by K. C. Hughes
Wicked
Warlock
K.C. HUGHES
CHAPTER 1
Deakon Metcalf could’ve been classified as a mutt. He was scraggly, he didn’t know who his real parents were, and he didn’t have any friends. But, unlike a mutt, Deakon walked on two legs, had an IQ of 159, and at fifteen years old, had a college ID.
It was Deakon's first day at Arizona State University. As he rode his scooter across campus, he yanked the jacket off that his mom insisted he wear. Why on earth would she think he'd need one in September in Phoenix? Unlike other parts of the country, the scorching sun hung around way past August and more times into October. He didn't want to look geeky so he ditched the jacket in the first trash can he spotted. He glanced from side to side checking for hostiles- that's what he called bullies. Satisfied, he sped up, whizzing by dorm housing and academic halls. The heat dried the sweat that ran down his forehead.
He knew the ASU student body reached seventy-two thousand, but seeing the hordes of kids scurrying from class to class gave him hope. He looked up to the sky and dreamed that he could make friends with some of them, or at least one. But, just like the klutz he was, he lost control of the scooter. He tried to correct the swerve before hitting the curb, but he was too late. The impact flung him in the air, then gravity sent him straight to the ground. When would he learn that having a genius IQ did not equal coordination? He got up and brushed himself off. He refused to look up at the students he heard laughing at him.
ASU campus was relatively new compared to the Ivy League schools that enticed him with full academic scholarships. But, he was scared to be that far away from home. And besides, Yale was old, Cornell felt stuffy, and Harvard was-well-just Harvard. He disliked the overblown sense of entitlement that the students at those pretentious schools lugged around.
Students at ASU walked and talked like they knew how to enjoy life. They smiled and greeted strangers-well maybe not Deakon but normal strangers. They laughed louder, played harder, and partied more. The atmosphere had a high energy that came from having eight months of summer. They carried on with a spirit that he thought would better suit his special situation.
Deakon had been a whiz kid since he was able to talk, but no one knew it. After the first day of kindergarten his teacher, the fresh-faced Miss Chapman, called a meeting with his parents. Since she was a first year teacher, the principal thought it was necessary to attend.
They sat at the reading table in her classroom. “Thank you for joining me on such short notice.” She said, looking directly at both parents. “I think your son should have an IQ test. He's remarkably intuitive and well…,” she said, glancing at the principal.
“Today in class, your son alphabetized all the books in the room and rearranged the toys in order of size and color,” the principal said.
Miss Chapman added, “I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think he read all the books as he put them up.”
Mrs. Metcalf glanced at her husband. She’d seen her son looking at the pictures in books but, reading them? “I don’t know what to say, but I’m sure he was just looking at the pictures.” She clasped her hands together. They seemed to be singling out her only child. And Deakon wasn’t biologically theirs. He had been adopted as an infant from an overseas agency.
“Would you mind if we brought him in to ask?”
The Metcalf’s looked at each other and nodded in approval.
Deakon entered the room and sat next to his mom. “Thank you for helping me with the books today," Miss Chapman said. "Do you have a favorite one?”
Deakon squirmed a bit. He knew his mom didn’t know he could read because she had always read to him. He sensed he had been different when he played with kids at the park. They had limited vocabulary with three and four word sentences. Whereas he had been able to carry on adult conversations, even though it was with his cat, Spanks. But what could it hurt. “I like Hop on Pop, by Dr. Seuss.”
“That’s a great book," Miss Chapman said. "It was one of my favorites too. Do you like the pictures the best?”
“We don't have that book at home but I mostly like the way the words rhyme," Deakon said.
His parents gasped.
From that day on, Deakon had been tested, prodded, and tested some more. He feared it would get worse, and he wondered what would have happened if he told them that he read some of his dad’s programming books too. Instead, he kept quiet. Since then he purposely took longer on placement tests than he had to. He also learned to hold back the urge to correct his teachers.
The cat was out of the bag.
Deakon hopped back on his scooter and rode to his first class-Linear Differential Calculus. It was located in the Brickyard building in the Science and Engineering section of campus. He selected Computer Engineering as his major because he wanted to be like his dad. Or maybe he wanted to be liked by his dad. His dad wrote code for software apps. He didn’t have to work for money because they had a gazillion dollars in the bank. He started with Microsoft at the time when their talk of an ‘operating system’ made them the laughing stock of Wall Street. After many stock splits on top of stock splits, he left the company with more money than Donald Trump. But he was too young to waste away in a rocking chair. So he pimped himself out to the highest bidder, developing software apps.
Deakon felt that if he had something in common with him they would grow closer. But as it stood presently, he was distant. His dad ate dinner in his office alone, going over thousands of lines of code in total isolation. Deakon had been scolded as a child for interrupting him one time. They never played catch or watched a game together. Not that playing catch would have mattered, because he had always been puny for his age and eye-hand coordination eluded him. He thought by having something in common with his dad, he could build a relationship. But that was not the case.
As he locked his Vespa scooter on the bike rack, he lost his balance. He stumbled backwards, hands flogging, causing all the other bikes to collapse on one another in a domino effect. Somehow he managed not to fall, but he stood still, holding his head down. Without his bodyguard to protect him, he went rigid with fear, knowing the backlash from knocking over the bikes would surely come. His clumsiness had caused a lot of bullying in the past. But he couldn’t help it, his awkward body danced to a different rhythm in an urky-jerky pulse.
He waited. People ambled around, paying him no attention. Some kids laughed, but didn't bother to stop. When no one confronted him, he had an idea to put the bikes upright before their owners noticed. Maybe college would be different after all.
While lifting the last bike to its upright position, Deakon heard it.
“What the hell are you doing with my bike?” someone yelled. Deakon turned to see a stocky kid wearing the latest Eddie Bauer crumpled-cotton shirt. The kid ran fast and that was never a good sign.
When the bike owner approached, Deakon balled his fists and felt his clammy, sweaty palms. He’d grown used to the bitter fear that raced through his veins. Ever since Miss Chapman stuck her nose in his business and had him tested, he’d been given a double promotion. He’d been teased, beaten, or humiliated nearly every school day of his life. Apparently, older kids frowned upon academically superior six-year-olds. As a result of little-to-no socializing, he developed a speech problem that caused a full blown case of stuttering.
“Um, sorry, but um, de-de-de-,” Deakon said, humiliated by the mumbo-jumbo.
“Shut your trap, you freak. What are you anyway? Some kind of retard throwback?” He bum rushed Deakon so fast that he didn’t know he'd been smacked until he saw his glasses skitter across the sidewalk. It was times like these that he wished he were taller and stronger. Some nights in his bedroom, Deakon stretched out on the floor, spread eagle, willin
g himself to grow. But to no avail. His five feet two inch body refused to cooperate. He knew he didn’t have a chance to protect himself against bullies like the kid in front of him.
“No one touches the Bird Man’s BMX, especially a geek like you,” Bird Man said. He unlocked his bike and took off. He moved so fast that Deakon was relieved when he was out of sight.
As a way of surviving the hurt from the name calling, Deakon had found that rating the kid’s gibes helped him cope. He rated Bird Man a ten on the ‘retard throwback’ taunt. That was an original. He had been called everything imaginable: assmosis, stutter-muffin, nerdstrom, Deak the Freak and many more. Most insults had been unoriginal and boring. So rating them helped him compare his intellect to theirs. His won every time, but it still hurt. Whoever came up with the phrase, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me, apparently had never been teased like he had.
Deakon picked up what was left of his glasses. The lenses came out of the frame upon impact, and he did not have the wherewithal to put them back in. He jammed them in his backpack and trudged into the Brickyard building for his first class.
When he entered the room, he noticed that it was a stadium seating lecture hall. Unfortunately for him, the hydraulic hinge was broken and the door slammed into the wall with a loud bang. Every head in the room turned.
Just what every fifteen year old stuttering-genius-whiz-kid entering his first college class needed.
He slumped in the nearest seat, held his head down and prayed that the students would stop staring at him. Then he heard the professor start roll call. He tensed, knowing this was the only time every student actively listened for their names to be called. Why hadn't college been different from high school by eliminating the dreadful attendance check. He was certain there'd be a burst of laughter after the students heard his name.
Who names their child Deakon?
From the millisecond view of the lecture hall, he saw that only fourteen students had been females. From his leisure reading of engineering trade magazines, he had noticed a trend: women rarely entered engineering. It suited him just as well because he had been intimidated by them. In fact, his mom and his next door neighbor, Ms. Zelda, had been his only female friends on Facebook. More specifically, they'd been his only friends.
After the uneventful roll call, Professor Lord explained Euler's Method to approximate solutions, and his tension eased. He watched as he illustrated the equation on the whiteboard. He noticed other students scribbling in their notebooks or typing fast on their laptops trying to keep up. Deakon had never had to take notes, so he relaxed and watched the equation unfold. The burn on his face from Bird Man's slap faded as well as the embarrassment from his entrance. Maybe college would be different because he noticed the students in his class were like him: more interested in learning.
CHAPTER 2
Deakon had a bodyguard soon after he started high school. Addeson Catholic Preparatory in Scottsdale, Arizona was originally built in the early 19th century as a castle for a rich farming guy. Who knew farmers got rich? At that time, Scottsdale was a small town known as the Wild West. Addeson Prep had been such a cliché school with dark wood paneling throughout the halls and in each classroom. They were small because they were once bedrooms. The teachers and admin staff walked around with their noses in the air. And the students hung out in cliques based on the size of their parent’s wallets. The grounds were meticulously manicured with lush greens and exotic flowers. It was a contrast from the rest of the desert landscape in Phoenix.
The school required students to wear the silly crested blazers and chino pants. What a joke! Deakon was glad the blazers didn’t come in his puny size. He got away with wearing a simple button down shirt and the uniform pants.
His dad said he selected the school so he could make friends with kids like him. But Deakon knew he wanted him to be around kids whose parents had gobs of money. He didn’t like to discriminate against people just because they didn’t have a lot of it. Rich people acted strange. All they talked about was how to make more of it or how keep it. It was just paper, after all.
His mom worried that he hadn’t made any friends in elementary school. She failed to see he was a social outcast due to the age difference and his smaller body. His father hadn’t known that the private school kids treated Deakon worse than in public school. When Deakon came home from the first day at Addeson with a broken forearm, his Dad insisted on a bodyguard.
It started in Algebra class when the teacher orally quizzed the students on simple fractions. It was a refresher from the long summer break. But when Randall King, the school’s wrestling champ, didn’t know what one-third plus two-thirds was, Deakon had been floored. All ninth-graders should know simple fractions, right? “Simpleton”, Deakon mumbled under his breath.
Or so he thought.
After he heard the muffled laughter from the other kids, he realized that he spoke in his outside voice. When would he learn to keep his snide remarks to himself? He lowered his head, wishing he was invisible because he knew he was going to get beat up.
After school Randall and what seemed like the entire student body surrounded him.
“So, you think I’m a simpleton?” Randall asked.
Deakon was glad that he knew it was a rhetorical question because his first impulse was to answer ‘most definitely’. Instead, he tried to back away, but the first blow came so fast and had been so forceful that he was flung to the ground. Once Deakon was hit, he faked a knock-out to avoid more punches. But in order to do that he had to fall convincingly. What he didn’t know was there was a rock nestled in the grass. When he landed, his arm smashed into it.
Enter Marc Nash.
Marc had been a referral from one of his dad’s clients, a law firm that handled personal injury cases. During the interview, Deakon sat on the stairwell next the his dad’s office and eavesdropped.
“What did you do for Oswald & Platt?”
Marc cleared his throat. “I was an external investigator.”
Deakon couldn’t see the interchange, but he envisioned his dad rubbing his chin in deep thought. His dad was a mister-know-it-all who would rather jump into a pool full of hammer-head sharks than to let on that he didn't know something.
Deakon often thought his dad was jealous of his intelligence. After that first day in kindergarten, he started asking him random questions. He thought it was great that his dad was showing interest in him. He wanted to please him, answering every question enthusiastically. Deakon noticed their relationship shifted further apart, though. Toward the end of kindergarten, the score for the Mensa test arrived and his dad opened it. He called Deakon in the study.
“Son, what’s (2 + 15 + 5 + 9 – 4 + 3 + 8 – 12 + 26)/2?”
He looked at the ceiling, biting his lower lip. ““That’s easy Dad, it’s twenty six.”
His dad hadn’t ask him another question after that.
“What exactly does an external investigator do?” his dad asked.
“I did a lot of things, from running errands to um, finding witnesses to accidents.”
“How would that qualify you to be a bodyguard?”
“With all due respect sir, look at me,” Marc said.
Deakon saw Marc when he had entered the house and he was huge. He was in his late twenties and wore non-descript black pants and a matching shirt that stretched across his chest. He wondered if it was a requirement for bodyguards to wear tight fitting black pullover shirts. If some men had guns, Marc had cannons. He would’ve given up half his IQ to have a body like that. It was odd that Marc didn’t have man-boobs as he seen in other muscular builds. But his pecs were perfect. He had to have at least one flaw, maybe he was a brute with no brains.
“Why don’t you meet him now?” And his dad raised his voice. “Deakon, come to my office.”
He froze on the stairs. If he ran down, his dad would know he had been listening. But if he went up to his room and then came down, he would avoid punis
hment for eavesdropping. He decided to run up to his room like he’d been there the entire time and come down. In his clumsiness, he tripped over Spanks, his long haired orange cat. His body went tumbling down, landing with a soft thud. He knew Marc would take one look at him and walk out of the interview.
When he sat next to Marc, the huge man dwarfed him. Deakon looked up with dropped jaws. He had little to no eyelashes which made them looked like they belonged on an alien’s head. His eyes were pure black and he couldn’t tell where the iris’ ended and the pupils started. He had never seen solid black eyes before.
“Son, this is Marc and he’ll be your bodyguard from now on.”
Deakon feared that having a bodyguard would cause more ridicule and bullying at school. But when he scanned the mass of Marc’s body, he was pretty sure no one would mess with him again. “Ok, if you say so.”
Marc turned to face Deakon, “How do you feel about that? You want me to be your bodyguard?” His features softened, looking sincere. Deakon liked that.
“Umm, yeah. But the kids will probably pick on me more,” Deakon stuttered.
“I won’t let that happen, Buddy.”
Something stirred in him. No one ever called him Buddy. He sat higher and poked his little chest out.
They spent the next weeks hanging out during school and even after school getting to know one another. Marc came over on weekends. He taught him about eating proteins to grow muscles. He bought two gloves and a baseball, spending hours a day playing catch. But Deakon was so uncoordinated he couldn’t catch the flu. After he told countless stories of him getting beat up, they practiced basic self-defense drills. Unfortunately that didn’t work either. After a couple of weeks they had built a great rapport and to Deakon, Marc was more than his bodyguard. He was his only friend.
Deakon faced challenges, being younger and smaller than all the other kids at school. He had to sit in front of the class because he was too short to see over the heads of the normal sized kids. This made him the brunt of teacher’s pet jokes. But he wasn’t afraid because Marc had been constantly at his side. Something was odd, though. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but he wasn’t the only student at Addeson Prep with a bodyguard. The daughter of a military contractor and the son of the General of a military base had bodyguards. He thought it was pathetic that kids of high profile military personnel had to have protection.
