Celadon City

1.1

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.

-Jim Bishop

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This is a story about life. Your middle-school teacher might call it coming-of-age. Take it for what it is, expect ups and downs, and pray for a happy ending… even when no one else feels like it can come.

.:i:.

Emmett opened the door to his house. It smelled the same. This had been a big concern of his: that the entire fabric of his household would have changed, thus affecting the odor.

He stepped in and methodically threw his things down on the loveseat by the door. The pickles were still in the door of the fridge; the couch still had that stain from the time Larissa had left a kiwi on it overnight. No time had passed.

Emmett would always look back on those three years as truly insignificant in his life. It was if the time had been sucked into a chasm—he left, he came back and things continued from where they had left off. It was a difficult sensation to explain, having his normal life just pick up again after all that time. Yet, he never gave it much thought, and neither shall we.

Life didn't bother to nag at him until Larissa arrived home later that afternoon. She wasn't surprised to see him—he had called ahead and told her that he was coming home—but the little brother in him was crushed that she didn't actually make a big deal about his return.

He had been in the house for only a few hours before realizing that he had nothing to do, and he decided to roam around the town for a while. It was the Friday before eighth grade would start for his school, and the place was sure to be buzzing with people he knew.

The first familiar faces Emmett saw were not of his school friends or their parents, but of two young cashiers at a popular surf shop near his house. There were not too many surf shops in the heart of Celadon City, logically enough, and this boded well for their business. The little store had been there as long as Emmett could remember, and he couldn't help feeling unimaginable relief when he saw not only that the store was still there, but that the young girl—the owner's daughter—and the boy that had been working there since Emmett was nine still waited on customers.

He knew the girl's name was Lauren, but he did not know the boy's name and neither of them knew his. The gossip around his grade had always been that the two were madly in love with each other (at least as much as two tweens can be in love, which probably amounts to no more than a childish crush). More often than not the talk of the girls' lunch table was not about each other, but about these mysterious mini-celebrities.

Time passed and, somehow, Emmett ended up at his grandfather's workplace. This was quite a feat you see, as Mossdeep City was a relatively long journey from Celadon. The overnight boat trip eventually put him on the doorstep of the Mossdeep Labs Biological Division at around eight o'clock the next morning. By the time he was able to sit down in his grandfather's office, gazing through the large Plexiglas window that overlooked the rest of the lab, it had been nearly twenty-four hours and was late afternoon.

"Finally home, are we?" The question was quiet and without emotion, as Dr. Christopher Solvati shuffled through papers on his desk, looking for some thing or another. After either locating it or giving up, he looked up at his grandson and posed the question with more passion, "Decided to come home, eh kid?"

Emmett felt he should say yes, wanted to say no, and said neither.

He had always admired his grandfather; ever since he was younger; talking to him was a kind of therapy. He had decided on the boat that he wanted to go in and, as discreetly as possible, bid his grandfather for sagely advice. On the doorstep, he resolved he wanted to go in, mope, and see what came of it. In truth, you see, he had no idea what he wanted, for what he truly wanted he could not have.

"Give me a word, Em! Can't help you if you don't say anything," Chris said rather happily. The pleasant tone and casualness in his voice irked Emmett. He had known already; of course he had. It wouldn't make sense otherwise.

A word was what he wanted, then. "Disturbed." The word had come out sounding more monotone than Emmett had meant it—it was supposed to have a sarcastic edge in it somewhere and, frankly, it did not.

Chris gave a thoughtful grunt. "I can't really blame you for that one. Continue, if you'd like."

"I don't know." The sarcasm had made its way through in that one. Chris sighed and leaned back in his chair, which responded by swiveling a bit and making a distasteful squeaking noise. Chris laughed. So did Emmett, forgetting that he didn't want to seem happy in any way, shape, or form. "So, did Gram know?" The question sounded almost lighthearted. Emmett was unendingly confused by his sudden inability to control the tone of his voice.

"Yes she did," came the answer. Silence followed, creating awkwardness as it always did when it entered on cue.

"So is that a lie too, or what?" There was the missing tone. The words were bitter and sharp, just as they were when they had first made their way through Emmett's mind.

Chris sighed. It was a pitiful sigh that Emmett resented. "Em, no one lied to you—"

"That's complete and total crap and you know it." Emmett hadn't meant for that to come out harsh, but he had wanted it to. He took a deep breath, wishing he wanted to apologize. The room echoed noiselessness in response, silence again an actor with perfect timing. "Confused," Emmett finally, quietly squeaked. Confusion was a small, squeaky feeling: that one had come out properly.

"Then let me help you." There was desperation in Chris' voice as he leaned over the desk, his crossed arms supporting his weight, his weight crackling and crunching the disheveled mass of papers.

Emmett nodded. If nothing else, he was fully aware of the fact that he needed help. This was an interesting shift of mindset, since he was rather sure that several seconds before he had been adamant on asking for nothing, and before that had a desire for advice.

"So tell me, then." The tone was quiet, reserved. Emmett felt that, even he if he wanted to change his pitch, it wouldn't come out any other way. Considering his luck with voice control this far, this was probably was not much of a stretch. "What," he allowed the words 'the God-damned hell' to stay in his head, "Am I?"

"What, you couldn't figure that out on your journey? That's what you went to do, right? Solve all your problems?" Emmett could not find words for his surprise. He felt the insult well up in his eyes as he stared in disbelief at the thing that had come out of his grandfather's mouth. The Silence must have been astounded by the biting comment as well, because the lack of sound that ensued was not awkward.

Emmett recoiled deep into his chair, and retreated himself into the mind he had been busy hating not long ago. He tried to stop himself from crying, and fought the urge to run out of the room that was the final place he wanted to locate any kind of consolation.

Chris closed his eyes and felt a twitch in his stomach. He sighed. "Em, I'm so sorry. Listen, kid…"

Emmett came out of his retreat. The grandparent he idolized had returned. He was thoroughly convinced that this was the only person who could give him comfort and he decided right then and there to cling onto that for dear life.

There was more silence, but it was untimely and, in being so, rather welcome. Chris gave Emmett time to collect himself while he wondered how he had let something like that come out of his mouth. Finally, Emmett released his breath loudly, gave a nod, and decided to restart the conversation. "What's up?" His voice had quivered slightly, but otherwise the sound was as intended: friendly.

"Not too much, Em." Chris paused to look, interested in something, at the screen of his computer. "Interesting word, isn't it?"

"No. It's ugly; I hate it. It's hard, and weird. It doesn't even have, like, normal letters in it. And it already has a meaning. I don't want to be, like, assigned to a word that already exists for something else. That's stupid," Emmett replied, suddenly having regained control of his voice. The tone was casual, thoughtful, agitated, and as intended: like a child confiding in someone he trusts.

"That doesn't mean it's not interesting. Think of words like tape. Do you know how many meanings it has? But when you ask for a tape for your VCR, I don't give you Scotch tape. And not too many people know the real, biological definition anyway. Even if they had an idea, it and your definition are similar enough." Chris paused. "Hybrid. No, I don't think it's ugly. Maybe a little hard, but sculptures and hard and they're not ugly, now are they? What word would you rather have?"

"A real one." It didn't take Emmett long to realize just how juvenile that particular answer was.

"Last I checked it was," Chris replied softly, his attention having shifted back to the computer and the mess covering his workplace. The discussion was over; they had hit a wall. Uneventfully, Emmett said goodbye to his grandfather, and began dreading his arrival home. There was so much and the future to worry about.

.:ii:.

It is in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night that Feste the Fool addresses Olivia with a speech about the doubt in words. They are finicky, he claims, and any fool—or any Fool-- could easily manipulate them to mean what they do not, and to not mean what they do. Chris Solvati believed in this, and had mastered it. Only his family believed what he said was what he meant, and only Emmett believed he had nothing to hide. Only, Emmett believed because saw no other choice.