What is in a name? Does it have some kind of power over you? Can that power somehow be taken away if people stop calling you by that name? Do they somehow strip you of your identity? The children at school and most of the teachers have this way of calling me anything except my real name. Almost as if though I do not even have a name. Sometimes it feels like I was born without one, born without an identity. Like I never existed. I am destined to be invisible for the rest of my life, at least in this town.
Despite the fact that anyone ever rarely uses it, my name, McKenzie, means "comely". It can also mean "child of the wise leader" or "born of fire". I have no reason why my parents gave me this particular name. Maybe they had really high hopes for me or maybe they were giving themselves a compliment.
They have called me weird, freak, outcast and a bunch of other names. With every new name my identity gets stripped away further. My so-called guardians call me a rebel and a delinquent. My usual response to when they tell me that "I am a loser", is that it takes one to know one. That would usually result in a screaming match. The one who yells the loudest usually ends up winning. That is usually either my mother or her boyfriend. I know that it might seem disrespectful, but if you knew them you would say the same. They cannot be considered to be good parents. In order to even call them parents they would have to acknowledge our existence.
I wonder why no one has ever attempted to intervene when the screaming gets out of hand. Everyone is probably scared of Goliath. He can be very intimidating. I once saw him take a beer bottle and bash someone's head in because the guy cut him off in traffic. Anger was his middle name and his default setting was irritated. If his temper was not enough to scare you, his physical appearance definitely will. With his dark hair that had grey stripes in it and his stomach that hung in a big bulge at the front. His thick arms could strangle a buffalo and he has a face set in a permanent frown. The only time I have ever seen his laugh or smile is at some distasteful show on the television or when someone else is in pain.
To the people who actually know me, like my twin brother Skylar and my best friends, Tyler Hawkins and Edith Cyres, I am just "Mac".
Things were not always like this, at least not at school. There was a time when I used to date one of the most popular guys in school, Brian Montgomery, the Captain of the Rugby team. It was an immense mistake in judgement on my part. We are all allowed a few mistakes.
I turned sixteen a few days ago. We celebrated alone in the Red Flag sharing a cupcake.
The name of the town where I live is not really important. It is pretty much a walking cliché of a mixture between the Upper East Side of Manhattan and Orange County like in those old TV Shows; The O.C and Gossip Girl. That is where the similarities end though.
The town I live in is close to the beach and it is one of those places where you get four seasons in one day. You can smell the sea in the air when you walk down the street. If you listen close enough you can hear the waves breaking almost anywhere in town. The air is almost always clammy and wet, especially in the mornings.
In all the places we have lived over the years, it has felt the most like home.
Most of the young people are obsessed with surfing, Tennis or Rugby. It would not be a typical South African town if the people in it were not obsessed with Rugby. I never really got it though. To me it has always been a bunch of guys running after a ball. I know that people would disagree and say that it is more complex than that, but I have more important things to worry about; matters of life and death.
We have shallow girls who pretend that they can surf to impress hot guys. I do not need to pretend though. I can actually surf better than anyone else in the school and in the whole province. The only exception might be Harper Brown. According to me he is the second best, but he will most likely disagree with that statement.
Everything at school started to fall apart when I was caught in a lie. I was a part of that fake world until my boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend and left me for her.
The lie I am referring to is the fact that I am not in fact rich and that I do not live in some sick mansion which has way too many rooms in any way. I happen to live in the worst part of town; a type of trailer park. I know that a lot of people have different ideas or opinions of what it must be like to live in the local trailer park; well let me help you with that, it sucks.
I got labelled as an emo and a liar afterwards. I cut my natural long blonde hair. My wardrobe changed with the hair. I used to wear brand name outfits outside of school, which I borrowed without permission, now I wear a bunch of layers made up of different colors. Some people would say that this was my attempt to re-invent myself, that I am now more "fake" than I was before. Maybe they are right, or maybe I am now being myself. Maybe that dumb blonde who was head-over-heals in love with Brian Montgomery and best friends with Ashley Castles and Christina Brown was the fake "me".
My mom currently has three jobs. The first job is from six o clock in the morning until two o clock in the afternoon by the local Diner. The second job is at the local meat market, where she sells meat for this really rude guy called Pedro, from two thirty pm till about six thirty pm. I think that he is Greek or something like that. At least that is what he keeps telling everyone who will listen. I think he is lying through his teeth though, he was born somewhere on a farm in Namaqualand. The third job is at a club in town called the Raging Bull where she works as a bar lady. In other words, my mother is never home. Even when she is physically home, she is still not home. I don't know how else to explain it. Like a Zombie.
My dad died when Skylar and I were five years old. Whenever I tell people this they say how sorry they are. The truth is that I hardly knew him. All I remember is that he yelled allot and drank allot. He ended up drinking himself to death, literally, by walking in front of a train while he was drunk. Too bad he had to do it in front of my brother. It really messed him up.
My mom's boyfriend who happens to live with us at the moment is this guy called Goliath. The one boyfriend is worse than the other. Goliath works from home, or at least that is what he says. In truth I think he just likes to sit around and do nothing. That makes the fact that he often calls me a "loser" kind of ironic.
Do not misunderstand me; there are a bunch of really nice and civilized families living in the neighborhood, but my family just happens to be the rotten egg in the whole equation. I would avoid my own family if I could. I do not blame the others in the neighborhood for walking circles around us. The sad truth is that you cannot choose your family.
Skylar is my older brother by a total of five minutes. It is probably common sense that with a name like Skylar that he has been bullied a lot. We are more than brother and sister. We are best friends. We do everything together and we always stand up for each other, no matter what. Even if the whole school hates me and my so-called parents think I am useless, I still have Skye. Mac and Skye against the world and that is the way it is always going to be. Like Thelma and Louise or Bonnie and Clyde except for the fact that we do not really steal, that much, and we have no current plans to go driving into the sunset off of a cliff or to get shot to death by cops.
My life is actually pretty boring except for the fact that every day of my life is like a war and that my house is full of active landmines that can explode any second. I always thought that things could have been worse. If one of my mother's boyfriends would get angry and physically assault Skye or me; I would tell myself that things could be worse; at least he did not break a leg or an arm. The night one of them broke my brother's arm, I told myself that it could have been worse; at least they did not break his leg as well. The list became longer and longer over the years and I have always looked for excuses to make my life more bearable, more normal.
I have spent my whole life looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, or the rainbow at the end of a storm, because the second that I admit what my life is really like, that there is nothing better, that things are only going to get worse from now on, I will lose all hope.