Adapt (I)

TJR Garcia © 2020

SCARLET

I am home by five twenty-five, just before Boe knocks on the door.

“You’re... sweaty.”

“Hmmm?” I hum, because I have a mouth full of banana, much to my disgust, but I am so freaking hungry.

“Have you been training without me?” Boe looks like a puppy that has been locked outside overnight, with his rain wet hair and the hurt in his eyes.

“I do three training sessions with Trent a week. He teaches me martial arts.” I say between chews.

“My training isn’t good enough, huh?”

I shrug. “It’s different. Trent is more focused on technique. You’re more about... discipline.” I don’t want to hurt his feelings and say ‘bossy’.

Boe rubs the back of his neck.

“Is there a problem, Boe?”

He swallows. “Yes and no. It was in your time, so technically no. But hunters don’t get exterior training like that.”

“So, you mean that, at HQ, I wouldn’t be allowed to do train with a more experienced hunter outside of training hours?”

He pauses, looking at me. “Well, that would be okay, but this - this is not the same.” He stammers.

“I don’t see how it’s different. Trent has trained throughout the world, taken out titles. He’s fifty and can still take me down. It would be like my father teaching me.”

The tension in Boe’s shoulders seems to dissipate, but I don’t know what I’ve said to relieve him. I don’t question it, though. I am just glad that he isn’t angry with me anymore. “So, Trent is a hunter?”

I screw my face up at Boe’s question, knowing that my answer may have a negative response. “No...” I trail. I turn back into my house, walking to the kitchen. “But he knows what I am. I saved his family when I was nine, and he hasn’t left my side since. He is the father I never had.”

“Trent took you in?” Boe asks behind me.

I nod in lieu of speaking, as I just put another piece of banana into my mouth. I swallow and say, “Yeah. You find this little scroungy kid, dirty as all hell in your basement standing over the body of a man that you have been suspecting of hurting your family for weeks, but every time you call the police, they do nothing to help you. What do you do? Turn her into the police, or do you take her in and say nothing.” I shrug.

“So, you are telling me that you were able to take down a fully-grown Therian at the age of nine?” He sounds genuinely astonished.

I turn to look at him. “Well yeah. You couldn’t?”

He slowly shook his head. “No. We go out into the field when we are sixteen, but only if there is a senior hunter with us. We would never consider sending a nine-year-old out into the field...” he trails his sentence in wonder.

I take a deep breath, trying to settle my little confidence boost Boe’s reaction just gave me. “Okay, boss, what’s on the menu for this morning?” I say as I polish off the rest of the banana.

This pulls him from his wonder. “Eggs on toast.” He says as he takes off his bike jacket and slings it over the back of the couch. He is wearing one of the new shirts that he got yesterday. It is a slate grey shirt, so close to black it may as well be. Irregular shapes and patterns are printed on it in florescent pink. The more I look at it, the more the shapes come together in an image. It is a girl in a bikini, breasts the size of mountains, with that typical naughty schoolgirl look in her eye.

“Really?” I wondered why he was being weird about that shirt yesterday. Now I know it has more to do with a half naked girl on the front.

Boe looks down at his shirt and gives me a devilish grin. “Don’t you like it?”

“No, I think it looks great. You just need a straight cap and a skateboard and you will the most fashionable fourteen-year-old boy at the skate park.” I say, as I get the eggs and the bread out of the fridge, hinting at Boe that I am still ravanous, and he needs to cook me breakfast.

“Funny. I still like it. And I like it even more now I know that you don’t.” He meets me at the kitchen counter, eyes wild with... actually, I am not sure what. This emotion I see on his face is a mixture of mischievousness and elation, like he just won a prize.

“I never said I didn’t like it.” I say, trying my hand at reverse psychology.

“No, but your tone did.” Then he begins with cooking breakfast.

I roll my eyes. It looks like my sarcasm doesn’t have an effect anymore. It saddens and makes me smile at the same time. Maybe there is a version of Boe that could survive in the human world after all.