The Gifted by C.C. Lynch

Author:C.C. Lynch [Lynch, C.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-07T05:00:00+00:00

11

CONNOR

“Jamie, Albert, Sean, whatever your name is…” my mother grunted while taking everything off the heat of the stove.

“Connor,” I replied, unscathed by my mother’s loss of my name. She usually said three or four before she got it right, especially when she was stressed.

“Connor,” she sighed, grabbing a handful of forks from the drawer, “can you please tell your brothers that supper is ready. And get Seth to set the table please.”

“Sure thing, mom.” I nodded before heading outside to let everyone know we were about to eat. I was number five in a family of nine brothers. I was the ignored, the scapegoat, and the unappreciated. I did not mind so much though, we all had a part to play. Plus, it helped so that they would not realize I was different. Jamie, Colin, Seth, Albert, Sean, Riley, Mikey, and Ryan may have gotten more attention than I did, but they were common.

My mother worked hard to put food on the table. She drove the school bus, served lunch at our school, and came home to make sure we were fed. She tried to be there for every moment of our day. I could forgive her for not being able to get my name right on the first try. My dad worked at the post office and a night shift as a janitor as the local college. He always got our names right, when he was around at least.

One can imagine the excitement they had when they found that “Sean, Seth, Ryan… er, Connor” got a full boat to a college. I hugged my father, kissed my mother, and traveled all the way from Quincy, Massachusetts to nowhere New Mexico.

“What’s your talent?” I hadn’t even made it through the doors of the school before someone was inquiring about my gift.

Unaccustomed to attention, I turned to the guy preparing to give me a tour and shrugged. “I don’t really know what to call it.”

He nodded, familiar to such an admission. “Explain it, I might know the term.”

My mind went back to the first time I realized I was not normal like my brothers. That’s not true. It went back to the second time, the event that confirmed something was not exactly natural about me. The entire fifth grade was on a field trip to the Boston Science Museum. Everyone had already been there at least half a dozen times so the only thing we were really looking forward to was the lightning show and knowing that we were missing an entire day of classes. People had always played jokes on me and used me as their scapegoat and that day was no different. Returning to the buses was always chaos because half the students were using the restroom before the fifteen-minute bus ride back to school while the other half were pure chaos outside.

“Hey, Connor,” a toothy classmate yelled, “looks like your frog is headed back to the river.”

The kid had stolen a clear bouncy ball with a rubber tree frog in the center from my backpack.

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