“Sesame chicken and happy family!” cried out the short, plump, elderly Asian woman in the stained, white apron. As always, her hair tightly fixed in a bun on top of her head. She placed the brown paper bag on the counter and looked kindly at Dylan as he stepped to the counter. “You a good boy to come and get good Chinese takeout for your family,” she told him in a thick Chinese accent while Dylan fumbled in his pocket for the money.
She smiled at him, as she always did. The wrinkles on her face made her appear kinder, and perhaps even wiser than she really was. Dylan had been coming here for a while to get dinner for himself and his little brother. It was one of the many local take-out joints that he favored whenever his mother had to work late, which was more often than not. Both brothers could eat the sesame chicken until they were stuffed silly, but Dylan knew that he needed to order something like happy family. It had vegetables.
Putting his change on the counter, she told him to “have a nice evening, and we see you soon!” She smiled again with a customer service smile designed to make the restaurant’s customers feel as if they were truly loved by the family who owned The Wonderful Dragon.
Dylan knew better. He had always known better, but he looked into her eyes and in a polite voice replied, “Thank you, Ms. Faung. I’ll see you again soon.” Her smile widened, and she scurried back to work.
Dylan walked out the door and into the brisk autumn air. At 15, he couldn’t drive, but it didn’t matter. The walk was only two blocks. His home sat in the middle of what he considered a dull, average city block in Denver. It was a couple of blocks from a main street and only a few blocks from each of the schools that he and his brother attended. The streetlights began coming on as he stepped onto the porch and opened the front door to his home.
“I’m gonna destroy every one of you motherfuckers!” yelled a young boy, as Dylan stepped into the living room. The young voice continued its bravado, “Leveling up after this round, you bunch of dumbasses can’t keep up!”
Dylan stared at the boy, sitting on the floor, wearing headphones with a microphone that was tethered to a game console in the television stand. The boy was almost exactly four years younger than Dylan, but the difference in their size and stature seemed like more than four years. Dylan was always an above-average sized kid, and puberty treated him right. The wisps of dark hair on his face had begun to thicken. His voice occasionally cracked but was deepening and sounding more and more masculine every day. He knew he was attractive. The girls at school knew it too, and he was very aware of how they felt about him.
