Chapter 18: Chapter Seventeen

Mr. Walsh had already worked out a study plan and gave me my first set of worksheets as we started preparations for the SATs. In private I could call him Gareth and we spent two hours after school every day except Fridays when he would just hand me tests to complete over the weekend.

“Have a good weekend, Kage,” he said.

“You too, Gareth,” I said as I piled my work into my backpack and headed outside where the guys had waited for me in front of our lockers.

Everybody had already left the school and our bikes stood alone in the parking lot aside from Josh’s truck and his group of friends. They were watching us as we pulled our jackets on and headed to our bikes.

“This isn’t good,” Endri said as the group started walking towards us.

“Yo asswipe,” Josh called out and I turned around to face him.

“Walk away, jock,” Castiel said as he placed his helmet on his seat.

“Heard you went to go see the Coach,” he said and stopped right in front of me.

“We’re not trying out for the team,” I said.

“Good, you wouldn’t be able to hack it anyway,” he said and pushed me backward.

“What’s your problem?” Sloan asked him.

“You lot rocking up here, thinking you can take over everything,” he said angrily.

“We haven’t done anything to you,” I said to him.

He pushed me backwards against my bike and Miles and Endri kept it upright from the other side as I pushed him away from me. His fist connected with my cheekbone just below my eye and I knew it was going to turn blue from that one punch.

“Come on, fight me!” he yelled.

“No,” I said as I turned around and I heard him laugh.

“Are you going to go cry to Mommy?”

I tackled Josh to the ground, and I didn’t stop hitting him. My fists landed everywhere I saw a gap and by the time Mr. Walsh ran outside and broke up the fight, Josh had a split lip, and a bloody nose and his eye was going to swell and turn a pretty black color.

“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked us as he pulled me off Josh.

“Just a misunderstanding,” I said as I shrugged Mr. Walsh’s hand off my shoulder.

“We have a no violence policy at this school,” Mr. Walsh said as he looked at each of us in turn.

“Tell that to Josh,” I said as I walked back to my bike and pulled my helmet on.

By the time we arrived home the blood on my face and hands had dried and my knuckles felt stiff and sore. As was the new norm, Alexander waited for us in the living room. He closed his newspaper and stood up when we walked inside, and he took one look at us.

“I guess the shit hit the fan,” he said, and Sloan started laughing.

“That it did,” Endri said.

“Care to elaborate?” Alexander asked.

“Josh punched Kage first,” Castiel said.

“Should I expect a call from the school?” Alexander asked.

“Maybe, Mr. Walsh broke the fight up and it was after school, nobody else was there,” I said.

Alexander took my face in his hand and pressed lightly on my cheekbone, and I winced at the slight pain. He turned my face to each side to look at me and then he looked at my knuckles and moved my fingers one by one.

“That eye’s going to be black, put some ice on your knuckles, it’ll help with the swelling,” he said.

My brothers were mostly fine as they all basically just wrestled each other out of the way as Josh and I fought and I was glad for that, especially with Sloan and Castiel. They couldn’t afford to damage their hands, it could severely affect Sloan’s piano playing and Castiel’s surgery hands, as he liked to call them.

I went to my room first and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. My eye was swollen, and it was blue, a small scab was starting to form on my lower lip, and I had patches of red on my ribs where Josh had hit me.

I was pretty sure one of my ribs was cracked and the knuckles of my left hand had blood on them. I washed the sweat and blood away under the stream of the shower and thought about how I could’ve handled that situation better.

‘It was inevitable,’ I thought to myself knowing that no matter what I’d said or done differently, that fight needed to happen.

Miles was busy in the kitchen, and he didn’t allow any of us to taint his curry-making process, so we all lounged in the living room until dinner time. Alexander was in his study where he spent most of his time. Sloan had an odd look on his face, one I couldn’t read.

“Chow time, guys,” Miles yelled from the kitchen before I could say anything.

The atmosphere in the dining room was relaxed and after dinner, we slumped down on the couches in the living room as we tested Miles’s new game. Endri had designed the characters for him, and I laughed as I saw that they resembled us.

It was a simulation game where you developed your own kingdom and then sent out scouting parties to slay werewolves and vampires, gaining their attributes with every monster you killed. It was still a work in progress and the characters got bitten by the vampires too easily which meant you had to start over.

“Yeah, I was still going to fix that,” Miles said as I died for the ninth time.

“It’s impossible to play this game until you do that,” I said to him and put the controller down.

“I could compose some dark music for you, especially the parts just before the battle takes place, it’s eerie when you only hear the screams and clicks,” Sloan said.

“That’d be awesome,” Miles said.

We talked about his game for the next hour, giving our own ideas as we played each level and what we expected and what didn’t work for us as Miles made notes. He always took criticism really well, better than me.

It was already ten pm by the time I said goodnight to the guys and headed back to my own room. I lay down on my bed and thought about the turns my life had taken. I felt good about taking the SATs, Mr. Walsh didn’t go easy on me, and I felt prepared and soon I’d be on the ice again trying out for the hockey team.

Doubt crept back into my mind wondering when the other shoe would fall. What would happen this time to completely ruin my life? Some days I still woke up thinking everything was too good to be true and the feeling scared me because what I had here, I didn’t want to lose.

I had a family now, brothers. Alexander loved us and we loved him. I loved my brothers too, more than I thought I would. Adoption had once just been a dream for better circumstances but now this was my life.

I hadn’t lied when I told Alexander that he had saved me. I’d probably be in juvie if he hadn’t adopted me. He had given my life a new purpose, so why was I still so afraid? Why was I afraid to hope and believe in myself?