Erebus

By Hunter Wilde

After struggling through a horrific childhood and tragic loss, Indigo thinks he'll finally have a normal life: university, friends, a woman he loves, and a blossoming career; but the world is changing.

As international tensions rise and World War 3 erupts, Indigo makes a horrifying discovery about the Prime Minister and the government.

Indigo must make a decision - revolution with the woman he loves, or absolute power. His decision will decide the fate of the human race, and whether or not we deserve a future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jan 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781312841925

Book preview

Erebus

Erebus

Copyright

Copyright © 2015 by Hunter R. Wilde

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2015

ISBN 978-1-312-84192-5

Written for You, my dearest, and Winston Churchill:

as a testament of my love.

Erebus

Hunter R. Wilde

They tried to bury us.  They didn’t know we were seeds.

— Mexican Proverb

Part I: History

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

1

I warn you reader, that before you embark on this adventure, that my story is not a pleasant one.  It does however, contain in its words, a great hope for humanities future; a hope that after 3.8 billion years we might better ourselves and have more to offer than what we can now.  I believe that humans have that ability, the potential, to be even greater than we thought possible – we just have to put forth the effort. 

In our name, the Indigo Movement was initiated to change what is unjust in our world, and cleanse it for a better future.  Perhaps we did not recognize the significance of the Movement, and its consequences at the time, but the Indigo Movement – that started to keep one man from death – would forever change the course of history.

This man’s name was not always so familiar.  He came from humble beginnings; from a family riddled with disease. Even our hero would not escape unscathed, but he was stronger than the rest.

No one is as lucky as I for having the chance to attest to his greatness, whose presence I was so fortunate to bathe in, and whose ear did bend on occasion to my council. And so it begins, my friend, the grand tale: the infamous life of Indigo von Brandt. 

What is truly fantastic about Indigo is the miserable drudgery from which he climbed.  At first sight one would have thought that Indigo would have enjoyed a peaceful childhood.  His home was located on a quaint street lined with trees that shaded the pavement and the sidewalks.  For streets upon streets the houses faced each other, all equally the same; the adults all climbed into nice cars in the morning with their bitter coffee and sleep in their eyes.  It was a neighborhood that ran like clockwork in Dante’s 5th circle of Hell.

It was on these streets that roves of children could be found.  They littered the space in front of the only convenience store in the neighborhood, and frequented the public pool.  Indigo was among those children, and would leave his friends at the bottom of his driveway to trek up to a spacious bungalow that was nicely embroidered with tamed shrubbery and colorful flowerbeds. 

The neighbors had inklings about the truth but the true horror hidden behind the bungalow’s closed doors, would only reveal itself too late.  The tragic event that forever altered Indigo incited a deep hatred in him towards his mother.  They already didn’t get along – for lack of a better term – but his hate would become a scar deeply embedded in his heart, never to heal, and always easily reopened.  The misery wouldn’t occur, though, until his youth had already been sufficiently spoiled:

Indigo was born to a man and woman who thought they were fit to raise children and he shared this dismal excuse for a loving family with his younger sister Emily.  Emily was the beautiful girl that everyone hopes their child will be.  She had beautiful dark hair, fair eyes, and the infamous peaches-and-crème complexion.  She had a wonderful disposition; soft and gentle, and she was loved by all.  Indigo was known to be the neighborhood troublemaker.  He got the younger boys to steal for him, or participate in the pranks he’d devised which led to parents and teachers alike resenting his presence both in the school and in the neighborhood. 

The other children knew Emily was going to be around when Indigo stood a little taller and spoke a little sterner (it wasn’t just some show he was running when she was around).  She couldn’t make it over the fences quite like the boys could, nor did she really like the dirt, or the roughness of their fighting, but they thought of her fondly. 

Indigo’s father was a salesmen; their mother a funeral director.  When his father fell ill with the flu, the anticipated result was a full recovery.  But then the flu mutated and his immune system crashed sending him to the hospital for a month.  He recuperated slowly, but the illness would forever affect his memory, so that when he was able to return to work, he found himself standing in front of expectant customers without a word to pull from his throat.  He was deemed unfit to work, sent on disability until his memory corrected itself, but it never did.  It became a source of discontent between his mother and father.  When their mother and father’s bickering could no longer be kept quiet, even though the children didn’t understand, they held fast to the idea that it would get better in the end; it never did.  As the fighting got worse, it became more and more apparent that his father was a weak man, with a thin spine, and a slow tongue.  A part of Indigo always despised his father for allowing himself to be so emasculated by his wife, but he would find other reasons to hate the man.

When Indigo woke up the morning his father had left he had two things on his mind: he had to get Emily ready for school, and Dawson needed a good kick to the ass for stealing his pack of gum the other day.  He got ready, woke Emily up and went downstairs for breakfast.  He found his mother sitting at the table with a cold cup of coffee clutched between her blue hands while she stared dumbly ahead.  Her hair was a mess, makeup that’d been smeared across her face was dried and crumbling, and her lips were tightly pressed.  She didn’t hear Indigo when he first walked into the room and found her there, but then she turned her heavy-lidded eyes to him and began to laugh.  Like a cat cornered with a vague sense of danger tickling at its spine he stood uneasily in the doorway.  He had a desperate urge to turn and run but his feet kept him rooted in place.  Her bony hand clamped on the handle of her mug and her eyes were wide.

He’s gone, she croaked suddenly and her laughter died off.  Gone forever, she said.  She stared sadly into her cup as Indigo dared to come a bit closer.

Who is? he asked, standing across from her.

Your bastard father.

Indigo stood still, wondering if it was perhaps a cruel joke or a lie.  He scrutinized his mother’s face and then came around the table to stand beside her with his hand resting lightly on her hand; her skin was ice.  She regarded his gesture with the same indifference as when he took her cup and put it in the microwave.

Get me a fresh cup, she said.  Out of the pot.

It’s cold too.

Oh.

They waited in silence for the beep and then he placed the cup in front of her again.  She took a sip of it and then held it exactly as she had before.  Emily’s footsteps could be heard overhead and a solitary tear journeyed down his mother’s cheek.  Handing him a bill she told him to buy Emily and himself lunch and to get her off to school.  He took bananas to share and met Emily at the bottom of the stairs.

Let’s go now, he said.  Sweet Emily could see her brother was distressed and didn’t ask, only nodded.  She followed him out onto the front lawn and into the hazy almost-summer morning.  There was a bit of fog lingering in the streets on the way to the bus stop where the other children waited.  Indigo did his best not to tell Emily all day but it ate away at him until at last he broke on their way home from school.  He had a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach and had to stop to retch in the convenience store garbage can.  Shaking he sat her down at the picnic table and told her, firstly, that they were going to get candy and rent some movies for that night, and secondly…he told her the truth, the horrible, awful, whole truth. 

It started with the cigarettes.  Their mother had been an occasional smoker, and they knew that, but as the days slipped by the light smoking began to get heavy until the smoke invaded every room.  She would perch on her high-backed chair with a cigarette between her trembling, birdlike fingers.  The blue smoke coiled around her shadowed face and drifted out the cracked window while Indigo watched.  He had taken to standing in the doorway like a ghost for the duration of her cigarette while she stared vacantly ahead.  And then, when the occasional cigarette started to become one after another, Indigo’s legs started to shake beneath him, and Emily would have to come and draw him away into the kitchen where he couldn’t see their mother.  Emily didn’t know what caused Indigo to watch, to wait, until she realized that Indigo was simply doing that: waiting.  He was watching their mother slip away with hooded eyes and a dark feeling rolling in his stomach. 

When the thunderstorm hit in late August, the rain licked the roof and the thunder boomed mercilessly.  Their mother sat by the window and the light from the lamp refracted in the wine of her glass.  She held the long stem, sipping and smoking alternately and completely oblivious to her children’s presence in the house.  The muggy heat that had preceded the thunderstorm had cloaked the city in damp blanket.  It made everyone sluggish; their mother was so enthralled in her misery that she would forget to eat, and the humidity made it worse.  The air was too thick to move through, and even the sound of the tray being placed on the table seemed muffled.  Emily took the spoon up and offered it to her mother, provoking a cry:

Do you think I’m an invalid? and her mother’s hand was drawn sharply across her cheek.  The three of them stood in silence – Indigo in the doorway, Emily with her fingertips on her reddening cheek, and their mother in her chair.  It was their mother who burst out wailing and pulled Emily to her, sending the tray flying and begging for forgiveness. 

For the first time since their father left, their mother sat with them in the living room and watched two TV episodes.  Indigo, though less trusting than his sister, went to bed thinking that their lives were on the way to repair. 

But it did not last.

The peace passed as did the thunderstorm, with its dark churning clouds, that left the city cold on its departure; the true horror started that night: Indigo went into the living room and found that his mother had returned to her seat.

Please don’t drink tonight, he pleaded.

Shut up, she snapped.  He stood in the doorway, as if he’d been struck, and stared at her, who seemed not to notice the effect her words had had on her son.  In the days that followed, their mother spoke little, if at all, to Indigo, who, in return, avoided her as much as possible.  She spoke sweetly to Emily, and doted on her daughter lovingly.  She still felt obvious regret for assailing Emily but her increasingly cruel comments to Indigo didn’t seem to faze her.

He told me he didn’t remember the first time his mother hit him.  He never spoke of the night again and there was great pain in his face when he said it.  He spoke all through the eyes, Indigo, and when he spoke I saw shadows moving in the depths of his irises like mirages of the words he said. 

All the blows and abuses had, over time, rolled into one dark, miserable memory.  His deepest ire came from the ghosts of his mother’s wails that it was entirely his fault, if he wasn’t such a terrible brat she wouldn’t have to do this to him.  For a while, he believed her.  He believed, with his tiny childhood heart, that his actions deserved it all. 

Day by day there were less children waiting anxiously for Indigo to step out of his house.  A few lingered loyally, but even they didn’t last long.  The ebbing of his friends didn’t appear to bother Indigo; watching Emily cling desperately to hers was much more painful.  She lasted far longer than Indigo who had seemed to merely watch his old friends pass as if contemplating sand through his fingers.  Emily, however, flittered between people, trying to appease everyone with her presence, her listening, her good deeds and her charmer’s smile.  He watched as she began to slow down; her smile started to falter, and her voice becoming more and more subdued under the chattering voices of her friends.  It all took its toll soon enough and one day, amidst all her friends, the smile cracked and slipped from her face.  It would never come back. 

In the end only Kingsler, Indigo’s German Shepherd, remained faithfully at his hip.  Indigo didn’t mind the isolation, at first.  His long walks with Kingsler were one of his few sources of joy and their walks often took them to a field on the outskirts of the suburbs.  It was a great golden field of grass with sprigs of wildflowers and shrubbery.  There were a few patches of woody area, severed by a stretch of train track.  There was a large oak tree that stood out from the treeline and under its wide, shady boughs Indigo and Kingsler passed many hours.  Sometimes Kingsler would chase butterflies and birds while Indigo tasted the wind.  He didn’t mind the idea of abandoning his old life and spent much time imaging a new life for Emily and he.  In the end, loneliness would become his greatest pain, but for many years he enjoyed the simple company of Kingsler’s presence. 

In the years that followed Indigo and his mother would have several fights about Emily:  He didn’t want her to touch Emily in any way, and blocked his mother’s advances, even pushed her away to spare Emily the disgusting sensation of their mother’s skin against hers.  She in turn, retaliated with blows, and shortly after, Indigo’s beatings became regular – almost a daily occurrence.  It was in this period of time that Emily developed horrible night terrors.  Indigo took to sleeping in her room on the floor on a bed made of blankets and pillows in hopes that she would feel reassured by his presence; but nearly every night he was awoken by her gasps for air as if someone were strangling her, followed by shrill cries and her terrified attempts to untangle herself from the sheets.  

She would awake, slick with sweat and tears, with her face pressed into Indigo’s neck and her bloodied nails dragging against his torn skin.  Kingsler sat in the doorway keeping a watchful eye on their mother’s door in case she awoke from her drunk induced slumber and found her way to Emily’s room.  It wasn’t often that anything could wake their mother (she took sleeping pills to suppress her haunted dreams) but when she did, she would stagger down the hall towards Emily’s cries and fall upon her, shaking her in attempts to break the chains of her dreams.  A few times Indigo was forced to rip their mother from Emily and shove her into the hall where he shut the door and leaned against it.  Each time his mother beat against it screaming that she was only trying to help and that she wasn’t drunk, she promised, she knew what she was doing.  Normally she would wander off once she realized that he’d pushed the wardrobe in front of the door, but one night, she didn’t leave.  She fought against the door so forcefully that he thought it’d break.  Gripped by panic he flung the door open and Kingsler leapt from the darkness onto his mother’s chest.  He snarled in her blubbering face and she fled back to her room.

The next day when Indigo returned from home, there was something especially sinister about the house.  Indigo’s heart broke the moment he crossed the threshold, usually filled by Kingsler’s bulk.  But the front hall stood empty that day, and when he ran to the living room, his mother sat in her seat, drinking with a smug look on her face.

He’s in a better place, was all she said.

In the darkness, bearing the weight of his heartbreak and Emily’s sobs alone, the shadows on the wall began to take shape before his tired eyes.  He began to see figures approaching him in the night telling him tales of glory.  They whispered soft, enticing stories of a thing called freedom.  He ignored their whispers at first, but he was vulnerable, and a child still.  His dreams grew violent, exploding with murderous intent and the thoughts began to spill into his waking life, plaguing every moment with thoughts of the most vile sin.  The thoughts might’ve driven him to madness, or action, but every time little Emily cried from her bed, the obsession faded.

I’ll get us out of here, somehow, he reassured her.  I promise, just hold on a little longer.  Emily wasn’t convinced.

Indigo grew weary through the long, dark nights.  The whispers ate at his insides and his anxiety for his sister kept him awake at all hours of the night.  His grades suffered, as did his health, and his mother took advantage of each:

You’re so skinny, it’s disgusting, she sneered, pulling at his arms and painfully prodding his ribs.  For his grades she punished him and called him an ‘insufferable moron’.  In those times he sent Emily to bed so she wouldn’t have to witness the brutality.  She’d often be crying, or have cried herself to sleep, when he got to her room.  On one of those nights that she was asleep, he unstuck her hair from her tightly pressed lips and tucked it behind her ear.  Around her he drew the covers tighter and fell heavily onto his makeshift bed; he closed his eyes and listened.  It would be so easy, the voices purred.  The human body is a fragile thing – only last week Johnny had fallen four feet and broke his arm.  He heard his mother’s heavy footsteps on the stairs and her nightly habits as she drunkenly prepared for bed; he could smell the stench of cigarettes from the hallway.

What could have been hours passed, and he didn’t remember going downstairs.  He found himself standing, puzzled, at the top of the stairs with a weighty object in his hand.  It was the large kitchen knife, the low-glow from the nightlight made the blade gleam in his eyes.  His feet moved without his order towards his mother’s room, where he stood at the edge of her bed in the light from the hall.  His lips trembled; he had to go to the bathroom to vomit in the toilet and his palms were sweaty.  Just do it, the voices snarled.  Get it over with, it’ll be quick.  He felt his hand lifting the blade that hovered above her chest.   He might’ve plunged it into her soft flesh had Emily’s cries not cut through the oppressing silence.  He and the kitchen knife made a dash for Emily’s room, the knife hastily stowed under the dresser; it was the first time he hadn’t been there when she woke up, and until his figure appeared in the open doorway, she’d thought she might be forever lost in her terrors.

He gathered her up in his arms and held her tightly.

We’re not waiting, not anymore, he told her.  The next morning when they went downstairs he felt that his mother was particularly revolting.  She saw it in his eyes.

What? she snapped.

Nothing, he said surly.  When they left she kissed Emily’s forehead; Emily didn’t respond, and waited for it to be over.

I’ll see you when you’re home, she said to Emily and glanced at Indigo full of loathing.

If we come home, Indigo said flatly and took Emily out the door.

They came home to find her staggering from her seat, glass swinging in the tips of her fingers, and a cigarette burning in the ashtray.  She barely even registered that her children had come home.  She caught sight of Emily’s face and her lips almost broke into a smile before her eyes trailed to Indigo’s dark ones.  She grimaced.

What the fucks your problem you little shit? she snarled as she stumbled around in search of some forgotten object.  When he didn’t move she screeched, "I said, what the fuck is your problem?" 

Go upstairs, Indigo told Emily quietly.  Crying she had retreated up the stairs – she knew what would come next.  Their mother laughed scathingly at the display.

You’re a fucking joke, she sniffed and sipped her wine.  A fucking joke, you know that?  Goddamn brat.  He didn’t say anything and remained standing at the bottom of the stairs.  She was almost panicked by his calm, but the alcohol suppressed any inhibitions and offered only rage. 

What did I do? his mother screamed and sent the lamp smashing to the floor.  The scream was directed as everyone and anything. 

"What did I ever do to deserve such a miserable shit like you?  All I’ve ever done is try to be a good person, and, and, that fucking bastard cunt leaves me all alone with you?  You vile, horrid little beast!"  She calmed for a moment and then looked at him, her eyes were wild and mad.

God sent the devil to test me, she murmured.  "To withstand your poison and protect my beautiful daughter from your treachery."  Again Indigo said nothing but her words cut deep into his heart.  She sneered as she advanced,

You were always a miserable child, and hurled him against the wall.  The force was enough to crush the air from his chest and leave him winded, but he managed to wheeze,

We’re leaving you.

Leave me? And go where?

Anywhere.  Her face grew red, her movements were disjointed, but she managed to stay on point with a finger jabbing angrily in his face. 

You can’t go anywhere, I won’t let you.  There were tears pouring down her face when she whispered pitifully, you can’t take her from me.

Watch me, he said before her teeth gnashed into a terrible snarl and wrath took over as she advanced on him.  Neither one saw that Emily was still at the top of the stairs, to witness the worst beating Indigo had ever received. 

Indigo told me his mother threw him against the stairs so hard that they splintered and left straight bruises down his back.  He told me that he spat blood after she reopened his split lip and doubled the wound; that she crushed her heel into his stomach so hard that he thought his ribs were going to split and puncture his swollen lungs that were fighting for air.  But, he said, in between the pain of the hits, the seizing of his muscles against her attacks, he saw freedom gloriously before him; he heard the voices cheering him.  It rose up before him like a vision when his mother’s knuckles locked against his brow, and how magnificent it was before his blackening vision.

He told me how his knees hit the floor when she stopped.  She was struck by the fury of her actions and taken back.  He said her fingers trembled when they brushed her brows above her frantic eyes.  It was the first time she’d left a mark on his face and there would be no concealing it now.  She shook, she paced, she cried, she even hugged his stiff body once and that’s when he’d started to laugh.  He laughed with tears running down his face and even though the laughter made all his tired muscles hurt, he couldn’t stop because it felt so good.

Stop! she wailed, and reeled away from him.  STOP IT!  But he couldn’t help himself, nor did he care.  She covered her ears and shut her eyes; she fell to the floor he rose up. 

Indigo, she pleaded, you can’t leave! You can’t do this to me, I love you!  He ignored her and began to make the long and arduous trek up the stairs. 

I think his heart might literally have ripped in two.  His scream was so loud that the neighbours called the police for the first time.  He ran, his knees threatened to buckle underneath him, but he ran, down the hall to the open door of the bathroom.  The scream was so pained, so full of heartbreak that even his mother came running up the stairs.  She stood paralyzed at the top of the stairs as he reached Emily who lay submerged underneath the running water, only now beginning to overspill onto the cold, merciless tiles.  Tears pouring down his face, he rested her on the ground and pounded on her little, bird-chest until he’d broken three ribs, but she would not come back.  It wasn’t until he was laying in an inch of water, clinging to wet, sweet, dead Emily, screaming and wailing that he saw the little bottle swept off the tub’s rim and floating listlessly in the water: their mother’s sleeping pills.  How long his fight with his mother lasted, he didn’t know and could never remember.  What he recalled as twenty minutes of torture, equally could have been an hour…long enough for Emily to steal her own life. 

He didn’t know when the lights started to splash against the glass of the windows.  He didn’t hear the heavy knocks that fell upon the door; both Indigo and his mother were oblivious.  The door was kicked down, men with guns found his frozen mother at the top of the stairs and a child clinging to another, lost at sea.

b.

The brightness of the church cast an unseemly glow over Emily’s face.  Instead of lighting her as asleep, the sunlight emphasized the pallor of her cheeks and it made those who came to see the young child uncomfortable.  Indigo stood over the casket of his little sister and did not utter a word to anyone.  Without thinking he fixed her hair a bit, brushed it off her forehead, and choked on the tears he tried to stifle. 

Come sit, Indigo, his aunt said quietly and led him over to sit beside her and her family.  She was his father’s sister, and she and her husband had taken Indigo in after his mother was taken to prison and his father could not be found.  They had a son, named Riticher, who was arrogant boy with an indifferent demeanor, who moved over so that Indigo could sit beside him.  The ceremony was long and painful.  Each moment Indigo spent there felt like the air was quietly sticking in his throat and suffocating him.  When it was finally over he barrelled out of the church and waited by himself beside his uncle’s car. 

Indigo, people want to speak with you, his aunt said when she found him. 

I don’t care, he said.  She disapproved but she couldn’t bring herself to chastise the boy on such an awful day, so she sighed and opened the car so that he could sit inside.  He let the tears flow then when he thought no one could see him, but then the door opened and Riticher climbed into the backseat with him.  Indigo looked away, and Riticher didn’t say anything for a long while. 

She was beautiful, you know, Riticher said suddenly.

I know, Indigo answered and his words were flat.  Riticher sighed.

I don’t know what you went through, Riticher continued,  but it’s done now.  Remember that.

Riticher was never one for flourish, his hubris manifested itself in extreme narcissism that his mother played into and his father begrudgingly tolerated, but he could see his cousin was in mammoth pain and gave him what words of wisdom he could.  Indigo looked to his cousin, scrutinizing the profile of his face, and then looked back out the window.  Despite everything Indigo was grateful for Riticher’s silent company; Riticher was not an emotional boy.

Riticher’s strength lay in his intelligence.  As much of an ass as he could be, no one could deny that his knowledge wasn’t extensive (even at a young age), and he could be charismatically charming when he wished to be.  It was a powerful combination, growing up.  He was the child that always brought home the A’s and waved in front of his parents’ faces as an excuse not to do anything of real responsibility.  Despite all this though, and regardless of how Riticher would sometimes be rude, or condescending, there were moments where there was a mutual feeling of brotherhood. 

Indigo wasn’t unintelligent, but his greatest strength always has lay in his perseverance.  He was always stronger than Riticher.  Indigo’s wife described him as a giant among men, capable of moving the world – carrying it if necessary.  It took time to mould the Indigo that we recognize today:

Indigo was difficult as a child and adolescent: rude, and angry; very, very angry.  At first his aunt treated him gingerly, ignoring his irritable outbursts and tried to tame the flames rather than extinguish them.  She wanted to give him time to come to terms with his sister’s death and to make up for the difficult court visits to testify against his mother.  His uncle, who felt he needed a bit of a firmer hand, was a CEO that traveled a lot and wasn’t around often.  It suited he and his wife nicely (it was a relationship that needed distance) and Riticher didn’t seem to care much either way.  They lived in a spacious bungalow with clean white tiles and neutral walls.  It was decorated with expensive items (meant more for a house without children) and the filtered air gave the house a cold feeling, even in the winter months.  Riticher and Indigo kept to themselves, mostly in their respective rooms, while Indigo’s aunt fluttered around the house.  Indigo had never known what a home felt like, and certainly didn’t feel it there.

It was only a year or so after Indigo came to live with his aunt and uncle, that his uncle got a position where he could live at home most of the time.  Indigo was a year away from high school and sulking around with an unbridled fury.  His uncle took to him quickly, finding enjoyment in long talks with the boy, sensing a similar kind of humor when Indigo chose to display it, and soon they were whittling away afternoons in each other’s presence.  It was around this time that his uncle strove to really integrate him into the family as the son he’d always desired.  Even though Indigo’s aunt liked him, she never took fondly to him, and though it didn’t show as much in the beginning, as Indigo and Riticher got older it became much more apparent.

Outside of the house, Indigo was doing worse.  He felt like a pariah on the edge of the world.  Riticher was two years older and so Indigo was utterly alone.  He wanted so desperately to be part of the world around him, but hated it at the same time for what it allowed to happen to him.  He saw all the faces with their varying lives and wondered if any of them had experienced anything like him, and thought not.  He saw Riticher coming home with his buddies and his pretty girlfriends and felt caged.  For a long while it seemed that Riticher would be the eagle to soar, to rise with nothing but blue sky above him and Indigo would be destined for stereotypical life entrenched in misery.  He experienced a great social dissonance and didn’t understand why his pseudo-brother, who did nothing but expected greatness, had everything while he, who had tried so hard, was stuck in perpetual loneliness and had not. 

His uncle tried hard.  He knew the boy could have a bright future, he and Indigo had lengthy talks about trying to move on from the past, but it never seemed to help.  High school loomed ahead and posed more social issues for young Indigo, but everyone seemed to be at loss as to how to help him.  Even Riticher tried, once or twice, but was met with coldness and even hostility.  It was Indigo who made the decision to help himself, and in the first week of grade nine made an appointment with the school board psychologist.  It helped more than anyone could have imagined. 

It was also in the first week that Indigo met Pavel.  They found themselves wallflowers in the gym and it was in their mutual exile that they forged a friendship.  Pavel was difficult to talk with (Pavel was a very private man, even as a child), but they shared common interests that helped the process.  They began to eat lunch together, game after school, and the loyalties were set.  Pavel helped Indigo, more than he probably ever realized, in raising his confidence.

Indigo made a miraculous change in high school.  The first two grades were rocky, but in grades eleven and twelve he found his stride.  There was something magnetic about his personality.  He had a charming smile (like his sister), which he hated, but it blazed like the sun and when he laughed - people around him couldn’t help but notice his presence.

2

It had been seven years since Emily died.  It was the hardest part of leaving home, but Indigo was stepping into the world as a man and what a world it was!  Allow the scene to be laid:

The Syrian Revolution had been going on for a year; the Middle East was riddled with war; the Egyptian government was struggling against protests after their revolution only a year previous; Brazil was gaining power with sugar and suffering the consequences of trying to advance without a foundation for progress; the West doggedly refused to accept that their power was waning under China’s shadow; Africa was still in disarray but it felt