Adrien Francis Davids is six years old when his parents first tell him that he’s going to one day rule the world.
”We have high expectations from you,” his father says. He and his mother are sitting on the twin armchairs in the living room, while Adrien sits on the edge of the couch across from them. His legs don’t reach the floor; his feet are dangling, and he swings them back and forth, confused as to what they’re trying to tell him.
”You’ll do great, honey,” says his mother. Saralyn Davids is a tall woman, a force to be reckoned with, all blonde curly hair and red lipstick that reminds Adrien of strawberries, or maybe the wagon he used to cart around when he was four and a child (being six is totally being grown up). He swings his legs against the couch and bobs his head in a nod, because this seems like the right response.
His parents beam.
”He’ll do great,” his mother says. ”We have a gifted child.”
Adrien is twelve when he gets his first C on a report card.
He’s in sixth grade, middle school, where things are actually graded now and you don’t just get a “P” for passing and an “F” for failing. Adrien has never gotten an F, because he is a gifted child and he knows it, just like his parents said.
But middle school isn’t like elementary school. Everything is harder, more complicated, and Adrien doesn’t want to spend time learning how to find the square root of something or remembering his times tables so he can do better division in the future. He’d rather be in his home ec class, the class that the boys in his grade always complain about because it’s girly, but Adrien secretly loves it.
He can’t say that, though. It’s a secret.
He gets a C in math because he doesn’t understand it the way that he did when he was a child, because being in middle school means that you are definitely not a child, you are a preteen. He’s not a little kid anymore. He doesn’t have to do all of that babyish kid stuff, but he doesn’t know how to focus on math long enough to understand it. Besides, it’s not his fault that there are about a thousand things more interesting in the classroom than his math work.
”What is this?” his mother asks, when she finds the report card shuffled to the bottom of Adrien’s backpack. He’s forgotten about it; he really did mean to show it to his mother, but he got distracted, as usual.
“My report card,” says Adrien succinctly. “Sorry. Can you sign it? I’m supposed to bring it back.”
His mother’s red painted nails are skimming across the paper.
”A C? Why do you have a C in math?”
Adrien shrugs.
”It’s hard. I don’t get it.”
It’s the honest truth. He’s not made like the other students. And he’s also gifted. That means he doesn’t have to work as hard as them. That means he should know things that they don’t, right? It means that they should make the classes revolve around him, not the other way around. He remembers the note that his elementary school teachers wrote on all of his records:
Adrien is very talented, but very flighty. Needs to concentrate more. Needs to learn to focus.
His mother’s hand is tightening on the paper. Adrien has gotten a can of soda out of the fridge and is now trying to pop the tab on it so that he can take a sip.
”What do you mean you don’t get it? How can you not get it?”
His mother’s voice is rising. Adrien frowns a little.
”I just don’t.”
At the table, his father slowly puts his newspaper down.
His report card looks crumpled in his mother’s fingers.
”You aren’t trying hard enough, are you?” says his mother, and Adrien stares at her.
”I’m trying,” he says indignantly, because he is. He’s trying very hard. ”Math is hard!”
”Or maybe you aren’t doing what you’re supposed to be doing,” his mother snaps.
”Saralyn,” Adrien’s father starts to say.
Adrien’s mother slaps him.
It’s not a hard blow. In fact, he’s not even sure where she meant to aim, but it cracks across Adrien’s cheek like a baseball, pain ringing instantly and immediately. The can of soda falls from his hands, smashing on the floor, soda bursting everywhere.
”Saralyn!”
His father’s voice, muted, because all Adrien is aware of is his mother. He hasn’t actually moved. His hands are still outstretched, still in the same position they were before, hands wrapped around a nonexistent soda can that’s fizzing and sputtering on the glossy hardwood dining floor.
His father’s fingers, touching his cheek.
”What the hell is wrong with you?”
His father’s voice, again. Adrien’s eyes have begun to sting, and no, no, he’s not supposed to cry, boys don’t cry, he’s not allowed to cry, he’s not allowed -
His mother has dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around Adrien.
”I’m sorry, sweetie,” she whispers into his ear. ”Mommy didn’t mean to hurt you. I just know you’re capable of so much more.”
She draws back, her hands on his shoulders. Her nails are so red, like blood.
”You’ll try harder, won’t you?” his mother says, and Adrien nods, gulping for a breath that hurts in his throat.
His childhood is one of yelling.
Not his father. Mild mannered, quiet, and gentle, his father almost never raises his voice except in the few instances when he does. He works for the military, though as far as Adrien knows, he’s not actually in the military; he thinks he might be an engineer of a sort, but he’s never actually asked.
His mother is a lawyer.
His mother yells.
Sometimes at his father. Mostly at Adrien.
”You can do better, why aren’t you doing better?”
“You’re slacking again, aren’t you.”
“Stop wasting my time and my money.”
“You’re disappointing us.”
”You,” his father says quietly. ”He’s disappointing you. Not us.”
Adrien is fifteen when his parents get divorced.
In all honesty, he’s not entirely sure how they managed to stay together as long as they did. He can’t remember anything but yelling. The pressure to succeed. The lack of concentration, the fact that his mind seems to wander twenty four different places at the same time so that he never gets anything done anymore, but he has to get it done, because he has to be special, because he is gifted, because he is a gifted child and was a gifted preteen and now he has to be a gifted teenager, and he knows this, but his mind doesn’t want to settle - there are too many things to focus on -
Adrien is sixteen when he is diagnosed with ADHD.
His mother calls it a weak disease, an excuse. Adrien only sees her on the weekends. It’s Friday, and she’s sitting at the table with his father in his father’s little apartment, demanding to know what this nonsense is. Adrien is trying to do his homework on the couch, but he can’t do that and listen to his parents at the same time.
”This is just a flimsy excuse for him to slack off,” his mother snarls, throwing the report aside. ”You’re just doing this to taunt me, aren’t you?”
His father sighs. He looks older now, more lines on his face, his expression weary.
”I wouldn’t do that to you. Or to him,” he adds.
Adrien’s mother scoffs.
”Then why are you doing it?”
His father’s eyes flicker over to his son, still sitting on the couch, books splayed around him in some chaotic measure of organization that only works for Adrien because it helps him, strangely, to focus.
”Because he needs it,” his father says.
”He needs to be better,” says his mother.
Adrien is eighteen when he starts college.
Ivy league, just like his childhood. His grades are excellent, even with his little problem, as his mother has started referring to it. His teachers - most of them - throughout high school have helped, and so has the medication intended to calm him down. He has promise, everyone says. He has a Future - spoken like that, with a capital F as though the word is made to be more important than it should be.
The Future is a daunting prospect.
College is overwhelming.
Adrien doesn’t want to be there.
”What the hell do you mean, you’ve dropped out?”
His mother’s voice is a shriek that rises over the phone. Adrien closes his eyes against the sound of it, against the familiar cadence, the way she shapes her vowels, the hard lines of her syllables. He’s heard this voice so often that it’s become a part of him, some part of his past that he can’t fully cut off, as much as he desperately wants to.
And how much he desperately wants not to.
”I have to,” he says.
He knows what she’s going to say. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when it happens.
”You are not my son.”
Adrien opens the doors to his salon when he’s twenty-one.
The loan his father gave him is a heavy weight on his shoulders, but he’s determined to pay it all back when he can break even. It’s not a very big building; in fact, it’s kind of small, all things considered. But there’s a living space above it, and it’s more than what Adrien could have hoped for, in spite of this.
It’s not easy. Starting a business is incredibly difficult, stressful, and time consuming. There are sleepless nights where Adrien can’t think of anything but how much he doesn’t want to fail and how much he probably will. There are breakdowns, constant, when he’s sitting in that loft above his place with his arms wrapped around himself, trying just to learn how to breathe again.
But his father guides him, patiently and carefully, and so does his cousin, who has started a business of her own, and so does the woman who owns the cafe next door to the salon.
And slowly, slowly, the mess begins to unravel.
At twenty-two, Adrien hasn’t heard his mother’s voice in three years.
At twenty-three, he meets a boy with dark hair and dark eyes and one of the gentlest, quietest personalities Adrien has ever met.
And slowly, slowly, his new life begins to form.
[ WORD COUNT: 1,751 ]
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