Post by ∴ Anthony on Feb 5, 2009 20:34:17 GMT -5
Anthony Brown was born to two very messed up parents. Messed up in that if you named a drug, they had both done and sold it, and probably on more than one occasion. Messed up in that his mother of twenty was only fourteen when she first sold her body to pay for her father's heroin addiction. Messed up in that his father had spent more of his life in prison and juvenile corrective facilities than he had outside of them. The both of them were heavily involved with gangs, had multiple arrest warrants out for them, and were madly in love with each other.
Love can do strange things, even to those perceived to be the worst people imaginable. Love kept two drug addicted gang members together, love led to their decision to keep their unborn child and raise it themselves, and love even managed to help both mother and father cut all ties with their previous lives, get treatment for their psychological problems, and quit using.
It wasn't easy, what they went through, and even though they had stopped using drugs, their baby was born addicted to heroin. The doctors told them that aside from withdrawal symptoms, he seemed healthy, but they were warned that he might develop learning disabilities or ADD/ADHD later in life. They told the doctors that they would be able to handle it, they were just happy he was alive.
However, tragedy seemed to be in the boy's blood. He was only a few months old when his parents' previous life came back to haunt them; a former rival gang member with a grudge against the pair of them shot and killed Anthony's mother and father on the front porch of their new house in a drive-by before he was even a year old. Anthony, who was in his mother's arms at the time, survived, but a bullet grazed the infant's neck and rendered him permanently mute.
Young Anthony spent his childhood in various orphanages and foster homes; it seemed no one was eager to adopt an unruly, mute child who never listened, never learned, and never showed anyone any respect. The fact that he showed absolutely no fear was also highly disconcerting.
At the age of eleven, Anthony met two angels. A young couple showed interest in adopting him, and he took an immediate liking to them, perhaps the first time in his life he'd ever smiled at anyone. Born-again Christians, their past was nearly identical to that of his parents; gang involvement, drugs, the works, but they had reformed in a big way. Anthony felt almost as if he had been given a second chance to a happy life with his birth parents.
He began attending church with the couple, and his behaviour started improving almost immediately. He explained that if the people in the Bible could endure such hardship and still be good people, then he could too. He also began to attend specialized learning programs that catered to his unique needs, and developed strategies to help him not only succeed academically but to excel. He was diagnosed with ADD, but in specialized IQ tests was found to be a certifiable genius as well.
After about a year of deliberations, complications, and arrangements, Anthony was finally adopted. After twelve years of waiting, he finally had a family.
Fate, it seemed, liked to play sick jokes with him.
On their way to pick Anthony up from tutoring one day, his parents were involved in a fatal car accident. Due to a mix-up with the adoption paperwork, Anthony wasn't contacted when it happened, and didn't find out until his school called the police when they found out Anthony was still waiting outside for his ride the next morning. He'd been adopted two months.
Nobody knew what to do with him, as he was now refusing to communicate with anyone in any manner, and it was likely he would have ended up in another orphanage if not for the Academy.
Anthony didn't know until then, but both of his parents had been Gifted, and had refused to attend the Academy. They hadn't only been on the run from the ordinary officials. The Academy couldn't prove he was Gifted (he was suspected of having Eidetic Memory, but in reality was just born with photographic memory unrelated to tampering from the Artifact), but they took him in anyway, if mostly because there was no other place for him.
Anthony has been at the Academy ever since, and other than attending church faithfully on Sundays, he rarely leaves his room or the Research Center, often skipping out on classes. There have been warnings of expulsion if he doesn't attend classes or show signs of a Gift developing soon, but he doesn't seem to take them seriously.
Love can do strange things, even to those perceived to be the worst people imaginable. Love kept two drug addicted gang members together, love led to their decision to keep their unborn child and raise it themselves, and love even managed to help both mother and father cut all ties with their previous lives, get treatment for their psychological problems, and quit using.
It wasn't easy, what they went through, and even though they had stopped using drugs, their baby was born addicted to heroin. The doctors told them that aside from withdrawal symptoms, he seemed healthy, but they were warned that he might develop learning disabilities or ADD/ADHD later in life. They told the doctors that they would be able to handle it, they were just happy he was alive.
However, tragedy seemed to be in the boy's blood. He was only a few months old when his parents' previous life came back to haunt them; a former rival gang member with a grudge against the pair of them shot and killed Anthony's mother and father on the front porch of their new house in a drive-by before he was even a year old. Anthony, who was in his mother's arms at the time, survived, but a bullet grazed the infant's neck and rendered him permanently mute.
Young Anthony spent his childhood in various orphanages and foster homes; it seemed no one was eager to adopt an unruly, mute child who never listened, never learned, and never showed anyone any respect. The fact that he showed absolutely no fear was also highly disconcerting.
At the age of eleven, Anthony met two angels. A young couple showed interest in adopting him, and he took an immediate liking to them, perhaps the first time in his life he'd ever smiled at anyone. Born-again Christians, their past was nearly identical to that of his parents; gang involvement, drugs, the works, but they had reformed in a big way. Anthony felt almost as if he had been given a second chance to a happy life with his birth parents.
He began attending church with the couple, and his behaviour started improving almost immediately. He explained that if the people in the Bible could endure such hardship and still be good people, then he could too. He also began to attend specialized learning programs that catered to his unique needs, and developed strategies to help him not only succeed academically but to excel. He was diagnosed with ADD, but in specialized IQ tests was found to be a certifiable genius as well.
After about a year of deliberations, complications, and arrangements, Anthony was finally adopted. After twelve years of waiting, he finally had a family.
Fate, it seemed, liked to play sick jokes with him.
On their way to pick Anthony up from tutoring one day, his parents were involved in a fatal car accident. Due to a mix-up with the adoption paperwork, Anthony wasn't contacted when it happened, and didn't find out until his school called the police when they found out Anthony was still waiting outside for his ride the next morning. He'd been adopted two months.
Nobody knew what to do with him, as he was now refusing to communicate with anyone in any manner, and it was likely he would have ended up in another orphanage if not for the Academy.
Anthony didn't know until then, but both of his parents had been Gifted, and had refused to attend the Academy. They hadn't only been on the run from the ordinary officials. The Academy couldn't prove he was Gifted (he was suspected of having Eidetic Memory, but in reality was just born with photographic memory unrelated to tampering from the Artifact), but they took him in anyway, if mostly because there was no other place for him.
Anthony has been at the Academy ever since, and other than attending church faithfully on Sundays, he rarely leaves his room or the Research Center, often skipping out on classes. There have been warnings of expulsion if he doesn't attend classes or show signs of a Gift developing soon, but he doesn't seem to take them seriously.
