The sixteen-year-old boy stands in front of his house and he never in a million years thought for once that the place he grew up in would cause him so much pain.
The house isn't a mansion, it isn't a penthouse, and it isn't the kind of house one would see a celebrity living in. But it was home to him.
As Angelo stands in front of the duplex with the worn-out white paint and the old brown door, an ache comes into his chest, but he's not sure if it's the tiny scar he saw back in that changing room. This isn't a physical pain, it's an emotional one.
He still cannot understand why he cannot feel physical pain anymore or how he got these other abilities but it will be cool if he doesn't have emotional pain as well, it will be cool if he just becomes emotionless. But he's not. His emotions will never leave him he's sure of that, it's what makes him human. If he can even call himself that anymore.
He stands in front of the door and smiles at the welcome home mat that's beneath his feet. It says welcome but in Spanish. La Bienvenida.
His parents always told him to be proud of where he comes from and to be proud to be Mexican. And Angelo is proud of his Mexican heritage.
No white could make him feel disgusting, just like no homophobic person would ever make him feel disgusted for being gay. Not even his dad.
He wonders why he's even in front of his house in the first place. Does his parents even know that he jumped off the Colorado bridge? Even if they do do they even care?
He loves to believe that his parents still have a little bit of love for him. They can't have fallen out of love with him so easily. Is he that easily disposable and forgettable?
He wants to knock but he freezes. He thinks for a second, if he knocks on this door and his father opens it who's to say he's not going to call him a demon again? This will cause Angelo to want to commit suicide again and this time he'll make sure to stay dead.
Maybe he's in hell already and his punishment is an eternal time loop where he hears his father call him a monster for something he can't control and Angelo goes to kill himself, then he comes back to life then it happens over and over again.
But the fact that he's thinking of not knocking on that door proves that he's fully conscious of his surroundings.
And he's not an expert in hell but are people even allowed to think they're in hell?
He hears laughter, and he recognizes it, his sisters. He steps away from the door and he moves over to the window. The curtains are up and he can see his family members. They each have a taco in their hands and they're all happy, they're all acting like such a big happy family.
It's Taco Tuesday. Of course. Every Tuesday night they eat Tacos and watch a movie. It's the only night when they don't have to eat at the table and the only time when his mom has to sacrifice her telenovela-watching.
That's one of the things he shares with his mom. While the rest of the family hates watching Mexican soap operas, Both Angelo and his mom love it. The soap operas might be overtly dramatic and unnecessarily long but they're entertaining.
He barely shares any interest with his dad. He doesn't even remember if he and his dad have anything in common. His dad taught him how to change the tyres of a car and fix a bulb light.
His father, Gustavo Hernandez is a big hairy guy with bushy eyebrows. Gustavo doesn't go to the gym at all, but Angelo is positive that he gains all those muscles from working at construction sights all day.
Building large buildings for rich people pays him well maybe not well enough to be taking them for vacations all summer, but enough to pay the bills. His mom on the other hand works at a restaurant as a chef.
He doesn't know about other people's mothers but he believes that his mother's cooking is better than every other mother's cooking in California. Rosalie Hernandez is the best cook ever. It's a shame he'll never get to taste her cooking ever again.
And then his sisters Isabella Hernandez and Lucia Hernandez are his first best friends, before there was Joshua there were Isabella and Lucia.
Isabella is the oldest, the second parent when her parents aren't around. Angelo never thought that the girliest girl he'd ever seen would want to be a Doctor.
She's in Stanford studying Medicine. She visits sometimes and Angelo loved her even more for visiting because he didn't know what he was going to do without his older sister.
She looked like the main characters of those Mexican Telenovelas with her long curly dark hair, small lips, rosy cheeks and hazel eyes.
Angelo and Isabella both get their hazel green eyes from their mom, while Lucia gets her brown eyes from their dad.
Isabella is the most beautiful girl Angelo knows and he's a hundred per cent sure no other girl can compete. She's beautiful because every time they walk together different boys would always check her out or ask for her number.
She's a male magnet, she knows that but she's not a slut, she doesn't have any intention of being a slut. She believes in having a boyfriend and even starting a family with him. It's how they were all raised.
As boy crazy as Angelo is he's not the kind of gay teen that goes about having sex with different guys. He wants to have an emotional connection with another guy. But of course, his parents think that homosexuals don't fall in love and all they have in their heads is sex. Hence why they call homosexuals sexual deviants.
Isabella was his best friend, they'd watch a lot of rom-coms together and read those magazines for teens and they'd talk about what Backstreet Boy was the hottest. Isabella didn't know Angelo was gay so he'd just talk about the beauty of the Backstreet Boys like any boy would talk about them. By complimenting their swag and not their pretty face.
Kevin Richardson is his favourite.
When his best friend Joshua took his life, Angelo was a wreck. His older sister was there for him, comforting him. He was this close to telling her the reason why Joshua committed suicide but he decided to cry in her arms instead. He took a risk crying not scared that his dad might barge into his room.
"Men don't cry." his dad would say.
And Angelo would think that's the dumbest thing anyone has ever come up with. Men have emotions and should be able to express those emotions. Why shouldn't men be able to cry?
As for his younger sister Lucia, the baby of the house whom Angelo loves so much. The cute twelve-year-old might be demanding but she has his back every time. She doesn't snitch when Angelo does something illegal like sneak out of the house or invite a girl into his room. That's the number one rule in their house. Do not invite anyone of the opposite gender into the room.
Little did their parents know that one of their children would be attracted to someone of the same sex.
Lucia is their cute chubby princess who has a huge heart. She cried the loudest when Gustavo was yelling at Angelo calling him names and telling him to leave the house. She pleaded with her dad for Angelo to stay, begging for him not to get kicked out of the house.
Angelo could feel those cries and it broke his heart to see his sister like that. He always said that if anyone made his little sister cry he would pound their face and he didn't think he'd want to punch his father in the face for making his sister cry.
Looking at his sister right now gives him a sense of happiness now that she's smiling. He's looking at the Lucia he knows and loves. The Lucia that makes everyone's frown turn upside down.
Angelo is good at that as well. He and his siblings have the ability to make someone's day. They're always there to make people forget about their troubles.
But who is going to be there for him to forget his troubles?
Angelo quickly swipes his cheek removing the tear. Watching his family being happy without him is too painful. He doesn't know why he came here in the first place.
He gives his family one last look before he turns around to leave. He takes a deep breath, lets it out and walks away from the house he grew up in.
He's never slept on the streets before but he thought why not try now? He doesn't know where to sleep. He's not about to go to any of his friend's houses because they'll ask questions. He walks alongside the other Californians who are going about their night. Some are going home after a long day at work closing up for the day and some are going to the night club to live their lives.
Which has given Angelo a thought. What if he goes to the nightclub? He's underaged but he doesn't have to show the bouncer any ID, he doesn't even have to stand in front of the bouncer.
All he has to do is use his new powers to either teleport into a nightclub or go through the walls. He still doesn't understand where he got these powers from.
He doesn't know if it's a gift from God or if those Doctors had something to do with it. All he knows is that he's grateful for it.
At least he has something that's going to keep him sane. Maybe he doesn't have to sleep on the streets, maybe he can just teleport himself into a nearby hotel and disappear the next morning.
First, he has to look for a nightclub to party in.
There's no way he's going to wait that long till he's finally allowed to enter a club. Just when he stops to think of the nightclub he would want to step into he does a lot of thinking, trying to remember if there's a nightclub around here. But someone pushes his hand as they walk past him.
He's about to fight the person but then he sees it's a girl. A very distressed girl and what seems to be a dark shadowy figure following her.
"What the hell?" Angelo mutters to himself. He rubs his eyes thinking maybe he's not seeing clearly but he is, it's a dark figure following this girl. What can it be?
He decides to follow it.
He walks past a lot of Californians, his eyes not leaving this lady.
She's a blond woman, wearing a long coat and she looks like she hasn't gotten any sleep at all. Something is troubling her and Angelo has a feeling that that thing is what's causing her trouble. But he wants to know what that thing is and why nobody is talking about it.
Is everyone going to ignore this strange unnatural figure following this girl?
People are just walking past like they don't see it. Maybe they don't see it and Angelo is the only one who sees it. If that's the case Angelo has to follow this woman and the shadowy thing behind her to understand what is going on.
The lady walks into the shadowy alleyway in between a pizza shop and an ice cream parlour.
The lady slouches down on the ground. She's shaking she looks cold but that's not what grabs Angelo's attention the most, what has grabbed his attention is the shadow thing has turned into a tall slender man and its mouth is wide open.
It looks like that thing is taking something from her, her energy. Her life force? What is it?
Angelo has to help her so he boldly walks toward them both.
"HEY! LEAVE HER ALONE!" The lady spots Angelo and then makes a run for it leaving him alone with the monster that's angry that his food has escaped.
"Angel." the monster hisses in a croaky voice facing him. The monster looks scary as hell. This monster is a skeleton. Its eyes are pitch black and its teeth are stained with green.
"No, my name's Angelo, not Angel and how did you even know my name you punk!" he rushes over to fight the monster, to maybe punch him like how he punched the robber and that bully. Angelo yells as he charges toward this skeletal creature.
Angelo thinks he can easily take him because the monster is made of bones after all.
The monster just stands there and when Angelo reaches for him with a single wave of his hand the man slaps Angelo across the face causing him to hit the wall and fall to the ground.
Angelo places his hand on the face this monster hit.
"Ow, that hurt."
"Now I'm going to kill you, angel."
Angel? Why does he keep calling me an angel? Who cares? I'm dead! I'm so dead.
The monster opens up his mouth ready to do what he did to that poor lady. Angelo places his hands on his face, he knows that won't do anything but he has to attempt to protect himself. But then he hears the skeletal man wince and Angelo opens his eyes to see an arrow in the slender man's abdomen.
"Why don't you pick on someone your own size you fucker?"
Angelo turns to his right to see three teenagers in black standing firm with weapons in their hands. He smiles at them because he thinks they're…
"Cool."