After all these years, Emmett was still afraid of what might happen if he was caught.
Appendix H—Blog Post
My Stepdad and Other Monsters: Part 2
By: Emmett Truesdale
Published: June 20, 2018
It was part of my mom and dad’s custody agreement that my sister and I would spend every other weekend with Dad and my older half brother Chris at Dad’s condo in the city. The older we got, the less frequently Abby joined us; Dad’s place was cramped, and he and Abby butted heads.
A registered special inspector for construction sites, Dad was as structured and organized as my mom was loose, as spendy as she was bargain-savvy, as health-conscious as she was indulgent (excluding, of course, the two bottles of merlot he put away every night). It was hard to imagine the two having ever been married, but then again, the marriage hadn’t lasted long.
Dad didn’t keep much food in the house, so when I came over the first thing he’d do was take me to Vons and let me pick out what I wanted—Pop-Tarts, tortilla chips, cookies. Even better, I could play my Game Boy in peace, disappear into the streets of Fortree City, and battle gym leader Winona for the Feather Badge.
Skarmory used Sand Attack! Vileplume’s accuracy fell.
Vileplume used Leech Life. It’s not very effective!
For those of you non-Pokémon people, every Pokémon has a type, which reflects their natural habitat and what special attacks they can perform. Electric, fire, grass, rock—there are dozens, each with their own strengths and vulnerabilities. Like the character Misty from the original show, water-type Pokémon were my specialty.
I’d grown up in the water. Almost every day I spent at Dad’s included a visit to the community pool, me doing cannonballs and secretly pretending to be a merman while he sat in the hot tub with a can of Coors Light. He and Chris were surfers, so often Saturdays were spent at Tourmaline Beach. Dad would go out on his longboard, and I’d wade out until the water was up to my chest. Jumping around in the waves, I’d imagine I was joined by my favorite water types: Staryu, a starfish Pokémon with a red-gem core; and Goldeen, an elegant fish type with sleepy eyes and a horn protruding from her white-and-orange head. Happy to be out of their Pokéballs, they showed off their agility in the water, nourished by the sea, like I was.
One day, a boy my age and his younger sister appeared beside me in the surf. The little girl looked at me, making a face.
“Why do you have your shirt still on?” she said, scanning the wet T-shirt clinging to my torso.
I pulled it away from my skin and it inflated like a balloon, hiding the lines of my body in a way that felt safer. “I don’t like taking it off.”
“Why? Boys are supposed to take off their shirts.”
I wished I had the powers of my favorite Pokémon, Sobble, which turned invisible whenever its skin touched water.
“Well?”
Her brother leapt over a wave. “Because he’s fat, Kayla.”
Without even looking, I could feel Staryu and Goldeen surface beside me. Could feel them quivering with anger, waiting for my command. The words buzzed at the tip of my tongue:Do it, Staryu. Use your Water Gun!
I imagined Staryu leaping into the air, taking aim at the brother and sister, blasting them with a jet of water.
Great job. Now, Goldeen, show them your Horn Attack!
In my head, she skated over the waves, frilly tail fin dancing behind her as she lowered her head.KABAM!
Goldeen used Horn Attack. Critical hit!
“What the hell?” the boy shouted. His arm was bleeding. “You just scratched me!”
“No I didn’t,” I shot back. Surprised but also pleased.
It was like I’d brought the Pokémon to life with my mind.
Like I at last had someone fighting in my corner.
In November 1999, to coincide with the theatrical release ofPokémon: The First Movie, Burger King launched a line of kids’ meal toys that, in time, would go down in infamy as the one that ended in the deaths of two children and a national recall. But I didn’t know that when in 2004 my mom and I were browsing a local thrift shop for holiday décor and I spotted half a dozen of the toys on the shelf, each collectible Pokémon encapsulated in a plastic Pokéball. I begged my mom for them, but my tenth birthday had just passed and Christmas was just over a week away, a dead zone for frivolous buying.
Still, it ended up being a pretty decent Christmas. We spent Christmas Eve at Dad’s house—he got me the newPokémon LeafGreen Versionfor my Game Boy—and Christmas Day at home, Mom making a big fuss of everything, buying too many presents and cooking way too much. In my stocking I found two of the thrift-shop Pokéballs and a card from my grandma with another fifteen bucks.
