MARCH 1, 2009 / DENHVOY ALVOROD CEMETERY

For someone with Asher's potential, having no hobbies at all might have been an inferior thing to do.

He was the sort of clever boy that, if looked at from afar, would be expected to do Olympiads or play chess. Asher was quite the nerd at school, and his reputation of researching preceded him. He was precocious, easily entertained by anything mysterious - but at heart Asher was still just a boy.

Admittedly, he still liked to practise hoops, though he wasn't very good at it, and sneak around town - but only because his friends did these things, and he wanted to fit in with them. The truth was, outside of trawling through Wikipedia and online encyclopedias (which some wouldn't even call real hobbies) and riding his bike, Asher liked little else.

And even then, he didn't always like researching or riding his bike. Occasionally, doing one or the other or either was intolerable. He didn't know how to explain it to anyone else, but it felt like his emotions pin-balled between various extremes.

When he felt he could handle it, Asher genuinely loved researching, but he could not always handle it. Sometimes unwarranted exhaustion fell over him, and he could not muster any energy to get out of bed. Then, he would be filled with energy, unable to stop himself reading web comics late into the night, early into the morning.

Worst of all was when he felt uncontrollably angry. Worst of all because he took it out on his father, and he couldn't put into words why he felt like this, how sorry he was, or that he felt like suffocating everywhere except with his mother.

Today, he was angry and devastated and filled with red-hot energy. Being told to pack his things and move to an entirely foreign country had switched on the side that leaked adrenaline into his veins, that forced his aching calves to turn the pedals just- one- more- time.

Removing himself from his mind - this was Asher's favourite coping mechanism.

To avoid the pitying looks that he received from Vasily Delrov and Giorgi Polzin - the only living people who knew about his imperfecta - being transferred to the faces of his classmates, Asher pretended that all his previous fractures were a result of innate clumsiness, instead of a bone disease. Most of the time, he only allowed himself to be pitied by people who could help him; i.e. Dr. Polzin.

If someone were to find out about his condition, and say, "I'm sorry," Asher would most probably thank them for being sympathetic. But inside, he'd be withering at the thought of having to add another person's worry to his shoulders. Inside, he'd want to reply, "I appreciate the consideration, but if you can't do anything with those sympathetic feelings, then don't be sorry for me. Be sorry that you can't do anything for me."

Harsh, but Asher couldn't help feeling so bitter.

Especially because Ekaterina never pitied him. They were in the same diseased boat - before she fell out and drowned - and drew strength from each other, laughed about the looks that doctors gave them and shared the sweets Asher got from his check-ups. Back against the gravestone, and ignoring the protruding letters on the plaque, Asher let himself sink into the feelings of self-pity that had only come along after his mother left him.

Her love was unconditional, but she would not have liked her son wallowing in his depression. She would have taken him to the Annual Gatherings that Mensa held, and shown him what minds like theirs were capable of. Ekaterina would have treated Asher's depression like a technical problem that could be fixed with a few more wires and batteries, like a scientist - though her maternal instinct would have wanted to bundle Asher up in blankets and separate him from the world's dangers.

Except, Ekaterina wasn't there anymore.

She wasn't thinking, or even conscious. Asher would have liked to think that there was a heaven, so that he might have a chance of rejoining his mother when he died. He was an atheist, though, and even if he could delude himself into thinking there was someone up there, or below, Asher believed that Ekaterina was gone.

That was the dark advantage to his ranting sessions at the cemetery; he could say whatever he liked, and no-one would hear. If, on the miniscule chance someone did, they wouldn't be on the same earth to judge.

"Mama, you should be here." Asher eyed the blotchy, grey sky, "You'd stop Papa's crazy bullshit."

Ekaterina didn't live long enough to hear her son start swearing, and Asher wasn't sure she'd want to. What if she wasn't proud of who he'd become? She had an affinity for vintage class and modern values, but Asher definitely was not a gentleman. He could zip up the image and pretend, but if stripped down to the core of who he was, Asher was just like everyone else: broken, somehow.

"The future sucks. My future sucks, and I don't want it to be in America."

Asher wanted to smash his fist to ground in frustration, but his bones had broken with less impact than skin-to-ground force, so he refrained.

"I think I'm going to get hurt more over there. I'm doing so well at school here, that's going to change because I'll have to learn the language first. My friends . . ."

Asher knew his friends would be sad when he slipped them the news, but he also knew that they'd be over it within a month. One boy from their group of friends had travelled across the country; their class had given him a goodbye card and cake, and Asher's friends had kept in touch with him for a month. Then they forgot all about him.

What made Asher special?

His friends had better things to do than salvage a friendship that was made just because that guy was in his class, and brought nice food to school. Asher had better things to do than move to another country, and make more meaningless connections with people. If he moved to America - yes, he was considering it; his father had made a good point - what would make him happy? Forming friendships was inevitable; forming strong friendships was doubtful.

Asher was sure that school would get easier once he learnt English, but he wasn't sure how he could accomplish that. Ekaterina spoke some English, and passed on only a fraction of her knowledge. Did he have the heart left to take on more burdens?

The strength that Vasily Delrov always said had come from Asher's mother had already been chipped down to a sliver of courage. Some of it was with his father, a large portion was buried with his mother, and what was left was dedicated to facing the days when his mind worked against him.

The solemn truth was: Asher was unsure whether he had enough of himself left to move to another country, and fall in love with new people and places. Learning and remembering and achieving took brains - Asher had more than enough of that. Asher was excelling with his studies, but oh, it was a terrible shame that with every blood sample, a part of his hope was sucked out; with every closed website, some part of his heart disappeared with the browser history.

At the end of the day, when the boy pedalled back home to a worried father, Asher wasn't even sure the world deserved his effort.

If the world couldn't give him a chance, why should he give one to it?