The Edge

Matteo: Epilogue

Matteo being adopted came up every now and again, in both positive and negative ways. A lot of them kind of blurred together, which was why it shocked him that he so vividly remembered one moment in particular.

They were staying long-term on a planet (he'd forgotten which one), and going to a public school. Well, most of them were; Gideon stayed homeschooled with Tola, the former still being skittish around groups of strangers and the latter being too sweet for public school. The rest of them could handle it (though Arian handled it a bit too well sometimes), and regularly made the trek together to go learn (or be deeply bored in class, depending).

They all had lunch period together that year. It was mostly great, except a few of them had dedicated bullies, and seeing all of them together, all of them visibly different outside of the twins, put a target on their backs.

Or, it did in theory. In practice, it usually went a lot different.

"What, are you the kid they found in the dumpster?" asked one kid. He was small fish in comparison to other bullies Matteo had faced, more irritating than anything, but his sheer persistence made him noteworthy. He wasn't actually hurtful, but damn, he was trying. "Should've known you'd all be freaks."

Matteo wasn't sure what the kid was expecting, but from the look on his face, five simultaneous death glares was not on the list. "Look, I'll give you points for coming over even though you're outnumbered, but seriously?" Cassandra said. "Fucking weak. Go bother someone else."

The bully's mouth opened and closed. When a comeback didn't immediately pop into his head, he just sneered and stalked off. Matteo waited until he was out of earshot before turning to the others. "He's probably just going to be even more annoying now," Matteo sighed, "to compensate."

"Just have Gideon kill him. It's fine," Arian said without hesitation.

Technically, it wasn't funny, but they couldn't help laughing at it.

There were a lot of memories like that—memories that reminded him he was cared about, that his family loved him and would always stand by him. No matter how strange they were individually, they still loved each other, as any family did.

That was all that mattered.

.

.

(Author's Note: This story was cross-posted from singlequantumevent.com. If you'd like to see more stories like this one, including ongoing stories and ones that haven't been posted to WattPad yet, check out the site! )