Your support makes Blue Moon possible (Patreon)Elias was born far from where he had been conceived, for reasons he had spent half his life either not asking, or not knowing to ask. His single mother Carolina Chacon tried to mollify him with assurances he was better off not knowing his father, that his sire was a bad man. They were not very well off consequently, and relied heavily on support from Carolina's family, particularly her mother who had taken to calling Elias 'Diablito' until she died in his early teens, clearly despising Elias' father and resenting the boy for causing her daughter to lose so much by having to raise him. Fortunately Elias had many aunts, uncles and cousins so he did not lack for family connections, things were just often difficult, only having a ball to play with when his neighbors were playing with their Wiis. No one in the family had ever gone to college, let alone graduated. Carolina cleaned houses for a living, often having to leave Elias with family as she couldn't afford child care.
Public school was a relief from some of the dysfunction at home, Elias was visibly mixed and so had an easier time socializing with many of the white students, and had taken to identifying with the English pronunciation of his name, though at home his mother never failed to call him ElÍas. Consequently he grew up bilingual but didn't use it publicly and performed well academically, focusing on that rather than sports. He stayed fairly thin and luckily grew into having a face that was simultaneously cute and handsome, so he was able to make friends with the opposite sex very easily in middle school, but had some trepidation having been abandoned by his own father, and not wanting to make a careless mistake even if they were more than willing to let him go all the way. His teachers were also supportive and praised him for his successes, though it was sometimes condescending when they laid on a little too hard with his 'disadvantages'.
Once his mother finally revealed his father's name, he was off and doing all the research he could. There was more than one man with the same name, but some were far enough away that it was unlikely his mother ever could have met them there, so it was easy enough to narrow down and positively identify him, especially when seeing a picture of him and comparing the two of them, a perfect mixture of his two parents. The man was a doctor, lived in a gated community, had no scandals to his name and was a Republican, of course, precisely the opposite of Elias' life experience. It was hard not to despise the idea of such a hypocrite, seeing the cross hanging from the man's neck. Carolina had stopped going to church long ago, after the shaming of her giving birth to a child out of wedlock, and Elias had gotten enough vitriol from the sanctimonious community to know better than to believe anything that kind of person said. But there was one other positive outcome of that kind of deprivation from a happy, stable home life.
Elias began to read a great deal more, and even write. He wanted to turn his experience into something profound, something to share with those like himself, and the catharsis that came with it certainly wasn't a bad thing either. His English teacher was impressed by it, the writing seeming like it came from someone beyond Elias' years, and encouraged him to finish it before graduating high school so he could have something to impress colleges with. Sadly, the completion of it coincided with his mother's cancer diagnosis and things were deteriorating rapidly. His extended family were more strapped financially than ever and couldn't support him while he was going to be trying to pay for college and living expenses. Unable to find another viable alternative, Elias decided to throw everything behind a huge gamble, and approach his estranged father. He had not planned to threaten the man or sue him for child support owed, pending a paternity test, but in her last days, his mother gave him enough evidence that Dr. Thomas Hartford was indeed his biological father.
Multiple buses and a bike ride got him to the community's entrance and having to pose as someone making a delivery, Elias rang the bell at the three-story house, heart pounding, not just because of how nervous he was to meet the man that had voluntarily forsaken he and his mother for nearly two decades, but because the stakes of being rebuffed. Elias somehow didn't have the heart to turn hostile if not given what he was ethically and legally owed, but in his desperation, could not settle upon a good approach to introducing himself and simultaneously looking for a handout. He did genuinely wish to get to know his father but needed to know that in a month, he was still going to have a roof over his head as well. At 18 years old, he had no other support he could have gotten from programs to help foster youth, literally one of those most unlucky human statistics who was going to fall head-first through the cracks of a broken system. It almost brought him to tears imagining a spectacular failure as he was about to have the door opened to a world he had never known.
Public school was a relief from some of the dysfunction at home, Elias was visibly mixed and so had an easier time socializing with many of the white students, and had taken to identifying with the English pronunciation of his name, though at home his mother never failed to call him ElÍas. Consequently he grew up bilingual but didn't use it publicly and performed well academically, focusing on that rather than sports. He stayed fairly thin and luckily grew into having a face that was simultaneously cute and handsome, so he was able to make friends with the opposite sex very easily in middle school, but had some trepidation having been abandoned by his own father, and not wanting to make a careless mistake even if they were more than willing to let him go all the way. His teachers were also supportive and praised him for his successes, though it was sometimes condescending when they laid on a little too hard with his 'disadvantages'.
Once his mother finally revealed his father's name, he was off and doing all the research he could. There was more than one man with the same name, but some were far enough away that it was unlikely his mother ever could have met them there, so it was easy enough to narrow down and positively identify him, especially when seeing a picture of him and comparing the two of them, a perfect mixture of his two parents. The man was a doctor, lived in a gated community, had no scandals to his name and was a Republican, of course, precisely the opposite of Elias' life experience. It was hard not to despise the idea of such a hypocrite, seeing the cross hanging from the man's neck. Carolina had stopped going to church long ago, after the shaming of her giving birth to a child out of wedlock, and Elias had gotten enough vitriol from the sanctimonious community to know better than to believe anything that kind of person said. But there was one other positive outcome of that kind of deprivation from a happy, stable home life.
Elias began to read a great deal more, and even write. He wanted to turn his experience into something profound, something to share with those like himself, and the catharsis that came with it certainly wasn't a bad thing either. His English teacher was impressed by it, the writing seeming like it came from someone beyond Elias' years, and encouraged him to finish it before graduating high school so he could have something to impress colleges with. Sadly, the completion of it coincided with his mother's cancer diagnosis and things were deteriorating rapidly. His extended family were more strapped financially than ever and couldn't support him while he was going to be trying to pay for college and living expenses. Unable to find another viable alternative, Elias decided to throw everything behind a huge gamble, and approach his estranged father. He had not planned to threaten the man or sue him for child support owed, pending a paternity test, but in her last days, his mother gave him enough evidence that Dr. Thomas Hartford was indeed his biological father.
Multiple buses and a bike ride got him to the community's entrance and having to pose as someone making a delivery, Elias rang the bell at the three-story house, heart pounding, not just because of how nervous he was to meet the man that had voluntarily forsaken he and his mother for nearly two decades, but because the stakes of being rebuffed. Elias somehow didn't have the heart to turn hostile if not given what he was ethically and legally owed, but in his desperation, could not settle upon a good approach to introducing himself and simultaneously looking for a handout. He did genuinely wish to get to know his father but needed to know that in a month, he was still going to have a roof over his head as well. At 18 years old, he had no other support he could have gotten from programs to help foster youth, literally one of those most unlucky human statistics who was going to fall head-first through the cracks of a broken system. It almost brought him to tears imagining a spectacular failure as he was about to have the door opened to a world he had never known.
