Tremble

Once the school day was finally over with its monotonous, tedious routine, Asher dipped out of the back of the school and pulled out a Camel Crush and a pair of black-tinted sunglasses. Today, he chose to crush it. He needed the menthol, or at least, he convinced himself as much. He loved the dirty habit, not because it made him feel at ease – nothing could make him feel more at ease than he already was. He loved the filthy habit because of the head rush, he had the best thoughts, and the most heightened thoughts when he was dragging off his cigarette. The spicy mint of the menthol made a soft scent on him that mixed with his natural musk, he liked it and so did the girls that would part ways for him.

His index finger curled around the carcinogen stick and his thumb was beneath it to keep it leveled as he scuffed his black, worn-out Doc Martens through the grass. His hand shoveled through his mess of shadowy locks and his eyes examined the area. He saw the soccer team practicing and decided that cutting through the field would be a quicker way home.

He walked through the field, his shoes scoffing the perfectly green, perfectly cut grass, dragging it up with each kick of his foot. Asher looked around as they screamed for him to get off the grass. He decided to take his time. When a ball flew at him, Asher reached his hand out and trapped the leather lining between his clenching grip. His teeth were biting into the filter of his cigarette, careful not to damage it, as he threw down the ball and continued to walk through the remaining feet of the field.

“Want to get off the field, dude? Seriously. We’ve got a big game tomorrow.” Callum approached Asher with a studious step.

Asher turned his head toward Callum, his eyebrow arched high enough that it wasn’t concealed behind his sunglasses anymore. “If I chose to stand here all day, what would you do,” he paused, his eyebrow falling again as he dragged the word with sarcasm, a puff of smoke framing Callum. “Dude?”

Callum looked back at his teammates who had started to round a little closer to the growing dispute. Asher rolled the cancer stick with his teeth, his eyebrow arched. Callum took another step closer, “Me and my guys, we’d kick the shit out of you.”

Asher released an intimidating laugh as his lips framed the cylinder full of fumes, sucked in, and blew hard out his nose as he replied with tremors of laughter. “You need help?”

Callum looked back at his teammates and then stepped toward Asher with a determined feel. He waved the guys back a little and they took a few steps to calm the air. “No, I could take you if I wanted to.”

Asher’s arms spread open and gestured to the air around him as he tipped his head back and then forward again to lock eyes with Callum. “If you thought you could take me, then why am I still standing? You need help, and you just don’t want to admit it.”

Asher took one last drag of his Camel Crush and flicked the dying bud into the grass a few feet beyond them. Callum shook his head lightly, his eyes staying against Asher’s with purpose. “No, I don’t need their help. If I wanted to take you, I’m positive I could.”

“Is that so? Then prove it, twinkle toes.”

Callum took the remaining short steps and pushed Asher with an exerted force he was looking for. Asher sidestepped as Callum’s hands pushed into his chest, his hand wrapping deep into Callum’s long, blonde locks and ripping his head back. Asher’s eyes flashed up to the soccer players with a challenge. He wanted to see who would step forward and try to defend Callum, ward Asher off with threats and demands. No one came toward them.

Asher ripped Callum’s head back again, a few loose strands torn from his head as the boy tipped his lips a bit closer to his ear. He searched over the contours of his face, his challenging eyes flickering to the teammates before settling on the frustrated expression on his face, his lips pulled over his mouth. “I could fucking kill you, kid. Don’t fuck with me.”

He launched Callum forward, watching him tumble towards the ground on his hands and knees as he turned his face up to look at Asher’s slow, retreating steps. He pushed himself to stand on unstable legs as he screamed with an infectious tone, “Stay away from my girlfriend, you freak!”

Asher laughed under his breath, his head shaking left and right for a moment as he called lightly before he became too far away, “If your girlfriend can stay away from me.”

The insecurity hiding inside Callum’s voice was almost too much of an opportunity for the young manipulator to disregard. He walked over a few more blocks until the dark beige house with a white door and dark brown shingles came into view. The grass was nearly mowed, the flowers watered. Everything looked to be in order and his aunt’s car was pulling into the driveway as he made his rounds up the sidewalk. She drove the newest style of the Toyota Camry in a dark maroon tint.

He had his bag slung on his shoulder with lazy weight under the flap, his thumbs in the pockets and his fingers curling into lame fists. He saw his aunt and nodded once to her as she smiled at waved at him. He agreed that his aunt wasn’t a bad person. In fact, she worked with mentally disabled first graders as a day job and taught a night class at the community college a couple miles up the road. She had opened her house to him with open arms and an open mind. She knew the reason why his parents kicked him off to America to live with her and she still had the will and open-mindedness to smile at him. For that much, Asher believed that she deserved respect from him. He was still a difficult child to have under the wing, but he didn’t do anything intentional.

Asher firmly believed in respect, maybe not so much in showing it, but nonetheless. He believed that if you had gone through so much and still had the will-power to smile, you deserved the acquaintance of his limited normalcy. Katherine was one of those people. She deserved not the snide, rude, pungent adolescent that Asher usually was, but instead a suitable young man who said yes ma’am, no ma’am. A chivalrous young man who wouldn’t sit down at the table unless she had sat down already and to be honest, Katherine was the first person he’d ever met who deserved his respect.

When Asher reached his waiting aunt, he nodded once towards her. She lifted her hand to brush a piece of his long, curled hair out of his face. “You’re so much more handsome without those raven hairs clouding your face.”

Asher smiled once, mostly because he was so much taller than her. He stood easily at six-foot-two and his aunt was somewhere in the five-foot-seven range. Only a few inches taller than Kaden, Asher realized with a twisting smirk. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Katherine sighed with a shake of her head. Asher had been living in her house two weeks now and he still hadn’t called her aunt, or auntie, or even Katherine. She had asked him countless times to call her any of those three names, but every time Asher agreed, he ignored the request.

Asher reached out and took her brief case and laptop bag from her grip and waited for her to walk before him. If he was being honest with himself, his aunt held a sweet spot he wasn’t sure even was inside him. He didn’t want to manipulate her, he didn’t want to damage her mind or even make her squirm. If he was being honest, in the last two weeks of living in her house, she had treated him better than his parents, or anyone else for that matter, ever had.

Katherine, with her choppy dark russet brown hair and red-violet lipstick and dark brown eyes, stared at the tall young man with an inquisitive brow. “You’re nothing like your mother had said you would be, Asher.”

He looked up as his aunt looked behind at him pryingly from over her shoulder. His eyes connected to hers for a moment before he broke the contact and looked down. “Yes, ma’am.”

“She said you’d be Hell in a handbag. You haven’t caused me problems yet, not a single one. She said you were a terrible, terrifying manipulator. How come I can’t see that in you?” she asked with something that almost sounded like disappointment to Asher.

He looked her over as he took the steps before her to open the door for her to enter before him. She smiled and nodded once as her appreciation to the gesture. Asher walked in after she took a few steps up the stairs, closing the door and locking it silently after he’d entered. The house was a comfortable seventy-four degrees against the challenging ninety-six degree weather.

He followed her up the stairs and set his aunt’s belongings on the kitchen table as she moved to make the two of them some lemonade. “You deserve respect like no other person I’ve ever met.”

She turned on him and watched him pull his sunglasses from the bridge of his nose, his shadowy grey eyes staring down at her as he dropped the plastic onto the table as well. “Why is that?”

He had started to walk away from her, move towards the exit of the kitchen so he could walk up the three steps and down the hall to his bedroom. She followed him and stopped at the entrance of the kitchen, her eyes still staring at him for an explanation. He turned to look over his shoulder at the gracious saint-like woman. “You had the courage to take me in when no one else believed they could.”

“Oh, Asher.” The woman cooed softly with the click of her tongue. She moved toward him quickly and wrapped her arms around his chest. He hadn’t remembered the last time someone hugged him, embraced him, or even attempted to console him. He placed his hand in between her shoulder blades and looked down to where her head touched his bottom lip with a skim. “Just because people say you’re a bad kid, doesn’t mean that you are.”

Asher’s head shook and she could feel it as his lips pushed strands of her hair around and out of place. “You don’t know how I am, ma’am. I’m not kind, I’m not gentle, and I’m not sweet… I don’t feel much of anything.”

She pulled back from the embrace, her eyes searching over him as she smoothed her hand against his shoulder. “What do you feel?”

His head shook once more, a heavy sigh flowing down through his nose as he stared at the shorter woman. He could never and would never tell her how much she meant to him. In his falling and growing resentment for the human race and his driving need to destroy all things beautiful and gentle, there was his aunt Katherine. She was almost intangible to the boy, like she was the conscience he always wondered if he had.

He stared over her head, his eyes connecting with the wall, the cranberry color of the kitchen as she took a step back. “Asher, look at me.” He did without a moment’s hesitation. “It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t feel. I take care of you now, and I’m not going to deport you or ship you off. Okay?”

Asher nodded and she stepped forward, a sigh moving through her lips as her hand curled around the back of his head. He allowed her to touch him, which was out of character and weird for him to realize. She pulled his head down to her level and pressed a kiss just above his ear. Pressing her cheek where she pressed her lips just prior, she whispered. “I love you, Asher. Okay?”

Asher pulled back when she released him, and only when she released him, with half a smile that ghosted across his lips. It was there only long enough for her to see before it vanished completely. “Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded and Asher moved up those three steps and back to his room. She watched him close the door until there was only a slight crack left. She had wondered for two weeks why he always left the door cracked open. Katherine finally realized it was because of this respect that he showed for her. It was her house. If she wanted to barge into his room he would meet her halfway with the gesture.

Her phone began to ring, but when she got to it and realized the number, she just stared at it for a moment. She was severely conflicted upon answering or rejecting the call. She slid the green bar across the touch screen.

“Hello,” Katherine said just before she cleared her throat, her hand flattening against her chest as she moved back to stare at Asher’s mostly-closed door.

“Hello, Kathy. How are you today?” Rachel Bishop asked with a light tone. Rachel and Katherine had always been close sisters, they just never had the extra money to fly out to her or fly her over. That, and because they didn’t want her to see their disturbed, “rotten” son.

She nodded as if her sister could see the gesture. She was there for the child birth, she remembered. Asher was the most beautiful baby Katherine had ever seen. She wondered how such a beautiful baby could cause so much trouble in too short of a time. “I’m fine, we just got home.”

“Oh.” Her tone dried up quickly, the sobering of a happy mood turned into a short-lived, almost irritated tone. “He’s there.”

Katherine scowled at her sister’s tone, her eyes narrowing. Still, Rachel ran her mouth. “Has he done anything yet? It’s only a matter of time, you know. He’ll come off sweet and loving and then, just like that, be the devil’s spawn Ben always thought he would be. I guess he lived up to the name.”

“In fact, he hasn’t, sister. I don’t think he will. You don’t know the kid that I met the second he walked off the plane. You don’t know him like I do.” Katherine’s tone challenged her sister’s. Katherine slowly was becoming irate, her hand balled into a fist.

Rachel sputtered, a short cackle moved through her lips for half a second before that, too, sobered up. “Know him? I birthed the child.”

“If you remember correctly, I was there when you did. You happened to be squeezing my hand and screaming profanities.” Katherine retorted with venom, her eyes staying locked against the wooden door that stopped her from seeing Asher’s face. Slowly and silently, she started to move up the stairs and towards his door with prolonged steps.

Rachel’s scowl was much louder than Katherine’s had been. She was making it a point to be heard. “Yes, well, I’m his mother. I’ve been raising him for the last eighteen years, I breast-fed him, I changed his diapers, I nursed him, and I loved him unconditionally!”

Katherine was standing just outside his door now, looking through the crack as she saw his darkened room and located him on his bed with his knees propped up and his arm across his eyes. “Yes, well, I’m his mother now, you lying bitch.”

“Lying bitch? I did all of those things, you second-rate wannabe. Tell me, did you accept my child because you wanted to feel good about yourself, or because you’re too much of a cheap slut to find a man to actually give you a child?” Rachel seethed, striking a sensitive nerve located within Katherine.

“You never loved the boy a day in his life. Tell me this, Rache, did you ever once believe or ponder the possible thought that you’re the reason he is the way he is? Did you ever think that you could have fucked him up? Of course you didn’t, you could never point the finger back on yourself. Just because he did stupid, weird things when he was little doesn’t mean he’s a bad kid. You never gave him a chance to be the son you thought he could be. Here’s the catch, darling sister, I will give him that chance. I will show him how to love and be loved. I’ll be the mother that kid always deserved!” Katherine’s breath came up short, her body shaking from the adrenaline released and the writhing anger her nerves and limbs were coming to understand.

There was a silence on the phone for a full minute and Katherine had begun to wonder if she had lost connection with her sister. She pulled the phone back and watched the seconds tick on before she put her ear back to the receiver. Rachel’s sobs came out strong and loud. She didn’t know what her sister was thinking at the moment, crying for her own mistakes. Katherine found it foolish and without recognition. There was a breath-shattering weep that fell through her older sister’s lips. “Can I talk to him?”

Asher’s arm lifted slowly and his eyes snapped open, staring at Katherine for a moment, unblinking. She could tell that, in the dead silence of the room, Asher could hear the conversation happening over the phone. At hearing his mother’s sobs and asking if she could speak with him, he wanted to. He wanted his mother to beg and plead with him, beseech for forgiveness and accept the apology of sending him off to live with a perfect stranger. Katherine knew he was staring at her as she stared back at him. Her voice came out with power that she didn’t know she could possess. “No.”

“Please?” Rachel screeched through her sobs, her voice breaking on the word as weeps followed after. “Please let me talk to my baby boy? Please let me talk to my son? Please?”

Katherine shook her head, her voice coming out with truth as she said, her eyes connected to Asher’s. “He’s my son, Rachel. Never forget that. Go cry to Ben, you’re not talking to my son.”

Katherine pulled back the phone as her older sister screamed and begged and sobbed more than the day their father died, Rachel was close with him. With her eyes glancing down at the phone for a second and then connecting back to Asher’s, who had begun to prop himself up on his bed with one elbow. She pressed her finger firmly to the END button. She wanted to run into his bedroom and hug her son, hug the child that she truthfully had custody over, but she wanted him to want her to hug him. She knew it wasn’t because of his age that it was a problem, but the fact that he acted the way he did as well as the fact that he didn’t have proper parental love proved to disprove the affection he wanted.

“Are you okay, Asher?” Katherine asked with a smile loosely strung to her lips. Her anger and irritation still hadn’t died away from her body.

He nodded once as he laid his head down just beyond the pillow, his eyes staring up at the dark ceiling. “Yes, ma’am.”

She leaned against the door that had fallen open a little more since she had gotten to it, her head poking in with a slow comfort. She sighed and looked at her tall boy lying out on the bed as his eyes stared depths into the ceiling. She whispered slowly with affection, “I love you, Asher.”

Asher didn’t look away from the shadowed ceiling as he replied just as quietly, “Yes, ma’am.”

Silently sighing once more, she pulled the door closed so there was nothing more than a crack left in its wake as she retreated back down the hall and into the front room. One day, she told herself, I will hear him say it back.