Adam and Terese

Shawn pressed his ear to the door jam. He could hear his newest foster mother whining. "I don't know what to do with him. He won't have anything to do with the other kids. He's always angry and I fear he may turn violent. My children are scared of him--and not just because of the scars. We can't keep him any longer." It was the eighth time he's heard that conversation. One year: eight homes. Every one was about the same. The family welcomed him, full of pity for his situation, determined to make a difference in his life, then they turned around and threw him out on his ear when they saw the kind of person he really was. He had determined one thing: People were not worth loving. Everyone had one thing in common: he, Shawn Dean, hated them. 

Two days later, he was moved to his new home. The agent who drove him there--the same, bottle-blonde lady who had driven him to all the others, lectured him the whole way on how people didn't care how he looked, but cared how he acted and how his behaviour made more lives than just his own miserable. As they pulled up in front of the new home, she turned to him.

"We have been looking into more options for you, Shawn. I can't tell you more except that you can't mess up this time. These are wonderful people."

Shawn rolled his eyes and, as he always did when he had to step out on the street, put up the hood of his black sweater and fitted his sunglasses on. He kept his head down as they walked up the driveway. The door opened before they got there and a tall, slender African woman stepped out. She beamed at Shawn. He looked her over and leaned back against the porch railing. There was nothing special about this lady. Why should she be any different from the rest? She took his hand--his right hand, thank heavens. People always freaked out when they accidentally grabbed the prosthetic. 

"My name is Terese. I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time, Shawn." Shawn acknowledged her with a nod. How long could she really have been looking forward to it? He'd been kicked out of the last place only three days ago. She leaned back into the house. "Adam! Sandi is here with the boy!" Adam proved to be a massive man--at least six foot six with arms almost as thick as Shawn's waist. This man would certainly be able to enforce any rules he set. There were no kids--that was a mercy. Adam took all of Shawn's bags except his backpack and showed him inside. Once the door had closed behind him, Shawn whipped off his sunglasses and hood and turned to the couple. The first reaction always told him a lot, but this time, there was no first reaction. They didn't so much as blink at the sight of his half-bald head and molten, lumpy face. He wasn't even wearing his patch. He unzipped his hoodie and took off his prosthetic with it, and still they didn't react. They must have been warned. Shawn wondered briefly what else they had been warned about. He walked into the room and stopped in his tracks. It was way too fancy. The bed was at least Queen sized, with six pillows and a billowy comforter, and the bed-table was a rich, reddish wood, and on it, there was a lamp with a fancy wrought iron stand and beaded cover. The dresser matched--red wood and black iron, as did the mirror above the bedhead. A big TV sat on the dresser, with a DVD player and Xbox. The deep blue curtains over the large window matched the thick, soft carpet under his feet, elegantly setting off the light blue and white walls. A faint paint smell told him that the room had just been done up like this. There was a skylight and a bathroom attached. The bathroom featured a full sized Jacuzzi tub and a shower, not to mention a marble counter top and a mirror with sides that folded out so he could see himself from all angles at once--not that he'd ever actually want to.

"Wow." Shawn turned to Adam and Terese. "You do know I never stay anywhere very long. I hope you have other plans for this place after I head."

"Perhaps you've never stayed anywhere long just because you haven't found the right place yet," Terese suggested quietly. Adam put down the bags and suggested that Shawn come down for dinner as soon as he was ready, then they both left the room. 

Shawn flopped down across the bed. "I don't like these people." He told the skylight, but it sounded false, so he added one word: "yet." He was hungry, so he soon went downstairs to see if this lady could cook. 

When he reached the kitchen, he found that it was Adam doing the cooking. He'd been half expecting some weird foreign dish, but what he got was spaghetti with chicken sauce and garlic bread. As they ate together, Shawn watched them carefully, trying to gauge what kind of people he'd been put with. He quickly realized that he had no hope of disliking Adam. The man was just too funny. He had an amazing talent for mimicking famous people and the best sense of humour Shawn had ever encountered. Terese was quieter, but she had this way of looking people in the eye when they spoke that felt like she really cared. Also, when she laughed, she just shook silently and wheezed in a way that made the humour even funnier. 

The first few days with Adam and Terese--the Kagumes--flew by and, to his own surprise, Shawn actually enjoyed them. The food was good, the house was kind of posh, and he could do basically whatever he wanted to. Adam was in and out--he was some kind of specialist doctor and philanthropist, dividing his time between the office and dinners and special events, and Terese was one of those crazy people who run two miles every morning and eat only raw stuff, but they were cool. As usual, Shawn kept his eyes open for things to provoke them--to bring out their other side--but when he found ways, he realized that he didn't want to provoke them. He didn't want to risk being sent away. Where else would he find such a family? Two weeks passed before they called him to come and "talk". Every family did it at some point, and he dreaded the "Let's talk" moment. He met them in the living room and sat across from them in a slouch, neither meeting nor obviously avoiding their eyes.

"Shawn, I trust that your are now quite comfortably settled in here?" Terese asked gently.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Now there are a few small things we need to work out. Adam?"

Adam leaned forward."Sandi tells us that, due to how quickly you have been moving from home to home, you have missed a whole school year. We don't want you to fall behind, so we have been looking into various options."

"I won't go to school." Shawn replied bluntly. "You can't make me."

"And you needn't go to school. You can do online. But you shouldn't write off going to school. You need to make friends somehow, and school is a good way."

"School's for normal kids. I'm not normal. I look like a freak. Anyone with eyes in his head can see that."

"Normal is overrated. Perhaps you could be the one to show them that. As long as you expect everyone to think you're strange, they will keep on thinking you are. You have to show them that you are more than that."

"What if I'm not? What if there is no more to me than meets the eye?"

"I don't believe that--and, deep inside, I know that you don't either." Terese patted his knee sympathetically. "But if you don't want to go to school yet, I can enroll you in online school. You should be in eighth grade, I believe?"

"Yeah."

"And the other thing we wanted to talk about is this: You haven't been more than a few meters outside of this house since you came here. It's not healthy. You can wear your shades and hood outside if you want, but you need to get out and get exercise."

"I can get exercise inside like Adam."

"You can't just body build. You need aerobic exercise."

They finally came to a compromise that left Shawn jogging around all in black after dark every night. He took a secret pleasure in knowing that he was creeping the neighbors out. 

Online school was a pain, with far more homework than he was used to, but he put up with it. His grades were low, but who cares? It wasn't like he'd ever get a normal job or go to college or anything. About a quarter of the kids in his online school were obviously religious, and most of the rest went out of their way to prove that they weren't. Shawn occasionally put a few words in on trivial discussions in the Student Lounge, but he didn't dare comment when people posted pictures of themselves, lest they expect him to post one. 

If his social life was to all be online, he figured he'd best open a Facebook account, but soon closed it as former friends flooded him with questions about how he was doing, where he was, and, worst of all, why he had no pictures. He had an gmail account, but no one except his teachers emailed him anyways. Twitter was a little better. He tweeted endless movie quotes--after all, watching movies was most of what he did with his time--under the name  of "HammerofThor", and soon accumulated some thirty-six followers. He took to creating online "What kind of ____ are you?" quizzes, but his weren't particularly popular and most of the comments were about how far off the results were. He played computer games constantly, often playing a game and watching a movie at the same time. He read books sometimes, but never the self help or supposedly inspirational books that Terese gave him. Trivia and graphic novels were more his fare, with the occasional dark horror story or thriller novel. After he read a graphic novel of the Phantom of the Opera, he read the full book. He liked that story because, in his eyes, he was the phantom--a deformed monster with a desperate human soul. Then he made the mistake of watching the movie. He loved it right up until, in the middle of singing"Past the Point of No Return", Christine tore off the Phantom's mask and everyone screamed in horror. The phantom was no Prince Charming to be sure, but Shawn knew that he was far, far more hideous than this "half-monster". If that man was deformed enough that the only place for him was his lair under the opera house, where was the place for Shawn? 

Terese and Adam insisted that he make minimum one trip to a store a week, whether for groceries, clothing, or other stuff. He knew they meant it well--they were trying to help him meet people, but it wasn't working. Shawn loathed those trips. Even with his hood and sunglasses, he could hear the whispers of "Did you see his face?", and catch the moment when the cashier's eyes widened ever so slightly when she looked at him. The worst was one time when a little girl said, loudly, "Look, mommy, it's Quasimodo!" Her mother quickly hushed her and scolded, but the damage was done. Shawn turned and left the store without buying anything. Quasimodo. The hunchback. So deformed people fled from him. That was what kids thought of him.

That night, when he got home, he took a razor blade from the bathroom to his room with him and carefully, painfully, cut three long lines in his shoulder. The pain was distracting, but not enough. He stabbed the blade into his shoulder beside the cuts and turned to the mirror. Blood was trickling down his shoulder and the blade was standing straight up. Then the emotions just broke loose and he sank to the floor, crying like a girl. He pulled out the blade and stabbed it into the floor again and again, staining the carpet with blood. He felt like the world had ended. He screamed out his hate against whatever fate or deity had made that accident happen. He could picture a god, like a mad scientist, cackling "I have made a monster!" His rage seemed to go nowhere, but stab him through with self-loathing. He returned to his room, feeling sick and miserable and began flipping through channels on the TV. He found some kind of death metal band concert and listened to them scream and roar about blood and revenge. He wondered if the lead singer really did hate the world as much as the lyrics said he did. Shawn knew he hated the world that much, but did this man? What had the world ever done to him that was so horrible? He was rich and famous and good looking. Shawn was just about to shut it off when something caught his eye--the drummer. He was a skinny guy, covered with chains and spikes like the rest of the band, but his white and black streaked hair was swept over in a long, gelled to stay perfect, side piece, covering half his face. Shawn watched carefully until it gave a closeup on the drummer and he could see how the hair was done.