Freaks: Year Two

Spots And Shrimpy

Ableism.

The first big change with Jasper and Toby gone was their mother staying home from work to walk them to school.

The second change was that Ethan would not budge from his bed that morning. No matter what Francis and Edgar did, he would not move or talk. Their mum had snapped at him to get up and even started to drag him out of bed, but since Ethan was making no effort to move, she had just left him in his bedroom.

"This is exactly what I meant," she muttered.

Edgar looked back up the stairs, hoping that Ethan would appear. Maybe they just had to wait for a few more minutes, but Mrs. Odair had yelled at Edgar to get a move on, and he looked back towards the front door, and quickly scurried after her because he did not want to make her mad when she was already in a bad mood.

Edgar caught up with Francis who was trailing behind their mother. Edgar immediately noticed that his older brother looked miserable. "What's wrong?"

"This is all my fault," said Francis.

"It isn't–"

"It is," Francis cut him off. "I shouldn't have made him upset, now he doesn't even want to go to school and mum is..." He lowered his voice. "Mad."

Edgar didn't know how to respond to that. He looked up ahead, seeing the start of the school property and all he could hope for today was that he would have no magical accidents.

He was even more nervous about having one now with their mum being around. What if she got angry? What if she hit him? He had a very brief memory of before Hogwarts for Jasper and he would have a magical accident and she would get really angry at him and whack him.

Edgar was already scared of his dad, he didn't want to be scared of her too.

That was the third change, this new overwhelming sense of fear that he had not felt before when Jasper and Toby had been here.

Suddenly, Edgar really wished Toby was here. He really, really, really wished he was here because that meant their mum would go back to work, and that meant she would barely be around which meant she was not here as much to get mad and hit them.

When their mum had dropped them off, Francis pulled Edgar aside before he went to the wall where his classmates were lining up at. "Are you okay?" He couldn't help, but notice just how on edge his little brother looked. "Is your...er, magic, okay?"

Edgar just nodded. "I-I'll be fine."

Before Francis could ask another question, the bell rang and Edgar quickly ran up to catch up with his classmates, and Francis quickly rushed up to his door, slipping the hat he had in his pocket on.

"Hi, Francis!" Mary exclaimed as he joined her at the end of the line. "It's kind of hot for a hat, don't you think?"

"You know I like hats," Francis answered with a shrug.

They went into the school, down the corridor to their classroom, and that's when Francis had to take off his hat as one of the teachers passing told him to do so. He went into the classroom and to his seat, taking the hat off and he put his elbows on his desk, placing his palms over his ears.

What Francis usually did in his classes was that he would keep one hearing aid in and one out. He would use his right had to do his work while covering his left ear. This was for two reasons, one so Mary would not find out and laugh at him and two, to stop his classmates from teasing him.

The first part of the morning had gone relatively normal. He focused on his spelling worksheet, while thinking about his brothers. He felt bad for bothering Ethan as much as he did. He didn't know it would make him so upset that he wouldn't even move to go to school today, and then he thought about Edgar who had looked so nervous on the walk to school. Francis had a feeling it was because their mum had walked them and now the days would look different. She would be around more and with his magic he must have been more spooked about causing a magical accident as they all knew what their parents thought about magic.