Catboy

04: flashback

He was only five years old when his whole world would become scarred.

His older brother tried to stop her. He shouted, screamed, tried to run at her. He was only 11, though, and he wasn't strong enough. He watched as his younger brother was forced to the ground.

Julian wasn't sure whether Arin remembered it. He didn't know if he remembered it. All he knew was that she had been holding a butter knife, heated to such a burning temperature that her hands would be permanently scarred. She didn't care.

Julian had only been five when she had brought that knife down on his face, not once, but six times. He was only five when he screamed, kicked, tried to lash out, while she yelled into his face.

Failure.

Useless.

You shouldn't have been born.

I wish you were never born.

I wish you would die.

When he was five years old, Julian had six scars burnt into his face. They were arranged like cat whiskers, in a sad sort of joke about the woman who had inflicted them. Julian was told never to tell. He stopped going to school. The bandages would say too much.

When he was six, Arin ran away, but his mother found him, dragged him back. She promised she would take better care of them. She didn't.

When he was seven, the two boys put on beanies. Arin found his mother's makeup, smeared it over Julian's face to mask the scarring. They were lighter than before.

The two of them left, called their grandparents, and didn't look back.

They lived with their grandparents for years. Julian was thirteen when a local talent scout, searching for a new track and field team, found him running along the street. Asked him to consider signing up.

Julian was fourteen when he became the captain of the track and field team.

He was fifteen when he was offered a scholarship to a university in Canada. He had, with his grandparents' permission, packed up his things, and moved to Toronto. Arin had gone with him to supervise. Not that he actually did anything.

Now he was seventeen, and living with two roommates to help pay the rent. One of them was Lawrence, a partially deaf boy set to become one of the world's greatest baseball players. Julian had no doubts that he would do well. He had a fiery sort of look in his eyes, hidden well behind a sweet temperament and an awkward smile. He had moved in just over a year ago, and worked at a little café down the street to pay for his room.

He was determined, said he was going to do his best at every opportunity, and he had. Julian had genuinely never understood the guy. He was half Malaysian, half Russian, and had grown up in Russia. But baseball was a hard sport to play there, given its unpopularity. And so, with another scholarship in prospect, he had moved to Toronto to live with his aunt and uncle.

Straight away, they didn't approve of him. They had never met him before, and they didn't like what they saw. His dark skin and Malaysian features, tied together with bleached-blond hair and his strangely good taste in clothes, didn't appeal to them. Him being partially deaf, his English really wasn't good enough for them. They snapped, decided enough was enough, and forced him to leave the house. That was when Lloyd and Julian had found him, wandering the streets, completely alone on his birthday.

And then there was Lloyd.

Lloyd, who Julian had met at a party. The two of them, over a little more than a year and a half, had become good friends. Lloyd was everything that Julian wasn't, and they both liked it like that. Everything was fine.

There were incidents along the way, of course. Lloyd potentially falling in love with Julian's older brother was one of those incidents.

But Julian would have to push past that. He had promised, a long time ago, to take care of Lloyd no matter what. Even though it seemed quite the opposite, Lloyd was the youngest in the apartment. He was eight months younger than Julian, and six months younger than Lawrence.

Still, Julian wondered why everything seemed to hurt inside of him. Why a single spark of something bright and angry shot through him every time he heard Lloyd slip into Arin's room. Was it jealousy? No. There was no way in hell he would want to be in Lloyd's place.

But in Arin's?

Just the thought of it sent another spark up his chest. Every time he saw them together, he felt his gaze lower just a little bit, looking away. He crossed his arms. There was no way in hell that he was jealous of his brother. That wasn't what this was.

He was straight, for god's sake.

Besides, nobody would ever want him. His mother had made sure of that, made completely sure of it when she had raised that burning knife. Lawrence had screamed the first time he saw Julian without makeup, without the concealer that his his scars.

Failure.

Useless.

Nobody will love you.

Nobody will care for you.

You will never care for anyone.

But he knew that last one was a lie, because sometimes he woke up to hear crying. And even though Lloyd didn't like people hearing him cry, Julian barged into the room and picked him up. Sat him on his lap. Held him until everything stopped.

Apparently it was a stress-related disorder. The doctors had said it was losing his eye that triggered it. That he would grow out of it.

He hadn't. In some ways, it was getting worse.

You will never care for anyone.

She had been wrong. When Julian saw Lloyd and Arin, all he felt was jealousy. All he thought was one thing.

Why doesn't Lloyd love me?