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GENEVIEVE
I’m forced to eat, but the stew turns to ash in my mouth. Pain, sadness, and disgust roll through me. I gave up fighting and trying to get home so easily. Why?
What have they done to me?
Eric watches me sadly, and his big puppy eyes are so wounded, I can’t meet them. Archer appears concerned as he watches me mechanically lift the spoon to my mouth, force myself to swallow, and repeat. Booker shoots me side glances, while Grumpy Pants seems oblivious.
Could they kill me, really?
I don’t know, but what I do know is that I can’t stay around to find out. I need to go home. They have to let me go…right? Once I’ve eaten, I stay seated as they clean up around me. It’s only when my voice comes out, strong and cold, that I realise there’s a strained silence in the air.
“What will you do when I’m home?” I ask. My curiosity gets the better of me, but also gives me a chance to see if they truly do mean to release me.
Archer shoots me a look, and they all look at him to answer, but he doesn’t.
“Carry on stealing?”
His jaw grinds as he turns away.
I stand abruptly, and my chair screeches across the floor. “I deserve the truth. I deserve—”
“What?” he roars as he turns to me, his eyes hard and angry. “What do you deserve, Genevieve?” he snaps, stepping closer. “What does anyone deserve in this world? It’s the very thought that every rich, spoiled person in this world has—that they deserve something without earning it. No, Birdie, you deserve nothing. You earn it.”
The flip in his attitude tells me I’ve hit a nerve, even as I flinch at the venom in his tone. He’s right though. When did I start to think I was entitled to anything? I knew better on the streets. No one, no one in this fucked up world, deserves anything. You earn it through blood, sweat, and tears, and if you’re lucky, if you’re really lucky, you manage to get what others simply think they are owed—food, shelter, friendship, family, love, happiness, and a future.
When did I start thinking that this world, or the people in it, owed me anything?
I sit down heavily under his gaze. He sighs and turns away, his shoulders tight as he presses his fists to the counter. “Is that why you do it? Because you hate the fact that the rich think they are entitled to everything, and you…are some kind of Robin Hood?”
He snorts bitterly, and the others watch us through veiled expressions, as if unsure whether to intervene or let it run its course. It’s the most reaction I’ve gotten from Archer though, so I don’t back down. I truly need to know why—why do they do this?
“Hardly.” Gage snorts.
“Gage,” Archer snaps, revealing the elusive name. I’m so focused on the conversation though, I can’t even focus on it.
“Hardly?” I repeat, focusing on him.
“Robin Hood doesn’t learn how to pick locks in juvie,” he grumbles bitterly and then turns away as if he’s annoyed he let that slip.
“So not Robin Hood. Then why?”
“Because we can,” Archer snaps, turning to me. “Because for people like us, it’s the only way to survive. Not only just to survive, but to have a better life. Not all of us can think our way to the top. Not all of us get off of those streets you escaped so easily.”
“You think it was easy?” I shout.
“Compared to what we had to do? Yes,” he answers truthfully. “Did you have to kill, steal, and lie? Did you have to sell your fucking soul just to get free of that place? Did you go to jail as a kid for just trying to steal food? Or how about serve your country, only for them to turn their back and leave you with skills and no place to use them? Or did you have your heart broken time and time again by the people who were supposed to protect you, but instead let you watch as they drank and shot their lives away when you were a kid?” I flinch with every spat out word, and then he steps closer. “Did you have to take a gun from your big brother’s dead hands just to protect yourself?”
My mouth falls agape as I stare at him. There’s so much information. Is that really what they have been through? Did they…did they survive that? It’s clearly about them. Because of Gage’s comment, I can discern that he’s the juvie one, but the others? Booker was the military man. He admitted as much. I scan them and then bring my gaze back to Archer.
I get it, I do, but trauma doesn’t discriminate. Just because my struggle wasn’t the same doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. Pain is pain.
“I didn’t make it out unscathed,” I point out. “Your pain isn’t stronger than mine, just different. Yet here you are, hurting one of your own.”
He sighs and scrubs his face. “We never meant to. We do this because we have the skills and no other choice. That’s why.”
“There’s always a choice,” I whisper.
“Not for people like us,” he mutters as he sits heavily.
