Graham Donovan (_backfire) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-01-22 01:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | #flashback |
Fall is here, hear the yell / Back to school, ring the bell
Who: Uli and Graham Donovan, ages 9, and 11, respectively
When: September 29th, 1988
Where: Elementary school briefly, the walk home, and then the Donovan residence
Warning: Brief violence and... well, dysfunctional family is dysfunctional
Essays were stupid. Essays were so stupid that teachers liked to give students essays once a week as a punishment, or something. School hadn't been going on for more than a couple of weeks, and they were already writing essays. With stupid prompts, like favorite pets, and favorite toys, and how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They'd even made Uli write an essay on why phone books were a valuable resource. Apparently, 4th grade was about learning how much you could make the old, ugly teacher believe. She didn't have a pet, and she didn't like playing with very many toys so their wasn't a favorite. Half of her peanut butter and jelly essay had been about why you should have more jelly because it was purple and it was her favorite color.
Kids had laughed at her. They were always laughing at her. If it wasn't because she liked purple so much, it was because she liked to wear a lot of different layers, and the old faded clothes didn't really mesh well at all. She was wearing an old pair of skinny jeans, with a purple dress over it. The purple was faded into an almost gray grape, but she loved it anyway. She looked like she had a bad case of bedhead too, but that's what putting your head down into your desk did. She always put her head down into her desk after they read essays. People always laughed and liked to throw paper balls at her.
She stood outside the school now, pulling on the straps of her plastic backpack. Graham would be there soon from the middle school and they would walk home together like always. Like always, the kids would trail them as far as their own houses, poking fun at the little girl. Graham would tell her not to care what they said, but he was always scaring kids away with his crazy eye. Today though, they'd gotten to watch the space shuttle Discovery go up into space on tv. The teacher had been muttering something about 'the thing staying in one piece this time', but she didn't understand what that was about.
When Uli had read her essay for the class, a new one about how she would like to have a purple dog. One of the other kids had spoken out of turn.
"I bet wanted to ride the space shuttle back to her homeworld. That's where they have the purple dogs, I bet."
"And the gross jelly sandwiches."
"Uli has to be an alien. Nobody else is named that and she's too weird to be from Earth."
Boys. They liked to make fun of her and snatch papers from her, and butt in line and tell her that she didn't know any better because it wasn't how they did things on her home planet. Ugh. She was sick of hearing it all day!
Graham had also thought essays were equally stupid, but for completely different reasons. By the time half of the class had written two pages - and that was with skipping every other line - Graham had already filled out ten pages. No skipping lines and he actually wrote smaller than normal to fit everything in. His teachers kept telling him to slow down and try not to rush, in which Graham gave them a peculiar look, followed by rolling his eyes and some snide remark about the teacher being as retarded as the rest of the class. Ok, so it was a bit more colorful than that, but either way it always landed him in staying after school to write a letter to his parents explaining why he had to stay after school. It wasn't until he was done and left that his teachers would finally sit down to read his essay, realizing the writing level put most senior high school students to shame.
Once he was outside, Graham headed on over to the elementary school to catch up with Uli. He was beyond late at that point, but it was nothing new. Uli always waited around for him. At one point while heading over to the elementary school, Graham whipping out a pack of matches from the inside of his coat. He had stolen them from one of the kitchen cabinets and were meant to be used to relight the pilots on the gas stove, but now they were being used to burn up the letter he had written after hours. Graham knew it was pointless to write it, but it was merely to appeased the stupid authority figures. By the time his parents came home from work they wouldn't be interested in reading a letter written by their son. Besides, it got old after the third grade.
Letting the paper burn into nothing within his hands, he looked up to see his sister down the street, waiting for him as always. And there were other boys standing around, talking amongst themselves, as always. Sighing hard, he narrowed his eyes onto them while catching up with his sister. For someone his age, he was extremely tall, only a couple inches shy from six feet. That along with his messy hair and dark attire that consisted of a black jacket, jeans, and a red tshirt, he didn't really look like the type of person someone fucked with that at age. And even if that didn't stop some brat bully, he had a backpack filled with heavy textbooks and a metal lunchbox in hand that he was not afraid to use.
He stood by Uli, staring the boys down some more before looking over to her with a slightly smile. "Hey, sorry what took so long. You ready to go?" Graham ruffled the top of her head affectionately. His voice was remarkable clear and clean at that age. Sadly in the years to come would be when he would start heavily smoking, but until then he sounded healthy.
Uli couldn't duck her way out of Graham's reach even if she wanted to. He was so tall and his arms were so long that she swore that he could get cats out of trees without really even thinking about it. Like if there was a house on fire, he could stretch his body up and pull the person from the inferno without any trouble at all. Sometimes she thought about asking him if he could touch the stars in the sky, and if he was strong enough to hold her up so she could pick out a couple for herself. Maybe he was made out of the same stuff Stretch Armstrong was.
"Ready to go." It was some time during her middle school years that Uli have developed her knack for odd metaphors and ridiculous similes. In her youth, she'd been as terse as possible, minding her own business and worrying parents and teachers that something was wrong with her. Why couldn't a little girl just be left alone? It wasn't like she was being really loud like those boys back there were being. She could hear somebody talking about how she and Graham were both from some other planet, because people didn't turn into trees on this one. Her pace quickened, but she doubted anybody could tell. Uli had received the short end of the stick on height. She was a tiny thing they got disappeared in bushes and behind poles. "Did you see the space shuttle today?"
"Why weren't you on it? You could have went back home!" The boys peach shirt told something of his tough exterior. She could see them pushing each other around and laughing at her expense from the corner of her eye. If only she was from another planet, she could melt them with laser guns.
Graham looked over his shoulder, shooting the younger boys a death stare. If only he could shoot lasers from his eyes, then they'd all be dead. A couple continued to laugh even after he shot them the glare, only making his blood boil faster. "Fuck off!" And that shut them up. Growling to himself, he tapped his kid sister on the top of her head and kept walking with her. "Damn kids are stupid. Don't let them get to you, ok?" Though his eyes still glanced to the side to eye the group of boys following them. He really didn't feel like dealing with them, but if he had to Graham could at least bait them off of school grounds.
"And yeah, we got to watch it. Too many kids were talking, though, was kind of hard to get what they were saying on the tv." Not to mention when he tried asking his teachers more about the shuttles, they were perplexed by his questions. Apparently they couldn't explain to him all the nitty gritty details of a space shuttle launching. Perhaps he could visit the library over the weekend and try to figure it out. "Did you like it?" Graham certainly did, but he knew his little sister wasn't truly interested in space shuttles.
"The shape the smoke makes is nice." Unless the thing was colored differently, she didn't really care, but she knew Graham loved all sorts of stuff like that. He liked burning things and making things explode like fireworks. She didn't know what it was about it that made him excited when he did things like that, but whenever he was feeling joy over watching something smolder, she couldn't help but give one of her sparse smiles. As far as she knew, children weren't supposed to play with fire or be so close that they could feel the flames lick at them, but that's why she never told. They would take away the fire, and then they'd be like two cold cavemen waiting to see what dinosaurs they could pounce on for fun.
Graham's language scared the boys well enough, but she could still feel them staring holes into her. She felt like walking swiss cheese, and her quickened pace did little to alleviate how they were making her feel. She just wished something bad could happen to them so that they would leave her alone for good. There was no way she could take an entire year of being in the same classroom with these boys. Uli turned to convey how she felt to her brother when-- bonk. The paper ball didn't hurt her, but the fact that they'd done it while her brother was with her! It was... it was, what was a word for this!? Audacious! She'd read that somewhere, and looked it up in the dictionary. That was so audacious.
Uli stopped and turned to face the boys. It was like they were mimicking her, because they all stopped abruptly and stared. Only Graham was still strolling along.
And Graham wasn't simply strolling along in the direction towards their home. Oh no, he was strolling along in their direction. And it wasn't quite as much strolling as it was angrily stomping towards them. Uli had one thing right, though - how dare they pull a stunt like that when he was around. If there was one thing Graham didn't tolerate, it was people pushing his kid sister around. True, he would tease her on and off, but he would never chuck paper balls at her. He preferred to soak up all the negative bullying instead of his sister. Uli was so small and innocent. Graham, on the other hand? Definitely not small and innocent.
"He did it! I swear!" One of the boys he was closing in on tried putting the blame on his friend. It really didn't matter who started it at that point. They just set off the short fuse of a fire elemental and now he was ready to explode. Swinging his arm back, he snapped it forward at the kid, the metal lunchbox smashing into the kid's face. A loud crack echoed as he fell to the ground, appearing to have a newly broken and bloodied nose. The crowd of boys began to back up as their friend wept on the ground. That wasn't enough for Graham, though. Pulling his foot back, he thrusted it into the kid's gut, knocking the wind completely out of him.
"DON'T FUCKING TOUCH HER. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT." He threw the lunchbox at the kid and now a few of the boys were running away in fear. The rest merely stood there, shaking in awe. "The hell are you looking at?!" Ok, now they were running. Groaning to himself, Graham leaned down to pick up his slightly bloodied lunchbox and left the kid on the ground to sob. Some adult would find him after a while and Graham would probably go into class the next day to only be sent to the principal's office. Or maybe they would try calling his home in an attempt to get his parents. Whatever. Same shit, different day. "Come on, let's go." Graham spoke lowly to Uli, walking on by her.
That was more violence than she'd seen that one night the commercial for the movie Die Hard came on, and that had Bruce Willis with a gun and he was shooting at people and things were exploding. She was scared, but she strode along as if she wasn't. She was scared of what they might do to her tomorrow for what had happened today, but part of her was just happy, albeit coursing with adrenaline. Uli hadn't even been the one to smash the kid with a lunchbox, but she felt like she had. It was odd to feel like she had done it with her own two hands when she'd stood and watched the interaction. She looked over her shoulder and she could still see him there, curled up and crying in pain.
He deserved that. He really did. Uli wasn't going to be the one suffering this year, or any other year for that matter. Nobody was going to bother her, ever, ever again. "I'll race you home." She knew that her legs couldn't carry her as far as her brother's Stretch Armstrong limbs, but she could get a headstart and be there before he even knew what was going on. Besides, he had to tired from beating up that bully, and every little sister knew that she could beat her older brother in every race that ever existed. If she lost? It was just because they were giving out blue ribbons instead of purple ones, or because the prize wasn't macaroni and cheese with the little dinosaur shapes. Uli huffed and puffed her way ahead of him, slowing down to look over her shoulder only once.
Graham had no intentions of scaring Uli, especially seeing he just wanted to protect the little girl. He hated it when they picked on her and no matter how many times her threatened the boy they persisted. Not to mention every year there was always a new batch of kids coming in that were more than happy to take some cheap shots at Uli. At the rate they were going, Graham was going to have to start doing some more serious work to protect his kid sister. A metal lunchbox wasn't always handy and came off rather unorganized. Perhaps he could convince his parents to let him take some classes at the local dojo.
"Huh?" He blinked his eyes upon hearing his sister's mention of a race, and before he would say something in reply she had booked it off. "Uli, what the hell?! WAIT UP!" He might have been tall for his age, but it didn't mean Graham was some star cross-country runner. In fact, he was more of the studious type than athletic. Not to mention his backpack was filled with thick textbooks, which only weighed him down more. Oh, and it didn't help that their house was on the complete polar opposite side of town. What the hell was his sister thinking?
Though he couldn't lose sight of her, so Graham tried his best to follow. He sprinted after her for a good thirty seconds before slowing down and panting heavily for air. "Fucking backpack..." Uli was quite a ways ahead of him, which was fine. He wasn't in the mood to be competitively running with her and didn't mind letting her win. "God, Uli..." Graham tried gasping for air as he slowly caught up. "Don't you... realize... that our house... is like... several miles away?" Apparently not.
The nine year old huffed and puffed her way down the street, her thick hair blown back with her quick steps. She wasn't a good runner, nowhere near the fastest in her class, and soon she slowed to a gasping halt, clutching the straps of her backpack. Graham was making his way over, but all of his heavy books weighed him down, and she was merely winded by the time he caught up. The cool air she swallowed down seemed abrasive to her heated throat and lungs, but she took long gulps of it as they steadied their pace once more.
"Maybe one day I'll be able to run all the way home. So when you go to college I won't have to deal with anybody." Uli kicked a pebble into their path, and focused on keeping it in front of her for awhile. A kick from the side sent it into the street and she turned her head to watch it as they walked on. So much for that. She still wasn't trusted to cross the road alone, so she knew that walking into it, and bending down to pick up the stone was like asking them to just watch herself put a radio in the bathtub. Apparently it was a bad thing, but Uli really wondered how music would sound underwater. "When are you going to college?"
The day that came where she could out run the boys would be quite something. Perhaps she could try out for track and become the star player, though that didn't seem to fit Uli at all. Actually, he was hoping more for the day when the boys stopped teasing her in general. Graham didn't mind being the hero to come save the day, but when she mentioned college, his heart skipped a beat at the thought of being away from her. "When I graduate from high school. Probably six or so years from now or so." Though Graham's calculations were off only because he was unaware of the fact he would skip a grade and graduate early, and as valedictorian. "I don't know, I really haven't put that much thought into it, but if college is anything like the shit we have to go through now, I don't want any part of it." Graham angrily kicked a rock onto the road, glaring off to the side for a moment. "Until then, I'm staying here and making sure no one picks on my kid sister." His eyes went down to Uli and he couldn't help but smile. "Only I'm allowed to do that." Graham nudged his sister playfully, hoping she didn't mind.
"I bet they're going to let you in early." Uli watched Graham kick the rock into the road and listened to him talk about college. Her parents and the little television she watched often said that college and high school were the best days of people's lives. Shouldn't he be happy to try and get there as fast as he could? It just didn't make sense that he wouldn't want to go there. Graham seemed like he was bigger than this town, bigger than anything she understood. She thought that he should be somewhere famous, somewhere where the people were just as smart as he was, and knew all the things he did. She liked that he looked out for her, but that shouldn't have to be his life, and she wished that she had the power to make the boys leave her alone. Uli wasn't that weird! There was that kid that picked his nose and ate it, or the girl that still liked chomping on glue sticks. Ew. Uli was the girl that liked purple and sat still and that didn't do anything weird, but she still got picked on.
"I wish those boys would just blow up or something." Or get cooties and get really sick, anything that would keep them away from her.
"You really think so?" Graham perked up a brow at the thought of going to college early. He was still too young to understand all of the details, but it would have been nice if that was the case. The sooner he could get out of high school the better. "Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see." He was already beginning to take the advanced level courses in certain topics, such as math and science, and was starting to wonder if it would be a good idea to push the concept of trying to take an advanced writing class instead of being stuck with the retards who couldn't keep up with him. Actually, no one in his grade could keep up with him. It would have been a stroke of luck if they even remotely became close.
He didn't respond to Uli's comment about the boys blowing up, knowing that the last time it came up was when their parents were around. Graham had said something to the effect of looking into how to strap a firecracker onto a human body, just to scare them off so they would Uli alone, which quickly resulted in his father whacking him upside the head for a minute straight while yelling at him, quickly followed by throwing the poor boy into his room for the rest of the day. Ok, so their parents weren't around while walking on the streets, but Graham didn't feel like taking any chances. So far everything that came out of his mouth was a bad omen. Might as well stop the track record for the time being.
"Mm-hmm. Like the Road Runner makes the coyote blow up when the plan fails." Or they could fall off the cliff and make that whistling sound before they landed with a hard landing that usually sounded like somebody punching a pillow. Maybe she could be the Road Runner and run by them when they started to pick on her. Or like that one time, when the coyote was using a launching thing, and it slammed him into the dirt like a flyswatter. Uli smiled, beginning to take big, exaggerated steps. Graham was so much taller than her that her big steps equaled his regular steps, and she had to almost speed walk to normally stay level with him.
Uli could remember the day that Graham had made the comment. Sitting alone in your room staring at the walls or just idly brushing a doll's hair for hours made you aware of everything in the house. On top of that, she always had some odd feeling that Graham was distressed, and either her father or mother was too. Sometimes, she thought she really was a weirdo, because she could pinky swear that she knew the man next door was happy, but only sometimes. More often than not, she just felt a relaxing calm since her status quo was just that, calm. But with her brother around, there was always some new exhilarating feeling. She would suddenly feel super happy during dinner when Graham's favorites were unveiled, or angry when he showed up after having a bad day. Sometimes she would feel worry over things like bills, but all she knew on her end was the worry, and it plagued her that she didn't know why she ordinarily felt emotions she knew weren't hers. "They give you money in college. And then you buy a house, and find a mommy to live with."
Graham shot Uli a rather confused look, mostly about the part where she said he'd find someone else to live with. He had barely hit the age where other girls were coming off as more alluring than anything. Sure, he was highly attracted to them, but holy crap, buying a house and living with one? Graham had way bigger things to think about than that. Not to mention he didn't like the concept at all. What if he didn't want to buy a house or live with anyone? Maybe he just wanted to live for the moment and if that meant having someone in his life, then cool. If not, that was cool, too. But for the time being, he was still having fun trying to figure out how to win some girl's attention instead of having them run away and shrieking because he was a boy.
The part about college, though, intrigued him far more. Their family was horribly poor and everyone knew that. Graham didn't entirely mind, though, seeing that they got by with what little they had and made the most out of everything. He was easily amused with burning old toys in the front yard than anything else. Then there was also his guitar that he enjoyed playing on, but only when his parents weren't around. They hated the obnoxious noises it produced. And then he also enjoyed to read, surprisingly enough, especially his text books. He had already finished the history one for school, and they had only been in class for several weeks. It wasn't even the fact Graham had nothing better to do. He truly enjoyed reading all the information. "That would be perfect, actually." He finally spoke up after much thought. "I just don't know what I'd go to college for. Not sure if they have some specialization in fireworks or something. Or maybe I just do math. Or both." He shrugged his shoulders as they walked along. "Who knows. I'm not that worried about it. Everyone says that only the rich kids go to good colleges, so I'm not going to get my hopes up."
She assumed that rich kids meant the people that actually got ponies and didn't own the generic brand Barbies that she did. But that was mainly fairy tale garbage to her. The only rich people she'd ever scene had been characters like Scrooge in that Christmas movie. There were kids that got new clothes every year, sure, but she wouldn't say that they were rich. But she wasn't exactly old enough to notice that they were downright poor yet. As long as they were eating and she had clean clothes and a room she could sit in for hours while staring at the odd dimples in the walls, she would be content. It would never really be about money for Uli, it would just be about being content in her own weird skin-- the one that everybody except her brother-- loved to mock.
"You could blow up numbers." Like the number four, so that there would never be anymore 4th grade so that she and anybody that came after her would never suffer have to suffer the atrocity that it was. No more stupid essays, and no more stupid kids making fun of your stupid essays, and no more stupid teachers giving you stupid topics to write about that you actually had no idea about. If Graham could find a way to successfully end the 4th grade and keep his sister out of that ridiculous amount of torture she would be immensely grateful. Immensely. She could just see it now, Graham, in some kind of super scientist outfit, a lab coat with a cape, behind a window of impenetrable glass with some goggles on. He would throw a switch and four would vaporize and the ashes would be gathered into an urn. Then Uli would watch them lower it into the hold of a space shuttle so that they could launch it into the sun to make sure that four never, ever came back.
The great part was that down the road when he would eventually go to college, he would have said lab coat and goggles. The cape and urn, though? Yeah, he'd have to work on that. "But I like numbers." Graham looked down to Uli while scrunching up his face. "They're all sorts complicated and can be used for different things." Not to mention he thoroughly enjoyed his math related work. Graham was already placed in the advanced math classes and was learning concepts that he wasn't suppose to be aware of until middle school, maybe even freshman year in high school. The other kids were bright, but still struggled to fully understand an algebraic problem. Graham, on the flip side, had it all figured out and wanted more. Sadly, he couldn't go that fast and had to wait for the rest of the class to catch up to him. That was going to be another couple of weeks. Maybe he could sneak around the library and find more books on math. This thing called geometry was tickling his curiosity to no end.
"So aside from boys being stupid and numbers blowing up, was the rest of your day fine?" He spun on his heels and began to walk backwards while talking to his sister. It was a straight walk for another mile or so, and it didn't bother him that he couldn't technically see where he was going. The worst that would happen would be him bumping into someone with his backpack. Though honestly? They should have moved when they saw him coming their way with a massive bag on his back.
She thought about what he was saying for a bit. All sorts of complicated? Weren't numbers just what they were. 4 didn't come as a baby and then grow up and become 6 or anything. That incorrigible bastard of a number was always the same. He wouldn't eventually grow and become a young woman like she would. See, she would be a baby Uli, and then a teen Uli, and every time she grew, they said that her body would change. But 4? He was just going to be that same couple of straight lines and fourty-five degree angles for the rest of his miserable existence. Just please nobody tell her that sometimes he liked to pal around with a line in front of him as a negative number. Uli might have exploded.
"We had to read essays. And the other kids all have pets so nobody looked at them weird. I wrote about a purple duck." The teacher had told her that she was very imaginative, but that ducks didn't come in purple. She'd also told her that the essay topic was to focus on a pet that was already in the home, and not one that she would like to have. Like that wasn't enough, she had to tell her all of this while she was still in front of the class. Why weren't adults smarter? Why did they feel the need to embarrass you in front of everybody and have the gall to call it social skills. What part of learning to be social entailed picking apart your imagination in front of your peers. Blech. "School can suck itself."
Graham let out an obnoxious, yet amused laugh at Uli's declaration of school sucking itself. Wow, that was the most colorful his kid sister had been in a long time. Patting her on the shoulder, he looked on down to her with a smile. "It definitely can, that's for sure." He wondered for a moment if she had picked up the language from him or from some brat kids at school. Regardless, if she uttered such words in the presence of their parents the blame was going to fall onto Graham. Apparently he was a horrible influence on his little sister no matter what. He could have been sitting home all day reading his textbooks and suddenly have his father barge in and go on a yelling rampage about how it was his fault for corrupting his sister. Whatever, everyone was going to become corrupt at some point, might as well start early.
The two continued to talk about school and their favorite classes and who they got along with or didn't in school. It made the time fly, that was for sure. Before Graham knew it, they were walking down the long, endless street that quickly led to the lower-class area of the town, along with their house. Once they arrived, Graham retrieved his pair of keys that his parents somehow entrusted him with, and unlocked the front door to their house. No one was home, as usual - real shocker there. Graham got used to his parents working constantly since he was a young kid. Both had minimum wage jobs and worked forty hours a week, if not more, thus creating little time to be with the two kids. In Graham's mind he preferred that they stayed out of his life as much as possible. The most he saw out of them was when they eventually strolled on in for dinner time, and even then sometimes his mother would just return and he wouldn't see his father until early the next morning.
"You have to write anymore essays, or you done with that shit for the day?" He held the door open for Uli as he spoke. Honestly, he didn't care if she was going to do her homework or not, but it was worth asking. Graham knew he had a few assignments to work on, but it could wait for the time being. Looking on out over the front yard, he began to formulate other things to do... and with the slight grin forming on his lips wasn't entirely a good sign.
Uli stepped inside of the house and quickly dropped her backpack onto the floor and kicked off her shoes. It was great to be home after all of that crap going on in school and the boys afterward. Being barefoot at almost all times was her way of relaxing. If she needed to study, or do something that she wasn't exactly fond of, the shoes went back on. The plan worked perfectly unless she got the urge to be rid of her footwear in a hallway or the middle of a room. Their father wasn't very keen on things like that, and her brother was usually the one getting yelled at for her shortcomings, so she learned to either leave the shoes in the immediate area of the doorway, or in her room to be tripped on later. If they were in her room at least, her father would just give this look, like he was going to beat Graham in his face for doing absolutely nothing.
Sometimes she wondered if her parents really loved her because she was so weird. Graham was smart, really, really smart, but they were always busting his chops for some kind of something. It didn't help that he was so outright with his words and thoughts, and liked to play guitar. Uli on the other hand didn't ever do well in school, didn't like to play with the neighbors, and she didn't talk much. Maybe they wanted a poor version of a pageant child or some model student. She wasn't very pretty, she wasn't very smart, and so far, she hadn't shown any particular affinity for anything. She could even get an A on an essay.
"Done." She scampered off to find something to snack on, leaving her things behind. She could only imagine what they were going to do today.
Graham blinked as he watched his sister step inside and dart on off to the kitchen. She was definitely a weird girl. One second she was talking about blowing up numbers and being mopey, then the minute they arrived home she was all sorts excited. Shaking his head, Graham closed the door and proceeded to drop his backpack on the floor with no concern about what his parents thought. They weren't home now and wouldn't be for a couple more hours, so what was the harm there?
He followed his kid sister into the kitchen and began scavenging the cupboards for something to munch on. The cupboards were never entirely full nor did they ever have anything interesting. Other kids would go home to find fruit rollups and cookies and chips with dip waiting for them, or maybe even had a full meal prepared by their mom who stayed at home. All Graham found was a mostly empty bag of stale pretzels. He sighed softly to himself as he settled for that, knowing it wasn't going to get any better than that. Opening up the bag, he jumped up onto the kitchen counter and perched there, swinging his legs back and forth while nibbling on one of the pretzels. He didn't even like pretzels that much, but there was nothing else readily available to him. Graham wasn't allowed to touch the stove, seeing the last time he tried to make something as simply as soup resulted in the appliance somehow catching fire and smoking up the whole kitchen. Well, Graham thought it was freaking sweet, but his parents thought otherwise.
"So no homework at all?" He cocked up a brow at Uli. "We should do something." His eyes poked out the dirty window to eye their front yard again. "Like, do you have anything lying around you don't want?"
The dark haired little girl had reached her hand into the freezer to pluck an ice cube from the freezer trays. She crunched on it mercilessly, wondering how to reply to Graham's question. It was definitely an odd one. She had to have some toys she didn't want, since she never really played with them. Strolling into her room, she plucked one of her dolls off the shelf. The paint in its eyes was chipped and dull and she hadn't ever really touched it. Just thinking about the dead, damaged stare the doll gave her when she looked at it freaked her out a little bit. She stripped it of its clothing, intending to give it to another of her kind, and held it out to her brother.
She wondered what he was planning, but didn't ask. It would all come in due time. Uli opened the fridge to pull out another ice cube and munched on it quickly. Her cheek, tongue, and lips were cold, and her finger tips were wet from when she'd briefly touched it, and she rubbed them on her jeans to get a quick dry.
"What are you going to do?" If she sounded scared, she didn't mean to, but she was genuinely interested in what was going to happen from this point on. It was still light outside, they had a long bit before their parents were coming back too.
After plopping a few more pretzels into his mouth, Graham took a hold of the doll and looked it over a few times. Oh yeah, this would do just fine. "Don't know just yet." Graham shrugged his shoulder and placed the doll beside him, staring at the bottom of the bag to find a few more edible pretzels. Way too much salt at the bottom, sadly. "We still have some firecrackers from July hanging out in the garage I think, and if not I'm sure dad has the usual gallon of gasoline floating around in there." He was still far too young to figure out how to make his own gunpowder to blow up the toy, and perhaps it was a good thing he wouldn't figure it out for another couple of years.
"Wish we had more to eat." He sighed while plucking out the last of the pretzels, promptly crumbling up the bag into a ball and chucked it into the nearby trash can, which he missed by at least a foot. Sports was not Graham's forte by any means and it was quite evident. Teachers kept telling him to try and apply his energy to something like basketball because he was so tall, but Graham didn't want any of that. It was just so dull and boring and nothing ever new. Such a damn predictable game in his eyes. Now science, on the other hand, was not predictable. Sure, if he knew which chemicals reacted to others a certain way at a certain dosage, then it was predictable, but Graham enjoyed experimented with the different outcomes, and that would never get boring.
Uli bent to put the crumpled bag into the trash can, and then looked into the cupboard. They had a can or two of soup, and she thought she could mimic her mother's actions in the kitchen well enough to heat it through without burning down the house. Maybe it was because Graham had such an affinity for fire that their father chased him from the kitchen so fast, but Uli never really got into trouble for much, so maybe this was just another one of those things she could get away with. Little did she know that in fact, she would wind up cooking for her family with the busy work weeks her parents undertook. She put the can down on the counter and tugged on Graham's legs to get him down. No counter-sitting in her kitchen.
"You go get that stuff. I'm making soup." She pulled a chair from the dining table and put it down in front of the stove. The little girl retrieved a saucepan from the cupboards, the can opener from the drawers, and the oven mitts dangling on the oven. Climbing onto the chair, she lined up the can opener, but found she didn't have the force to open it properly. Uli turned to Graham, holding out the contraption to him along with the can. She didn't ask, she simply shoved it in his direction, and leaned over the stove to turn it on medium heat. Leaving the chair, she walked around to grab a cooking spoon, and then leapt back on it to patiently wait for the soup.
First she was wanting him out of her way and then she wanted him to actually help her. Rolling his eyes with a bit of a smile, Graham took the can in hand and quickly opened it up for her. Even though he wasn't built of solid muscle, he was still stronger than his sister and had no issues with said can. Once it was opened, he handed it back to her. "Thanks, Uli." He was definitely no stellar cook by any means, so having his sister do anything kitchen related was a nice treat. Far better than hoping stale pretzels would hold him over until dinner.
From there he went on off into the garage, which was filled with all sorts of old junk along with dust and cobwebs. The light he flicked up to illuminate the place barely helped out either, but it was all he had. The boy began to rummage through all the compartments, hoping that there was something flammable that he could use to entertain himself. Though he couldn't find a case of gasoline lying around, he was able to find some of the small firecrackers that his parents bought for July. They were nowhere near as big and impressive as the fireworks the town put on, but it was something and definitely enough to blow up a certain doll.
Taking a small handful of them, he shuffled on back into the house, his clothes a tad dusty from being in the garage. "Found them!" Graham beamed proudly, holding up the explosives upon reaching the kitchen.
The soup was just coming to a simmer as he strode back into the house from the garage. She had dropped pinches of salt and pepper into it, but most of the other spices in the cabinet were a mystery to her, and she wasn't about to go fumbling about in her mother's things. The last thing the little girl needed was her brother being accused of something else he didn't do. Uli diligently stirred the pot, using her oven mitt clad hand to reach over the steam and turn down the burner a little bit.
Uli smiled in his direction as she clambered about for a bowl. They were too poor for nice ceramic plates but she didn't take notice, the plastic bowl they had ensured they they didn't break when she dropped on every now and then. She plucked it from the dish rack next to the sink along with a spoon and went back over to the stove. Donning the oven mitt again, she twisted the setting to off and then used both hands to pour the soup into the bowl almost successfully. She pushed the bowl to the side, took the pot to the sink and let it fall in. She wasn't tall enough to turn on the water without the chair, but she returned for it with a dishtowel to clean up her mess.
"Ta-da."
Seemed like they were both successful on their respective end of things. Smiling to his sister, Graham pulled Uli in for a brief, yet tight hug. "Thanks, Uli." He rarely thanked people, but his kid sister definitely got his thanks. What he would do without her was beyond him. Then again, what she would do without him was quite unimaginable, too. Those damn boys would always be after her to no end and she would have no one to protect her. And Graham wouldn't have someone to cook for him or give him toys to blow up for his own amusement.
His eyes flickered back and forth between the soup and explosives, not entirely sure which one to tackle first. After his stomach growled hard for a second, he decided to eat up and get it over with. Blowing up her doll on a relatively empty stomach didn't sound like a good plan. Graham jumped on up to the counter by the soup and then held it in his hands to start eating. As always, it didn't matter if it came right off the stove piping hot. His parents always yelled at him for eating immediately and not waiting for food to cool down. He never got burnt from it, so why did it matter? He was hungry! "Do you not want any?" He perked up a brow, talking with the spoon in his mouth.
She shook her head liberally for indication and went to push the chair back where it belonged. She was sure that the soup was scalding hot, it had felt more than a bit warm through the mitts but the way her brother was shoveling it into his mouth was like Goldilocks chowing down on Baby Bear's porridge. Next he'd be sitting in the chair and then sleeping in the bed. All Uli could really think emotionally at the moment was 'mm,.' It was a bit frightening because she wasn't the one eating. She would sneak a few more pieces of ice later on and be completely content until their mother came home and fixed whatever she deemed was food that evening. The taste combined with the late times that dinner was served was probably the reason that Uli cooked all the meals when she was older.
With the cooking done and her brother now being fed, she focused on cleaning to be rid of the evidence. She had ample amounts of time after the explosions were done to make sure the pot got done, so she wasn't worried about that. The dishtowel she used to clean the counter of her mess had to tossed in with the laundry and replaced though, so she wandered off to find it's matching twin in the linen closet. After nearly embedding herself within, she emerged victorious and skipped back to the kitchen to place the clean one in place of the other. Perfect. The set had been used so many times that it didn't even seem like the new one was really that clean. "I don't think they will notice that I did anything."
"No, they probably won't," Graham agreed, halfway done with the soup. "And even if they do, I'm probably going to get the brunt of the bitching yet again, so nothing for you to worry about." Having close to nothing to eat when their parents weren't around was tough, so the moment he had the chance to eat something, it was immediately scarfed down. Graham knew it wasn't the best thing for his digestive system to be eating in a rush, but he was starving and that was reason enough to explain why he rushed a perfectly good bowl of soup. With another minute passing by, the bowl was completely empty, in which Graham placed into the sink without any care. It could be cleaned up later. For now, he had other things in mind.
"Come on, Uli!" He tugged at his sister's arm gently before grabbing the firecrackers and doll. With those at hand, he headed for the door and out into their front yard. There were only several other houses within proximity of theirs, which made sense. Besides, who wanted to live in such a shitty side of the neighborhood? Even the trailer parks were better than the beat up house they lived in. Though the up side of having few people in the area meant that no one would freak the hell out if he blew something up. Not like it would be the first time, but the neighbors became jaded from Graham's antics rather quickly.
As he plopped down in the middle of the front yard, he pulled out the pack of matches he still kept in his back pocket, and then suddenly realized that there was nothing to bind the firecracker and toy together. That definitely took the fun out of it. Sighing, he looked over his shoulder and called on out to his sister. "Hey, Uli! Do we have any duct tape or rope or something?!"
Uli was on her way out of the door as well when Graham asked for the tape and she rushed back inside. Sticking her hand into a drawer on the far side of the kitchen she produced the best that she knew they had. She made her way back outside and pulled a long piece of scotch tape from its dispenser to hand to her brother. She always enjoyed her role as the assistant and in Graham's explosive endeavors. When the things didn't just explode, but had their remnants catch fire, she was always ecstatic. "When did we ever have rope? Did we tie somebody up with it? I think that the rope would hold the firecrackers together too much and that they really wouldn't explode. I wanna see her head pop off!"
Without a word, she ran back inside the house. There was something she wanted to see burn that she hadn't remembered until now. It was one of the nights Graham had gotten a smack or two from their father. She'd found the bottle, taken it, hid it after that had happened. She didn't ever want to see that happen again. Even their mother had condoned it, and when she hugged Uli she could smell the strong scent of whatever was in the bottle on her breath. It was gross, and Uli wanted to see it burn, even if she couldn't pronounce the name. Within a few moments she was back, and she put the bottle down next to her brother. "I want to see this burn, if it can. I saw it on tv but I don't know if it was really true." It was a bottle of Bacardi, about half full.
"Hell if I know, maybe dad bought some and had it lying around," Graham replied about the rope, but the scotch tape would do. He ignored his sister running back inside, busying himself with taping the doll to a handful of the firecrackers. There, that was good. By the time that was done, Uli was back by his side with the bottle of alcohol. Oh, so that's where that went. Graham clearly remembered the bottle and that particular night. He hated those nights, but as long as Uli never got hurt, he didn't care. "I don't know if the bottle will burn but..." Taking a quick sniff of the liquid, he made a face and then put it down. "We can do something with it." It didn't take long for him to read the warning on the bottom that read flammable, and with that Graham couldn't help but smirk.
He doused the doll in the alcohol, smirking slightly to himself in the process. Then he proceeded to take another one of the firecrackers and shove it as far into the bottle as possible. For a second he sat then and weighed out the options: fire them both off separately or tape them both together for a massive explosion. Now this was quite the dilemma, though it didn't take long for him to come to a conclusion - it was Graham after all.
The boy took more tape out and began to bind them together, making sure they wouldn't fall apart. He then leaned the creation on its side, making sure none of the alcohol leaked out of the bottle. When that was done, he took the matches in hand and struck one up, briskly lighting the end of the wick on the firecracker within the bottle. Quickly on his feet, Graham backed up while tugging Uli with him, getting a safe distance away to-
BOOM.
The second the firecracker went off in the bottle, the container instantly shattered like a gun shot, leaving nothing but a pile of fire behind. In quick succession, the second firecracker caught fire and also exploded, ripping the fiery doll into pieces and sending it in at least five different directions. Graham didn't realize the explosion was loud enough to have neighbors emerge from their houses several blocks away. Instead he stood there with massively wide eyes and a giddy grin on his face as he watched the whole ordeal. "...awesome!"
There was one thing that Graham always knew how to do, and that was put on a show. Uli had let her brother pull her back with him, but now she was behind him, feeling the awesome heat on her face from the burning alcohol as she clung to him. She hadn't expected that to happen. Liquid doused flames, but this liquid was true to television, it really did burst into flames. She had almost missed the doll explode, but that was a real treat. The glass had shattered, sliced into the doll, and then the flaming doll had blown apart and scattered like it was exploding glass itself.
She didn't have words to explain how she felt seeing that. She didn't even understand that she was feeling excited for two, all she knew was that she was excited beyond her understanding, and the adrenaline coursing through her little frame from the heat and proximity of the flame on the lawn was just amazing. Uli came out from behind her brother, walked a few steps, then turned back to face him, then to the fire again. She started jumping up and down and clapping. "That was so awesome, it was like pwoosh, and then boom! and then fire, and then the doll just went everywhere. That was so awesome. That was so awesome!" It would be one of the last times that Uli had an outburst like that, but it was probably one of the best.
Uli's play-by-plays of his explosions were just as entertaining as the actual demolition itself. He couldn't help but let out a thoroughly amused laugh as the debris continued to burn in the front yard. It didn't faze him that people down the street were screaming about the lawn being on fire and something about calling 911. Graham was lost in his own little world. Wrapping his arms around his kid sister, he gave her a tight hug as his amusement only progressed. It wasn't a cynical laugh by any means, but merely an innocent, childish laugh. Some kids had fun playing with action figures, but Graham found more pleasure in lighting the same figures on fire or see how many parts he could blow up.
In the end, all that mattered to him was that he was enjoying himself, even if it meant being slapped in the face when his parents came home to find out the fire department had to make another visit to the house. Right then, Graham was definitely enjoying himself, and with the long, dreary road ahead of him in life, he was going to need all the fun he could get that moment.