The McKay Boys

25| brumous•

"Why are you punishing him when he's not the one to be blamed?" Kesha frowned. "He said the bus didn't want to pick him up." The way that she distractedly sucked the apple sauce from her finger made Ashton believe she didn't truly care.

After dinner that night, Erwin had rubbed Ashton's head when he was about to go to bed and he said:

"I know it's not your fault. But we want to be a perfect family. And in 'perfect' families, parents discipline their kids. That's just the way it has to be."

Ashton didn't quite understand. It made no sense to him, but instead of seeking clarification, he only went to bed.

As he grew he couldn't come to understand the world he lived in. Why the poor had to be poor, why the rich had to be rich, and why those with too much sometimes didn't wish to share with others. His bitterness toward the wealthy class grew over the years because he couldn't understand just why the world wasn't balanced.

And then one evening at Sade Rose when he heard a purring engine and laughing and turned his attention in the direction, his anger and bitterness expanded. He observed as the McKay boys got onto their bikes and rode out of the school grounds, and how some of the students hooted and smiled after their vanishing presence. He was annoyed. How loud, how proud, and how privileged the rich were. It made him sick.

And he thought to himself, that if Kanan McKay didn't get off his case, he was sure to show him how much he despised the high class. He'd make another example out of him.

Flashback Ends

•❅──────✧❅✦❅✧──────❅•

Khalil

My large hand pressed Amelia into the door, and she stared up at me with those big brown doe-like eyes that never failed to melt the ice encrusted around my heart.

When I first saw Amelia, she was cute as fuck. She was still cute as fuck at that present moment, but back then I was almost knocked off my feet at the first sight of her.

Through the cold bannisters, she was so tiny in her dirty white dress and her round face flushed and swollen from crying. I called her potato-face, but I loved potatoes. She didn't know that.

She was an angel sent to protect me from the darkness that was waiting to suck me away. I was doing a good job at controlling this darkness, but it was only a matter of time before it consumed me whole. How long can a fallen angel manipulate the devil? Not long before he, the king of hell decides that yes, he's far stronger and mightier than those he has proven to be above.

Amelia was my saving grace. She was my sanity. I didn't burden her with that responsibility. At least I hope I didn't burden her with it. Which was why I didn't expound too much on how much she meant to me. I didn't want to intimidate her.

When she showed up at my house years ago, I felt a weird connection. I saw myself inside of her. Her tired eyes, soaked in trauma that she was much too young to have experienced, mirrored mine in a sad way.

I remembered what had taken away the light from my eyes. Or what moment, rather. It was a rainy afternoon. Or was it nightfall? The streets were darkened by the rain, and inside the backseat of my father's long, black limo, I could hardly see past the harshly tinted windows. He'd parked at the gates to a huge brown house with an ugly shape. It was too big, brass windows stretching from top to middle and arched doors that shaped like the roaring mouth of a monster. Vines stretched across the walls like several thin, dark hands reaching above the other. And from the front seat, my father with his cane clenched in his hand eyed my brothers and me from the rearview mirror.