Bring Glory(Us) Life

Chapter 2- The Color of Despair

        Lachlan Barclay, sixteen, son of the famous business owner Arman Barclay and French model and chef Brigitte Bellerose Barclay sat in a hard plastic chair in the front row, watching numbers appear from beneath beautiful strokes of chalk on the blackboard. Complex formulas, proofs, derivatives and integrals. It was like watching a ballerina dance. Or at least it had, before the world had gone dark.

        “Lachlan, would you like to show the class how to solve this problem?” his calculus teacher asked, offering a stick of chalk to the boy. Lachlan peered up through thick eyelashes and rose, accepting the writing device. He set it to the board, feeling the resistance of the chalk on his fingertips as he let the answers flow through him and into the world. His teacher smiled from the side, proud of his star student, always pleased to see the boy working.

        Only sixteen, a sophomore in high school, Lachlan was a genius. Not only was he at the top of his class, but he was halfway through a mathematics major on the side. He excelled at everything he was given: english, math, science, languages, history. He was set far ahead of the rest of the school, but not good enough to be one of the few young students admitted to the Ivy League schools he had aimed for. He had missed his chance to two other students in the city’s rival high school, leaving Lachlan where he was. He was on the path to a great future, but it hadn’t been what his high achieving parents had wanted.

        “Showing off again, Locky?” a boy in Lachlan’s physics class asked, a smile on his freckled face. He was always pestering Lachlan with jokes and invitations, and Lachlan knew another was on the way.

        “Hey, some guys and I are going to the beach later, check out some girls, catch some waves. Want to come?” Lachlan shook his head, as he always did.

      “I have to study,” he said flatly. The same excuse. The other boy, Stephen, nodded and shrugged, the same routine every time.

        “Alright, but if you change your mind, you know where to find us.” Clapping Lachlan on the back, he ran off to catch up with his pack of friends. Friends, Lachlan thought wistfully. He wondered often what it felt like to have friends, to go ‘hang out’ with other people. The familiar ache in his chest returned and he focused his thoughts elsewhere, fending off the same voices that had driven him to the ledge.

        “Lachlan, honey, can you take care of your sister tonight? I’m going out with the girls today,” his mother, Brigitte, said, little one-year-old Pauline in her arms. Ever since the birth of his long awaited sister she had been the center of his mother’s world and his father’s affections, not that they had been taken from Lachlan. He had been an accident when they were young and newly married, the son they never wanted.  Now he was just cheap, easy labor to take care of his baby sister when his father was working late and his wild, adventurous mother needed to get away.

        “I have to study for an exam,” he said weakly, knowing his mother wasn’t listening. She had already sat Pauline, playfully called Pia, on the floor and vanished behind a paper screen to change into something fabulous. She was always dressing in extravagant, fabulous things that Lachlan didn’t understand.

        “I’ll be back around midnight. There's some leftovers in the fridge for you and ingredients for whatever my little princess needs.” In a whirl of yellow feathers and silk she was gone, gliding out the door and into their limousine.

        Lachlan sat on one of the grand couches in their living room, a pile of books and papers at his side, little Pia seated in front of the massive flat screen TV watching one of her favorite stupid kids programs. The high pitched voices grated on Lachlan’s nerves, like a pencil being driven into his brain. He leaned back his head on the couch arm and surveyed his surroundings.

        They lived on ‘the rich block,’ as it was called, at the edge of town away from the taint of ‘commoners.’ Their house was a great four story, faux French mansion, all white walls, huge windows, and meaningless statues of naked people and animals in strange positions. In the back were an in-ground pool, mini golf course, and Pia’s play area for when she got older. The front sported rows of brightly colored gardens to give color to the white walls. There were too many bedrooms and bathrooms, and rooms altogether, for Lachlan’s taste. The house always felt empty and hollow, bare of the affection and warmth he had only on scarce occasions experienced in lower income homes.

        “Muh Muh,” Pia cried suddenly, waving her tiny arms in the air. Lachlan sighed.

        “I know you want your mama, but she’s not here right now. You just have to deal with me,” he said, trying to hide the contempt in his voice. He hated his sister, who got everything she wanted, could do anything she wanted, all with the admiration and praise of their parents. He, on the other hand, the unwanted one, was a mere slave, locked away with the half deaf nanny he had been raised by until the old woman died and his parents discovered he had some intelligence. They had immediately forced him into rigorous programs, and his life of suffocating pressure had begun. He didn’t know what fun felt like, or freedom. The happiest he had ever been in his life was on that roof, reaching for eternity. Sudden tears flooded his eyes as he thought of it, and he hurriedly rubbed them away. Bending down, he lifted his sister into his arms and set her in her highchair in the kitchen for dinner.

        It was always a battle feeding Pia. She screamed and threw her food around, something their mother thought endearing and didn’t discourage, which drove Lachlan up the wall. He sat bitterly across from the tiny demon, food splattered on his face and clothes, until it was too much for him.

         “You know what? You can go to bed hungry. Time to go,” he hissed, hauling her to her room, into pajamas, and finally to the crib. Slamming the door, he stalked down the hall, away from the shrill screams, to his room on the fourth floor.

        It was his favorite place. Quiet, secluded in the attic, an old desk once used by his German grandfather by one wall, his French grandmother’s piano under one window. Lachlan didn’t play; he just liked the look of it, so old and worn, yet stubbornly alive and strong, imbued with the freedom of music. In the center of the room was his bed, king size with silk sheets, stacked two mattresses high. He had needed a staircase to get into it when he was younger, and it was still a challenge for his short stature.

        Closing the door, he caught sight of himself in the full length mirror behind his door. Short, scrawny, dressed in pressed black pants, a white button-down shirt with a wool vest over it. His dark hair cut short and gelled flat like an 1800’s English schoolboy. His gray eyes, the color of despair, were dull and lifeless, like the ones he’d seen in the stuffed animals his father kept above the fireplaces in their house, shiny and dead, devoid of hope. A sudden wave of emotion washed over him, building like a river when it reaches a dam, and it burst forth. He sank to the ground, heaving sobs racking his body, and curled into a small ball, wishing desperately he could just disappear.