The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(2)
It hits me: it started in a house of hard lessons, back on Earth. I remember the first time I was acquainted with my destiny. After I press the switch on the tablet, the device powers up, and I start from the beginning.
2 THEODORE: OUR ONLY HOPE
Here goes. I am going to be in this cell for a while, so I should make it good. Maybe I can annoy the guards by being overblown and loud.
“You know! I will not be able to remember what everyone said, so I will do my best to entertain!” I shout, and then to myself I whisper, “Is this thing on? Okay.”
I take a deep breath through my nose, inhaling dust particles.
“My name is Theodore Crane, originally of Minneapolis, Minnesota.”
I cough, then start again.
“As a kid, I experienced pain from three separate origins in life: the destructive catastrophe of my parent’s marriage, the cold steel of a burger spatula, and the rigid edges of a metal studded belt. This is ridiculous!”
After pondering the start of my account, I decide the introduction is satisfactory and continue loudly, with intent to annoy. “Before I was recruited by Zane, there were two things I knew to be constant, pain and loss!”
The guard bangs on the vault, the intercom clicks, and with a grumble, he says, “I am going to tell you this once, prisoner, keep it down!”
I say, “Yes sir,” because that is the only response warranted toward an imperial prison guard. I return to the recording, and pick up quietly where I left off:
“Alright, here we go again. It wasn’t until the end of the one-hundred-sixty-two game season that I realized there was more to life than just baseball. My favorite team won the series that year.”
The excitement surrounding their triumph stuck with me. I remember seeing it all on television. The team was strolling down the strip with their floats and limos, as multi-color confetti rained down. The players were covered waist up in fur. They waved to all the people that stood by them throughout the year.
It was all a spectacle. The team had a record that year of eighty-five wins and seventy-seven losses. It was the worst single season recorded for a world championship team in baseball history. Their success in the midst of defeat meant a lot to me.
Enough about baseball. Now, the beatings. I would never have ended up where I am now if it wasn’t for my freakish home environment. Now that I look back, it was very much like a parallel universe, where I could visualize my alter ego waving at me stiffly from across the vast realm of space, nodding, “Uh huh, no thanks, dude, I’m not gonna cross over.” I was a prankster, and foolish as a lonely kid can sometimes be.
That one day I recall vividly. It was humid and sticky outside. The kind of weather one dreams about in December, yet moans when it happens. I was wearing a tank top over my sun blazed back.
As the bus stopped, I peeled my exposed shoulders off the vinyl seats. The action reminded me of my stupidity; there was still a lingering sting around my shoulder blades and arms from a few days earlier, because of a prank that Jason and his friends put me up to.
I was dared by Jason to tag the dumpster situated behind our apartment building. This green steel monstrosity was overflowing with trash, with mattresses and mufflers stacked up ignominiously against it. I only had to sprint toward the heap of trash, and touch the side of this butt-ugly dumpster.
Sounds easy, right? But the catch was that we both knew it was a hot day in September, and hovering above every dumpster spewing out garbage in the area, was at least one swarm of a hundred bees. In accepting the dare, I stupidly thought I was immune to danger. The pulsating bee stings on my shoulders was the equivalent to those of several sharp blows from a cold metal spatula striking my ass. I could never back down from a challenge, because in my mind, there was nothing that I could not do—except find a solid friend.
I shook off my thoughts. It was my stop.
When the accordion door to the bus opened, I hollered out to my fellow riders, ‘See ya wouldn’t wanna be ya!’
‘See ya, Theodore,’ the bus driver said.
I was a skinny little twelve-year-old platinum-haired jerk. I felt like no one noticed me up to that point, except for my scraggly haired female bus driver Willy. She was the only one to bid me a good day. Willy swore at us all the time, and wore hilariously huge sunglasses.
Most of the passengers witnessed me as I slipped on the top stair of the bus and tumbled helplessly to the curb. As I lay on the hot asphalt, crippled, I glanced back, seeking pity from my chums on the bus. All I received were laughs. Even Willy, the bus driver, had no shame.
When I rolled over to get up, I splashed into a puddle that I had not noticed when I fell. After the rippled water settled, I saw my reflection. Right in front of me was my face sizzled by the sun, hardened by trial, and marked by misfortune. The color of my eyes matched the cloud-shrouded blue sky; my hair was bleached by the sun-dazed summer days. I might have drowned in that warm, stagnant puddle if I were any tinier for my age.
As I turned away from my reflection, I once again became conscious of Jason and his friends’ deep guffaws from within the bus; their laughs punctuating the sticky air. I knew they were heckling at me. There was no way I was going to stick around and listen to them pummel me with trash talk. With a dash, I was off, far away from the scene of humiliation.
Jason and I played together all the time—whenever he was not busy with other friends, that is. He was quite a popular guy. If he wanted me to do something absurd, he was my best friend, and if he didn’t like what I did, he was my worst enemy. He was tough on me like an older brother, even if we were the same age.