Chapter 1
May 20th, 1921.
“C’mon, Cassie,” Tommy Bercherot finds himself grumbling, grappling at his thick arm. A man of nineteen years of age, he was eager to escape the land of boyhood. “You're taking too long! We’re gonna miss the train!”
“It's Cas,” Cassie replied, a thick mustache bristling underneath his pale pink lips. He was always the more feminine of the two, being the primary artist in their artist-writer duo; Tommy was an artist, of course, but that was more of the mental variety. “My mother named it. Dutch for imperial or however.”
Tommy rolled his eyes.
“We. Are. Gonna. Miss. The. Train!”
“Tommy,” Cassie scoffed, his soft voice edging to a warning.
Tommy sighed heavily, with a slight roll of his nostril, his entire face scrunching up with displeasure and annoyance. His friend was always so worried over such silly things. It was goddamn nonsensical! Who cared about a stupid Dutch name when a beautiful locomotive was making its way nearby? A train to the future! To their future!
“The train, Cassie! I’ll leave without you if you don't come already!”
Cassie was holding the luggage in his arms, clutching the two wooden suitcases to his chest.
He smirked at his worrywart of a friend. "I got us first class tickets."
"Can you even afford first class...?"
"I bought it," Tommy snapped. His temper always ran short. His long legs stretched as he drew himself up to his full height. "With my own money!"
Cassie shook his head, dowry black eyes looking downwards, as he made his way across the street. Hopefully crestfallen at having doubted Tommy that way, in public!
Tommy quickly followed afterwards, swiftly moving with a click in his leather heels. In truth, it was actually his Uncle Charles' money, who gave it to him after a good week of begging both him and Auntie Ophelia. If it wasn't for his darling aunt, the old bastard would have never given it to him, but his auntie, alive as ever, pleaded with him to give their westward-bound nephew a chance.
That was all Tommy wanted. A chance.
And, of course, a good few dollars. At least a couple of quarters! He said it was for a good cause, and it was... in a way.
Tommy needed the best of everything. How else was his brain supposed to process the future... Him, a grand film mogul? Him, in Hollywood? Him, known across the globe...
That was how it was supposed to be!
Sure, his older brother, William, born nine years earlier than he, would have scolded him, as though a man at his age could be scolded so, for his imprudence, but what did that matter? William was a stick in the mud! William didn't understand art as he did!
William...
"Tommy?"
Cassie's irritated voice rang out throughout the street.
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" Tommy shouted, one foot atter the other as he climbed onto the old train. It was the best one in the goddamn town. His favorite since he was a kid. He found first class, dragging an annoyed Cassie with him, and grinned when he saw the steel was so shiny he could see his own reflection.
His skin was slightly sun-tanned, but never so much, as William, now a salesman in Hollywood, usually did all the farm work for him. Tommy would laze around, steal apples, and play with the animals on the ground. William would appear at random and pitch a fit about it, his "disobedience" and how Father was going to "get real mad", but Tommy, the youngest out of their ten siblings, never cared much for punishment.
He wasn't disobedient. He was strong-willed. He was bold, and brave, and a man even when he was a little boy.
God, what could Father even complain about?
...A lot, probably. Even though Tommy was a man through and through, he still found time to mock his accomplishments (which were great), his hobbies (which were manly) and his lack of interest in girls (which... Who even needed girls when you had the guys you could pal around with?). Father, saggy and scowling, would do all of this, without even acknowledging how amazing Tommy was.
For all Tommy complained about his older brother, William always told him how different he was from other boys, from other people. How extraordinary. How funny, how special, how great...!
Tommy ran a hand through his thick hair. He and William didn't look too alike, with William having sandy-blond hair that was already thinning at age twenty-nine. Tommy's hair was dark brown, styled fashionablely just like the men at the local theater, and he took the time of swooping it to the side grandly.
He wore his best clothes today. Black suspenders, a white shirt, and his trousers lengthy and unwrinkled. A gray cap on top of his head.
He smirked at himself, thinking deeply about how nice his portrait would look on the local paper. No, not the local paper. He and Cassie were going to Hollywood! Starting a goddamn animation studio!
"Tommy?"
Cassie brought up his name and, in an instant, Tommy's attention immediately turned to it.
A furrow went through his friend's brow. Unlike Tommy's lighter features, drawn from his French heritage, Cassie had a square jaw and a compact face.
He was slightly shorter than Tommy was, enough so that he could tease the twenty-year-old Dutchman on it constantly, so that healed Tommy's ego on the matter.
"Yeah, Cassie?"
"Don't call me--" Cassie sighed. He wrung his hands together, popping his knuckles. "I don't care. When is this train ride over?"
"Uh..." Tommy's brain nearly hurt itself trying to remember. Loudly, he declared, "I don't know, but when we get there, I'm gonna-"
"Start a studio, I know," Cassie said. Affection slid into his voice. "You've only told me that speech a thousand times."
Tommy smiled impishly.
Cassie, after a few moments of staring like a freak, coughed. "So, Tommy. Er, you're staying with that brother of yours, right?"
"The 11th born in my family," Tommy said brightly. "Why?"
"Oh, I just... Well..."
"Nah, don't even think of offering nothing to my no-good ass." How kind his friend was! Oh, what a sensitive soul he was! Tommy couldn't help but laugh. The sound of his joy echoed across their compartment. "You know Katherine would hate it, me being there."
"Yeah," Cassie said. He repeated rather dryly, "Yeah. Yeah, it would."
He wasn't a very good conversationlist, being so quiet and demure. If he didn't have a girl, Tommy would think his best friend was a pansy. The stereotype of the artist.
Tommy was a better leader. He wanted to be good at art. He wanted to start a studio.
And what Tommy wanted, Tommy got.
"So, what's the studio's name?" Cassie asked with a quick swipe of tongue to lip.
Tommy ran his fingers through his hair in a way he thought would make all the girls (if there was any) swoon. All the guys jealous. The one and only William Bercherot finally knowing Tommy's true maturity instead of thinking him as some little kid.
"It's called Penny-Knickle Studios," he said with a wink. "It's clever, don't you think?"
He waited for Cassie's approval and his eventual, perhaps a little slow, praise. After he acheived it, Tommy grinned and thought more on how unprepared Hollywood was for him.
