Chapter 7 ~ Broken

“A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure” 

~Henry Kissinger~

Hunter’s point of view

So, the others have joined me in the cow house and told me that Justin’s mother is on the way. That’s such a monumental surprise and a weird feeling. I'm not sure how to react because if I was told my mother was on the way I would run in the opposite direction as fast as I could, bears and coyotes be damned. 

Justin is clearly very torn about it all. He’s a bit suspicious about her motives but I think his anxiety is mostly because he doesn’t want to leave Brian behind. 

So I can definitely understand how Justin is unsure about this whole thing. He knows just as little as the rest of us.  I agree that there is a valid reason to feel suspicious. Apparently she lives in one of the fanciest parts of Connecticut, and Justin’s grandparents are loaded. It just doesn’t make sense. Why would she send him here in the first place, wouldn’t have been much better to bring him to Connecticut, and if she didn’t want him around, there are fancy boarding schools, right?  Isn’t that what rich people do?

“I don’t know if dad ever told mom I was coming here, I think they only talked through their lawyers after the devorce. Maybe she just found out now that I’m here”.  Justin tells the rest of us. Ok, that would explain why she’s coming now, two months in. And the fact that she announces her arrival and Joan makes Justin pack suggests they are hiding the reality from her, that in itself suggests she’s not working with them. 

Jason and Kiara didn’t pack. I fondle the switchblade in my pocket, it used to belong to Jason.  It’s a Microtech Ultratech OTF, sharp enough for shaving. He stole from a client once and I think it’s worth a bunch. He loved that knife so much, didn’t even sell it for food back when we were cold and starving on the streets of Pittsburgh. If he knew he was going away he would have packed it. So let’s just say I don’t think he’s in Florida. 

Back to now, I need to focus… if Justin’s mom knew this was a literal teenage version of a brothel, would she be coming? Wouldn’t she rather have sent the police? 

So there’s no reason to worry she’s up for something bad. But we all know that she’ll take him away when she sees him. She’s not gonna leave him here when she sees what he looks like. The poor boy has been wasting away recently and if he loses much more weight it can be really bad for him. I’ve seen it before when I used to live on the streets. 

Maybe I’m a tiny bit  jealous, don’t get me wrong, I know this is not about me. This right now is about Justin. I’m glad if he gets to leave. He’s sick, he really should see a doctor, and more importantly he should not be here, he is a different breed than us. But, breed and money aside, none of us should be here and it would be so nice if we could all be picked up by someone who doesn’t want to hurt us. I used to dream about someone nice whisking me away putting me in school helping me out of this mess but maybe I just did something awful in a previous life and I’m being punished. I’m allowed to hope though, right?

“She should take all of us, we should just tell her that we’re in dire need of a ride out of here.” I suggest. 

“Yeah, and get us all and her killed.” Brian more so states than asks, and he’s probably right. He’s staring intensely at Justin and I give Cynthia a sign that we should bugger off and give them some space. We both give Justin a long hug and tell him we love him, and that we’ll come to Stamford and find him. Cynthia cries a little bit but me… not so much. I haven’t cried for years. Then we leave the two of them. They need some alone time for their goodbyes.

Like I said. This is not my mother who is coming, that won’t happen, she’s in jail for trying to kill my father. Living with my mother was just as bad as living here, maybe worse because I was young and didn’t know how to protect myself. She was heavy on the needle and dad used to beat her a lot. I was lucky I got to live with my grandfather whenever she got into rehab but she always relapsed. Grandfather was not that old and we did a lot of fun things together. He loved hunting and took me along for that. But he was a bit strange sometimes, he’d forget where he put his things, wasn’t sure where he was going. And then one day when I came to visit he didn’t recognize me. Turned out he had Alzheimer's. So he moved to a home and I was stuck living with mum. Her dealer started showing interest in me and she was all for it. He got to suck me off and she got her fix. I left. I was 13 years old and living on the streets of Pittsburgh selling my body for food until I ended up in the hospital after getting beat up and then social services got me a place in foster care. 

That didn’t work out so well, I was at different places, with equally messed up kids who I didn’t get along with and always ran away and ended on the streets again until some dogooder at social services figured I should come live here. It was great in the beginning,  Brian and Cynthia were great. It was hard to witness how tough Jack was on Brian but I actually thought it would work out and I dared to hope that I had found my little dysfunctional family. I couldn’t have been more wrong. When Cynthia told Brian and me about Jack… I… I don’t know. Sweet Cynthia. I hated she was having to endure that but I also felt so guilty for having thought that her need to always be with us had to do with her interest in Brian or some form of lack of self esteem. Well now there was a reason. 

Why haven’t I run away from here? I did it before from other places. I don’t know. I had a pretty good year here in the beginning. I have friends, a roof over my head. I’m never cold. I’m not on the streets. There is always some kind of food. So what if I have to give a few blowjobs here and there and bent over a few times a week. But the past couple of weeks have been bad. Really ever since Justin came here. I like Justin. I really respect Brian, and I think I might be in love with Cynthia. 

Brian suggested running away before and I told him living on the streets was nothing to joke about. That living here had its perks. But that was before, and now my friends are suffering. So I agreed we would run away tonight. Summer is coming, it’s not gonna be cold sleeping outside. And who knows, maybe we can get out of state and find a place somewhere far away where none of our “guests” will be able to get to us. California would be great. And maybe not. Maybe they’ll find us before we even get to Pittsburgh and kill us all. But it’s worth a shot. None of us have a glorious future here anyway...

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