LOTF: Before and After

Roger Conroy

Roger was a loner, and a solo fire starter at Bainbridge Military Academy for his first semester and a half at the military school. Of course, the fires he started weren't literal fires, except for the one time it really was. That was the week the lighters and matches ban was written into the school policy.

It was early in the last few months of his fourth grade year when Roger was finally assigned a roommate. To his surprise, the boy starting in the middle of the second semester was reasonably respectable at first glance. But once the two really got to talking, it confirmed what Roger suspected all along; that Jack Merridew was enrolled in military school for the same reason Roger was. Roger continued to assure Jack that being tossed into military school wasn't just a write-off by their parents, but evidence that there wasn't an adult powerful to control them. Though, it took a bit of time before Jack really started to believe that.

Roger and Jack were trouble, and everyone knew it. The two boys quickly became best friends on account of their shared love of causing trouble and finding humor in cruelty. But the truth was, Roger knew that he and Jack were different. In what way, he didn't know until the following Christmas when Jack spent it at the Conroy house instead of his own. But early into the friendship, Roger became well aware of the fact that whatever made him twisted inside wasn't what made Jack twisted inside. Roger knew that he never had a chance of being anything else. He was born without the capacity for empathy or grace. Roger didn't feel human and never had, but he could sense that something or someone had beaten the humanity out of Jack. And as it turned out, quite literally beat it out of him. Whatever shred of humanity Jack was born with was long gone. And once Roger figured out that Jack's family had something to do with it, he realized just how different they really were.

Roger Conroy didn't do poorly in school because he wasn't smart. Roger was smart, very smart actually. If he only cared enough to try, he would've done quite well for himself in school. But the thing was that Roger didn't care. He didn't see the value in education, or the point in slaving oneself studying to get good grades to get into a good college to slave himself studying for another four years just to land a job in which he'd have to slave himself til retirement. Roger was more of a live-in-the-moment kind of kid, and so he saw more value in enjoying his time at Bainbridge Military Academy instead of wasting it hovered over a different textbook every night.

In spite of his disinterest in education, Roger still did alright at the academy, academically speaking. He wasn't in the running for star student or anything like that, but his intellect carried him as far as he needed to go to get by. Military training wise, Roger tried much harder. His dad put a lot of pressure on him to succeed in one way or another. The way to his father's approval wouldn't be achieved through academics, Roger knew, so he busted his ass training so to prevent himself from being a complete disappointment. Roger didn't have the emotional capacity to care very much, but his parents made it very clear that if he didn't get into college or the military, he'd be out on the streets post graduation. Roger didn't care enough to study hard, so he trained hard instead and planned to join the military in some capacity straight out of high school.

Meanwhile, his older brother Malcom struggled in school for different reasons. He didn't exhibit the traits of psychopathy that his younger brother did, but Malcom was less intelligent than Roger. He struggled in school in spite of his best efforts, and wound up giving up on himself before he hit middle school. His parents worked to get him tested for potential learning disabilities, but by then Malcolm completely abandoned hope. He would later drop out of school at fifteen to work full time in an auto shop. He moved out at sixteen, when Roger was eleven and finishing his fifth grade year at the academy. Malcom moved in with two of his dropout buddies from high school, all of who also were working full time to contribute to the rent of the halfway house they were renting. Rhonda and Gregory begged their eldest to move back home and return to school, but the boy wasn't budging. He had no interest in school for different reasons than his younger brother, but the Conroy brothers' take on education wound up being pretty similar.