his parents was that they were bums and that he was following their footsteps and was going to turn out equally bad. Nothing else, not even their names were mentioned in the house. He wasn't even sure if Potter really was his last name; it might be or it might not. There was a time when he used to dream of some long lost relative coming to pick him up but no one had ever called about. He was at least hoping they would send him to an orphanage or something but they were dead set on keeping here in the mansion. No, he had resigned himself to living with the Goldman's till he was out of school. James would have given all of his gold to have his real parents who must have loved him back.
The attic itself wasn't that bad, he rationalized. True you couldn't walk straight because the nails holding the roof up would skewer your brains, but the mildew made pretty designs on the ceiling. Plus, he had the company of several rats who insisted on nibbling on his property. He pulled out a nice collared button down shirt they had given him.
Changing in the attic was a challenge that required a combination of skill, practice and flexibility. You didn't want to impale your head on the roof that was only five feet over head nor did you want Aunt Ursula and Uncle Midas to make shish kebob out of you when they realized you had dirt from all over the filthy attic floor. James managed to get dressed while remaining spotless through some nifty acrobatics and slowly walked down the stairs.
"Now you know exactly how to act," said his Uncle Midas warningly. He was standing at the base of the attic staircase. Uncle Midas was a small skinny diminutive man. He had a balding head though a little bit of hair still poked through at the sides. His eyes were a dull gray like the clouds outside. He looked something like an accountant should. Although he looked dull and uninspiring a shrewd calculating mind operated behind those eyes. He was a business genius driving every one of his rivals out of the hypo-thematic chemical industry through a combination of lying, tricking, deceiving and a general bending of the rules.
"I've told the Gadfly's that we took you in out of the kindness of our heart and that you are extremely grateful for us keeping you. His granddaughter seems to have known you and told her you are a wacko and that we are going to be sending you to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. If you do anything, I repeat anything funny you will be sent straight to St. Brutus's."
James gulped loudly; he wouldn't put it past his uncle to send him to that place.
Hector and Princess were also present next to him, sniggering in the back.
"Now Hector," said Midas lovingly, "I know we'll get the same excellent behavior we always do and same to you Princess dear. Show them just how delightful the two of you can be."
"And James," he said facing his nephew, "I expect you to-,"
But an enormous sneeze blew boogers straight into Uncle Midas's face.
"Not do that-," he said his cheeks turning a peculiar shade of gray and magenta.
