Growing Pains
I thoroughly searched the barren fridge and cabinets for something to eat as my empty stomach burned and grumbled. Nothing but a few dead roaches and beers for my parents in there, as usual. The harsh fluorescent light from the fridge illuminated the grimy linoleum floor. The light flickered unreliably, probably about to die like everything else in this house. My stomach growled without mercy, and in that moment, I couldn’t help but resent my Apex abilities. What good was it being an Apex if I couldn’t even use that status to improve my quality of life?
My ability was weak compared to some of the other Apexes. I couldn’t fly, move things with my mind, or any of that extraordinary stuff that could make one’s life so much easier. As a default, most Apexes did have slightly faster healing abilities than an unevolved human but some of us could heal almost instantly. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an ability I had. My abilities? I had a sense of smell that could put a blood hound to shame, and I had better hearing than a bat.
Sometimes these “gifts” felt more like curses, especially in this house. The smell of grime and withdrawal vomit was almost unbearable, and the constant drip of our leaky faucet was like Chinese water torture when I had my Apex senses turned up. At times I tried to be grateful for the fact that most Apexes only had one ability, but I had two. As weak as those abilities were, they were like a built-in lie detector when I used them simultaneously.
I could pick up on the slightest changes in someone’s tone and heart rate that were dead giveaways to deception. I could smell the nervous sweat threatening to escape their pores as they searched their minds for a proper lie. It was my parents that helped me fine tune my abilities at an early age. “I’ll be home for dinner,” “The rent’s been paid,” “We’ll do better next time”- all lies that reeked of deception and echoed with irregular heartbeats. It didn’t take long for their addictions to spiral into a pit so deep that they didn’t even bother lying anymore.
I could also turn my abilities on and off whenever I pleased. I’ve heard a lot of Apexes had to practice tirelessly to control their abilities at will. Not me. It was easy for me to turn them on and off at my convenience, so I guess I could be thankful for that as well. But right now, none of that shit was gonna help me fill my empty stomach. Good thing I started selling weed when I was 12 or I probably would have starved to death a long time ago. My good for nothing parents didn’t need to eat as long as they had a beer in their hands and dope up their noses.
My mom, Amber, a clearly malnourished woman, with faded and poorly drawn jailhouse tattoos that told a story of consistently bad decisions, always reeked of her most recent John and last night’s booze. Her bleached blonde hair hung down her frail and freckled back in fried and frazzled strands, her dark, greasy roots often neglected for months at a time. Looking at her was like watching a time lapse of decay.
My dad, Jeremy, was a hulk of a man, even taller than me, never smelled like anything else but cocaine sweat, and beer for as far back as I can remember. His gaunt sunken in face didn’t match his thick beer gut and broad shoulders. It was like someone had stretched pock marked skin over a skeleton skull and stuck it on a linebacker’s body. His buzz cut and light blonde hair revealed the many tattoos he had inked on his scalp and neck.
As my stomach continued to growl, I reminded myself that once school started back in a week that I would at least get some free lunch out of the deal. The girls who were picky eaters and desperate for my attention would let me have their lunch as well. It’s how I kept a healthy weight on my muscular frame instead of being frail and thin. I would thank them with a little kiss on their cheeks and I would hear their heart rates speed up every time.
It’s not like I was taking food out of their mouths; they just didn’t eat that slop that was served in the school cafeteria. I couldn’t blame them. But unlike me, they had parents who actually put food in their fridge. It might have been slop to the average teenager, but for me, that slop was a Godsend.
I know I’ll sell some weed to a few of the students and teachers, so that’ll help me out a lot as well. It’s a cruel summer for a person who relies on school lunches for the majority of their food source. I should have graduated last year, but I was held back in the 6th grade for making straight F’s. It’s not that I couldn’t do the work. I just didn’t want to, and who was gonna make me? My parents? Pfft.
I made straight A’s my second time in 6th grade just to prove to any motherfucker who doubted me, that I wasn’t a dummy. After I made my point, I went back to doing just enough to barely get promoted to the next grade.
“Jordan, toss me a beer, would ya?”
I could hear my mother say as she snorted a thin line of cocaine off of the wobbly and scratched up coffee table. Her nose made that familiar suction noise followed by the clearing of her throat from the dope dripping down past her sinuses. Her perpetually smudged eyeliner made her eyes appear to be more sunken than they already were.
“Get it yourself, Amber,” I scoffed, “And stop taking smokes out of my pack!
I held out the nearly empty box, shaking it for emphasis.
“Get your own smokes for fuck’s sake,” I added while grabbing a can of beer for myself.
I stared at her hunching over that old, dusty coffee table to inhale more dope. My soul boiled over in resentment.
“You’ve got to be the most useless person to ever give birth. Have you ever in your miserable existence thought to sweep or mop your floors, make sure your kid had food to eat, or ask how my day in school went. Help with homework or check my report card? You bleach your hair every fucking chance you get, yet it never occurred to you to bleach off the ring around the bathtub or suggest to Jeremy that maybe he should cook his meth in a location that wouldn’t potentially blow up his entire home and family!” I ranted.
She stared at me with distant eyes and dilated pupils. She wiped the white smudges from her nostrils but offered me no response.
“One day, I’m gonna leave out this door for the last time and I’m not gonna even bother looking back,” I added before storming out of the house, cold beer in hand, ignoring the blow on the back of my head from my mother tossing an empty beer can at me.
I made my way up the street to Javier’s house. Javi is my one true friend. He was the captain of the high school wrestling team, never lost a single wrestling match, but he was still humble and down to earth. He never let it go to his head. He’s a little rough around the edges but mostly a square type of guy.
We were an odd pair for sure. I’ve never been a square, even as a small tyke I was a hardheaded little shit. Making trouble with no fear of consequences. I’ve grown into a rebel that marches to my own beat and I’m not sorry. Nobody grows up in the dysfunction I grew up in and made it out alive without learning how to be tougher than nails and harder than steel.
I cracked open the can of ice-cold brew and took a big sip before tossing the rest of it in the gutter with the rest of the excessive litter. I’m very careful to keep my drinking to a minimum out of fear that I’d spiral out of control and become an alcoholic like my parents. Some may argue that I was too young to be drinking in the first place.
To those people, I’d say I have never in my life known the comfort of being home with loving parents. I was just a kid trapped inside a dilapidated house with the adults who created me yet never concerned themselves with my wellbeing. I wondered what being home felt like. For my entire childhood and adolescence, I dressed my own wounds, found my own meals, and did my best to teach myself good manners. So cut me some fucking slack.
As I made my way up the block, the burning hot pavement quickly infiltrated past the thin and worn-down soles of my Converses. It felt like the bottom of my feet were one degree away from catching fire. I easily persevered through the minor discomfort as being an Apex automatically gave my race a bit of higher tolerance for pain than an unevolved human. Another convenient default feature for most of us that I was highly grateful for in that moment.
Every block in this part of Elizabeth had its own history and scars. Old Man Rodriguez got shot over a drug deal in the tiny front yard I was passing by. Two houses down from there is where Angel Sanchez had her first kiss, right before she saw the eviction notice taped on her front door. The usual sight of the crack house with the rotting staircase and the abandoned apartment building riddled with graffiti and busted windows were just a part of the daily scenery throughout my childhood growing up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Neither the loud and vulgar music ringing out from cars passing by, nor the constant sirens from cop cars and ambulances could manage to get a reaction out of me.
My thoughts were distracted with hopes that I’d get a chance to see Javier’s mom. I wish I had a mom like Javier’s. She wasn’t a cheap coke whore like my mom. She was still a whore, but she was a classy type of escort, and she didn’t spend all her money on beer and dope. Carmen was everything my mother was not and understood something my mother never could. She knew how to hustle while still keeping her dignity intact. Her presence filled any room with warmth and purpose.
She took good care of Javier. She made sure he got a fresh haircut once a month, raised hell on the seldom occasions when he cut school, and always made sure that all of their necessary expenses were squared away before she bought any weed off of me. She always cooks a good hot meal for Javi before she heads out for the night to meet her Johns. She used what she had to build a better life for her son, and she was decent enough to never bring her work home with her. Wish I could say the same for my mom.
