cracked • lashton [v slow updates]

two - ashton

i'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but when i was little i thought my grandfather had an important name. i call him pop, but he is mr. george irwin. i used to think he sounded like a banker or a businessman. i'm sixteen now, and i know the only important things about my pop are his fists. they're big and they hurt, not that i'd ever let him know that.

i even used to think that my name, ashton irwin, made me sound like i mattered. my pop renamed me bull when i was five because he said i was like a bull in a china shop since i wrecked everyone's life, and he didn't want me thinking i was special. i didn't let the name get to school, but he still only calls me bull.

i know i look like my pop did when he was younger. not from photos or albums, though. we aren't the type of family to that has scrapbooks or memory books of anything sentimental. there isn't one photo of me before i hit kindergarten, and it's a school photo.

ever since i can remember, whenever my mom has a load on, she'll smack me upside the head and tell me how much i look like pop. "dad, look, you have the same hazel eyes." it comes out like this though: "dah, luh, yeww teww hah the say hay eye."

my pop always tells her to shut up, but i never say a word.

we used to have the same curly dirty blond hair, too. whatever. i keep my hair short, just so i don't look like him. even though he's gone gray, we still look a lot alike, and i hate looking like him.

pop has always hated me. at least i know where i stand. in a fucked-up way, i can appreciate that. i stay out of his way and he stays out of mine, unless he's looking to beat the crap out of me. then we get to spend some real quality time together.

i also have an uncle, sammy, my mom's brother, who dropped out of high school at sixteen to become a mechanic. turns out he couldn't hack that, so he decided to become a professional druggie and alkie instead. he's pretty deep in the drug scene- spent some time in juvie, then big-boy jail.

when he's not locked up, sammy lives in a well-known drug house two blocks over from me. this is great when you're walking home from school and your wasted uncle comes crawling out from under a neighbor's bush, covered in his own vomit, asking you for money. makes you really popular with the other kids, let me tell you. he hadn't been around our apartment in ages, though. i overhead his drunken dad- my grandfather, mr. george irwin, pop- on the phone with the police a few weeks ago. he's back in jail.

now, i don't want you to think that i live in a place where a drink guy crawling out from a bush would be a shocking neighbourhood event. i don't live where the ladies gossip over tea sandwiches. hell no. i live in the dumps, a real shithole.

it's me, my mom, and pop, all shoved into a two bedroom second-floor apartment in a crappy twin house. well, i guess it isn't just the three of us. there's hundreds of other things living with us. countless roaches join us when we turn off the lights, and we have a pack of mice residing under our kitchen skink. when i grab a trash bag from that cabinet, i'm always grossed out by mouse turds- there's piles and piles under there.

you'd think my mother would sweep them up, try and keep her child from germs. nope. one time when i was little, she tried to serve me a piece of bread with a mouse turd on it, stuck in the butter. i'd started to cry because it knew what it was, and she smacked the back of the head and screamed that if i didn't eat it she'd shove it down my throat.

yeah, she ended up shoving the entire piece down my seven-year-old throat and held my mouth shut while i chewed and swallowed it. she's a great mom.

she also loves reminding me that i wasn't supposed to be born, and that i stole her dreams. she never really had dreams, so ur guess i inherited that from her.

her stupid big dream was to be a yoga instructor, even though i don't think that's a real job. she said i wrecked her "core strength" and she would never get any respect as a real yoga professional with a pouch for a stomach. the doctors had to do a c-section to get me out, so she's got a scar, too. no bikinis for her, also my fault.

i really don't know why she keeps throwing that one in my face. i swear she acts like i put the guy's dick inside her that night under the ocean city boardwalk. she hasn't been back to the beach since that summer, so who cares if she can't wear a bikini anymore? she got fat too, enough to give her an extra chin and a tire roll around her middle. after i was born she stopped excercising because she had to work to support me and my diaper/formula addiction.

she pretty much blames me for every bad thing in her pathetic life. like never graduating high school. instead, she got a job being the desk at the local salvation army- the salvy to those who work there.

the salvy is this place where rich people drop off all their used crap to make themselves feel like they're contributing to society in some way, like giving back or whatever bullshit they like to call it. you can get shitty furniture, shitty kitchen stuff, shitty house stuff, shitty clothing, and shitty shoes. i hate those the most. you have to be in the complete craphouse to want to buy someone else's used shoes. no matter how rich or uptight the people who wore them were, they still had foot sweat and funk between their toes. my mom doesn't care, and every pair of shoes she owns were worn by someone else.

according to her, i wore other kids' shoes all the time when i was little. she said i didn't care. i always have to tell her it's because i was too fucking little to know the difference. she just says i think i'm better than her. then, she wants to know: who do i think i am? do i think i'm some kind of rich kid? some kind of snot? do i really think i'm better than her?

i always tell her no, i'll buy my own fucking shoes because i'm just not enough of an idiot to to put on someone else's shoes.

then she'll hit me. i usually just let it happen, and i don't duck or try to dodge it. i let her hit me. it pisses her off so bad. but i figured out that my pop likes to finish what my mom starts, just to shut me up. he hits a lot harder.

realistically, i know i could knock her out with one punch. i've imagined it so many times. i'd smile, raise my fist, and connect it with her stupid face. down she'd go, like a freshly cut tree. i never do it, because the only thing my mom ever taught me was to never hit a girl. she told me that men who hit girls are weak, and i'm not weak. i'm the exact opposite, actually. i can kick any kid's ass, and i always could.

i fought my way through elementary and middle school. my nose is pretty much permanently broken, my right pinky finger has been snapped the wrong way, and my lip's been ripped open a bunch of times. we've never had health insurance, not even on welfare. my pop hated government handouts, and he says no daughter of his is going to stand in line like an animal for free anything.

so my nose is crooked and my pinky hurts when it rains, which is a real pain in the ass. but people leave me alone. i'm sort of over beating kids up now.

sort of.

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a/n: ok so if u haven't realized at this point, we're doing the thing where ashton is bigger and tougher than luke

also i'm writing based off the actual book's chapter lengths, so that's why this is longer than the last