Marcus' parents didn't start out bad, or even become anything remotely so. In fact, they were always loving and attentive parents who strived to be as good as they could be under the circumstances - to Marcus' older brother, Alan, who was their only child until Marcus turned up out of the blue when Alan was six. This, it would prove, was a problem.

Returning to Normal

It wasn't that Marcus' parents outright disliked him, on the contrary, they did love him, at least a little bit. No, the problem came from the fact that his parents didn't quite seem to know what to do with him once he was born. This meant acting as if nothing had happened. Alan was a rambuctious and athletically talented child whose rising stardom in ice hockey took up most of their already sparse free time, and their schedules didn't exactly mesh very well with a surprise child whose baby babbles and wails soon became almost paralyzing anxiety. It wasn't that anything was particularly wrong in Marcus' toddler life, but all of the problems he obsessed over came from his own head. He worried over the climate change he saw on the news while his parents left him in the living room, and he cried for weeks about dinosaurs taking over the earth once they accidentally left him alone while Jurassic Park was on, and then he had his first panic attack over the asteroid his brother told him was going to hit on Christmas morning.

This was a new and startling problem his parents hadn't had with Alan, who tended to be more destructive than anxious, and whose problems they had come to almost master. So, instead of learning how to mitigate this issue and prevent it from becoming a lifelong trauma, perhaps with some well-timed therapy and a bit more attention, they did what they had learned to do best: largely leave the issue alone.

The Cameraman

Marcus spent the vast majority of his childhood in his big brother's very deep, very cold shadow, an upbringing that isn't rare in families with overachieving firstborns. The only difference was that this wasn't contained to game days and graduations, but instead extended to every single aspect of their lives. If there was a game Alan was in, Marcus had to sit still, be quiet and hold the camera. If Alan was getting an award, Marcus was left behind either at home or on the outskirts of the crowd, and had been left at the event more than once before. Marcus became so used to the obedient expectations of his parents that being polite and staying out of the way became his only personality trait, molded and encouraged by all those around him. Marcus was polite, kind, and never got in trouble, and sometimes he'd be so quiet in class that the teachers would forget he was there. This was all well and good, if it wasn't for the fact that he was left waiting in front of the school to get picked up almost until dark on a weekly basis, and when his parents did come to his grade school graduations they were almost always on their phones. Some part of Marcus and the adults in his life were thankful his parents were present, until they realized it was only physically.

The saving grace in Marcus' childhood years came in the form of a dorky, scraggly uncle named Rodney. Rodney wore awful 90's shirts and laughed at dumb jokes and always embarrassed Marcus when he picked him up for playdates, and he was the best thing in Marcus' life. But Marcus didn't understand why Rodney never stayed to see his parents, or why his father always said the meanest things about Rodney, or why Marcus' mother sometimes snuck Rodney in when his father wasn't home just to take Marcus out, but Marcus suspected it had something to do with why his father would always call uncle Rodney 'Charlotte' and the cool scars on uncle Rodney's chest. For years Rodney was the closest thing resembling a parent Marcus had, and would ever get. Rodney came to all of the events his parents missed and made him cool bagged lunches and picked him up from playdates and gave him comics and told him how to breathe through a panic attack and told him how proud he was of him...until the day his father caught Rodney sneaking in to take Marcus out to a game, and Rodney was never allowed to come back.

Learning the Ropes

With Rodney gone his parents did try to be more attentive for a time, but their attention was a stranger's gift, and his brother's attention a violent guest. Alan went from childhood bully to a monster to something rabid and dangerous in the sort of way someone would regard a shark lurking just beneath the surface. Alan smiled mean with a crooked tooth hooked on the fat meat of his bottom lip, and as they got older Alan seemed to only like a laugh if it came from one of his teammates' bloated breaths. This only got worse as his ice hockey career plateaued, and even though his parents still praised him like a local god, some part of Alan always knew he'd peaked and lashed out because of it. Home became a minefield of his parent's disinterest and his brother's anger, and Marcus spent most of his days out of house and home, but that doesn't mean he was alone.

It was middle school when Marcus met Kelly and Noodle, two ragtag, scraggly kids with late teeth punched out of their smiles and enough middle school rage to kill god with. They were each other's best friends at nine when Marcus was walking down the streets alone after a fight with his brother, and they were each other's best friends at thirteen when some bigshot blonde with sad eyes showed up in their math class looking like he'd rather be baking on the surface of the sun. Together they faced the hardships of life head-on knowing they had each other to fall back on, and this comfort became the force that got them through each day. Even though sometimes Kelly and Dominic moved a little too fast, and Noodle and Marcus a little too slow, and sometimes they spent days alone wondering where it all went wrong, they always met again together. In the middle.

Now armed with the best three friends anyone could ever ask for Marcus doesn't feel any less anxious about the world and its many problems and his circumstances aren't magically fixed, but he knows he is loved on purpose and would do anything for his friends. However, soon it may just be tested just how far Marcus would go for his friends. One day though he hopes he's not just strong enough to keep going, but brave enough to stop and ask what he's going towards.