Great Pretender// K. Day, A. Minyard

02- Sign Your Life Away

Atlas

"Silence is now your best friend. Remember: You are no hero. There is no way out. Do not make us have to silence you."

Every day his father stood above a sea of children and quoted those exact words. They were engraved in his memory.

Silence was all he knew.

So, as the younger children looked up to him with wide teary eyes, he stayed silent. As the police blew down the door of the facility he watched in undisturbed silence. When witness protection asked him what he wanted his new name to be, he stayed silent.

Silence was the only answer that was always right.

Altas could only remember one person who silence was not a valid answer for. One person. A person who died with his old life.

Well, that had been the case until he met David Wymack.

"Yeah, you're going to have to give me more than that." The man had followed him out of the doors of the school. Atlas had impressed on the court, just as he always did. But apparently, that wasn't enough for Wymack. He wanted to talk.

Atlas wasn't good at talking to adults. He was even worse at talking to adult males. Adult males who he didn't know a damn thing about? You would have better luck get something out of a literal brick wall.

Josten and Coach Hernandez had long since left, leaving the two men to converse among themselves. Their absence also meant the absence of Atlas' voice.

Wymack wasn't one of his clients. He looked strong. Like, throw Atlas over his shoulder and climb Mount Everest without breaking a sweat strong. If that wasn't enough, he also looked smart. He would not be manipulated. He had the physical and psychological advantage over Atlas. David Wymack was his worst fear come to life.

He was someone Atlas had no hope of beating.

"Kid?" Dirty fingers snapping in front of his face brought him back to reality. "You alive in there?"

The two, after walking out of the school and across the empty parking lot, had found themselves sitting in the grass at the park adjacent to Milport High.

The swings were either only hanging on by one chain or wrapped tightly around the pole above it, the slide was rusted so bad that no one dared go down it, and the red of the monkey bars could no longer be seen beneath the vast array of cobwebs covering its surface.

The park was an absolute shitshow. No kids had played there in a long while. It was a wonder the place hadn't been torn down yet.

Coach Hernandez used to say that 'Everything happens for a reason'. Atlas wasn't too sure he believed in that. He could have five extra hands and he still wouldn't have enough fingers to count out all the times terrible things had happened to him for seemingly no reason. But, if he were to agree with his coach's mantra, he would say that the old park not being torn down was an act of fate.

Without that park, Atlas would have been forced to look into the eyes of David Wymack.

"I don't know what you're waiting on, but I don't have all day." Wymack looked down at the kid in front of him as Atlas picked the dead grass out of the ground.

"...why are you still here?" Atlas' voice was the smallest it had been all day. All in less than four hours, he had lost the biggest game of his highschool career, seduced his English teacher in some last-ditch attempt at salvaging his pitiful grades, gotten beat up by that very same teacher after he wouldn't go all the way with him, and then been harassed by some random coach from rural Carolina.