Yale Manetho // Seven

Yale was definitely an ugly duckling. Or, ugly squirreling, as it goes in Seven. He was meant to be handsome, because his mother was exceptionally beautiful, but as a toddler and tween, Yale just wasn't. He was gangly with a protruding stomach, hair that knotted itself faster than his mother could shave it, flat lips and undefined chin. Sure, his eyes has always been an easy, summery shade of green, but most people never even bothered to look into them.

It didn't help that he always wore ill-fitting clothes. Shirts that tugged too tightly around that distended stomach, shorts that rode up too high or too low, and shoes so dusty and worn they become little more than sturdy socks.

It was really the onset of puberty, and his ability to work and earn a little for himself, that transformed Yale. His voice cracked earlier than most of his peers, and even at fourteen he had a bit of stubble to show. His hair grew in darker, curled more than knotted, and it turns out that having a beard will compensate for not having a chin. All that work in and out of the woods' filtered sunlight has developed freckles over his sunken nose. While Yale isn't going to win any stud contests this year, he's a far cry from that awkward boy. And maybe he would've been a nicer, more compassionate person if he'd had to go through life in that body. But he doesn't, and now, it's pay back time.

Yale has a smart mouth, which has gotten him into a handful of scraps and detentions over the last several years. With the onset of his good looks came the hormones that gave him his scruffiness. While externally they've done wonders, internally they have twisted the little poor boy he once was. As a child he was unfailingly polite, curious, open minded and quiet. He didn't like to talk because his father would constantly ask him to speak up, which only made him want to speak more quietly.

But he listened, and he was bullied, and Yale never forgot. He can list the boys and girls who picked him on him from the very first day of school until he started to fight back. Yale is lucky that his brothers were interested enough to eventually teach him out to fight back; certainly his father had no interest in such a task. And it wasn't that Yale specifically targeted those who had made his life miserable; he just waited for them to try it again. You know what? Most of them did, and Yale - ever the curious learner - got better and better.

As is true of his father, Yale's intelligence lies in his hands, in aesthetics. He can see a tree and imagine how to best cut it down, how to most efficiently use the wood. He can feel the roots of it, determine if it is health, or sick, or dying. He's never been very good in class, but put Yale outside with things he can touch, and he thrives. This took a long time for him to realize, and he's still waiting for his parents and teachers to see it. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe he just has to wait until school is over, and then he can begin a carving apprenticeship and leave his quiet life behind.

Because it has been quiet. It turns out when you don't talk to anyone, it's hard to make friends. Yale has a handful of acquaintances, people he does school projects with, but no one to call a best friend. Most of his fights are won or lost by himself, and while he can be funny, he can also be sarcastic and downright mean. It's also hard to learn where that line is without practice. As Yale gets more comfortable in his own skin, he's more and more willing to reach out to others. Dating has always ranked relatively low on his totem pole of priorities, but as the beard on his face grows more and more wild, he's begun to wonder what it would be like to really have companionship.

Yale was born as an afterthought. Not an accident; his birth was purposeful. But after three boys, the last of which being eleven years his senior, his parents thought they were done. Until they weren't. Until his father decided he would try one more time to give his wife a baby girl, and once again failed. Harvard, Princeton and Stanford are good sons, all born within six years of one another, all true brothers. They never had to win or lose a fight because there was always the trio of them. And when they fought each other, well, that wasn't anything serious. Not like the broken noses and bruised ribs Yale has endured.

The older brothers were all in high school by the time Yale made it onto the family's radar. He was not what his mother or father had hoped for, and while they loved him, they didn't care of them they had the others. Yale was mostly left to fend for himself, with decade-old hand-me-downs from his brothers. He rarely saw either of his parents as a toddler; his father worked in one of the wood processing plants and his mother at one of the book binders. None of his brothers possessed paternal traits, but they were the ones left to feed and change him.

As the brothers moved out, less money trickled into their meager home, close to Seven's city center, in one of the slummier parts of the district. It took Yale almost no time to realize that his family was pretty much the bottom of the barrel; his peers at school let him know that. He made his way through the classes as best he could, but most of the time found himself distracted by the outdoors. The woods called to him.

And it really wasn't until he began to grow up, until his body began to change, that Yale found any sort of comfort in this life. It will take more time for him to discover exactly who he is, but at least now he has the chance. He has a mean left hook, a penchant for carving, and a part time job at the pulp plant to pay for silly things like shoes and hot meals.

For Ariel <3