roberto & nia

02. nia+robert

nobody buys pink lemonade from long-haired boys who can't make lemonade right.

maybe this has less to do with his hair and more with the lemonade, but both had some sort of stake. they were two characteristics that defined him as a person, and it hurt to have them slighted.

robert realizes this in between long, bitter sips from a blue straw and clear cup. a whole gallon of the brightly colored drink sat tentatively on his table in a shining silver dispenser, untouched and unnoticed, for all its beauty. and it was beautiful — he had saved up for two entire months a small fortune of three hundred dollars and sixty-seven cents, and almost every penny was dedicated to the purchase of the dispenser. he had even stolen flowers from his neighbor's garden to stick onto the side container — passionately red amaryllises that made him think of his girlfriend's lipstick, and blood. eye-catching things.

it seemed as if no one else noticed this. or maybe, robert wondered, his eyes were just more keenly attuned to life's most beautifuls.

but chances were his eyes really weren't, that he had perfectly average noticing skills, and that this was just another one of his attempts at making himself appear special. to belong, to be an envied member in an elite group of — whatever, it didn't matter, as long as he was one of few.

at least two times a day robert found something special about himself—something he wanted to be special about himself. his eyebrows were well-shaped. his teeth were barely crooked anymore. he could say the alphabet forwards and backwards in thirteen seconds. he had a bit of pudge on his stomach—baby fat that hadn't quite slid off during track season in the spring–but if he flexed hard enough, folded his breaths and laid them flat, it looked like a nearly developed six-pack.

to keep himself from growing an ego, robert regularly reminded himself of that fact that these were extremely mundane tasks, the things he could do — all he had to do was look at his cousins, or uncles, and he became fully aware that he was mostly nothing in the grand scheme of things.

robert still toyed with the idea of having secret, extraordinary abilities while he sat and scorched and grew scornful under the sun, watching what could have been a sea of customers pass by without stopping.

selling lemonade was a purely experimental and sort of juvenile idea, born completely out of boredom and dissatisfaction with the thought of staying in his room all day until his friends could come over at night, when it was finally cool enough to be outside. nothing serious. he had stopped being serious about things when school had ended. but robert still came into it with the goal of success, and potential income. his mother said it was a good thing, a smart thing he was doing. 

"be innovative. break out that cycle of death and worthlessness your father put you in," she reminds him, while patching up holes in a pillow case,  even though his father was perfectly rich and worth very many things now. she had issues when it came to coming to terms with his current life situation. robert thought she was probably just jealous, and bitter. understandably so. robert still disliked him, deep in his soul–the kind of contempt that manifests from watching your father escape through the window of your home and forget to call you on your birthday. but he saw his mother's hate too. his father was her reminder of her nonspecialness.

he had set out in high spirits. weekends were ideal; it seemed as if no one could stand to be in their houses during the day, probably because the a.c. in most houses went out at two in the afternoon. at least forty people circulated the neighborhood per hour, a mixture of his friends, relatives, and strangers alike.

robert's best friend xavier had come by at one and drunk eight straight glasses, no stopping or choking or spills on the floor. he dropped a twenty in the jar, patted robert on the back, and ran off.