The Boy I Met On the Roof

Father And Mother

Growing up, Noah had always been a healthy kid; up until he was 12, he could count on one hand how often he had gotten sick; when he was 4, he had chickenpox, combined with a high fever and a fever-caused spasm, which back then was as bad as it got.
According to his mom, seeing him twitch on the ground was the moment in which she decided to protect him, no matter the cost.
The very next day, she took him out of preschool, homeschooling him instead; he wasn't allowed to see his father anymore without her presence, wasn't allowed to eat or drink without her keeping an eye on him, because of the choking hazard, he couldn't even have a quiet moment with his sister, Aline, because she was a bad influence. Of course, he knows that it wasn't because of his supposed illness.
After their divorce, they constantly competed with each other; their love had always been a battlefield, and their children were the soldiers. His mother had told him how horrible of a man his father was because he cheated on her, hit her, or manipulated his sister into hating her. Ironic, since she did the same to his father. The truth, as it turns out, is that they both cheated on each other, both with someone of the opposite gender. That explains why they were together despite hating each other's guts. He knows from his grandparents that none of them ever really wanted to marry, have kids, or abandon their body anatomy for a literal parasite. Luckily for them, his mother had always been easily swayed by material possessions and money, and his father was filthy rich. Starting at the age of four, he was his mother's "angel", someone who could do no wrong, and when he did, it wasn't his fault. The other kids used to whisper behind his back, talking about how to turn into a monster like this; he must have been hiding bruises behind his always too-high collar, but they never even considered that it was lipstick stains.
"You are the only positive thing I have left." She used to whisper in his ear, sighing contently when he just lay still, eyes wide open but unseeing and empty. The lights are on, but nobody's home, you know?
It was life for him; he knew that whenever things were too much, his brain had a soft spot in the back where he could land. He went through his daily motions numb, his mind floating in his cerebral fluid, watching anger and despair swirl in front of him, yet it never touched him again. Funnily enough, he spent his life content because he knew nothing else and was always told to be grateful for what he had.

The turning point came at ten.
His mother had a thing for attention and was willing to do anything to get it, even if it was from doctors; so, of course, she went to hundreds of doctors about her back pain, yet all scans and tests came back negative, so she tried again and again until they just threw painkillers at her so that she would leave them alone, which she never did. She never took the medications she prescribed; she just picked them up from the pharmacy for them to rot away in her cabinet.
On a Friday in the middle of winter, he had the worst headache he ever had; throwing up made it worse, crying made it worse, and coughing made it worse. Everything made it worse, and he knew that his mother would refuse to give him anything for it.
She never did, saying that if he took pills every time he had a headache, he would build up too much of a tolerance and find other ways to deal with them. Of course, no matter if he tried drinking tea or exercising more, they would still come and go. As he later finds out, his body was trying to tell him something was wrong; what exactly it meant, he still has no idea.
Either way, on that night, he crept into his mother's room and opened the cabinet in her private bathroom, taking out a random orange bottle.
Oxycodone, the label read, inside, the blue, round pills rattled; not reading the instructions, he popped four into his mouth, cringing at the bitter taste. The pain persisted for the next twenty minutes, all of which he spent rocking back and forth on his bed, hands over his eyes, afraid he would die, hoping he would die. But as the pain finally faded to a dull throb, a sensation of euphoria overtook him. For the first time in his life, he felt energized, body buzzing with energy, hands itching for him to do something, anything. His head swam, his vision tunneled, he was disoriented, and he was dizzy. He didn't care about that. He didn't care that he threw up as soon as the pills wore off. He didn't care that even days later, his pupils were still blown wide.