Less Than Perfect
[Memory, Junior Year in High School]
Sixteen had to be the most annoying age known to humankind, Lyn decided as he stared at the ceiling, examining his inner feelings carefully. He hadn’t been raised under a rock, so he knew what was going on. It made him feel dreadful excitement rising like dough inside him, sticky like it, too, and it annoyed him. If he wanted to become wealthy in this life – the real wealthy, not the wealthy his mom liked to project – he needed to study like a madman, so feeling this way was irksome, to put it lightly.
A new guy had come to their school. He was handsome, loud, and downright obnoxious. But Lyn had discovered he liked to stare at him just as much as the girls who giggled in the hallways while stealing glances at the stranger.
How did that literary sophism go? Every story started with someone leaving on a journey or a stranger coming to town. This was the second half of that statement. And once the stranger was there, Lyn felt as if things… had the potential to start happening.
He really didn’t have time for this. He needed to return to his homework and forget all about the guy. He needed to stop wondering what his name was or trying to eavesdrop on the girls’ conversations about him.
Yet, Lyn thought and smiled as he rolled on his belly and covered his eyes. Was this what he thought it was? Maybe he could talk to his mom about it. Although that would be strange as hell. No, no, he couldn’t do that. He’d be better off pushing this – whatever it was – down, down, down until it disappeared.
If only his cheeks didn’t stretch so hard and painfully because of the smile that refused to be pushed down, along with everything else.
He looked out the window and stared at the roofs, colored pink by the early spring evening. If he opened the window, leaned out and inhaled, would the air smell sweet?
His cheeks were too hot, and all he could do was think about it. What he had to do right now was get himself a glass of water from downstairs and then return to his grueling studies.
***
The stairs sighed under his steps, as they tended to do more often than not lately. He caught the sound of conversation when he was halfway down. Ah, it was Arya, his mom’s best friend. Although they never openly talked about what his mom did for a living, Lyn was old enough to understand a few things. And Arya shared his mom’s career choices, so they most likely had a lot to say about wealthy men with deep pockets and how they could land a… good gig. Such words were his alone. While he had never heard his mom ever use crude words regarding her chosen profession, he felt the need to distance himself from it through well-chosen euphemisms. A good gig meant his mom was the same as a freelancer.
“Are you sure the boy’s not his, though?” Arya’s mellifluous voice reached him, making him stop halfway down the stairs. “I don’t mean to say that he’s the man’s spitting image, because he’s pretty like you, but the way he squares his shoulders, his eyes--”
“Hush, dear, don’t say such nonsense. Lyn is mine. That’s all he needs to know, and you as well.”
“You could make bank out of it. I mean, he’s practically the face of their morality campaign. A little blackmail could take you a long way, darling.”
“Don’t even think about such a thing,” Lyn heard his mom’s voice become sharper, edgier. “I have no intention of exposing my Lyn to that kind of people. The moment I dare open my mouth, they’ll flock on us like vultures to a corpse.”
“You’ve always been thin-skinned, Blanche. I still don’t understand how you manage to continue to survive in this big bad world.”
“I have my strategy, don’t worry. I’m fine. Lyn is fine, too, without having to think about a man his mother made the mistake of sleeping with.”
“Mistake? He used to be quite generous with you, if I recall correctly.”
“You do. But not everything in life is about money. And I won’t waste a thought on--”
Although his mom’s voice dropped to a muffled whisper, Lyn made out the name. He had stopped breathing at one point and now his chest burned as he began climbing the stairs backwards, up to the landing.
***
Lyn felt sick to his stomach as his eyes were filled with news, interviews, images, and videos. From all the pictures, the same eyes stared at him, eyes he believed he had known his whole life. The only explanation was the simplest one – he recognized the man because the same eyes stared back at him every time he looked in the mirror. Arya had to be right. He was the son of this spiteful old man who preached from the height of a soap box while pretending to have the right to judge the world.
He wished he hadn’t chosen that precise moment to go downstairs. If he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, maybe he’d be able to make it all go away. Maybe, when he looked at his phone screen again, the man behind it would look like a total stranger, someone who had nothing to do with him whatsoever.
His chest hurt now as he sat on the edge of the bed, squeezing his phone until he was afraid it might break. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from pressing play on the one video that seemed to have had the most reach to the audience of the platform which it had been posted on.
The voice was strong, booming like thunder, tough as a steel door.
We cannot tolerate these things… they are a weakness, a disease… sons without fathers… lost generations…
Lyn’s eyes filled with tears as he listened to the same portion of the interview, over and over again. They weren’t tears of shame. No, that wasn’t what he felt. It wasn’t anger, either.
It was fear. Men like this weren’t an abstract idea. They existed, and they meant harm. They could become a real, concrete threat in the blink of an eye. And he would be stupid to ignore a threat of such magnitude. And the things that kept him awake at night, ever since he had become aware of having a mind that could torture him with what-ifs, just became a lot clearer.
He brushed his tears away hurriedly. Studying hard guaranteed he’d land a good job and have money, so he didn’t have to worry about tomorrow and the many days after it, as was the case with him and mom now. Keeping himself safe from men like his father – Lyn was certain now that man was the one who had given him life most likely by accident and recklessly – involved formulating a strategy, too.
The same feeling as before, the excitement he had experienced while thinking about the new boy at school, churned his insides. Arya was right; there was a big bad world out there, and to keep safe, he needed to grow thicker skin, eliminate any risk of getting hurt by people who could hurt him.
***
“Have you been crying, Lyn?”
His mom had ordered dinner and, as always, it was exquisite. But Lyn couldn’t force himself to swallow another bite.
“No, mom. It must be some spring allergy.”
“You don’t have allergies,” his mom said, continuing to watch him carefully across the table.
Should he lash out at her? Tell her that he had overheard her secret? But his mom wasn’t strong. Her friend was right about that, too.
“I have a lot of homework,” he said, standing up abruptly. “Thank you for dinner.”
He hurried to reach the stairs.
“Lyn,” his mom called out softly, “did you happen to hear what Arya and I were talking about earlier?”
“Yeah,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut, his hand resting on the bannister, his fingers fidgeting on the polished wood. “She wanted you to lend her that dress, the strapless one. I didn’t want to be caught in a long talk about fashion, so I decided to leave the two of you alone.” The lie slipped out of his mouth like it was the most natural thing in the world.
His mom sighed, but he couldn’t tell whether it was a sigh of relief or something else. He climbed the stairs fast, eager to reach the safety of his room.
***
“Hey, dude, can you throw me that ball?”
Lyn looked up from his book and blinked hard. The new guy was standing only a few feet away from him on the other side of the fence – sweaty, breathing hard, gorgeous.
He averted his eyes quickly. The ball was only a few feet away, and if he put in a bit of effort, he could throw it over the fence.
“No,” he replied icily. “Come get it yourself.”
“Wow, rude,” the guy commented.
Lyn got up to leave. Why the hell was he still coming here, to the bleachers, to read? The library was a safer place.
“You’re Lyn, right?” The boy called after him, even as Lyn sped up.
“What’s it to you?” Lyn threw back.
“Nothing. Can’t you even give a bro a helping hand, though, Mr. President?” The boy snickered at his own bad joke.
They called him that behind his back and even to his face. He guarded his home realities fiercely, which meant that he had constructed a different reality for people around him to know, people of the same age. He carefully built a fantasy he preached like gospel involving an absent father who was neck-deep in many lucrative businesses and a demanding mother who expected nothing but the best from him.
Lyn dropped his book on a nearby bench with a thud. He marched over to where the ball lay and grabbed it. Without overthinking, he launched it into the air and kicked it with his foot as hard as he could. The thing arced high into the air and landed on the other side of the fence, a fair distance away.
“Thanks, bro,” the new guy said and gave Lyn a shameless wink and a quick once-over.
Things like that would have made his stomach flip just a week before. Lyn paid the other student no attention and grabbed his book.
“Come see me play next Saturday, Lyn,” the other boy shouted at his retreating back.
He didn’t deign to even give the guy a look, let alone an answer. People like Lyn Calloway didn’t have the luxury of free time to spend on silly entertainments like sports.
TBC
Thank you for reading!
@Derek - an explanation on Alexander's marriage will appear at one point... Brad will have his 'ride or die' to himself, but he might discover certain things.
@Buchanan - Alexander has his flaws... stubbornness being on top of the list. He has his reasons to behave like this, whether they make sense or not.
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