Casey finds her rejected brother, Robbie and a new journey begins.
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When Robbie was born, his father celebrated for 2 days straight; he had a son, someone to carry on the family sporting tradition. Steve Dolan had been star quarterback his senior year, the most popular boy in the school, dating the head cheerleader, Angie Rayne. He’d married the cheerleader, started his own business, building up a small chain of 8 hardware stores across the mid-west. Now he had a son, all his dreams were coming true, one after the other.
As Robbie grew, and took notice of the world around him, and began trying to grasp things, Steve noticed that he was having difficulty judging distance, identifying simple things like his toys, and as he started walking this grew more pronounced; he seemed to be having great difficulty seeing things, always bumping into things. His eyes were tested and the news devastated both of them; Robbie had severe Myopia, short-sighted to a degree requiring immediate corrective surgery and life-long spectacles; he was never going to play sports, it would be too dangerous for him.
When Steve and Angie heard the diagnosis, something inside them died; their son was never going to be a sports star, never going to be Prom King, never going to be anybody except the kid with the thick glasses, and Steve remembered the cruel tricks and casual beatings he used to hand out to kids like that. Now his son was in for all that, a life of being dismissed as Four-Eyes, Magoo, Nerd, and Urkel.
Steve’s disappointment in his son was extreme, his reaction to him more so; he simply decided there was no point in making an effort with him, he was always going to be a nobody, a joke in school, ‘victim’ already tattooed on him in big glowing letters.
When Robbie was 2, Angie gave birth to a little girl, Casey, and she was everything, in their eyes, that their son wasn’t; perfect in every way, bright, friendly, healthy, and growing up beautiful, smart, everybody’s darling. From the moment she was born, all of Steve and Angie’s efforts went into her; she was their princess. Robbie was sidelined, forgotten, in the family, but no longer a part of it. All the love, care and attention they had was lavished on Casey, and there was none left over for little Robbie.
He wasn’t neglected, but he was ignored, unloved, abused in all but deed, and excised from the family by the most subtle knife of all. There would be periods, sometimes weeks at a time, when his father never spoke to him at all; Steve had nothing to say to his failure son, and Angie was so busy preparing her daughter for the prom-queen, cheerleader, catwalk life that was in store for her daughter that she overlooked her little boy entirely.
For Steve and Angie, Robbie simply stopped existing; it was easier that way. They fed him, clothed him, and dismissed him from their lives; he became invisible and unregarded.
The bullies at school had discovered early on that he was almost blind if he lost his glasses; all he saw of the world was moving smears of colour, so they would slap them off him, and watch him stumble around, afraid and at their mercy.
Robbie endured the beatings that got handed him at school, Steve and Angie not even noticing their boy was hurt, and hurting, unable to see he was worth their time and attention, standing by uncaring while his life spiralled downwards. One time, without his glasses, it took him nearly 4 hours to get home, unable to find his way, trying to make sense of the blurs and jags of colour he saw, almost petrified with fear, missing cars by a hairs-breadth. When he finally made it home, dinner was long over. They’d saved none for him; he was only 12 years old, and they hadn’t noticed he was missing.
Robbie excelled in school; he was an outstanding math and science student, his grades the best ever achieved at Ellenbrook High, a grade point average so far ahead of the curve that his school predicted a glowing future for him; colleges were going to fight over him one day, he was scholarship material. Steve and Angie dismissed all that from their minds; Casey was the important one.
When time came, he applied for colleges across California and the South-West, and was accepted at all of them, his GPA and perfect SAT score going before him; the prize, though was the offer of a full Computer Sciences scholarship at UC Berkeley. But he had no way to support himself; Steve wouldn’t hear of him going to college, they needed the money for Casey, for when she went to college; for him, there was nothing.
He spent most of his time with his best friend, Joey Anderson, the most popular boy in the school, cheerleader girlfriend, the whole cliche. If not for the fact that Joey genuinely liked him, Robbie would have avoided him like poison; too many guys like Joey had beaten the crap out of him for him to trust a jock, but Joey put a stop to that, made it clear that messing with Robbie was messing with him; after a couple of the worst offenders got handed their asses by Joey, the beatings stopped.
Joey had somehow managed to convince Robbie to help him train, and had slowly encouraged him to lift weights, to join him in his callisthenics and workouts, and to circuit-train. At last, Robbie had found an athletic endeavour he could participate in, one that he actually enjoyed. As he grew taller, he bulked-up, helped by the daily exercise and training, muscle-mass growing and firming as he trained harder and for longer, his genetics finally kicking in. At 18 he stood six feet three inches and weighed 200lbs, with not an ounce of spare fat on him. He favoured Steve in heft and looks, but towered over him, brown haired and brown-eyed, clean-limbed, clear skinned, healthy and fit. Except for his eyesight.
However, none of his family noticed the changes in him; they were watching Casey, and Robbie was just background noise they’d stopped hearing years ago.
Joey’s mom, Sarah, was more of a mother to Robbie than Angie ever was, Robbie often staying over for days on end, knowing his family would never ask themselves where he was, Sarah never complaining, being there when he needed a mom to tell his troubles to. When he told her he’d turned down his college offers for lack of funds and support, she was furious, Steve Dolan had a string of successful, profitable stores, and he still had nothing for his boy! But there was nothing she could do; Robbie wasn’t hers, and she couldn’t afford to help him; she could barely afford to support Joey. Not that Robbie would have asked.
The evening it all came to a head was like any other; Robbie and Joey hanging out, lifting weights out back, watching TV, good-naturedly ragging each other, just keeping company with each other. When Robbie eventually left to go home, Sarah watched him walking away, a lone, upright figure, and she confided her feelings to Joey.
“It’s a sin to waste your own life, but it’s a crime to waste someone else’s. Steve Dolan discarded that boy for no reason, took away his college, said he had no money to spare, then buys Casey a new Escalade for her birthday, and promised her a trip to Europe for the next one. You know what they gave Robbie for his birthday this year? A Disney Tee-shirt that didn’t even fit. It breaks my heart to see that poor boy treated so shamefully; what did he ever do to anyone? They’ll pay for this one day.” Joey could only express his wish that they did, letting rip a few choice words to describe the Dolan family.
Meanwhile, Robbie arrived home to find his parents waiting for him, tight-lipped, angry.
“What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Steve, waving an envelope at him, and his heart sank; the scholarship offer. “When were you going to tell us you’d applied to Berkeley? That you’d been accepted? Do you know how much it costs to go there?”
Robbie was confused. He wasn’t going, he’d already turned it down, there was no money for him to go to college, any college. They’d already made that clear.
“Dad, I turned it down, I can’t support myself, you can’t support me, it’s over, so what are you so mad about?”
Steve read through the letter properly, anger mounting as he began to understand that the scholarship had been full tuition and a bursary.
“Why didn’t you give this to us, why did your mother have to find it when she was cleaning your room?”
Robbie was confused, now he was at the sharp-end again for doing exactly what they wanted. “Dad, you told me I couldn’t go to college, any college. Why is there a problem, I’ve already refused the offer, the scholarship offer’s been rescinded, it’s gone to someone else. End of story. May I go now, please, I have an assignment due tomorrow?”
Steve wasn’t ready to let it go.
“You stupid little shit, you had a scholarship, you could have gone to Berkeley, but no, you pissed it away — what the hell were you thinking of?” The unfairness of it broke over Robbie, and he reared up, all his bitterness, anger and despair finally boiling over.