Slide To Open

Part Nineteen

~ A sketch of Skip, my favorite problem child :) ~

_____________________________________

From the moment he was brought into this world, Zeke Jacobs was controlled.

Baptized at such an early age he wasn't able to remember a thing, his parents forced him to church every week, including the daily catholic lessons that took place after his usual school hours. He grew up in a household filled to the brim in crosses and biblical quotes, to the point that strangers felt the need to comment when entering such a suffocating house.

Zeke didn't know that any opinion apart from his parents existed. All he knew was the environment surrounding him, the fellow church goers and their families, the friends from lessons that were only allowed to play for an hour at a time. Zeke's parents weren't parents at all; rather, they were a duo who didn't believe in allowing their only son to form beliefs of his own without looking down upon him.

The first time Zeke asked for a phone, his parents sent him to his room to be grounded for a week. He learned shortly afterwards that to ask for something out of turn was as bad as sinning in that house, and he didn't do it again. Not until years later, when he attended public school for the first time, and learned just how accessible the real world's opportunities spread out for him. There were people his age that didn't believe in the same God as his family, and that fact alone blew his mind out of the water. The idea of living for yourself, away from parents that forced you to attend confession every Thursday and grounded you for asking for a break every now and then, was unheard of to Zeke.

And then Zeke found out something incredible; he didn't have to listen to the rules outside of his own house. Sure, he would be punished with detention or a slap on the wrist, but it would be nothing compared to the hours of lecture from his parents, and Zeke craved all the defiance he could perform.

It wasn't long before his personality changed from a sheltered, timid child to someone that carried frequent sarcasm and a bitter attitude on a daily basis. Sure, he would still go to church every Sunday and wear his best button down shirt, but the moment he left to go to a school away from his parents, Zeke broke out a stick of eyeliner and took off the jacket covering his ripped black tank top. He brought as many accessories as he could with him to school, wearing everything he could to defile the very persona he was forced back into at home.

After a while, Zeke started to feel a strong sense of hatred towards his own family. The controlling, overwhelming parents that broke him down from the minute he was born. The over abundance of crosses in his room that blocked any sense of identity outside of his church. Most of all, the belief that if he didn't adhere to what they wanted from him, he wouldn't be loved in the household that sheltered him for the past 17 years previous. Zeke was determined to strip himself from the people that made his life a living Hell, and the only way to do that without cutting them off entirely was to change his name.

Nothing legal, of course, because to do so would mean his parents finding out and wreaking even more havoc on his life, but a nickname that allowed Zeke a chance to escape between his two personas. A God-loving catholic boy at home, and the hardass delinquent at school.

Rumors eventually got around that Zeke was the school skipper; if anyone knew how to get out of class without the teacher finding out, it was him. People would come to him the period before a test and ask for advice from around the institution, and a reputation tends to precede those who live up to it. Strangers who didn't know his name, but the face of the person who knew every corner of the school, referred to him as the "Skipper," a common joke amongst students that carried on into something more the longer Zeke heard it. It was his name, not legally, but officially from the moment it first flooded his ears.