First and Last and Always

Time Capsule

To say he wasn’t well regarded in school wouldn’t be an understatement, it would be a lie. He was tormented.

His family was lower income, possibly the lowest in the whole school. In the eyes of many people the family had too many kids even before he came along.

Ashleigh Knorr saw people fawning now, and it made her a little ill.

He had been her first kiss, on the lips, when they were five. Before they knew the concept of wealth, or popularity, or reputation.Just a little innocent infatuation.

She wasn’t just ill for the fawners, the ass kissers, the people from Coolidge Elementary with convenient gaps in their memory.

She was ill at herself, for becoming part of the group that had mocked him. If the infatuation had been innocent, the teasing and the social isolation had been anything but.

If Ashleigh Knorr got the chance, she would apologize.

But she would not crowd him, in the flock of hypocrites she saw, now that Stan Flescher was the writer and director of the most popular streaming show in the world. 

People quoted the lines. 

The songs played on the show were played on the radio. 

There were t-shirts and lunchboxes.

Lunchboxes.

You used to tease him because his family couldn’t afford a fucking lunchbox.

The mutant family on his show is his family and the evil loggers are you. Us. You idiots.