The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

Nothing like massive amounts of fat and sugar to make you feel older.

Though the party, if you can call it that, is a subdued affair, I look at the gifts with great anticipation, the way a lion does a zebra before pouncing—hunter’s eyes. I don’t want toys. Didn’t ask for any. Not interested, despite grandfather’s continuous donations of G.I. Joes. My parents always know what to get me. Because despite their constant lies about my past, they’re like me.

Smart. Uncommonly so.

Nerds. Geeks. Bookworms. I’d heard all the names at school. Being smarter than everyone in my class exacerbated the issue. No senior in high school likes to be upstaged or outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old with a cracking voice. Though I sometimes wonder if their real problem with me was my resistance to 1980’s pop-culture; I don’t feather my hair, wear friendship bracelets, or watch Music Television. It doesn’t matter now. All that went away when my parents decided to home-school me. My nervousness, tension and boredom has been replaced by excitement, learning and stimulation. Not to mention a name-calling cease fire.

Well, almost. My parents call me Schwartz. The name evolved from my mother’s first nickname for me: first and only, which was short for the “first and only baby born on Antarctica.” They quickly shortened it to FAO and then, thanks to the FAO Schwartz department store, I became Schwartz. After the movie Spaceballs came out a few months ago, my parents stopped using the name in front of Justin because, almost as a Pavlovian response, Justin would say, “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.”

The first gifts I open are books—fiction and non-fiction, popular and obscure—I like them all. Next come three boxes of Robotix kits. I’ll put the dinosaur-looking robot on the cover to shame with the creature I’ll create. The biggest box comes last. I tear into the bright blue wrapping paper as Justin slurps grease from a leftover pizza slice.

The loud slurp stops short and grease drips on to Justin’s plate. “Whoa,” he says.

To Justin, this is a “whoa” moment. He likes to blow things up. To me it’s a big letdown. My parents see my down-turned lips even as I fight to reverse them.

“You have to build it yourself,” mom says.

“The box says it mimics the pattern of a real lava flow,” dad adds.

I let out a grunt, wondering if my parents IQs have dropped. Or maybe they’ve finally given up caring? The gift is nothing more than a cardboard cone, some quick drying clay, a pouch of red-colored baking soda and a small bottle of vinegar. This is the big present? They had gone on about how surprised I would be. About how incredible the gift was. This is...simple.

Boring.

Justin punches my shoulder. It hurts. I know he didn’t mean it to, but I seem to feel pain more than other people. Justin’s dark brown eyes are impossible to see behind the tinted sports glasses he always wears, but I know they’re wide with excitement. I focus on that to avoid thinking about the pain in my arm.

“Are there any G.I. Joes we haven’t melted?” he asks.

“A few.”

“Let’s go!” Justin dashes from the dining room and takes the stairs two at a time. “C’mon!” he shouts from the top.

“Go ahead,” mom says. “He has to go home in an hour. Mass starts at six in the morning.”

Saturday morning mass is something I never understood. It’s a sacred time. Not mass, mind you. Saturday mornings. A bowl of Cocoa Pebbles starts the morning. Starvengers, Gaiking, Robotech and more, followed by Creature Double Feature, which promises at least one Godzilla movie, fills my day until noon. It is a TV line-up so good that I am sure God skips mass for it too.

“May I be excused?” I ask with a sigh.

Dad chuckles. It’s the kind of chuckle that’s a substitute for calling someone stupid. I’ve heard the laugh enough to recognize the sound. “You don’t need to ask after we told you to go.”