Chapter Text
The dark haired little boy burrowed deeper into his small, dark closet as the front door slammed. A woman’s quiet voice was quickly silenced by a deeper, harsher voice and shattering glass.
“I work all day to provide for you and the boy and you can’t even have a decent dinner waiting for me woman. What the fuck are you good for?” the voice demanded. “And then you drop fucking glasses and make this mess! Clean it up-I’m going out to get some decent food.” Another door slam.
Once he heard the car pull away from the apartment, the little boy slipped out of his closet and down the hall to the kitchen.
“Mama?” he asked in his tiny voice.
“Oh Max, que haces despierto?” the woman brushed a tumble of dark hair from her face as she turned from the mess on the floor to her whimpering son. A darkening red mark across her cheek stung as she smiled at the sweet boy in front of her. “You should be long asleep.”
“He hit you again,” Max whispered, gently touching his mother’s face. She pulled away, but couldn’t hide the wince of pain. “I’m going to hit him back next time.”
“No mijo, no. You stay away from your papa when he is angry.”
“But-”
“No,” she said with more force, “I don’t want to see you hit anyone Maxwell Lorenzano. Ever. That is not who you are.”
“I wish Papa wouldn’t hurt you. I wish he was kind.”
“I know cariño. Sometimes just wishing isn’t enough to change things, but don’t ever stop. Wishes are what hope is made of, and hope is the best thing we have,” Arabella Lorenzano embraced her only child tightly. “And maybe one day Papa will feel better.”
“I will make you both proud,” Max said suddenly, eagerly. “I will make sure we never have to worry about money or anything again. And then Papa will be kind.”
“Money isn’t everything mijo, but I tell you what: I wish you happiness; all the happiness in the world. Now,” she said, brushing Max’s dark curls from his face, “You need to go back to bed. Don’t you have a spelling test tomorrow?”
“Si mama,” Max replied, yawning. He hugged her tightly, inhaling the soft scent of cinnamon. “ Te quiero Mama,” he said softly as he padded back down the hall to his room; the tiny space held a narrow bed and little else. Tucked into the thin blankets, Max whispered again, “Someday I’ll be important and everything will be alright. And Mama will be happy.” He slipped into a soft sleep before the sound of sobs could be heard from the kitchen.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* 3 years later *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Look at little Lorenzano’s shoes! You can see his toes through them!” a burly red-haired boy taunted while the other teens jeered. The dark mop of curls fell across the angry dark eyes of the subject of their torment as he lunged at the larger boy, hitting him in the shoulder.
“You call that a punch, you sissy? Who taught you to fight? Your mother?” The redhead shoved the smaller boy against the rough brick wall.
A girl chimed in, “Couldn’t be; she’s dead!” The gathered group laughed; a handful tossed paper wads and trash at the fuming boy on the ground.
The shriek of a whistle scattered the crowd as a woman in a faded suit approached. “Grant! Lorenzano! My office now.”
“But Principal Phillips, he started it!” The boy she called Grant whined as a bell rang across the yard. “Plus I’ve got weight training and Coach’ll have my head if I’m late!”
“Very well, but I’ll let him know about this!” the principal called at the retreating back of the large boy. “Maxwell,” she said, quieter this time as the courtyard emptied of the rowdy teens, “This is the third time in two weeks. You can’t keep getting into fights.”
“So I’m just supposed to let them take my things and push me around?” Max spat back, brushing gravel and dirt from his scraped palms.
“No, but maybe avoid Brandon Grant and his gaggle of sycophants.”
“We both know that’s impossible when he wants to start a fight. And since he never gets punished for it…”
“Coach Henderson would override detention in a heartbeat, but he does make Grant run extra laps.”
“Great,” the dejected Max replied sarcastically, “more cardio to inflict more torment.”
“Get to class, Mr. Lorenzano,” Principal Phillips directed, pointing to the classroom building. “But report to Mrs. Parsons for detention after your last class.”
Groaning, Max turned for his math class, knowing full well his father would be furious at him for ending up in detention in the library of all places.
The last bell rang out over a raucous science lab and Max used the noise as an opportunity to escape the crowd and make his way down the back hall stairs in the old library. In terms of detention, this was about the best he could have asked for, since he spent most of his free time here anyway, especially since his mother’s death and his father’s unemployment. The books were safer than being at home.
Mrs. Parsons, the librarian, was a middle-aged woman with short, bright pink hair, and who rode a motorcycle. She didn’t say much, but always had snacks on her desk when Max came in. He didn’t need to know that she didn’t offer those to everyone.
She waved him in that afternoon and gestured to a pile of heavy, leather-bound encyclopedias in the reference corner. “I need you to sort and reshelve those before you go home. My back has been acting up and I can’t lift ‘em to the top shelves anymore.”
He nodded and set to work, his weather-beaten backpack resting on the table nearest the pile. The books were heavy, far older than most in their tiny school library, but they had to have been newly added to the collection since he’d never seen them before. Checking the letters on the spines, he began to hoist them up to a top shelf above his head. He was nearly done when one of the books decided to topple over and fall onto his shoulder.
“Damn!” he sputtered as the tome bounced off his collarbone and to the floor, falling open as it did. He prayed his shoulder wasn’t hurt because he knew if he couldn’t fix the oven when he got home, it was cold cereal for dinner and his father’s wrath for dessert. A few experimental shrugs determined that, aside from a little soreness, his shoulder was fine, so he reached for the rebellious volume. A drawing of a crystal caught his eye and he stopped before closing the text. It wasn’t anything remarkable, just a dull, jagged, yellowish-grey stone, but beneath the image were the words, “Dreamstone.” An accompanying paragraph detailed a mythical stone that appeared in the legends of cultures through history, delivering wish-granting powers but ultimately destroying whatever society had utilized it.
His first thought was to dismiss the tale as far-fetched as most myths were, but something about it grabbed him. A stone one could use to literally wish their desires into existence? Who wouldn’t want to find that kind of treasure?