AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh…okay.”
Casey picked that moment to scramble down the stairs, still with his headphones on. He was heading toward the kitchen but paused when he saw us. He pushed his headphones down to his neck.
“Hey, what are you guys up to?”
“Nothing,” I said. “But could you get me some ice from the kitchen? I think I sprained my ankle.”
“Oh, that’s rough. Doing what?”
I just shrugged and said, “It’s a long story.”
Casey nodded and jogged into the kitchen, returning with an ice pack a few minutes later. As he handed it to me, I noted a dark purpling bruise on his arm.
I frowned. “What’s that?”
He glanced down and then paled when he saw what I was looking at.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he mumbled quickly, adjusting his hoodie sleeve to cover to bruise. “I was just fooling around with some kids at school.”
He avoided my eyes when he said it, and I got the feeling he was lying.
“Casey…”
“I have homework to do,” he said, cutting me off as he practically bolted back up the stairs.
6
ZANE
The next time I visited the punching bag, Meech had already left, and there was no one around to stop me. So I laid into the bag so many times that the chain finally snapped, and the bag went flying before smacking into the other side of the wall.
And still, I wasn’t satisfied. Part of me wanted to continue by punching the wall until my fingers broke and bled. Maybe the pain of that would take away from the scars bleeding inside me.
Murderer. Abusive piece of shit.
Fuck.
I scrubbed my face, trying to fight back the violence that was rising within me. I wasn’t a stupid kid anymore who gave in to emotions easily. I’d learned to control my anger and hone it into fights where I at least got paid for the blood on my knuckles. Those battles mattered because they enabled me to get out of the hellhole I was living in.
This one was just an arbitrary match against myself that meant nothing.
I needed to accept that I wasn’t going to calm down soon, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t get the angry old man’s face from my mind.
Kelly’s father.
Why the fuck did I care?
I knew he hated me and had shouted worse obscenities at me at Kelly’s funeral. Plus, it wasn’t like what he said was worse than what I’d said to myself for years. I’d never abused Kelly, but I neglected her in ways that could have been just as bad as abuse.
And Kelly wasn’t the first person who died because of me.
Unbidden, the image of Toby came to mind. A little boy with blue eyes and knobbly knees followed me around like I hung the moon. He was as fucking hungry as I was, and he came from the same damn streets I did. Unlike me, though, the place hadn’t kicked all the humanity out of him yet. He was one of the few people who gave a shit about me before I became who I was. And while I fed my hunger by fighting, he did it by fixing up cars and occasionally robbery.
It was a shame. He was a smart kid. He could have been the next scientist or car manufacturer if he’d been born to richer parents. Or if any of those damn people had given him a chance.
But no one liked the older kids. At twelve, Toby was nearly my size and was too old and big to be cute anymore.
I told myself that when I made enough money, I would take him out of there when I left. And for a second there, I’d actually thought I would do it too.
