vermilion prince . d6 . fin

vermilion prince

Your father is one of the smartest men in District Six. Or so he says, anyway, you'll just have to take his word for it. He's in the organic chemistry scene, and with increasingly high stakes all around your nation, it tracks for him to be so well-off. For all your life, you've held Mom's hand and walked around with them as their little boy, their only son. Dad would call you Einstein, and while you didn't quite understand what that meant, the way he said it was how a smile begging for someone to pinch your cheeks would come to fruition.

With two very intelligent and capable parents who could succeed at every turn and trial in their way, expectations in your household are demanding and have felt so unattainable, even for a little kid. Your sisters managed to pick everything up right away, acing their reading, and writing, and math, and science, and history, and, well, everything else you can think of for schooling. Your eldest sister, Nadia, was by far the best of your family, maybe even stronger than Dad when it came to science.

The bar set for you, the only son in the family of four children, felt higher than Mount Everest and forced you to dig deep into the earth's core to even get a glimpse of what success looks like to the human eye. Despite hearing it over and over again, all that Einstein shit, you could never manage to clear the bar, could you?

Why not? Mom graduated top of her class in her year, and Dad's a self-proclaimed (but accurate) genius. Your sisters are studying about medicine and preparing to treat potential diseases or viruses for when they come to your district. Yet when you find yourself at a desk with a textbook mounted and opened to a wall of text, you shut down. You don't get it. Not that you fail to understand the material, but you can't understand the words on the fucking page. They all blend together, jumbled up like an unopened puzzle box.

At the age of ten, you struggle when you're asked by your teacher, Mr. Foles, to read a passage about the phases of the moon. "Can't we all just read in our heads? Isn't that easier?" Foles shakes his head at you and tells you to go on and start to read. It was worth a shot, though. You'd rather fail yourself without anyone knowing than fail yourself in front of a room of people who hold such high expectations for you. "There are, uh, there's eight stages of the moon. The new moon, the waxing cres-kent, first quarter, the waxing gibbons, the full moon, the waving gibbons, the-" The chuckles in the room reach a volume that makes it impossible for you to even think about going on.

You look to Mr. Foles for guidance. {"Mr. Prince, I think you've got some of your pronunciations wrong. It's the crescent, the gibbous, and it's waning, not waving."} You try to look back at the page to see where you messed up, but it's hard to find it. Snickers in the background leave sweat to drip on your forehead and your face turns a bright red. You cover your ears and look back at the page, finally getting to where you left off, so you can continue. "Third quarter, waving cres-kent-" Mr. Foles cuts you off again to correct you on your pronunciation. This time, you refuse him the opportunity, slamming your hands on the bulky book at your desk. You rip the page you were reading out from the spine and crumple it up before throwing it on the ground, stomping again and again until it's completely flat.

Dad has to pick you up from school that day, and along with him came a hefty fine to replace the book. It wasn't anything that Dad couldn't handle, but still, he looks at you with displeasure. {"I don't understand why you're acting out like this. You're ten years old, it's time you start trying to actually read instead of sitting there, doing nothing. You're not learning if you don't invest any effort in what you're doing, Vermilion."} His voice drowns in irritation and disappointment. But you feel it just as much towards him as he does you. Why does he assume that you're not trying to learn or practice? Every time you look at a book, the words on the page all seem the same, and half the things you say don't turn out right. Dad wants to blame this on your lack of a work ethic, and throughout the walk home, he tells you about how smart you should be if you actually cared. {"Some day, you'll need to learn how to support yourself, Vermilion. You can't do that by being a mindless janitor in my lab."}

It's been seven years since Dad first realized that you aren't the Einstein guy that he thought you were capable of becoming. While he grows to accept that you produced a failure for yourself, you still struggle in school. A few months ago, it took you thirty minutes to write a paragraph that was only what, half grammatically and linguistically correct? Dad demands that every assignment you do that is graded be brought to him every day so he can see your progress. Yet all there seems to be is regression. At age seventeen, you have given up your father's dream of becoming Prince & Prince, two men who found the cure for cancer or discovered how to keep humans from dying. There's no chance for science now, not when you stutter on half your words when you read aloud and take ages to understand something read in your head. Pronunciation has gotten a little better for you, but other than that, things have either gotten worse or remain the same.

Dad is a scientist, though. Legally, people in the district call him a fucking doctor. You struggle to process the fact that your father is a chemist yet he can't even consider that perhaps there's something intrinsically wrong with you and your body, instead of the artificial belief that you just don't care. Mom and he refuse to let you get checked out by a professional. Once again, you find yourself wishing that failing yourself in private could be a possibility. Not when you're under a fine microscope or when you're stalked by two parents on the edge of their seats ready to criticize you.

They have given up on encouraging you, and you've given up on trying desperately to please them. Between the two sides, all that's left is a battle of who gave up first and who is simply responding. Them. They gave up on your first. So quick to judge and slow to understand, the same things they criticize you for being.

Dad tells you that you're not allowed to leech off of him for money if you're not going to attempt to pursue an education. You haven't gone to school in weeks, and you've changed everything about yourself. Pompadour haircuts from the barber and leather jackets, jeans, they're all more of your style now. You try to get steel-toed boots but struggle to find a good pair.

You tell Mom, Dad, and your sisters that you're too cool for school now, and you're quitting. You've outgrown it and don't see the use when there's plenty of people who are just.. smarter. The reality is, though, that you're terrified to go any further. The longer you stay in school, the higher the bar rises ahead. You don't want Mom and Dad to see you fail, you don't want your friends to see you fumble. At least if you're the only one who knows that you've failed, you can tell yourself a different story and force a new narrative. Besides, you've carried your head on your shoulders for seventeen years. You would much rather keep doing that than carry the burden of everyone else's disappointment.

Prince, heh. Runaway royalty or family reject, heavy is the head that wears that crown*.

*Shakespeare Henry IV