Chapter 26: Delusion As a Lifestyle Choice
Connie's and Larry's mother Diane lived in the suburbs of Ramford, a bigger town neighboring Bullworth. Her current husband Harvey was a real estate broker with a pretty decent income and while he was by no means rich, the life he and his wife lead was nothing like Diane and Larry's and Connie's father had been able to provide their children in New Coventry.
When Stanley drove past the rows of identical houses and yards and located Diane's house, he parked his car in front of the white single-story house. A familiar figure stood in front of the car could be seen before the engine stopped its purring: Diane was outside, enjoying a cigarette. When her daughter and her fiancee stepped out of the vehicle, the unenthusiastic and tired-looking woman hardly managed a smile.
"Nice to see you two lovebirds", she greeted with a raspy voice and blew out a puff of smoke. Connie giggled as she went to give her mother a quick hug.
When Larry came out of the car a second later, Diane cocked her brow, then simply nodded at him while she put out her cigarette in a snow-filled flower pot that several old butts were already sticking out of.
"Joe's not here yet. Come on in and have a cup of coffee", she said and opened the door.
When they walked inside, Connie, Stanley, and Diane engaged in meaningless small talk which Larry couldn't be bothered to pay any attention to. After removing his outdoor clothes, he flopped on top of a couch and planned to stay there, watch TV, and mope.
"Aren't you gonna come drink coffee with us?" Connie asked.
"Nah, I'm good", the boy grunted. His sister shrugged, then ruffled his hair idly on her way to the kitchen.
Suddenly, Diane walked behind him. Larry could feel her staring at him, so he turned to look at her over his shoulder.
"Since you're here, how about doing something useful? Scott has this robot toy that stopped working... Harvey's meant to take a look at it for a while now, but he's been busy", she said seemingly casually. The demanding edge of her voice was loud and clear to Larry, however. He almost retorted disdainfully to her, but he found an ulterior motive that could make the task worthwhile: if he took his time finishing it, he wouldn't have to be around when his father arrived.
"Sure, whatever", the boy muttered. Then he stood up and made his way to his half-brother's room.
The sheer amount of stuff in Scott's room never ceased to amaze Larry. Combining all the toys he had ever had been given from the day he had born wouldn't have amounted to anything resembling the amount of toys and gadgets that this kid had. Apparently Scott had an uncle on his father's side who liked to spoil him with gifts. Sadly, having a lot of toys didn't change the fact that the 9-year-old didn't really have anyone to play with.
"Hey, Scott. Mom told you have some toy that stopped workin'?" Larry said when he stepped inside the child's room.
The boy didn't even greet his half-brother, he simply stood up and walked to his shelf. A glance over his head told Larry that he was fiddling with a plastic tank full of some sort of insects. Gigantic cockroaches. When Scott walked up to Larry with something that resembled a robotic bug, he wasn't surprised at all: one thing about the kid that was completely nonsensical was his obsession with all kinds of weird things. Probably one of the reasons he didn't have friends.
"It just slowed down and one day it just stopped working. Can you fix it?" the boy said while staring at Larry's hands as they pressed the buttons and twisted and turned its moving parts.
"Eh, dunno what I can do with it but I'll try", Larry muttered.
Larry concluded that the only thing he could really do to the toy was to open it up and see what was inside it. Harvey's garage didn't have a screw driver small enough for the tiny screws of its plastic casing, so after a lot of swearing and coming dangerously close to cutting himself, Larry managed to unscrew them with the tip of a knife. All the while Scott stared at him silently right next to him like the creepy child that he was.
After making a haphazard diagnosis of the machine, Larry made Scott go through every electric apparel in the house until he found something that ran with a coin battery of the same size while he had a smoke outside. Then, he carefully removed the old internal battery of the toy and replaced it with a battery pilfered from Harvey's calculator. And, when he switched the toy on? Lo and behold, he had successfully made it move again. He felt somewhat proud about fixing it even though it had all been thanks to him making a lucky guess.
"There we go, done", Larry said after managing to reassemble the toy.
"Thanks uncle Larry", Scott thanked.
"Brother, Scott. We're half-brothers", the young male reminded nonchalantly. Scott looked at him with his big blue eyes, amazed as if he didn't believe him. Larry found this unsettling out so he concentrated on putting the tools away.
"What're you wearing?" Scott suddenly asked.
His brother was taken aback by the totally random question. Scott really, really creeped him out a lot of the time.
"My school uniform. Didn't have time to change before we came here", he muttered.
"Is your school nice?" Scott inquired.
"No", Larry snorted as he hunted for a tool he had dropped on the garage floor, under Harvey's car.
"Are there bullies?"
"Yeah, lots", the young man answered as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"My school has bullies too, I wish they went away. What can you do to make them leave you alone?" little Mr. Creeper asked, hopeful and wide-eyed.
"Get friends. Friends that stick up to you", Larry ordered harshly and stood up from the floor.
"What if you can't get friends?"
"Then you stop bein' such a weirdo. Nobody likes weirdos", Larry scoffed. Scott pouted at this.
"I'm not a weirdo", he said.
"Yeah, right... Look, just stop yammerin' about bugs 'n' robots shit. Makes you sound like a nerd", Larry said crankily. Scott turned his sad eyes to the ground where his feet shuffled restlessly.
Larry frowned. Looking at Scott and thinking back to what he had just said to him, something seemed to click. It was as if someone had stealthily hammered a wedge in his brain for a long time and had just now delivered the blow that finally dislodged a big chunk of his mind. It quietly shook him to the core, made him shudder.
He looked back at his years at Bullworth Academy and even his earlier years and saw it unlike he had never seen it before. He looked at it like an ancient project and he suddenly had no idea where he had been going with it. He remembered the good times he had had with the greasers, but at the same time he remembered the anguish of trying to fit in and the futility of it all.
The realization seeping into his mind him hurt him like no other: despite having had more respect for his old friends than most of humanity summed up together, his days with them had been numbered from the very beginning. He could have lived true to himself and it would've all been the same if not better, except for not having an illusion that living in the shadows without ever knowing if your friends accepted you as yourself was somehow saving his and his friends' dignity. Except now he didn't even have that illusion anymore. He hadn't saved anyone's honor.
Really, the only things that had truly kept him as Lola's toy had been his fear of losing face and the fear of being rejected by Johnny outright. Well, he had now lost his face, being the friendless no-name who had lost himself in Lola's mind games and had nothing to look forward to after high school, and he had always known that Johnny would never look his way. All that there had ever been for him to do even without Lola's "prank" had been to be left feeling undesired and become bitter about something that was beyond both boys' influence.
Looking at all this, who the hell was Larry Romano to tell a little kid that he should conform? Who was he to tell his half-brother to kill a part of himself?
"Larry?" Scott carefully prodded, snapping the older boy out of his daze. He and his half-brother had stood staring silently at each other for a while now and now it was the little one's turn to be weirded out.
Larry, left without answers and feeling like his heart had just shrunk three sizes, decided that it was time to tell Scott the biggest lie he had ever told.
"Don'tcha worry squirt. It'll get better", he assured.
"It'll get better."
Author's Notes: ... Why do I get the feeling that the end of this chapter is what I'm telling myself about this fic? D: