father
♦ Neville Lovelle, 46, High school teacher
mother
♦ Hannah Lovelle, 44, Baker
siblings
♦ Lucia Opal Lovelle, 18, patient
Prudence Victoria Lovelle , 17, student
Eleanor Catherine Lovelle , 17, student
Robbie Jude Lovelle , 16, student
important people
♦ Phalanx Staff and residents
hometown
♦ Augusta, Maine
overall history
♦ Two things,
I’ve had two things my entire life that have defined who I am.
I'm good at everything I try my hand at, it's not me being full of myself it's a fact, and I’m a big brother. That's it.
When you ask me to describe myself those are the first two things that I can think of. Of course, I don’t say that because I come off sounding like a pretentious asshole. I'll feed you a line about how I'm a super chill guy which is a lie. I'm not. I just want to be a super chill guy like my brother Jude. That's not a pun, I swear.
Either way, I was born in 1998 to a pair of Beatle fanatics who thought it was a good idea to name me Teddy. Not Theodore or Edward but
Teddy. Despite that one remarkably cruel act my parents were possibly the most loving people in the entire world. They provided me with a home that most people go without filled with life, love, and laughter... Ew, I just said that. Don't tell Prue I ever said that. Life didn't start out all smiles and sunshine. In the beginning, I was alone.
I was two when I think my life really started. At least, those are the first memories that I can call up. Two years old when my mom and dad placed the baby carrier in front of me and I laid eyes on Lucia. She was so small and pink... Granted, I was pretty small too but you get what I'm trying to say. I'd been so excited to be a big brother. My parents said that I carried around a teddy bear to "practice". I don't remember that and staunchly maintain the picture of me changing the diaper on a bear to be doctored. I was happy having Lucy around. I guess my parents were too or they just sucked at practicing safe sex because I ended up with three more siblings. Not that I'm complaining about Prue, Nellie, and Jude. It's just that life got a little busy once they entered the picture.
Seven people in a house sounds like some sort of cheesy sitcom. There was a severe lack of laugh track and privacy. That was my life though. I think, despite my parents' intentions, I was forced to mature a little faster than most kids. They needed the help. Five kids getting ready in the morning is pure, unadulterated chaos. I was helping make lunches and herding kids on the bus from the time I was in grade school. Some days I felt like I was a junior-parent with mom and dad. I didn't resent anyone for it though. I liked being relied on and looked up to.
At school, I was busy trying to keep myself in my seat and focused on the board. I don't have ADD, at least not that I've been diagnosed with, I just hate sitting still. At home, I tried to entertain my siblings with whatever games and adventures I could come up with. Life was a constant stream of activity. No matter where I turned there was another sibling. I leave the living room, sibling, go outside, sibling, bathroom, sibling, bedroom, sibling.
The only time I really felt like I had time to myself was when I played baseball. I can't tell you when I fell in love with the game. I don't think there was any real defining moment. It was something built up watching the Sox with my dad, running the bases in gym class, teaching my brother and sisters how to catch and throw. All these little memories that joined up together and became some monstrous love, bigger than the Green Monster at Fenway. I was six when my parents finally buckled under my unrelenting pestering and put me in the local tee ball league. I started pretty late compared to most kids and the coaches were worried that I was gonna struggle to keep up.
They didn't need to.
In retrospect, I think my powers have always been kind of active in some passive regard. Not the full-blown monkey see monkey do aspect but the coordination bit. I mean, there's no way a six-year-old should be able to pick up a bat and hit a line drive that can knock a grown man on his ass. Though, I did just watch Manny Ramirez the night before so that may have contributed. I don't know, I don't really get how this power thing works. Whatever it was that made me the way I am, I was a fucking natural at this game. Every year I grew by leaps and bounds. From Tee ball to little league, and finally right into high school varsity.
I never thought much about my talents when I was a kid. To me it was perfectly natural for people to be able to pick up a bat and maintain a batting average of .308 after watching a few examples of proper technique. I was fourteen when my powers really came around. I think the first time I ever knowingly copied someone was when my friends decided it would be cool to skateboard. The first day I went out I busted my ass at least a million times. It wasn't until some older kids showed up and started showing up all of us that I was able to actually stay on the board. I went from being the worst to just about tied with the best.
Then they showed me a video of Rodney Mullen. That was a mistake.
He was so cool and I just wanted to skate like him so badly. I watched that clip three times. Every time I laid my eyes on it I saw a bit more. I understood a bit more. I saw the mechanics of his body, the subtle shift in his center of gravity, the way he breathed. After the third time, I was pulling off tricks I hadn't even heard of until fifteen minutes prior.
When you go from not knowing how to skate to pulling off a laser flip in three hours that cause for concern. I didn't even think that I had a power. I'd never heard of adoptive muscle memory. Superpowers were like super strength and being able to fly, not copying people. If it wasn't for my "fits" I probably never would have figured it out. Probably never have left Maine.
My fits? I don't have them too often anymore but they were these episodes were I got stuck on loops. I'd just act out what I saw over and over again or sometimes I'd just latch onto someone and mimic them.
Scary doesn't cover it.
Losing control of your body, watching as strange force manipulates you. The first time it happened I was in class. I just stood up and started mirroring my history teacher. He started screaming at me and didn't stop until he realized I had tears streaming down my cheeks ten minutes later. Another thirty minutes and the fit had run its course and my parents showed up. They'd known about how I was able to pick things up pretty quickly but had never thought that I might be some sort of mutant. It was legit like something straight out of X-Men.
Lemme take a second to say that I, in no way, think that I got the short end of the stick with my powers. There are a lot of people who have it worse than me. I'm actually really lucky to have my gift. Ever since I found out what it is I can't help but feel like I've been cheating my entire life. For a long time, it felt like it diminished all of my achievements, tarnished all my trophies. Sometimes I still feel like that. Who would I be without this? Am I just some cheap knockoff of all of my heroes?
... That's enough sulking and self-pity.
It didn't take my parents long to find a place that specialized in "gifted children" and before I was even halfway through with my freshman year I was getting shipped from idyllic,coastal New England to a swamp.
Moving from Maine to New Orleans was hard. I was giving up a lot and, at the time I thought, not getting anything in return. There was no more baseball, no more talking with dad or baking with mom. Leaving behind my siblings was the worst though.
No more watching Star Trek with Lu
No more softball with Prue
No more trying to wrangle the rest of the kids with Nellie-Bean
No more bickering with Jude
Phalanx was a new chapter for me. The first few weeks I was definitely a zombie. Slogging along doing just what was expected of me. The staff was eventually able to worm their way past my shoddy defenses and get me to open up. They were good people, Professor X, I mean,
Astor Oliver Perona was good people.
I made friends pretty easily after that bumpy period and things got a little easier. Still, there wasn't a day that went by where I didn't find myself wishing to be back home. I never expected my family to join me out in NOLA. Never expected Lucy to end up in
that place.
It was kinda funny in a way when Lu got her powers. I mean, my whole thing is remembering the past and living it in the present. She saw the future and lived in the present. You can't write that kind of irony. Is that irony or just a coincidence? I always get those mixed up. Either way, the accident was a lot less funny and her getting locked up in that place... I tried asking Carver about it. He really didn't seem like he wanted to talk about it.
She was physically closer to me now than when she was Maine but she still felt just as far. I visited as often as I could though. It hurt seeing her there, locked up like there was something wrong with her... The only thing that eased that pain was the arrival of Nellie and Prue. When the two of them showed up things got a little easier and when Jude showed up the next year I felt like my family was almost whole again. I didn't get to enjoy it long. I always knew that I'd end up leaving Phalanx for one reason or another.
I never gave up on my dream of playing pro ball. In NOLA I played for a couple of local leagues to keep my skills sharp. I even managed to play a few pickup games with some of the kids from Primrose. Superpowered baseball is awesome.
Four months ago I had my shot. One of my teammates from back home sent me an email that the Red Sox feeder teams were having open tryouts. I took my old beater out to Fort Myers and tried out for the GCL Red Sox. I watched thousands, not an over-exaggeration, thousands of hours of baseball footage beforehand. I hit like Barry Bonds, I caught like Brooks Robinson, I pitched like Randy Johnson. When that didn't cut it I played like Teddy Lovelle. I bled, cried, and put it all out there on that diamond that week and in the end, I made it. I'd taken my first steps towards making it to the Show.
May 5th I was yanked back to reality. That day I got a hysterical phone call from all of my siblings. I thought I was getting yelled at for not calling Nellie and Prue for their birthday sooner. It wasn't. They all just sobbed and begged for me to come home. I packed it all up, told my coach I was leaving for family matters, I barely registered that we had a series starting that day. I just needed to get home.
There are two things that define me but...
Being a big brother, that's the only that really matters.