Chapter Text
I remember the day I was taken vividly, It was Friday, my tenth summer, last day of fourth grade and just a few days before my birthday. One of my little brothers, Mathew, had lost his first tooth. Well he didn’t really lose it per see, I kind of knocked it out if we’re being honest.
“Mom, Nathan hit me!” The six year old cried, running to our mother.
“No, I didn’t you little liar!” I was seething with rage. I turned to our mother, her hands still pruny and wet from washing the dishes. “Momma he’s lyin’! I ain’t even touch him!”
Momma scowls at me before crouching down to look at Matt’s cheek. Clicking her tounge she stands up to get on ice pack, as she opens the freezer she looks at me, “Net, why did you hit your brother?”
”I done told you momma! I ain’t do it!” Looking back, I don’t understand why I kept lying, I knew mom wasn’t believing a word I said.
My mother never got mad, even when when I had hurt someone and was lying through my teeth she was still calm, she just cocked her eyebrow and tilted her head. “Okay then, tell me who did it.”
“Matthias did.” I said pointing to Mattews twin, my other brother, who had his nose in his 3Ds.
Momma sighed, “Matthias, hun, did you hit your brother?”
“No, mommy, I been right here.-“ His voice was disinterested and he didn’t even look up.
“My tooth is gone!-“ Matt suddenly shouted, his finger in his mouth. “Mommy, Net knocked out my tooth! He did, you have to believe me he did it!”
My mother gasped, “Nathaniel Harold Accardi!-“
“Marci, what’s wrong?” We hear my fathers voice from the hallway, we didn’t hear him come up the stairs over all the fuss. You remember what I told you about my mother never getting mad? Yeah, well my dad is the exact opposite, if I was to do as much as not play well in football he would through a fit. “What did he do this time?”
“Nothing dear, we’re just fine!” She calls back to him. She turns to me, “Go to your room now, I’ll deal with you in a minute. Take Matt and Ty with you.”
I grab the twins by their wrists and half-pull-half-drag them to our room. Our room consisted of what used to be a door frame but is now just a curtain(dad took off the door as a punishment a few months before), a bookshelf, bunk beds for Ty and Matt, a twin size bed for me, a closet, and a dresser. I pull the boys over to my bed and wrap us in the red blankets, usually when mom and dad fought we would watch a movie real loud but recently dad took away our tv and DVD player so i result to telling them stories. I’d consider myself a good story teller, I’m very good at creating scenes in my head like a little movie, that’s actually how I made it through most of my time in project Jamboree, but more on that later.
I painted pictures of dragons, elven people, kings, and quests with my words. After a while Matt stops rubbing his cheek and focuses solely on my story, all the shouting is drowned out in my head, the only thing that exists is the story.
That is until dad slammed open the curtain (can you slam open a curtain?) “Nathaniel get up, come with me.” His face is a mask of anger, and there’s a hint of joy in his eyes. When I was little I used to think that I saw the devil in his eyes, but now I know better. That man was the devil, I killed the devil.
It takes me a second to realize what’s happening and come out of the story, “I-I’m sorry!” I stammer, “I won’t do it again! I’ll be good! I promise, please!-“
“Dammit boy! Come here! I’m not in the mood to hear your whining!” I don’t let go of my brothers, I naively hope that maybe he’ll just get annoyed and go out drinking again, lord knows he was a lot nicer drunk.
My father sighs and stomps over to us, he doesn’t try to get me up again this time he just pries us apart and drags me away sobbing.
“Papa, I didn’t mean to! He said it was okay! Matt isn’t mad at me anymore!-“
“Didn’t I tell you to stop that whining!” His grip is bruising. I don’t bother to fight back, that would’ve only made it worse. “You’re always doing something to mess everything up for everyone else. Either you’re hitting someone, setting things on fire, or tearing something apart and I’m fucking tired of it! You hear me?” I nod as he drags me outside, too bad we didn’t have any neighbors to witness this, instead we just had to live in fuck-ass nowhere.
“Papa it was an accident, I didn’t mean to! I won’t do it again!” My cries fell on deaf ears, I didn’t understand back then but now I know that he took pleasure in hurting me, nothing could make him want to stop.
He huffed as he dragged me out to the the garage. He kept all his tools, gadgets, and ‘dad stuff’ in there. When I was little, before dad lost his job as an engineer, before the yelling, screaming, and hitting, he used to take me there a lot. “Calm down dammit! I’m not gonna hit you.”
He pulled past his work bench, and sat me in a chair, “Don’t move.” Was all he said before he left me there. I waited for what felt like an hour before he came back, a cable in on hand and a trash bag in the other. When he spoke his voice was softer, not quite gentle, but he wasn’t screaming anymore, “Nathaniel, I’m tired, your mother is tired, neither of us know what to do with you.”
He sighed and laid down the the bag and cable, “Your mom is worried, I’m worried. Net bud, you’re hurting your brothers, you’re getting into fights at school, you almost caused a forest fire, what the hell is wrong with you?” He arranged his words and worked his voice to make him sound like he was concerned, but in reality I knew he didn’t give a shit. “You’re giving me no choice but to punish you.” He grabs a fold out chair so that he can sit eye-to-eye with me. “Tell me, Why are you doing these things? What can I do to help you?”
I didn’t know this man, I wished that he would just start yelling again, I hated it when he acted nice knowing how horrible of a person he was. All I can do is choke out a response, “I’m sorry, I hit Matt, I was mad. But I didn’t do the fires, I didn’t do ‘em!”
He rolled his eyes, i hate those eyes. I have the exact same ones, piercing blue with an almond shape. We have the same exact face, same nose, same jawline, same tired eyes. Our only differences back then was his facial hair and wrinkles, and now at eighteen our only differences(if he wasn’t dead) would be that I’m taller than him and his beer-gut. “Don’t lie to me boy.”
“I’m not! I swear to you I don’t know how it happened!”
“Nathan, you can get into a lot of trouble for that, be honest so I can help you. If you’re honest with me then I won’t punish you,” he took a breath, acting as if he didn’t want to hurt me, “but if you keep lying like this then I have to. Do you understand?”
“I do, I do.” I push back the tears, he hated it when I cried. “But papa, i ain’t lying. I swear to god I ain’t.”
“How do you expect me to believe this shit? So you just walked into the forest and a tree just magically combusted?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Officer McGoode told ya he didn’t find matches or a lighter. Papa, I don’t know how it happened but I didn’t do it.”
My father was getting to the end of his pacince, “Okay fine, tell me then, how the hell did it happen?”
“I told you! After school I was mad so I went to the woods to cool down, I ended up getting all twitchy and the fire just happened! I know how it sounds but that’s what happened!”
“Boy, I ‘aughta wash your mouth out with soap with all your lyin’.-“
“I’m not!” I screamed, looking back on this it was pretty dumb to yell at him but I was so fed up with him I couldn’t stop myself. I kept screaming and screaming. I thought my dad would’ve plucked me out of my chair and gave me a whoopen’ but he just sat there staring at me. “What? What are you looking at? Stop staring and say something!”
But he didn’t, he just sat in his stupidor. His mouth opening and closing. One word formed on his lips, not even a whisper. He just kept repeating it. I stood up, I wanted to go shake him and tell him to fucking snap out of it, but instead my eyes caught my reflection in a puddle. Red eyes and red-orange veins were prominent. For a long while I zoned out just stood there staring at myself and when I finally came to I was surrounded by men and women in national guards uniforms, guns all drawn on me.
“Don’t move!” One of them, a man, probably around thirty, yelled at me. I was shaking so badly, “It’s a red! Someone get the restraints!”
I looked around, my young mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Why was there fire in me? Why were they pointing guns at me? Why do they look like they’re about to shit their pants? Someone came behind me and cuffed my hands behind my back and clasped at plastic mask over my mouth and nose. Another gaurdsman picked up a can of red spray paint and marked and X over my back.
The same man, I guess he out-ranked the others or something barked an order to the rest of them. I was pulled along, five guns still trained on me. I was marched all the way down my driveway and out onto the main road where a black bus waited for me, I could faintly see the faces of other kids through the windows.
That same guardsman who delivered the orders grabbed me by the shoulder and turned me back to look at him. “Listen to me carefully, I will only say this once.” his voice took on an annoyed and angry tone, “Don’t do anything that we don’t tell you to, don’t talk out of turn, don’t try to run away, you won’t get very far, don’t try to take off your restraints, and don’t try those freaky little powers. Failure to adhere to these standards and you will be punished, do you understand?”
I really wanted to say something back, to smart him off, but I held my tongue and nodded.
“Good, punishment can be whatever we see fit with the exception of death.” The fact that that was even thought of sent a chill down my spine. “You may get on the bus now.”
As soon as I was on I noticed that there was probably just over ten other kids, the youngest was eight and I was probably the oldest. Could all these kids do what I could do? What was it that I even did? The realization hit me like a freight train. They had to have made a mistake, there was no way that I could’ve done that.
A guardsmen escorts me down the middle of the bus to the first vacant seat beside a little boy, probably the youngest there. He looks scared as hell, black hair and brown eyes, he looks like Matthew and Matthias. That thought bounces in my head painfully, i hated him for it. God, looking back on this makes me so mad at myself! I hated this kid for simply looking like my brothers! I hated this kids for fucking existing! I sat down, keeping space in between us, I felt discussed by him.
“Hello, I’m Nico. What’s your name?” He whispered once the guardsman had walked away. I simply shook my head, but that didn’t deter him. “What are you? They have us split up by color, I’m a green, that means I’m smart. There’s red, they do stuff with fire, blues can move stuff with their minds, yellows can do things to electricity, that’s why that girl is wearing gloves, and oranges can control people with their minds.”
“Shut up.” Was all I said. Red… so that’s what I am?
The boy didn’t look to upset by me, he just pursed his lips and looked out the window. All I could think of when he did that was Matthias does that, he would probably be a green like this kid too. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him!
Its funny like that sometimes, the red and the green. The youngest and the oldest. The nicest and the meanest. I hated this kid and he was going to know it.