Eleven

Kian

The hot sun fried the sparsely covered lawn, turning the grass a murky shade of brown. I wiped my sweat-coated brow with the back of my hand, then continued to push the lawnmower over the raised tufts of grass. This part-time gardening job may have made me a hit with the stay-at-home moms, but at sixteen years of age, it was still a case of “look all you want but keep your cougar paws to yourselves”. I was still a minor in the eyes of the law.

"Kian, do you want a cold glass of lemonade?" Mrs. Banks asked while pausing in the doorway and taking a good old look at all my hard work and effort.

Since her heart attack six years ago, I had been keeping a closer eye on her and took on all of her strenuous chores. It was Mom's drug dealers who had caused her sudden attack. The shock of them kicking down my front door and barging their way through my house caused Mrs. B to act impulsively in defense of my mother. From what I was told, they had given her a bad scare, and after they left, she barely made it back home when she collapsed. That was a huge turning point in our lives. Things had to change.

Mowing people's lawns paid me nothing short of peanuts, but it stopped people's tongues from wagging about where the source of my real income was coming from. Dad thought it was a good idea for me to be seen during the day so that it cleared my evenings for my main job. It mostly consisted of training and taking part in the odd paid fight here and there, but the Cage was where I made all my hard-earned cash. It was how I managed to pay for the orthopedic bed for Mrs. B; it was how I could afford to run a car back and forth to school each day, and it was how Dad and I raised enough cash to send my mother into rehab. She had been clean of heroin for a little over a year and a half and was holding down a part-time job as a cleaner.

"You're a lifesaver, Mrs. B." I exhaled a relieved sigh.

The old girl chuckled back at me, the glint in her blue eyes dancing like sapphires in the sunlight.

"It's the least I could do. You've barely stopped all day." She swatted the air as if it was really no bother at all.

Only, that wasn't entirely true. I noticed how she grew short of breath these past few weeks, how she strained more than usual whenever she rose from her armchair, how the stiffness in her joints made her wince with pain whenever she had been idle for too long. My beloved Mrs. Banks was getting old, and a part of me knew that she had little time left before she departed for that retirement home in the sky.

"Did you do something different with your hair?" I complimented her in an attempt to see her smile. "I swear that you're looking younger every day."

She gave an exaggerated eyeroll. "Oh, dear Goddess, you're turning into one of those smooth-talking asshats," she joked, fanning her face with her free hand while holding the condensation-coated glass with the other.

I took it gratefully, bringing the rim to my lips and taking a long, thankful sip of the cloudy liquid. It slipped past my lips like ice-cold heaven, quenching my thirst and cooling me from the inside out.

"You want to cover those muscles." She pointed at my sweat-glistened torso that was turning an angry shade of red through plenty of sun exposure. "Before someone slaps a health and safety warning on you." She gestured to the houses from across the street. "I don't need to bother watching sitcoms; it's entertaining enough watching all the desperate housewives tripping over their own tongues."

As I turned to look in the direction of where she was pointing, I noticed heads ducking down quickly from some of the windows.

"And you're going to get sunstroke if you're not careful," Mrs. B fussed as if she was my own grandmother. "Wear the cap I gave to you, and for goodness’ sake, put on a shirt."

My life mainly consisted of a routine succession of ordinary days: I went to school, my grades were a steady average, I came home, Mom and I ate dinner with Mrs. Banks, Mom and I did the chores between us, I did my homework, Dad would call home from one of the ranger stations, and we would have a pleasant conversation. On the weekends, he would come home without fail, and we would either train together, or I would take part in a paid fight that would earn me a fat roll of cash.

I kept my head down and my nose clean, and the guys at the Cage respected that. The one and only mishap I had was the first time that I had won a fight and celebrated with a few too many beers. I had never touched a drop of alcohol before that night, and according to Jaxton, who couldn't stop laughing his ass off, he caught me in one of the restroom stalls trying to get my rocks off with some broad from the club. I don't remember much else because I passed out before anything substantial could happen.

To any onlookers, I was a typical teenage kid, fooling around with the boys, eyeing up the ladies and dreaming of a life less ordinary. But that wasn't who I was behind the rusty herringbone metal of the Cage. That was when my primal side would take the wheel and thrive off all the blood and carnage that happened whenever I passed the dusty threshold. The scales were currently balanced between primal and civilized and were evenly measured for now, though all it would take was for something to tip one side for it to send me into chaos.

"Kian, are you still out there?" Mom called out from inside our house.

Moments later, she emerged through the door in her flip-flops and brand-new summer dress. Her cheeks had filled out thanks to her leading a healthier lifestyle, and her skin looked radiant and sun-kissed through soaking up the vitamin D. There were still a few tell-tale signs from all the past neglect: her teeth needed a little dental work to fix all the corrosion, and her nerves were still shot to shit, making her fingers tremble whenever she held up her hands to show how unsteady they were. But other than that, her hair was thick and shiny, and she looked more like the girl in her old photographs. The one that Dad fell deeply in love with. Their relationship was now stronger than ever, and Dad no longer felt the urge to bring alcohol into the house. I could always smell it on him whenever he came home from his ranger duties, but he put that down to missing us both while he worked away.

We were far from what you could call functional, but our family dynamic worked well enough for us. The four of us were happy, and yes, that included Mrs. Banks.

"Yeah," I replied, wiping the sticky lemonade residue from my lips.

"Are you done for the day?" she asked, then thumbed behind her. "Only, I'm going to fire up the barbecue and slap on a couple of steaks and burgers for dinner. Do you want some?" She bounced her gaze between us as she delivered her question.

"I won't say no to that," Mrs. B answered, shuffling past me in her house slippers and floral dress.

That left me to put away all the gardening tools and follow the two important women in my life through to our tiny backyard.

Mrs. B was sitting on one of the four new fold-up chairs that were a part of the patio set. Now that Dad and I had finished remodeling our house to how Mom always wanted it, we furnished the small yard with new paving stones and decorative garden planters. Dad bought a new barbecue at the start of last summer after our old one had given up the ghost. We had progressed from a half-barrel with charcoal to a six-ring gas burner. We even owned a matching dinner service and had a fridge with a built-in water dispenser. I felt like the fucking Fresh Prince, sitting at a glass patio table, eating steak beneath a parasol that had built-in fairy lights.

Living my best life.