Lex was having a bad day.
He had been shoved into a janitor's closet that locked from the outside as he was leaving school. He had so many bullies that he lost count at times of how many people laughed at him, tripped him, treated him like dirt.
He had screamed for help until he gave up. He curled onto the floor, crying. He hated school. He was a punching bag and he hated every minute of it.
He was delicate and that didn't help things. He had round spectacles and scraggly curly hair and it when it grew long it just made him look effeminate. His build was smaller than his father's and his father was a short man. He resented his height. He was 16 and 5'3". It was embarrassing. Every boy in his junior class was taller than him. Lex had ridiculous bad luck. He had discovered years ago that he lusted after all the jocks that made his life a living hell. He hadn't come out to his father yet.
His father didn't have the money to get his son a cell phone. Thomas kept telling his son that he didn't have a cell phone when he was 16 and that it was fine. He told Lex to get a job, but Lex had a bad attitude. He didn't know how to deal with authority. He had been shit on for so much of his life. When he managed to get a job at a grocery store, he was rude and standoffish. It was his own fault but all he could feel was sorry for himself. He told himself that he wanted to be in New York or LA where people were cosmopolitan.
To be frank, the kid was a bit of a douchebag. But let's back up and look at his father because Thomas was a single father always working to keep his head above water.
Lex came home that night late. The Mexican janitor had looked at him with a mix of pity and contempt.
"Go home, amigo! Don't let those guys get you down, huh hombre? Choo just need to show them who's boss, hombre!"
Easy for him to say, Lex thought. Lex resented even people that gave him good advice and tried to help him. He just told himself that everyone had it better than him. Lex walked in as his dad was on the phone. Thomas was only 5'5" and he had flat black hair of medium length, with homely looks; a slightly pug nose, very little facial hair and squinty eyes. He waved as his son came in, not commenting on the look of disdain and misery that his son always seemed to wear. Thomas lived in a world of denial, always trying to be cheerful in spite of not having the best life.
"Yes, Sir. I do understand, Sir. Of course I can do overtime this week. Okay. Sure. No, I didn't finish that project. I had to deal with Larson's project and Garcia and Perry. Everyone is out with covid. I'm trying, Sir. Okay. Okay, I'll work Saturday, too. Yes, I can do that. Um...where does your daughter go to school again? Okay. Let me write down the address. Thank you, Sir. Okay. Good night to you, too."
"You're picking up his daughter from school?" Lex said, incredulously. "Really? Like you don't do enough for that guy."
"Working for Mr. Harman is a lot better than what we had before. Remember how hard it was when I was working in restaurants all the time, barely making the bills? Now we have a nice apartment. I wish you'd just try and enjoy it. Enjoy what we have, Lex. Come on, I never had anything like this when I was your age."
"Yeah, I know, Dad. I'm sorry. It's just that I feel like you do way more than you should for that guy. He takes advantage of you," Lex argued.
"I know what you think, and you know what? I try to see the sunny side of life, is all. I'm lucky to have a job like this, Lex. And Mr. Harman appreciates me. I think he's gonna promote me."
You are in denial all the time, Lex thought. His father had been raised in some dingy garbage dump in West Virginia, some meth hellhole that he had escaped.
Lex looked at his father and agreed with him, muttering that he had homework. He sullenly sulked up to his room, wishing he had another life.
He escaped into porn, and he knew he shouldn't. He jerked off to images of masculine, muscular jocks, and he secretly fantasized he was a jock, He felt ashamed of himself. He hated looking at his reflection, at this small, scrawny, ugly nobody. He cried himself to sleep. His father didn't even ask how his day at school went and he was glad. He would just lie whenever his father did ask, tell him everything was fine. Except for the few days he had been given a black eye or he came stumbling in after being assaulted, thrown on the ground, his legs covered with bruises. They had gone to the principal and it was humiliating.
Thomas was a meek man always trying to make peace. He innocently thought that they could work things out with Lex's bully and his father but the bully, whose name was Colt, was just a dick and denied doing anything wrong, claiming that it was someone else. After he confessed due to eyewitness testimony, Colt "confessed" that he was goaded into it by all his friends and he promised his father he wouldn't hang out with those guys anymore. Lex could smell the bullshit. His father...Thomas was so weak that he shook hands with Colt's dad Corbin, who talked to Thomas and not Lex, who just sat there feeling like he didn't exist. Thomas ate up all of Corbin's bullshit. He always did that. He always let bigger, dominant men get their way.
He wished his mother hadn't abandoned him to go do drugs in Florida somewhere. Lex cried into his pillow. She had done drugs until they killed her, leaving them both alone.
Lex didn't have any role models. And he was filling up with a toxic energy he didn't even realize was here, a burgeoning anger. He had started mouthing off to the jocks at school that tormented them, cursing them out. Saying things like "Fuck you, asshole." to Colt right before getting his ass kicked. As if he didn't deserve it for calling him a fag every day of his life. But no, his father made him apologize and made him accept Colt's apology. And then Colt's dad Corbin and Thomas talked about where they worked and Thomas said they should all try and be friends.
Lex could tell Corbin and Colt looked down on him and his father. They were bigger, stronger, rich. People like that looked down on people like them. His father was such a chump. This life was hell.
"I wish that everything could be different." Lex whispered to himself.
He didn't feel like being there. He grabbed a jacket and told his father he was going out for a walk. It was November and the weather was beginning to get sharply cold.
"Try not to be out too late, okay? It's gonna get down to the 30s tonight. Try and be back by 9, okay?" Thomas told him.
"Sure. Okay." Lex said the words quietly.
He walked in the cold air and he almost liked that the air was so cold it hurt. At least it meant he could still feel something. Most of the time he just felt numb.
He wandered to a large park and found himself alone, with the streetlights coming on in the dim cold gray. He sat on some concrete steps and watched the leaves falling. It would start snowing soon, he thought, dully. In just a few weeks.
"I just wish everything was different."
"How different?" a disembodied voice asked him.
Lex got up. He looked around. He was suddenly very awake now. He looked all around him, turning in circles.
"I'm over here, kid."
"Where?"
"Behind you," the voice said, close enough to be just a few feet away. Lex swiftly turned around in circles.
"This isn't funny!"
A man in a trench coat and fedora was suddenly at his side.
"Relax, Lex. It's all gonna be fine. Trust me."
"Who are you? How-how how how how do you know my name?" Lex was stuttering and panicked.
"Name's Buster, and you're Lex." The man fished a cigarette out of his pocket and put it in his mouth, casually lit it. It made him look sexy and dangerous/ "Want one?"
"I...I'm only 16."
Buster looked annoyed and perplexed as to why Lex brought this up. "Yeah, I know. You want one?"
"N-no thanks. I don't smoke."
The man in front of him was masculine and handsome. He looked straight of a movie, with piercing eyes and thick stubbled cheeks. Part of his face was in shadow from the brim of his hat, and he walked away from the nearby lamp post.
"What if I told you, Lex, that you could have it all? Big house, money, be a jock, and most of all, that your dad could be a real man's man?"
"Who the hell are you? Some kind of serial killer?"
The man snapped his fingers. They had both teleported away from the park and they were now in the nicest neighborhood in town, full of big, old houses full of old, wealthy money. Auburn Street.
It took Lex a few moments to start freaking out. He began running away but his legs were frozen in mid air before the stranger returned him back to a standing position with another snap of his fingers.
"I'm a friend who sees you're down on your luck, pal. I'm a sucker for an underdog story. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Buster Trader, and I'm here to offer you a deal." The man had alternately been talking and smoking, confident, large, and he extended a large arm around Lex to clasp the boy by the shoulder. "And believe me, kid. You're gonna LOVE what I have to offer you."