Sci Fi & Fantasy / Epic Summer, Chapter 1 (Analysis)
I
Things Get Weird
Whoever invented the phrase “sweet sixteen” should be shot. Because despite what the movies tell you, and despite the revisionist history being written by everyone more than a decade out of high school, being sixteen isn’t about dances, tooling around in your convertible and one milkshake with two straws. No, sixteen is about Purgatory: the middle of high school, once all the gloss has rubbed off but before the end is anywhere in sight. Sixteen is about punishingly dull SAT prep courses, awkward silences and lonely nights of frantic masturbation. It’s about getting high for the first time, getting drunk for the first time, getting sad drunk for the first time, and getting hungover for what, you swear, will be the only time.
This is the time of your life when you start to get a sneaking suspicion in the back of your head that shit just isn’t right. You wake up one morning and everything that made sense about your life when you went to sleep suddenly doesn’t. You start to doubt that you’re sane, that you’re normal. Hell, in some dark corner of your mind, you might even start to question whether or not you’re totally human.
Call it adolescent paranoia. Call it teenage angst. But if you’re anything like me, then those questions might not be entirely rhetorical.
#
I found out what I was on the first day of summer. Like pretty much every other aspect of my life, it was awkward as hell.
I woke up around noon on that beautiful New England summer’s day with a small hangover that was half the alcohol from the night before and half a lingering aftertaste from the nine-month hangover that is sophomore year of high school. It wasn’t so bad – things were a little too bright, and there was a little bit of lingering queasiness in my stomach, but that was it. In a weird way, it was almost cathartic.
I heard voices besides my mom’s downstairs, so I took a shower and put on jeans and a rumpled t-shirt before I went down. You never knew who could be stopping by. The kitchen was empty, so I poured myself a mug of coffee and went into the living room.
That’s where things started to get weird. When I entered the room, the conversation my mom and the two guys in there had been having died so abruptly that I knew immediately they had been talking about me. The three of them turned and stared at me and I stared back with a cup of coffee in one hand and the other hand jammed into the pocket of my jeans, wondering if my fly was open or something.
“Hey guys,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “What’s up?”
“Max,” Mom said, “sit down.”
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound very good. I started mentally detailing all of the possible nightmare scenarios. Could she tell I was hungover? Did she have, like, Mom’s intuition about that or something? Had she heard me stumbling through the front door still drunk at 3 AM last night? Or – shit! – maybe she had used my computer for something and had found porn in the History bar. Then who the hell were these guys? Maybe they were from the RIAA. Maybe they had caught me downloading music. Maybe they were here from the school. Oh God, what if I had failed one of my classes? What if I was secretly retarded, and nobody had ever told me?
I looked at the two guys, sitting in matching chairs. They didn’t look much like government employees – the older one looked more like Hollywood’s idea of a college professor, a handsome, distinguished looking man in his mid-60’s with a stately mane of silvery-white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in what can only be described as business casual. The only thing about him that couldn’t be described as totally dignified was his eyes – there was a bright glint in them that reminded me of a mischievous old uncle.
His companion was mid-20’s, blonde hair, a dead ringer for a male model in one of those GAP ads. The only difference is that those guys were usually laughing about something, and this guy looked like he was sitting in his dentist’s waiting room, waiting for his root canal appointment. Which is to say that he seemed very, very uncomfortable. I sympathized.
“Max,” Mom insisted, patting the empty seat on the couch next to her. She didn’t look angry, but I found myself wishing that she was. Instead, I was being introduced to a brand new entry in her lexicon of facial expressions – fear. That meant wide eyes, flared nostrils and lines on her face that I had never noticed before. And all of a sudden, I went from slightly uncomfortable to more than a little freaked out. I took a burning gulp of coffee, made a decision, and sat down next to my mom.
“Max, I’d like you to meet your father,” she said hoarsely.
I almost dropped my mug at that. After living my whole life in a single parent household, I had started to think of meeting my father as the sort of thing that might happen in the future but always seemed too distant and abstract to ever worry about. Sure, finding out who my father was would be nice, you know, eventually. But it wasn’t exactly something that I spent a lot of time agonizing over. So finding myself in the same room as him all of a sudden was a little like being sucker-punched.
I looked at the older guy. He had to have been twenty years older than my mom. I vaguely recalled something from an conversation with my mother about how she had only met him once, which had segued into an very much unwanted explanation of what a one-night stand was.
“How did you find us?” I asked the older guy.
“Well-” He stopped himself. He had the sort of voice that gets you a job narrating documentaries about space. “I’m not your father,” he corrected, a little sheepishly. He gestured to his younger companion. “He is.”
The GAP model sank further into his seat and made a small gesture of acknowledgment.
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“Language,” Mom snapped, forgetting to be terrified for a split second. She wasn’t the sort of Mom who usually cared about swearing, but the rules tended to change depending on what sort of company we were in.
“There’s no way that guy’s my dad,” I said. “He’s like what, ten years older than me? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m older than I look,” he said.
Mom nodded. “It’s him, Max,” she said. “I can’t tell you what he’s doing here or why he looks the same he did sixteen years ago, but … it’s him.”
I stared at my father and didn’t blink for what felt like a very long time. The queasiness in my stomach was getting worse; something was very much not right here.
All things considered, it was not how I imagined meeting my father would be.
I gulped down as much more of the coffee as I could. “This is insane,” I said. “You’re my dad.”
“Yeah,” dad said.
Another gulp of coffee. I missed being drunk.
“And you,” I said to the older guy, “who the hell are you?”
“Max!” Mom said.
The older guy smiled. “No, it’s okay,” he said. “He’s right to ask.” To me, he said, “You can call me Menelaus.”
I rolled my eyes; I couldn’t help myself.
“Is that supposed to be cute?” I said.
Menelaus just smiled.
“Seriously,” I said, “who the hell are you people?”
Menelaus looked at my dad. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?”
Dad sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’d kind of prefer if you did it.”
Menelaus’s eyes flashed with irritation, but a moment later they were twinkling again.
“Max,” he said, “the man sitting to my left is not a man. His name is Hermes, and he’s a god. Which makes you the son of a god.”
The room fell back into silence. My cup was empty and so I had nothing to distract me. Instead, I just gaped at Menelaus and tried to reconcile the absurdity of what he had just said with the serious tone in which he had said it. Beside me, my mom looked as blank as a sheet of printer paper.
“You people are out of your fucking minds,” I said.
“You want me to prove it?” Dad said.
“What are you going to do, shoot lightning out of your hands?”
Dad grinned. “Not inside the house. And that’s more the big guy’s thing, anyway.” He pointed to a small vase of flowers on the coffee table and it turned into three bats. That was it – no magic words, no puff of smoke, no special effects at all. Hell, he probably didn’t even have to point – he just wanted me to know where to look.
I watched the bats flutter out the window and felt a wave of nostalgia for the previous night’s drunkenness. I think I may have said something to the effect of, Holy shit.
My mom swallowed. She looked like she was about to keel over.
“When you say the big guy, you mean-”
“Zeus,” Hermes said.
“Right. Of course.” Tears were beginning to leak out of the corners of her eyes. I had never seen my mom cry either. I had no idea what to do in a situation like that, and so instead I sat perfectly straight and stared at the coffee mug in my lap.
“There, there,” Menelaus said. When I looked up, he was out of his chair, standing over my mother and patting her on the shoulder. “Do either of you want anything? More coffee, maybe?”
We both shook our heads quietly.
“Very well.” Menelaus sat back down. The playfulness was gone from his eyes now – he was dead serious.
“Here,” he said, producing an envelope from within his blazer. He handed it to me. “Inside you’ll find tickets for a round-trip flight to Athens, Greece. There’s a school in Greece, the Center for Exceptional Youth. I’m the chief instructor. It’s a place for people like you to learn to control your abilities and use them responsibly.”
“What abilities?” I asked.
“That’s why you should come to the school.” He rose from his seat, and Hermes followed suit. “The flight leaves in three weeks. You’ll be there for a month, and the cover story is that you’re taking a college prep course there. Behave and pack accordingly.”
“What if I don’t show up?”
Menelaus smiled and said, “Son, forces far beyond your understanding are drawing you to our school. I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.” He buttoned up his blazer. “See you in three weeks.”
“Uh, nice meeting you,” Hermes said to me. He gave an awkward little wave to my mother. “And nice seeing you again.”
They saw themselves out.
<<<<>>>>
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
This 194 word review has not been unlocked.
good writing skill but what is so exciting about being enrolled in a privte school? it bored me to tears. but if you find a good subject to write about you have very good writing skills and i am sure you could write a book i would enjoy reading.
- add/view comments (0)
This 296 word review has not been unlocked.
This 21 word review has not been unlocked.
This 233 word review has not been unlocked.
This 133 word review has not been unlocked.
This 302 word review has not been unlocked.
This 567 word review has not been unlocked.
This 200 word review has not been unlocked.
Overall you write well. Your dialogue was believable and you did a good job with Max’s character.
“I found out what I was on the first day of summer.” Your first line was good, but this would make a super first line. Who couldn’t resist reading on with a line like this?
We need to know as soon as possible if the protagonist is male or female. When I read “sweet sixteen” I assumed female. I have never heard of that phrase referred to boys before. But then I read “lonely nights of frantic masturbation.” That definitely sounds male. If it wasn’t for the “sweet sixteen” part I probably would have assumed Max was a “he” from the beginning.
“a handsome, distinguished looking man in his mid-60’s with a stately mane of silvery-white” Would a sixteen year old boy really describe a man like this?
“And all of a sudden” It’s better not to use this phrase. It warns the reader that something is about to change. The change has a greater impact on the reader without the warning.,
“was a little like being sucker-punched.” Instead of telling us how he felt, show us. Give us a description of what is feels like to be sucker-punched.
I was believing the story up until Max finds out Hermes is he father. I think this might be more believable if you made up your own gods. I think it might help to do some foreshadowing ahead of time, or maybe some unexplained things happening around or to Max.
Showing 1 - 10 of 13
Next →
Review item
Add to faves
GENERAL
REVIEW QUEUE
Ratings & Rankings
