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I have never before hated someone I just met. It usually takes a bit of time, or when they show their true colors and use me in some sickening and abhorrent way.
“Mr. Murray!” the social worker scolds. His head whips in her direction. “This is not what we discussed. This is new for her, and I’m not going to condone her attitude, but under the circumstances, she has a right to question. She has a right to ask.”
He places his hands up in mock surrender. His gray suit jacket tightens around his arms from the movement. Stephen obviously works out and doesn’t have a pot belly. I can see what my mother saw in him other than the U.S. citizenship she was after when she became pregnant with me. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out my mother, Mariana Hernandez, was in the states illegally when she was involved with him. She found a replacement when Stephen left, though, my piece-of-shit stepfather.
“I know––I’m sorry.” He faces me with his coffee-colored eyes and straight dirty blonde hair. “I apologize for my outburst. This is not how I wanted this to go. I–” He closes his eyes, and I tilt my head and give him an I-don’t-give-a-fuck expression. I truly don’t care. He had seventeen years to be involved in my life, and now he suddenly shows up like my fucking savior.
This attitude is all you know when you have been in the system long enough. Changing environments disrupts the way you know how to process things. Things you have had to do to survive. I never thought I had a living relative to come here and take me in. I never once thought my deadbeat of a father would show up after all this time, or attend a school I thought I would never set foot in. I was wrong. Now I have to survive in a new environment with new people in a place where I know no one. Again. Every kid in foster care or juvenile detention wants to go to a stable home to live a better life. In my experience, being placed somewhere else is not always paradise. You think you are escaping one hell only to be sent to a lower level that breaks you all over again.
Like when I was eleven years old and first learned what heartbreak and loss felt like. My thoughts return to my best friend I had to leave behind because social services found out about my living conditions and how I was abused for so long. I left Ky a note hoping he would understand. Telling him how he was the only true friend I had at the time. He was everything to me.
Every year I wondered what he was doing. If he lived in the same house where the estate homes began. His backyard was so big it reminded me of a forest. It was easy to climb their fence and meet him three times a week when my stepfather left for work.
I would climb the fence after crossing the street near the bus stop on the outskirts of West Park, where I lived. West Park was the poor town on the left side of West Lake. West Lake was the rich part. Like everywhere, there is always the rich part of a county and the poor side of a county.
Our friendship started one day when I was running away from home and jumped the fence. I didn’t know it was someone’s backyard. I was eleven years old with a very worn backpack that was duct-taped on the bottom. I landed hard on the ground in my worn, dirty shoes I’d found in a dumpster. I looked up, dusting myself off, and that is when I saw him for the first time playing in the yard with a stick, trying to catch bugs.
“I can assure you that Mr. Murray is an exceptional member of the West Lake community and donates to multiple charities, including Westlake Preparatory Academy. He has an impeccable background and is a very successful businessman.” I hear a man’s voice.
I look up, snapping myself out of my thoughts. I see a man in a black suit handing each person in the room a folder while Stephen signs papers. I didn’t even see him come in, and now they are finalizing all the legal paperwork and handing me over to Stephen. I must have been thinking about Ky. Thinking about our time as friends is what has kept me going. It is how I survived. How I have been coping mentally with everything I have gone through since I left almost seven years ago. The thought that someone out there cared was everything to me as a kid.
Maybe Ky goes to WestLake Prep. I wonder if he still the same boy with the same heart I have cared about since I was eleven? The best year of my life was spent with Ky, even if I was a snot-nosed kid with stringy hair, a dirty face, and dirty, worn clothes. I wonder what he looks like now. Does he have the same dark hair and expressive eyes that promised to keep all my secrets? As a kid the things I liked and didn’t like were my secrets, and Ky was the only one I told them to. He would listen and then he would share his. These were things we told each other. Things that only we knew and no one else and it brought us so close together.
One thing he promised me was that he wouldn’t turn out to be a bully like the kids in my school did who made fun of me in West Park. I know Ky, and deep down, I know he wouldn’t be like that, but time has a way of changing people. If I run into him at Westlake Prep, I hope I don’t hate what I find if I see him. My heart flutters at the thought and I try to hold back the grin despite myself, eager to know if he attends the same school and what a shock it will be for him when he sees me.
Ky
I KICK THEbag in the boxing gym over and over, ending the combination with a kick to the bag that has it swinging with the distinct sound of the chain holding its weight. I train in the boxing gym every day after school with a couple of my closest friends, Tyler and Chris.
My father took me to Thailand on a business trip over my summer break when I was twelve, and I fell in love with Muay Tai, or what is known asThai boxing. We traveled toSoi, in the Chalong Phuket area in Thailand and I learned so much while there. Some people in the States refer to what I’m doing as kickboxing, but I have learned they are quite different. Kickboxing is a four-point striking technique, while Tai boxing is an eight-point striking technique. My dad saw that I stuck to it because it was a way to channel my anger without getting into meaningless fights. It is also a bonus that I can defend myself if needed.
When I met Tyler and Chris in sixth grade, I told them to hang out with me at the boxing gym my father opened, and the rest was history.
I glance to my right where I see Tyler assaulting the bag with a combination of fist blows. Sweat runs down my neck and I rub my forearm over my sweaty brow to keep the sting from my eyes as I saunter over.
I give him a nod with a chin raise when he spots me a few feet away. He gives me an expression that tells me he is battling some internal issues, so I walk over to check up on him. “Yo, you good?”
He turns to the bag and continues his assault as if he didn’t hear me or see me standing right near the bag. His breaths are coming fast from the effort, and I can tell whatever is bothering him, it’s some deep shit.
I have no idea what the fuck has him in this mood. We usually tell each other almost everything. What girls we fuck so we don’t hit on the same one, or which ones we don’t care about if we wanted to make a move. Either way, we always tell each other when something has us down. Well, almost everything. No one knows about Rubi. No one. She’s mine, even if I hate her to this day.
I turn my head and spot Chris on the mat teaching moves to another fighter.
When he gets up, he notices me looking over. I point my thumb toward Tyler as the sound of taped knuckles hitting the bag over and over echo behind me. “What’s with him?” I ask Chris.
He shakes his head. “Some shit about his dad. Family problems. It’s all I know. I don’t know the details.” He shrugs as if it’s not his problem.
The sounds come in rapid succession mixed with grunting and deep breaths. I turn around, and Tyler’s arms drop like dead weight as a look of exhaustion crosses his face as he holds the bag like it’s a lifeline as he tries to catch his breath.
He screams, and it’s then that I walk up to him and growl, “Locker room. Now!”
He can’t be bringing that shit into the gym like that. It raises questions he won’t want to answer.
I walk toward the locker room located in the back of the gym and he follows behind with Chris in tow.
I slam the door shut with my foot. “Alright, what has you all fucked up like you’re trying to exorcise a fucking demon out there?” I ask him with my hands crossed over my chest.
“Yeah, dude. You’re hitting the bag all sloppy and shit,” Chris teases.
