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That did bring him some comfort, as did the sudden thought that he only had a few more days left until the winter break started. He was used to masking among his classmates, pretending that grades and his lack of friends were his biggest problem, but it had become so much more exhausting in the last three months. It was so much harder listening to people bitch and moan about a test or a date or whatever high school drama they came up with when he knew twenty men had been killed because one bastard betrayed the Clover.
He was tired and that exhaustion had nothing to do with the “4:20 a.m.” glowing on the beaten up alarm clock.
At least he didn’t have to bottle it up anymore. The therapist he had been seeing once a week was one who specialized in cases like Thomas and men who actually chose to be made. She was surprisingly easy to talk to about things that most honest people would pale at. It made her practice popular amongst made men.
He had even seen the man who had stayed with him after Issac had been taken, a very friendly guy who only ever called himself Bat. When Thomas got up the courage to ask him if it was a name, an object, or an animal nickname, the man grinned and said it wasn’t a name. He seemed to delight in Thomas’s confusion on the answer but their conversation ended with Thomas being called back.
The other reason he didn’t have to bottle things up were the journal entries. He had never kept a real journal before. When he was younger and bouncing constantly between his aunts and his dad’s custody, his aunts had tried to encourage him to write down his thoughts. Thomas was fairly certain that was in part to try to make sure he didn’t backslide on his reading and writing skills until they got him back when his dad inevitably fucked up and lost custody again, but it never stuck. They tried again when his dad had died but Jake had told him not to or to heavily lie about whatever they did in them. It was after talking to Issac and the therapist that Thomas had been able to approach his aunts about his concerns.
His computer didn’t have a password on it. Not after the mortifying conversation he had to have with Aunt Jessi about “safe” porn sites after a virus locked him out of everything and they had to completely wipe the hard drive. But the program they put on it for his journal entries did have a password, allowing him to have the privacy he hadn’t realized he needed to get the words out.
He sat back in a ripped up office chair, frowning as he looked at the length of the entry, then shrugged to himself. His therapist had encouraged him to free write often even if he felt it was repetitive. It was good enough.
Rubbing at his eye, he exited the program to secure it. Someone was moving around the apartment and he glanced at the clock. Five-oh-three. Aunt Jessi then, getting ready to start her day. If he let her know he was awake, she’d make him breakfast, too. That would be nice. He was pretty sure he had seen apples in the kitchen when he had gone to get a snack last night. Aunt Jesse was the only one who could make an apple pie oatmeal that didn’t become a sensory nightmare for Thomas.
Maybe he could try broaching the topic of dropping out and getting a GED again. As a united front, Aunt Jessi and Aunt Ceri held on to their belief that Thomas should finish high school and have a “normal” experience before he went to college in the fall for high school 2.0. But if he could convince Jessi… He had, after all, given high school his full attention for three months— away from the Clovers and any “bad” influences and nothing in his opinion of the building and the people inside it had changed.
Picking up his phone, he paused and stared at the envelope icon in the corner. He usually had random emails from subscriptions, but last night, before he had fallen asleep, he had finally used the email on the business card.
Snake was a feared member of the Italian Mafia, but not because he was a murderer himself. As far as Thomas knew, the man had never gotten his hands dirty, something some of the Clovers had mocked him for. They said you couldn’t be a made man until you did the dirty work. But even they had been filled with fear when the voice over the speakers identified itself as the Zoo’s hacker. Snake could find anything, anyone, and hurt them in all kinds of ways without leaving his desk. He was the one who kept the rest of the Zoo safe and made them so efficient.
Thomas had met him in person at the hospital. Even before he heard him speak, Thomas knew the Korean man was the coolest person Thomas had ever seen. He had been dressed all in black and had been wearing a face mask to cover his mouth with chains on his pants and a jacket that hung off his shoulder. But more than cool, he had been kind to Thomas’s clumsy recognition of his voice and kind enough to give Thomas a card with his real name on it.
Seong Kim had been taunting him on the torn up cork board ever since. It mocked him for not having the courage to send the email as he slowly worked through the mountain of homework threatening to bury him.
Last night, he had finished the last of the assignments, beating the deadlines his teachers had given him by three days. He had no more excuses. He had to send the email, asking to meet with Seong to talk about what sort of computer related careers.
He pulled the menu down, seeing the collection of the typical subscriptions. Nestled amongst them was an email titled “Re: Career Advice.”
Thomas’s mouth went dry as he tapped the screen. The message was short but Thomas’s original email hadn’t been much longer.
A simple hello, confirmation that Snake did remember Thomas, and an offer to meet with him after school at a location near the college. It was signed “Seong Kim.”
He flinched as his alarms went off, the sound playing directly in his ear.
“Hey, baby,” Aunt Jessi said, smiling at him as he skidded into the kitchen. Her smile widened as he almost fell. She was still dressed in her silk robe, silk bonnet wrapped around her head and coffee pot in her hand. “It’s gonna be a cold day. Make sure you layer up, you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Thomas said automatically, his fingers tapping on the back of his phone.
“How about apple pie oatmeal this morning,” she asked, taking the green and red apples from the fruit bowl. “Maybe some hot cider?”
“Both sound great, Auntie,” he agreed quickly, feeling his twitching becoming less voluntary. “Um- w-would it be alright if I went somewhere after school today?”
She tried to hide it. Thomas knew she did but her narrow shoulders stiffened at his question for just a moment before she made them go slack. Guilt ate at the pit of his stomach for her worry. Normal parents didn’t have to worry like she did when their teenagers asked permission to go out. Most probably wouldn’t even bat an eye. But normal parents didn’t have a teenager who had brushed so close to the dangerous men that inhabited the city. “Where do you want to go,” she asked, too bright and friendly, “and who will be there? Kids from school?”
The guilt gnawed all the deeper at the thin hope in that last question. He wanted to tell her yes. That he’d connected with people his own age and was going to have a perfectly normal hang out with them, just so she could be happy. But he couldn’t lie to her anymore. “N-no,” he said, swallowing. He tried to tighten his grip on the phone, to stop the obsessive tapping. “I-it’s at a cafe by the college,” he explained when she glanced back at him, his hesitation only causing more worry lines to form. “Th-there’s- I-It’s to m-meet with someone to t-talk about computer careers.”
The worry hadn’t gone but it shifted into confusion as Jessi turned to look at him, the coffee pot rattling back into the hot plate. “You want to work with computers?”
A spasm ran up Thomas’s back, the stem he had been suppressing forcing itself past his hands into the rest of him.
“Breathe, Tommy,” she said, crossing the small kitchen and holding her hand just above his arms. “It’s okay, baby. I just haven’t heard you mention computers before. How long have you been thinking about something like that?”
“I- I don’t know,” he admitted, looking down and finding the embroidered peacock on her robe. There was something comforting about tracing the threads with his eyes. “Kind of- always? S-since you and Ceri got me the video games.”
His eyes darted up to look at her through his bangs and some of the weight lifted as she smiled fondly. The video games had started the first time he had been placed in their custody. He had been five or six and, in hindsight, it had been an effort to help him catch up to his class. Every time he came back to them there was a new set of games with whatever grade he was in proudly plastered across the box for him to play and learn what his dad failed to teach him. He had loved the games, not just because they had been fun but because they had been fascinating. He wanted to know how they were made, how they worked, how a random click of buttons could unlock a story and events.
“Why didn’t you say anything before, baby?”
