Chapter Two
2A: Home — Good News
“You boys have a good day today?” asked Mum, from the kitchen. I sniffed the humid air and sighed in relief. Mum was boiling spaghetti. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until now. After I came home from the creek ‘round noon, I was too annoyed to think about anything other than how Olli had left me! That traitor! The Wolfpack didn’t leave each other behind. In fact, we were supposed to do the exact opposite! Stick together, through thick and thin. Even if Olli didn’t agree with me, he still should’ve helped me…or stayed to make sure I wasn’t maimed to death. The
Old Olli would’ve. So, the answer was
No, Mum. My day was terrible.
“Mine was fine,” answered Brady, sprawled out on the couch behind me. We were in the living room watching TV, and as usual, he was hogging all three cushions, forcing me to sit on the floor. I complained a reasonable amount but didn’t push it. My band-aid-covered ankle was easier to hide sitting crisscrossed on the floor, and I’d made sure to shower early, too, so that I could put on pants without anyone wondering why I’d changed out of my shorts. I had to be thorough. I
really didn’t want Mum and Dad sweating me over this.
“Just fine?” Mum parroted in her practiced vocal imitation of a teenage jock.
“Yup,” Brady echoed back.
“Circhester is airing a match today,” I announced, hoping to change the topic before she thought to focus on me. It worked well enough.
“Ooh, already? If it’s Melony battling, I reckon she won’t go easy.” Casual fans of the gym challenge tended to root for those they knew or the challengers from their hometowns, but diehard sports fanatics rooted for the gym leader that represented their city. Unfortunately, dumb Wedgehurst lacked most of those—adequate gym challengers and gym leaders, I mean—so every household in town had their own favorites. As for my family, we had a longstanding loyalty to Circhester that me and Brady inherited at birth and that Mum married into. Whether it was Melony or Gordie, we were always in their corner.
“Yeah. But she’s not on right now. It’s just the pre-show stuff.”
“Oh, that’s rare.”
The league didn’t always air the challengers taking on the gym trainers, especially when the gyms were particularly busy, like I imagined the third, fourth, and fifth gyms were at this point in the season. Circhester was eighth in the circuit this year, so the fact that a challenger had made it through seven gyms in less than four months was impressive and worth paying attention to. Champion Leon held the record at three months, but he was a pretty special exception. I heard he’d been training for the league since the day he was born. Must’ve been nice to have supportive parents!
Mom trotted into the living room wiping her hands in a towel. “Honey?” She called to Dad who was hauled up in his personal office, a sizable room with shuttered double doors that walled it off from the rest of the living room. “Did you know Melony was on today?”
“She is? But it’s only July!” Dad’s muffled voice replied. “Me Mum didn’t call!”
“I know, but maybe she forgot! She’s at that age, you know. Give her a call!” Mum moved away from the glass doors, stopping behind the couch to watch some of the match with us. I felt a bit nervous with her looming over us. I kept thinking she would see through me with that crazy freaking all-knowing Mum-sense and somehow figure out what had happened down at the creek. But she didn’t say anything to me. She only mumbled a few offhand comments about the challenger’s performance against the gym trainers.
“Some of these kids take the gym challenge so seriously,” Mum said, referring to the challenger who looked to be around Brady’s age. “I mean, he’s just breezed through the whole thing in just four months’ time, and for what? There’s no snow on the ground in Circhester right now! What’s the point in visiting Circhester without the snow?”
Brady snorted. “No one’s doing the gym challenge to sight-see, Mum, unless they’re pansies. They’re there to kick some as—”
She pinched his ear. “Watch it, Brady. I’m just saying. I think it’s a waste if you don’t enjoy all the beautiful sights the Galar region has to offer.”
“They’ll still be there, though,” I couldn’t help myself from saying. “That giant man in Turrfield has been there for hundreds of years.”
“And it’ll be there hundreds more,” Brady said, “for where else would Galar parents take their children on their first ‘exciting’ vacation?”
I chuckled while Mom huffed in good faith. “Whether you enjoyed it or not, seeing Turrfield’s geoglyph is Galarian tradition. It lets you know that there are big things in this world that we humans may not always understand. Those big things help remind us not to get caught up on the little things.”
“Such a touching sentiment, Mum. Thank you for that. I remember seven-year-old me being overcome with so much emotion on the way to the stadium afterwards.”
“Alright, smart aleck. I’m just saying, the thrill of visiting a new place is never the same when you go again.”
I sighed after she walked away. I didn’t understand how she could be so into watching the gym challenge and not understand why people did it—or why they wanted to, for that matter. In my opinion, this trainer was smart for prioritizing the gym challenge. The sights would always be there, but the time you had to prepare for the Champion Cup was dependent on how quickly you got through the gyms, and since the Champion Cup wasn’t until November, that meant that if Melony lost today, then this challenger would have four months to train for that. That was the ideal situation for any trainer determined to defeat the champion. I put a lot of thought into how my own gym challenge might go—as did every kid I knew interested in participating—and with the right preparation, I hoped my run would go smoothly as this strong trainer’s did. It just sucked that my friends were already working through their plans while I could only sit around and watch. All this crap about tradition, and yet here I was, twelve and pokemon-less for some big, dumb adult reason I really didn’t understand.
“So, what exactly did you boys do for your days to be ‘just fine?” Mom eventually tried again. Geez, was she persistent.
“Nothing, Mum,” Brady said, sounding as tired as I was. “It’s summer break. It’s a fine day if we’ve managed to do nothing.”
“Oh, I know
you’ve done nothing. Look at this garbage still sitting here,” Mom remarked. “Didn’t I tell you to take it out before I left for work this morning?”
“I was sleep when you told me.”
“And you remember that?”
He paused. “No…?”
“Dummy,” I muttered.
Brady slapped my head. I slapped his stomach. It was loud, and he “
oof’d!”, clutching his belly. Mum dipped her head in the room, eying us suspiciously.
“I was simply playing the narrator,” Brady wheezed.
“Not from that perspective,” Dad said, emerging from his personal office like a nap-disturbed pangoro. Eventually, his grizzly yawn morphed into more words we understood. “You’d have to use the third person omniscient point of view—”
“Okay, Dad,” Brady said, pointedly.
Dad was a novelist and a language fanatic with a generous tendency to teach us things Brady and I never asked to learn. We got enough grammar lessons during the school year.
“Watch your tone with your father,” Mum said.
“My knight in shining armor,” Dad growled, playfully as he went in to hug her and kiss her cheek. I heard Brady fake-barf behind me. What was fake-gross to him was pretty normal to me. Olli always seemed shy watching my parents. I remember him once saying I was “lucky” my parents “still acted like that.” Again, I wasn’t sure how luck played into things—I mean, how did them acting that way benefit me?—but I guessed I could see how it was better than having your parents argue all the time. But
ugh, why was I thinking about that traitor?
“How was work, darling?” Dad asked and followed her into the kitchen to help set the table. Mum spent her days handling and overseeing business dealings with all types of companies across Galar. For years, I thought her being a lawyer was a cool job until I realized her most interesting cases were when one stupidly rich company breached contract with another stupidly rich one. According to Brady, a buttload of money came from those cases, but Mum and Dad had always been tight-lipped around us when it came to discussing their finances. I found that odd. We obviously weren’t on the level of Gio’s family—the Tarsiolis lived in a manor big enough to house our home three times over—but considering Brady went to private school in Motostoke, we obviously weren’t worse off than Presley’s family. And
his family had managed to get him a starter for his birthday, so what what my family’s excuse? It made sense for Brady not to have one, even at sixteen, because his school provided them, but I was going to Wedgehurst Trainer Prep next school year like every other normal kid in this town. What was I supposed to tell everyone when I showed up empty handed? Who was I kidding? That couldn’t happen. I’d die of embarrassment!
I really needed to get to the bottom of this. It was already July, which meant that summer was almost over! The time for me to get acquainted with my new lifelong partner was slipping by, and quick! I had to ask them again... Mum hated when I bugged her, but I hadn’t asked her or Dad about my missing starter since May. Surely now I deserved a clearer answer than the nonsense they’d given me back then.
I cleared my throat, ready to project my voice clearly and evenly. If I approached the conversation “maturely”, then maybe… just maybe… they’d give me the truth. I—
“Dinner’s ready!” Mum called. “Come eat, boys.”
“But the Circhester—”
“Now,” Dad cosigned, and that was that. Brady muted the TV, and we both begrudgingly rose to our feet. Crud. I’d ask over dinner then.
We sat in the usual spots at our cozy circle table. Dad across from Mom. Brady across me. Tonight’s meal was spaghetti with rosalei berry sauce and garlic bread, and the aromas filled my stomach with hunger pains. Gosh, did failing to catch a pokemon make a boy like me hungry.
“Ooh, I love this. Thanks, Mum.”
I frowned as I watched Brady dig in merrily. Then as I glanced at Mum and Dad, who were watching him, seemingly too pleased over a typical compliment. The hairs on my arm stood up. I had an inkling suspicion that spaghetti hadn’t been the only thing Mum was cooking up. Something far worse was brewing, I feared.
It occurred to me then that tonight’s supper, spaghetti with rosalei berry sauce, was
Brady’s favorite, and the last time Mum had cooked Brady’s favorite (right after work, no less) was when she and Dad had agreed to let him go on his school’s special summer “culture trip” last year.
Now, did Brady need to go on that overpriced field trip to the
Kalos region (of all places!)
especially when I’d spent months prior begging Mum and Dad to consider a fun, family vacation somewhere far away? The only acceptable answer was
No; but because Brady had put on the waterworks about being the only one who couldn’t go in his class and moped around the house for weeks (
boohoo!) they ended up changing their minds. Imagine that. I sure bet he was glad our parents knew how sucky it must’ve felt to be the only one left out.
(Oh, and to top it off, by the way, while he and his uppity classmates hitched a flight out of the region,
I was the one who got saddled with his chores. I was sick of being the victim of serious favoritism, I tell you! Sick!)
So, that’s how I started dinner. With a sour mood and a dwindling appetite as I embraced myself for Brady’s “good news” that would surely solidify this as the worst summer of my life. I ate slowly, but violently, piercing each noodle on the prongs of the fork before biting them clean off. Amidst my own thoughts, the chatter around me died down until Mum spoke up.
“Well, Evan? You’ve been quiet.”
I looked up from my plate with a string of noodles swinging from my mouth.
“Gross,” Brady groused.
“I don’t think you told me about your day?” Mum continued.
With a mouthful of food, I was prepared to give the same answer as Brady when Dad chirped, “Yeah, sport! I didn’t see you when I came out of my office earlier. Where did you and your little wolf-gang go off to today?”
I nearly choked as my lie got lodged in my throat. There wasn’t enough rosalei sauce to wash it down, and I scrambled for a glass of water and chugged it down. I hadn’t expected Dad to leave his office today, or remember he even had children, for that matter. He was in what he called his crunch days where he spent hours on end finishing up his latest manuscript. Even his bathroom breaks were limited…
“Dork,” Brady muttered.
Of course, Mum couldn’t wait until I’d caught my breath.
“Yes, where did you and your friends ago?” she asked, a hint of suspicion in her voice. “Not to the creek on Route 1, I hope. I thought I told you there was a big group of nickit roaming around, harassing the wooloo and farmers out that way. I know the Jennies have been on the lookout, but I don’t want you getting caught out there alone and defenseless.”
“I know, Mum, I remember. But I wouldn’t be alone and defenseless if I had a pokemon...”
“And you’d be safe if you listened to me and didn’t go to the creek at all.”
“I wasn’t at the creek,” I said through gritted teeth.
“For long,” Brady said. “That’s exactly where he was, Mum.”
“Oh, shut up, Brady! What do you know?”
“Lower your voice,” Mum, said, but she kept the pressure on. “Well, did you go or didn’t you?”
“No, Mum. I already said I didn’t.” I couldn’t hold her gaze, turning back to my food. I stirred my noodles around my fork weakly.
“Liar,” Brady snorted.
“You’re the one who’s lying!” I narrowed my eyes, knowingly. He hadn’t done nothing if he’d been outside the house, same as me. I’d seen him walking home from the eastern part of town, where none of his ‘friends’ lived. But my friends and I all knew who did. “How was your visit with Poppy?” I asked, and Brady clenched his jaw. “I thought I saw you in the area. The east side of town, I mean.”
“Who’s Poppy? And who stays on the east side?” Dad asked, cluelessly. “Poppy some girl you like? Or is that a pokemon’s nickname?”
Brady ignored him to sneer at me. “What, were you and your dumb little friends spying on me?”
“We were at the creek. How could we?”
Brady turned obvious sarcasm against me, though. “See, Mum. He
was at the creek. He just admitted it.” He cackled as I protested.
“Well, I, for one, thought it was a harmless question,” Dad remarked, casually.
Just then, the phone rang, and Brady and I fell into a silent, under-the-table, foot-kicking-game.
Dad wiped his mouth, but Mum stood first.
“I’ve got it, honey.”
Eventually, Dad and Brady returned to eating, but I couldn’t. I was feeling even more weird inside, like Zebedee and Bunnelby were jumping inside my stomach. Between lying about the creek and the weirdness of Mom cooking Brady’s favorite, I couldn’t make out how I was supposed to feel.
Our home phone was on the wall that separated the dining room from the living room, so as Mum answered, I had a clear view of Mum’s face, as she did of mine.
Her eyes focused on me, and I could see it, where her face turned a little plastic; it was her
negotiation face. I’d overhead Dad telling his friends about it, saying she used it at work to hide what she was really thinking and was especially nice to her on days it accompanied her home. The phone call was less of a conversation, with Mum’s only responses being generic one-offs. A bunch of
ho-hums later, and I sensed she was nearing the end of the call.
“Who was that, honey? Wasn’t me Mum, was it?”
“No. Just Mrs. Taylor. You know how she thinks she has the most interesting things to say,” Mum said, voice perfectly level.
Mrs. Taylor was Wedgehurst’s biggest gossip and somehow knew just about everything that went on in southern Galar without ever leaving her house. Seriously, she never left her house. Mum and Dad used to make me go over their house all the time to help out because of that. Though, I hadn’t been over there since summer started. I was pretty tied up, enjoying the company of my friends in between my time on house arrest and whatnot.
Whew. So, it wasn’t Presley’s parents then, thankfully.
But as I glanced to Mum, my relief was short-lived. She was so focused on swirling the spaghetti around her fork that it didn’t look natural, as if she were an zoroark trying and failing to blend in among us humans. Mum wasn’t the type to react in a moment. She waited, calm as a drapion while she weighed her options, waiting for the right moment to strike. . She was contemplating something… I just hoped it wasn’t my punishment. I’d grown tired of finding new things to scrub; our bathroom ceiling was now sparkling thanks to me.
“Who was the subject of discussion this time?” Dad teased, and it was his response that amplified my apprehensions. Nothing was more dangerous in a small town than gossip and a game of telephone. If Presley had tattled to his parents who in turn may have been in contact with anyone that may have talked to Mrs. Taylor afterwards, then my business may have been
everyone’s business in Wedgehurst at this point.
“A simpler question would be, ‘Who wasn’t?’” Mum said and forced a laugh. Yeah, I once said that Mrs. Taylor had a mind and mouth like a zigzagoon the way she jumped from topic to topic, household to household with seemingly no break in between., and after Mum and Dad both barked out laughs, I was scolded for ‘badmouthing others’. But I was only telling the truth, and they knew it!
“Well, that’s good she’s still as lively as ever,” Dad said, a bit of his dark humor slipping through in his inflection. I think Mrs. Taylor was the oldest person that everyone that I knew knew, so I think it was just an unspoken understanding that we let her get away with stirring the pot sometimes.
“I hope they’re doing all right over there,” Dad continued. “Evan, you be sure to stop by sometime and see if they need any help around the house.”
Mrs. Taylor had a landline into every household in the surrounding area; was there really nobody else in Wedgehurst who could help them out? Anyone besides me?
“So, all Brady has to do is
not take out the garbage around here? That must be nice.”
“I specifically asked you, son,” Dad said. “But not because I’m picking on you. The Taylors really enjoy your company. They also like when you bring your friends over to help.”
“Oh.” Gossipy Mrs. Taylor aside, I’d almost forgotten how well Old Man Taylor and I got along. He hated just about everyone else though, so the rest of the Wolfpack kept Mrs. Taylor entertained while me and the Old Man caught up. He wasn’t particularly nice to me, honestly, but I didn’t mind his unpleasant personality anymore did he mind my coarse and frank expressions. Maybe I should pay him a visit one of these days.
“Not everything is an attack on you,” Dad reminded me, gently. Whereas Mum was hard and stern with her words, Dad was more like a feather. A lot of annoying fluff, but his approach didn’t hurt. Usually.
But then Brady burped, instantly proving him wrong. As long as Brady was in my presence, my livelihood
was under attack.
“You’re so disgusting.”
Brady stuck out his tongue and blew his breath across the table.
“Really, Brady? Not while we’re eating,” was all Dad said. Mum didn’t say anything. They let him get away with everything, it felt like.
“I’m done anyway.” Brady stood up to dump his plate in the sink, when Dad suddenly said, “Hold on.” There was an awkward pause as we turned to him. He smiled weakly. “I mean, I thought your Mum and I were going to share some good news over dinner, but I…”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right, honey. We were, weren’t we?” Mum said, looking like everything but a person with good news to share. I think Dad noticed that, too, because he shook his head and said, “Never mind it now. Let’s just let our food digest, and we’ll tell you both later.”
“Cool,” Brady said, obliviously, and did a running dive back onto the couch. “Melony’s match is starting in five!”
As much as I wanted to be excited about the gym battle, the spaghetti noodles felt tough and chewy in my mouth. I could barely eat it anymore. I seriously felt off. Nauseous even.
“I’m done, too,” I said, rushing to stand.
“Where are you going, Evan?” Mum said, coldly. I faced her slowly. “You’ve barely touched your food.”
“I don’t feel good,” I stammered, honestly.
“Aww, well, let us know if you need anything, sport,” Dad said.
I left my plate on the table and sped past Brady who asked where I was going. I ignored him, and went straight up the stairs to my room. I shut the door and locked it. Then, I unlocked it. Why was I scared I would get in trouble? I hadn’t done anything wrong. Boys fought and made up all the time is what Dad liked to say, and us Wolfpack were no strangers to those. And there was no reason to be anxious over Brady’s “good news”. Maybe the “good news” was actually for the both of us, if Dad had wanted to tell us at the same time…
Crap.
What if the “good news”
was for me… ? But then the phone call…
No.
My parents were unfair, but they weren’t cruel… Right? They wouldn’t take away my “good news” over a petty little Wolfpack squabble… Would they?
I pushed the dreadful thoughts from my mind. I slapped my cheeks, grabbed my Sega DreamSwitch, and dropped into my beanbag chair. Playing the game would help me relax, so I killed some time doing that.
…
Three hours later, there was a knock on my door. I was too immersed in
Ultra Recon Squad to do more than grunt. The long sigh that pierced my room as the door opened was characteristic of only one person in the house: a disappointed Mum. I braced myself for what was bound to be a frustrating conversation for the both of us. We never saw eye to eye on anything, and there was no way I was just gonna let her scold me without defending myself!
“Tomorrow, you need to go and apologize to the Pearsons’ boy.”
“Ugh.” I paused my game and slid off my beanbag completely.
Presley. “It was Mrs. Taylor’s big mouth that tipped you off, wasn’t it?”
“Watch it, Evan; and that’s rich coming from you, young man. I just got off the phone with Stephanie, and she said Presley came home a crying and hot mess because of things
you had said, Evan! This is unacceptable!”
I rolled my eyes. “She exaggerates everything, Mum.”
“Evan!”
Brady came out of his room across the hall and poked his head into mine, being nosy. “What did he say?”
“I wish I knew. Apparently, Presley’s being tight-lipped about it,” Mum said. Well, at least he wasn’t a total snitch. Knowing his mum, she probably bulldozed his door down after she heard a sniffle and pressured him into at least coughing up my name. Or maybe Zebedee had let it slip. He did say he would check on Presley, and he couldn’t hold water with a dry mop and an empty bucket to save his life. “Poor thing. He’s always been a sensitive boy, Evan. What did you say to him?”
“Nothing,” I groaned.
“Nothing?” Her voice lowered an octave that was only effective at scaring Brady. “I’m going to ask you one more time, and I expect the truth because it wasn’t
nothing that made that boy cry."
“Mum, please! I just told him to shut up!”
“And?”
“And…” I coughed. Why was repeating things after the fact so hard? “I told him he wasn’t better than me and wasn’t a good trainer because his pokemon hardly counted and said his tyrogue couldn’t beat a wild zigzagoon with its quadruple type advantage—”
Brady doubled over as a fit of laughter overtook him, and he collapsed to the ground, much to Mum’s chagrin. My embarrassment faded, and I continued, biting back a smile.
“And then I offered him the chance to prove me wrong by suggesting we go to Route 2, but that’s when he ran away crying.”
“Now, why would you say all of that, Evan? What did he do to you?”
“He was acting like he was better than me,” I said, simply. I couldn’t exactly spill the beans about the empty, stolen poke ball that had prompted the fiasco.
“Woah, bro.” Brady hadn’t quite managed to recover yet, and was still wheezing on the floor in the hallway when he asked, “You really said all that?”
“Brady, don’t encourage him,” Mum said. “As his older brother, you should be leading by example, not enabling this type of behavior.”
“That’s
definitely something I would’ve done, though.” Brady held up his hand to do an air fist bump. “Way to stick it to ‘em, dork.”
“What you said was out of line, Evan,” Mum said. “You don’t talk to your friends like that.”
“Yeah, and I’ve never spoken to him like that before, but ever since he’s gotten his stupid little pokemon, he’s basically been egging me on, Mum!” I explained. Why would I randomly snap on one of my friends? Obviously, there was a buildup. Weeks and weeks of buildup. Honestly, he was lucky that was all I said. “Maybe if I had a pokemon, Presley wouldn’t try to walk all over me,” I ventured. “We could have just battled it out like real men.”
Mum shook her head, but just then, we heard Dad’s bear-feet bounding up the stairs.
“About the good news since we’re all together! Bad timing, though, it seems.” He winced as he joined Mum and Brady in my doorway. My scolding had turned into family meeting.
“And now I regret this,” Mum mumbled. Dad laughed and half-hugged her.
“Brady, your mother and I have done a lot of thinking and talking… You’ve been waiting patiently for a starter pokemon from us, and we think you’ve waited long enough. So…”
“No way…” Brady and I mumbled at the same time. I must’ve missed Dad say my name, too.
“We struck a deal with the old Professor Magnolia. It took us quite a while to pay off our end of the agreement, but we did it. You, Brady, are one of the three trainers that’ll get one of her select special starters this year.”
“WHAT!” Brady and I exclaimed at the same time.
“Yup! You’ll go down and get it tomorrow. Isn’t that fantastic?”
“Why him?!” I yelled as Brady cheered, “Yes! Me!”
“Mum, Dad,” I was stuttering through my hysteria—I couldn’t believe my ears. If I wasn’t already on the ground, I would’ve sworn the floor was collapsing beneath me. Brady??? BRADY??? With a
special starter??! “Am I one of the other two trainers?” I asked, desperately.
“Absolutely not.” Mum wasted no time in shutting me down. “Your behavior these last few weeks has us actually reconsidering if you should even have a pokemon.”
“WHAT?! HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT WHEN BRADY’S WORSE THAN ME?!”
Brady danced into my room and around me, as if to prove my point. I shoved the beanbag at his legs, and he hit the ground with a hard
THUD. But he bounced up, shaking his butt and chanting, “Didn’t even hurt! Didn’t even hurt!”
“Did you see what you just did?” Mum asked.
“He was the one in my face, though!”
Dad gave a dry cough and intervened. “Evan—”
“Where’s my good news?” I asked desperately.
“Sometimes in life, not everyone gets the same good news. Or rather, your good news can simply be that you’re healthy and alive and able to be present and supportive of one another.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Language!” Mom reprimanded.
“Evan, we understand how you feel but—”
“No, you don’t, because you wouldn’t sit up here and announce Brady’s good-freaking-news in my face like that!”
“And maybe you’re right. Maybe we probably shouldn’t have done that,” Dad said, softly, “But we don’t think you would’ve liked to find out after the fact, either.”
“Well, thank you for being so considerate of my feelings,” I said, clapping slowly. “I hadn’t thought it possible.”
“First of all, Evan, you know your Mum and I care about the both of you very much. Just because you’re upset doesn’t mean we love you any less. So, why don’t you calm down, and perhaps, consider not centering yourself as the victim in every situation when you don’t get your way, son.”
My jaw dropped. Mum’s dry bluntness was one thing, but Dad’s attempt at trying to pacify me made me feel as if my rage would bubble out of my skin. His feathery voice had a way of adding fuel to the fire once I was over a certain threshold. Brady’s “good news” had definitely sent me rocketing over.
“Are you being serious right now? Brady is the most selfish person in the world!”
“You may think that, but that isn’t true,” Brady said.
“Yes. It is.”
Brady scoffed. “I’m the most self
less person in this house.”
I glanced around for something to throw at him, but Mum’s sharp voice made me stop.
“Evan, cut it out!” Mum said. “You need to grow up.”
“Is it really that hard to just be even a little happy for your brother?” Dad asked. “To let him have his moment?”
“Does he even deserve it?” I asked harshly. “Brady gets whatever he wants all the time; he can be happy for himself like he always is just fine without me. Why is it always ‘be happy for your brother’ and ‘let him have his moment’? What about my moments? I’ve been miserable for the last two months because you guys say things like ‘
We understand you’ yet you haven’t even gotten me the one thing I’ve been asking for!”
“Evan,” Mum started, “it hurts me to hear that you’ve been feeling that way, but I’m sorry. Not having a pokemon isn’t the end of the world and the fact that you feel so strongly about it is yet another reason why we’re even reconsidering giving you one at your age. Owning and raising a pokemon takes maturity among other things, and your behavior as of late has been very telling of what you lack.”
“Oh, well that’s a convenient excuse. Aren’t you the one who goes on and on about “Galarian tradition”? I guess that’s just a bunch of baloney when it comes to me then, huh?”
Mum gasped, but Dad squeezed her shoulder. Mum would never be able to speak to me as “calmly” as Dad did, but I could see by the way his mouth pulled tight that he was past the point of “playing nice”, too.
“Evan. Your emotions are justified. But the way you’re speaking to us is not. This is clearly not the time or place to have this discussion.”
“Then when would it be because I think it’s three months long overdue,” I said, refusing to drop this.
“Bro, you do realize I’ve waited way longer than you, don’t you?” Brady stupidly asked me.
“Shut
up, Brady. You fo realize that the only reason you didn’t have one already is because Mum and Dad both said you didn’t need one because your stupid school provided you with them?” Taking a much-needed breath, I steeled my nerves and turned back to glare at our parents. “And since
obviously I don’t go to that dumb school, I guess they’ve gotta make up new excuses on the spot.”
“You’ve way over the line,” Mum said. “Several.”
“Well, living here sucks and makes no sense, so it’s bound to happen, I guess. I hate it here.”
“You shouldn’t say things you don’t mean, Evan.” Dad said.
“I’m not lying when I say that. I do. I do hate it here. I hate it a lot.”
“Fine,” Mum said. “You’re welcome to hate it here, but there are a lot of kids who would be happy to have nice parents who clothe and feed them and provide a nice, warm shelter over their heads.”
“And I’m sure those kids with oh-so-nice parents got pokemon for their 12th birthdays like everyone else, so…” I shrugged.
Mum nodded like she agreed. “Right. Well, I’m glad we’ve come full circle again.” Mum spoke like the meeting was adjourned. “Tomorrow, Brady will make sure you apologize straight to Presley’s face before he goes to the lab. Then I want you back home
immediately. In case you aren’t understanding it yet, yes—you
are grounded.
Indefinitely. And if you test me, and you can kiss the rest of this year’s summer break
and next goodbye. Do I make myself clear? Good.”
She herded everyone out and closed my door, and that was that. I was still so mad I threw my Switch across the room. It didn’t shatter into a million pieces like I wanted to, but it did chip some of the paint. Fantastic.
In that moment, I had a crazy thought.
I should run away.
But that was stupid and way too much work for what it was worth. Where would I even go? How would I defend myself if I ran into a wild pokemon or worse, a wild human? I couldn’t stop a mugger twice my size. I was utterly helpless, and it was all my stupid, dumb parents’ fault!
Seriously. How come everything about my life was just so unfair while Brady got and got away with
everything?
My anger whittled down to bitter frustration, and it kept me wide awake way past my bedtime. I tossed and turned and grumbled and kicked my sheets off my bed more times than I could count. I was full of awful thoughts for a long time. Big, awful thoughts about my future.
My parents were
never going to give me a pokemon, I’d realized.
Especially not after tonight. And that fear was worse than having to wait for years like Brady.
I did a lot of crying that night, after getting myself worked up over stupid scenarios. I imagined all my friends leaving me one by one. First, Gio, because he was always going to try for the gym challenge ahead of us. And next Zebedee because he lived his life on the schedule his parents set for him. Then Presley would head off, leaving just Olli and I behind. Of course, Olli would try to stay long, under the guise of friendship, but really, it’d be guilt that kept him back.
It eventually sank in that I was right to go after that skwovet this morning. If I ever wanted a pokemon to call my own, it was clear more than ever now that I was going to have to find a way to get it on my own. Screw tradition.
Amid my brainstorming, Brady decided I didn’t need any sleep and barged into my room.
“Ever heard of knocking?” I hissed, rearing up with a pillow for defense instinctively. I was used to his random bouts of harassment.
“Everyone already knows you were crying; you don’t have to hide it.”
“Shut up and get out.”
“I know you went in my stuff, loser,” Brady said, rolling up his magikarp pajama sleeves and threatening me with his flexed arms. “Tell me where you put it.”
“What are you talking about?” My confusion came out so naturally, and it was only because Brady irritated my soul and fried my brain cells simply by existing.
“I’m missing a ball.”
“Ooh, Brady… I don’t know where that could have gone…” I risked a cheeky glance towards his lower half and pulled a disgusted expression. “Are you sure it didn't just pop? You should see a doctor—” I blocked his smack with the pillow.
“I know you took it, doofus,” he said, smothering my face with my pillow until I punched him in the gut. He spent the next couple of minutes searching around my room in the areas I would only ever hide something if I
wanted it to be found before he gave up. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. You can have it. Not like it would do you any good, though. Ever,” he taunted. I chucked my pillow at him. He blocked it with the door— “Ha! You missed, loser!” —then slammed it.
“You’re the loser!” I yelled, not caring if it woke our parents. “But thanks for the permission to keep it,” I murmured. Hehehe. Sucker.
As I thought of the stolen—now, gifted—poke ball stuffed in my camping set’s sleeping bag, that’s when it hit me. I couldn’t just catch
any ‘ol pokemon around here. Imagining
Brady with a special starter and me, Brady Hall, with a trash-can caught caterpie made me sick to my stomach. That wouldn’t do at all. Yes, I was desperate, but not desperate enough to end up with a common ‘mon like skwovet or blimpbug.
Plus, after making such a big deal at the creek about the fact that I didn’t have a pokemon, I figured I kind of needed a cool one to make up for my pitiful failed attempt. Something cooler than or
at least on the same level as that shrimpy tyrogue.
With Brady’s poke ball—I mean,
my poke ball, getting my own pokemon was definitely possible. But I needed to do a lot more research…
The biggest problem that I could think of off the bat was that I lived in Wedgehurst, the most unremarkable town in Galar surrounded by the most unremarkable landscape in Galar. Even former Champion Leon had outsourced his partner pokemon. I mean, everyone knew charmander weren’t native to this region!
I was in such a big, fat pickle, but as soon as I figured out where in Southern Galar I could find a pokemon that exceeded the anticipation I’d built up for myself, it was a game over.
It was kind of exciting to have this much control over my own life. I’d prove to my parents that I didn’t need them. I’d rely on my own strength and get my starter through my own methods. I would.
