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He walked through the front door, unsurprised to find the house already quiet. It was almost 8pm — significantly later than he was meant to stay out, but he couldn’t help it when the coach held them all over.
He was exhausted, filthy, starving, and had a mountain of homework to finish. Somewhere in between all that, he still had to find the time to start applying for grants. At least he had a few advantages there, judging by how easily Walter found the money to make up for what their parents couldn’t afford. But financial aid came later. First, he had to get something to eat before he did anything else. Knowing everyone else had already eaten without him, Wilford checked the fridge for leftovers, but found none. Either his mom hadn’t felt like cooking a whole lot, or nobody cared to save any for him. Sighing, he started digging through the fridge for something he could turn into dinner. A sandwich was about all he had the energy for, so he dug through the drawers in the fridge for anything suitable for a decent, dinner-sized sandwich. There wasn’t much, but he found some cold cuts and a few vegetables that looked suitable, and started from there.
It wasn’t until he reached for a knife that he realised everything suitable was in the dish washer. There was a clean cleaver in the block, so Wilford grabbed that to slice up his tomato while a few strips of bacon slowly fried on the stove.
“You know Mom doesn’t like you in the kitchen,” Walter said suddenly. Wilford jumped, nearly slicing his thumb off with the giant knife.
“Yeah, well. You fucking pigs ate everything without me,” he said.
“Because you broke your curfew again.” Walter had a stack of mail he was sorting through, probably thinking it made him look smarter.
“I was at school,” Wilford pointed out. He shook his head and started tearing up the lettuce, not really caring how much of a mess he made.
Walter hummed. “Speaking of school, this looks important,” he said, dropping an envelope down onto the counter. Wilford snatched it up and tore into it.
“And I thought you were supposed to call for a ride if you stay past five?” Walter went on. “Should you even be driving in the first place?”
Wilford had stopped listening to him, and only made a vague noise in response. He had to read the letter twice to make sure it was saying what he thought it was saying. Scholarship season had come and gone, and yet here he was being told that he’d been accepted. Someone ahead of him must have got sniped by the major leagues.
“I’m going to Georgetown,” he said, testing out how it sounded out loud.
“Right now?” Walter asked.
“No, stupid.” He handed the letter over to Walter, still expecting to have read something wrong.
“Where are you going?” their mother suddenly shouted. Wilford turned away from the oncoming storm and focused on fixing his dinner. “What are you doing in here? Look at this mess!” she shouted even louder as she walked into the kitchen.
“Nowhere,” Wilford said with a sigh. “I’ll be done in a minute.”
“You’re done right now. Get out.” She tried to shoo him out, but Wilford held his ground, knowing she’d back down first. He dropped a few slices of bread into the toaster and turned to the fridge to find some condiments for his sandwich. His mom fluttered helplessly around the edges of the kitchen, moving quickly out of the way every time Wilford did anything.
“Wil’s got some big news,” Walter said cautiously. Wilford knew this wasn’t the time to bring up any news, but now he didn’t have much choice.
“Goddamnit, Walt.” Their mother shouted something in Korean while Wilford took his bacon off the heat and popped the toaster up a little early. She was probably shouting at him for swearing, but he’d never know. “So, uh. I got a tuition scholarship for Georgetown,” he said.
“How are you paying for the rest?” his mother asked. It wasn’t the answer he’d expected.
“You?” he said. They’d paid for Walter to go to school.
“Not with my money. Who goes to college to play baseball? You go to college to become a lawyer,” his mother said.
It felt like he’d been punched in the face. Their parents had covered everything Walter hadn’t been able to raise. It had never been stated that the same wasn’t going too apply to him.
“You paid for him to go to college to become a fucking farmer!” Wilford shouted, pointing at Walter with the knife.
His mother started shouting in Korean again.
“I don’t know what you’re saying!” Wilford shouted back.
Still shouting in a language she’d never bothered to teach her children to speak, she grabbed the frying pan from off the stove and tossed it into the sink.
“Fuck you too!” Wilford shouted back. He threw the knife at the floor as he stomped out of the kitchen, ignoring his mother’s panicked screeches. He had the distinct feeling she was going to try to kick him out again, so he saved her the trouble and walked out the front door, slamming it behind him. The sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving just enough light for Wilford to see what he was doing as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inventory. He couldn’t go anywhere. He’d been cutting things close with baseball and the school newspaper, but his probation officer was willing to look the other way. He wouldn’t have been so willing to look the other way if Wilford had left home. And fucking up his parole would absolutely, without fail, fuck up his plans of getting into any college. Not sure what else to do, he sat down on the front step to wait out the war that was no doubt raging without him.
Eventually, the noise inside calmed down, but Wilford still didn’t dare go back inside until the lights had all gone out. He wondered if Walter would be willing to order him something to eat, since going into the kitchen had clearly been the wrong course of action. When the front door opened behind him, Wilford jumped, expecting round two. But instead of his mother, his father stepped out and sat down on the ground beside him.
“You really did it this time.” He handed Wilford a sandwich wrapped in a paper towel. It wasn’t the sandwich he was trying to make, but it was still dinner so he took it.
“I didn’t do anything,” Wilford insisted. He crushed out his cigarette and tossed the butt into the roses.
“If she catches you smoking, she might actually strangle you,” his dad said.
Wilford looked over at him, calculating the chances of being narced on. It was a non-zero chance, but there was an easy way to make it zero. He pulled his pack out and offered his dad one.
They sat in silence for a long moment while Wilford tried not to straight up inhale his food. He got about halfway through the sandwich before his dad spoke again.
“So what’s this about college money?” he asked.
Wilford nodded, more scared than excited over the situation. “I got offered a scholarship. Just tuition and fees, but that’s more than Walter got.”
His dad nodded. “Your record doesn’t get in the way?”
“I’ve been talking to this guy for two years. He’s aware. My grades are good. I’ve stayed out of trouble. I got six weeks to go and it’s all erased and buried anyway.” He could have really fucked everything up before he’d even started high school, but getting that second chance had given him the kick in the ass he needed to get serious. He’d spent four years playing the game, blending in, and finding things he was good at. Granted, what he was good at was being a nosey snoop and hitting things with a stick, but even those skills could be turned into something productive and acceptable if applied correctly.
“I’ll talk to her,” his dad said with a sigh. “She won’t be happy. She’ll want you to get a job.”
Wilford gaped. “Walt still doesn’t have a job.”
“Walter didn’t shoot the neighbour.”
Wilford inhaled deeply. He wasn’t going to shout. Shouting was what got him stuck out on front step to begin with. “She wants me to get a job, while going to school full time, and playing baseball as a fundamental requirement for getting into this school in the first place?” he asked.
His dad only nodded.
“Can we trade the job for therapy?” he asked.
“Would you go?”
“No, but I’d be eighteen. She wouldn’t be able to know better anyway.”
“Wilford,” his dad started tiredly. “Six more weeks. Just behave for six more weeks. Get a job for the summer, and save up some money. Can you do that?”
Wilford shrugged. He didn’t see why he couldn’t. “Yeah, but I think my alternator’s going out. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to save.”
“I’ll fix your car. But you start looking for a job tomorrow,” his dad said.
Wilford nodded. “All right.” He could do that. He hadn’t planned on spending much of his summer at home anyway, since it was going to be his first summer as a free man since middle school. “I have an eight-page essay due on Friday. Am I going to get my head chewed off if I go inside?”
“Go straight to your room,” his dad said, throwing his own cigarette butt into the roses.
Wilford nodded and stood. Six more weeks. That’s all he had to survive, and then it wouldn’t matter as much if he got kicked out.
The game had been rained out. Bad news for the team, but good news for Wilford. He could finish his article and submit it on time. He wasn’t normally the first one home during the baseball season, so he took full advantage of the quiet house. He found a snack in the kitchen and took it to his room to get to work. With internet access becoming more of a common thing, he’d been assigned do to a piece on keeping one’s personal information personal. Which had required quite a lot of research. And since his probation had no stipulations around internet access, he chose to do his research by hanging out in chat rooms and keeping track of how many people offered up details about themselves with minimal prompting. Apparently all it took was typing “asl” and people would hand over a decent amount of info without even thinking twice. In less than an hour, he had several pages of names, ages, birth dates, approximate addresses, pet’s names, and more just using basic conversational chatter. He probably could have opened up a few credit cards with some of the information some of the people he’d talked to willingly shared.
It had already given him ideas for another three pieces for his portfolio. The internet was a weird fucking place. He loved it already.
He was so involved in his project he didn’t even notice how much time had passed until his watch beeped 5pm. Curfew. He hadn’t heard anyone else come home, but assuming he’d just not noticed, Wilford got up to see where everyone was. Walter only had one or two classes a day as he wound down the last requirements for his degree. He should have been stuffing his face and watching TV. But he was not. Nor was their dad back in his office, doing whatever he did back there when he was home. Becoming concerned, Wilford checked the garage. His mother’s car was in the garage, and his was the only car in the driveway. Maybe Walter’s class was a late one. And maybe there was something wrong with his mom’s car too. That wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities. There was a lot that could go wrong with four cars.
He went back to his room to work on his article, but it was difficult to focus. He wasn’t supposed to be unsupervised after 5pm. His PO looked the other way for school activities, since being at school meant he was still under someone’s supervision, but his parents knew he was supposed to be home at 5pm normally. Not that he had any raging desires to burn down the house or anything, but this wasn’t a rule he was too keen on breaking. But they probably assumed he’d be out late, playing at the game. Everyone probably thought they had some time to spare.
An hour rolled by, and Wilford was running out of excuses. He got up to find the phone. The cordless phone in the front room had been left off the charger for too long and was dead. Wilford was not allowed in his parents’ room or his father’s office, but he wasn’t left with much choice. He didn’t even think twice about going into his dad’s office to use his phone. First he called the hotel where his mother worked. She hadn’t been in, and hadn’t called with a reason why. Confused, Wilford called the office his dad worked at. He also had not been in, nor had he called. Something was seriously wrong. Wilford tried to figure out how to call Walter, but he didn’t have anywhere he was supposed to have been other than school, and they didn’t exactly give students dedicated lines. Unable to find a way to call his brother, Wilford dialled the only other number he knew. Some fucking judge or social worker was going to try to spin this as his fault somehow, but Wilford didn’t have a choice. He had to call his probation officer.
Twenty minutes later, he sat nervously on the sofa as a pair of uniformed cops searched the house. Officer Bradley stood in the kitchen on his phone, keeping a distant eye on the situation. Wilford didn’t even want to breathe. He’d been doing everything he was supposed to be doing, and somehow he’d still managed to do something wrong. He was about too lose everything, and he didn’t even know why. Five weeks. That’s all he had to survive, and he couldn’t even manage that.
By the time Bradley was done with his call, the uniformed cops seemed to have finished up with whatever they were doing. They talked quietly, so Wilford couldn’t hear what they were saying, eventually coming to some sort of accord. Finally, the uniformed cops left, leaving Wilford alone with his PO.
“There was a game tonight, wasn’t there?” Bradley asked.
Wilford shook his head. “It was rained out so I came home. I’ve got an article due in a couple of days and wanted to work on that.”
Bradley knew Wilford had worked his way up to senior editor with the school paper. It was another activity that kept him at school at odd hours sometimes. He nodded, accepting Wilford’s answer, and sighed. “How are you doing at school? Still planning on college?”
“I was offered a scholarship at Georgetown,” Wilford said.
“Academic, or athletic?” Bradley asked.
“Athletic.” Wilford wasn’t sure why that was important right now. Right up until Bradley swore under his breath.
“What do you know that I don’t?” Wilford asked.
Bradley looked down at his phone and shook his head. “A social worker’s going to be here in about twenty minutes to pick you up.”
“What?” Wilford demanded. “Why? What?”
“Your dad’s car was picked up from the airport about an hour ago. It was parked in the wrong spot. Do you know where they might have gone?” Bradley asked.
Wilford shook his head. “What about Walt? He graduates in two weeks. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“We’ll keep looking for him,” Bradley assured. But for now you need to gather up all your stuff. Any important paperwork you’ll need for next month, your homework. We’ll try to make sure you can play out the rest of your season.”
Wilford shook his head again. It didn’t make sense. Where did everyone go? Why had his dad left his car at the airport? Things were going well. Wilford was going to graduate, and then he’d have a few weeks before he turned 18 and got to move on with his life and put all this bullshit behind him.
“You’re… putting me…?” he couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“When we find your brother, you can go stay with him. But you’re not staying here alone.” It was an order. It was the same tone Bradley used when Wilford got too close to crossing a line that couldn’t be ignored. His stupid, awful parents had gone and ruined everything for him. And they had to have known what they were doing. It hurt. Wilford didn’t know why it hurt. It was a strange sort of hurt he’d never felt before — one that threatened to choke him from the inside.
“Go get your stuff,” Bradley said again.
This time, Wilford stood up. Important papers. That came first. He knew that was all kept in his dad’s office, in the cabinet against the wall. The cabinet, it occurred to him belatedly, his dad kept locked.
“Is it breaking and entering if it’s my own house?” he called out.
Bradley walked down the hall to see what Wilford was talking about. He was already standing in front of the cabinet, trying the drawers just in case. They were very firmly locked.
“Not today, and only if it’s your own stuff you take,” Bradley said.
Wilford nodded. His parents kept a crowbar under the bed (in case of intruders, was the spoken reason. He’d always suspected the real reason was in case of Wilford). He walked straight into their room, and found it under his mother’s side. It had been a while since he’d broken into anything like this, but breaking and entering wasn’t exactly a skill that got rusty. He tried the top drawer first, bending the entire casing to render the locks moot. Nothing of use was in the top drawer, so he tried the next one down. That was where his dad kept everything important. Wilford pulled out a few files and handed them over to Bradley so he could verify what was taken. Satisfied, Bradley handed them back so Wilford could stuff everything safely away into his inventory. He thought about keeping the crowbar, but decided to drop it onto the floor instead. He’d need the space for more immediate issues.
“Do I get to take my car?” he asked. “The title’s in my name. It’s mine.”
“Not tonight. You can come get it tomorrow.”
It wasn’t the worst case scenario, but it made packing difficult. Wilford found every gym bag he had and fished out the biggest one to stuff his homework and important gear into. He couldn’t take the computer. He already knew that, but his dad had a huge stack of floppy disks in his office. Wilford rushed back to grab as many of them as he could carry and started transferring everything he had over to them. He could go into school early and work through lunch to get his article done if he needed to. The computer labs were usually pretty empty, but half the computers seemed to always be broken somehow. He just didn’t understand what was going on. Why this? Why now? It was fucking sabotage was what it was.
There were no other fosters in the house Wilford wound up in. The two other kids in the house were the woman’s children. They were about ten years younger than Wilford, so he barely paid any attention to them. The woman, on the other hand, decided to be a complete megabitch right out of the gate. He hadn’t even been there an hour and she’d already started laying into him.
“If you’re not here by 3pm, I’m calling your probation officer.”
Wilford tried to watch TV through her. It wasn’t exactly easy. “If I’m here at 3pm, I lose my scholarship. Fuck that,” he said. Bradley knew Wilford never went home right after class let out. He wouldn’t care anyway.
“Watch your language, young man,” she scolded fiercely.
“Lady,” Wilford said tiredly. “Shut up.”
She slapped him. She actually slapped him so hard across the face, it upset his glasses. Wilford almost stood up and decked her back, but managed to clamp down on that reaction. He glared at her, taking a deep breath as he fixed his glasses. “Don’t. Touch me. Again,” he said. He wondered how much she’d scream if he ripped out a handful of that bleach-blonde hair, or if years of chemical treatment had dulled her scalp entirely.
There was a phone in the kitchen, just outside of his periphery. Calling Bradley so soon had the potential to come off as causing problems, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stay there a second longer than he had to. Wilford got up and strode purposefully over to the kitchen.
“Don’t you dare,” the lady scolded. Wilford picked up the phone. There was no dial tone.
“The fuck?” he asked.
The lady stomped over and pulled the receiver from his hand. “No phone after five,” she said, slamming it back into the cradle. “In fact, I think it’s time for bed.”
“Gladly,” Wilford said. He just hoped the bedroom door had a lock on it.
He got out of the house early, taking everything he had with him. He stashed what he didn’t need in his various lockers, and what didn’t fit in those in his coach’s office. He’d barely slept the night before, but that was normal. What wasn’t normal was the ball of rage and tension burning inside him. He finished his article in the computer lab, threw himself into all his class reading, and played way too hard out on the field during practise. They had a game the next day, but he wasn’t being as careful as he should have been. He ignored or brushed off questions from teachers and coaches. He just had to make it a few more weeks. He’d go get his car after practise, and maybe he’d feel a little better.
He was prepared to walk the almost two miles home — to what used to be home — to get his car. He even tried to ignore the green car next to the sidewalk, idling ominously. As he tried to walk past, the car drove forward onto the sidewalk, blocking his path.
“Get in,” the lady said. God, he hated her.
“I’m getting my car. Go away.”
“You’re not walking. Get in.”
Wilford knew better, but there clearly wasn’t any room for arguing. Grumbling to himself, he threw the passenger door open and flopped into the front seat. “Kenmore and Mason,” he said flatly.
She pulled out of the school’s parking lot, and immediately took a left.
“It’s the other way,” Wilford said. He looked around, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on. “Are you taking Twenty-nine? The hell are you doing?” This was not the direction he needed to go to get his car.
“It’s faster.”
Wilford looked at her. Was she high?
They got onto the boulevard, and actually started heading in vaguely the right direction, so Wilford settled into his seat. Right until she blew right past the left turn they needed.
“Hey, dumbass. That was your turn,” he said, pointing back toward the intersection.
“No it wasn’t.”
Wilford knew getting into the car had been a bad idea. They weren’t going back toward her house either, though. Wilford grabbed the door handle so he could bail out and hope nobody flattened him, but the door wouldn’t open and the electric locks had been overridden. “Let me out,” he demanded. He pulled on the handle a few more times, hoping to force his way through. When that didn’t work, he turned to try to force the car off the road. The lady had been anticipating this, apparently, because he got a fist right to the middle of his face. She’d definitely broke his nose. He thought he was going to choke, either from the blood or from the sudden shock of everything.
“Shut up or I’ll hit you again,” she said.
Wilford believed it. He didn’t have anything to use as a weapon. He’d left his bat and gear at school in case she tried to take it, and he had no idea what she was hiding.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded. She hit him again.
Eventually, she turned off the highway. The sun was still up, but everything was cast in long shadows, making it hard to see where they were. It wasn’t a part of town Wilford had ever been to before. It was sparsely populated, and nowhere anywhere near a place Wilford wanted to be. They finally pulled off the road to a fenced-off plot of land with a little farmhouse where two men dressed in all black were waiting. The doors to the car unlocked, and one of the men opened the door and pulled Wilford out, dropping him to the ground.
“Someone’s going to be looking for this kid. Look at those shoes,” one of them said, stepping away.
“Nobody’s looking for this kid. He’s a felon.”
Wilford glared up at all three of them. “Fuck you. No I’m not.”
One of the men kicked dust into his face. “Get him inside before someone sees him.”
Wilford was hauled to his feet and dragged into the house. The entire place was gutted out, with exposed floorboards and drywall. There was a light on in the kitchen, but the rest of the house was dark. They dragged him to a room with dark stains all over the walls and floors, appearing black in the light of a kerosene lamp in the corner. A few more black-dressed people, men and women, walked into the room and blocked the door. There was no window, or if there was, it had been covered over to completely obscure it. Aside from the lamp, there was no other source of light.
“Go choke on a donkey dick,” Wilford spat at them all.
A man dressed the same as all the others, but wearing a huge, ornately-decorated gold cross around his neck stepped into the room. The thing looked like some sort of disco ball as the light from the lamp glinted off all the jewels stuck all over the damn thing.
“Good. We can begin,” he said. He stepped close to Wilford and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him up to a sitting position. Wilford tried to pull back, but the man’s grip was painfully strong.
As he held Wilford’s arm at a painful, awkward angle, he began to say something in Latin, chanting the words with a practised precision. Wilford knew what was going on, but the knife still surprised him when the man brought it into the light with his other hand. It glinted in the flame, almost mesmerising for the few seconds before Wilford’s arm was wrenched to the side and the blade driven through his hand. Screaming and trying to pull away, Wilford reached for the lamp on the table. He managed to grab it, and smashed it into the side of the man’s face. Ignited kerosene flew everywhere, lighting the man and everything around him on fire. As everyone ran to get out of the way, Wilford managed to force his way through the crowd and out of the house. He found the front door and ran down the long, gravel driveway toward the road. The gate was still open, so he ran through it and turned back in the direction he thought they’d come from. He was burnt and bleeding and couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t stop. There was another large building off the road a little ways up, and it had a light on. Wilford sprinted toward it, but when he got to the driveway, he found another locked gate. He manged to climb over it, falling gracelessly off the other side and landing face-first into the dirt driveway. But he couldn’t stop. Someone was probably following him. He ran to the building, fighting back the urge to puke, and pounded on the door without stopping. Finally, it opened from underneath him, and he fell back to the ground.
“Holy shit! Claire! Call the cops!” someone shouted above him.
His glasses were broken, but he had a spare pair and contacts stashed away in his gym locker at school. There were matching lines of stitches on both sides of his left hand, and some puffy, red burns on his right. His nose was definitely broken. He was going to have to sit out the rest of the season. But at least he wasn’t going straight back to some shitty foster home. He got to spend the night in the hospital instead.
“I can’t miss school,” he insisted to anyone who would listen. “I have deadlines and I can’t lose my scholarship. I have to go to school.”
Nobody seemed to care.
Bradley arrived just before midnight, after a pair of detectives had come to take his statement. Wilford could barely even remember what happened, let alone explain it.
“The hell were you doing way out there?” Bradley asked. Wilford couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
“I didn’t want to go. The bitch beat me up,” he said. “And you put me there with her.”
“I didn’t put you anywhere. But someone’s going to be losing their job over this one, so take that for some vindication,” Bradley said. He sat down in the chair next to Wilford’s bed. “Where’s all your stuff?”
“Stashed it at school. I thought she might take it.” He realised it was a good thing he’d thought to stash it, because she would have probably burned anything he’d left there before she went to grab him after practise. “Why does everything suck? I’m just trying to graduate. What the fuck?”
“Well, the good news is there aren’t any charges against you,” Bradley said. “But fire? Really? Again?”
“I didn’t—” Wilford started. He realised he wasn’t exactly making it difficult for the judge to find a continued pattern of behaviour, but it wasn’t like he had a choice this time.
“Calm down. I told you there’s no charges, even though some of them are trying to say you attacked them. But fuck them, really.” Bradley pulled out a notebook and flipped through a few pages. “So, here’s what’s going on. You’re going to keep your head down. Get an A on all your homework and tests going forward. Tomorrow morning, a uniformed officer’s going to pick up you and take you to school. Then he’s going to pick you up after school and take you to where you’ll spend the next few weeks until you graduate. I’ve vetted this one personally, so don’t worry.”
“I’m worrying,” Wilford said. “I just got fucking sold to a cult, and you’re telling me not to worry? Where’s Walt? Why can’t I stay with him?”
Bradley frowned in a way Wilford didn’t like at all. “You’re a minor, and he didn’t want to assume guardianship.”
Wilford had no idea what to even start to say. So, they’d found him, at least. Wilford figured he wouldn’t have left with his parents, so close to finishing his degree. But he didn’t expect Walter to completely abandon him as well. “Wh… what?” None of it made any sense.
“Get some rest,” Bradley said, getting up. He pulled an envelope out of his jacket and handed it over. “Notes for your teachers tomorrow, but don’t use it as an excuse to start slacking off.”
Wilford took the note and nodded. “Yeah,” he said numbly. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly?
He went to school. He gave his teachers the collection of notes he’d been given. He rather predictably got benched for the rest of the season, but decided it was a blessing in disguise. It would give him more time to study for finals and make sure his grades were as good as they could be. When the end of the day came, he thought he might go sit through practise anyway, but his uniformed friend was already waiting for him. Feeling like arguing with a cop would probably not be the best thing to do, Wilford stashed anything he didn’t need overnight and followed the officer out to the (thankfully unmarked) car. The house he was taken to wasn’t very far from the school — only a few blocks away. He felt like that was a deliberate decision.
They were greeted at the door by a woman with a large smile and even larger dreadlocks. She ushered them inside and insisted that Wilford sit right down. The house was chaos. Too many kids. A man Wilford assumed was the woman’s husband sat at the table helping a little kid with some sort of reading homework. This place seemed a lot more safe than the previous house he’d been sent to, but it still didn’t mean Wilford wanted to be there. Once the officer went on his way, the woman came and sat down in another chair in the living room.
“So you’re Wilford,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Bernice.”
“Who’s been talking about me?” Wilford asked suspiciously. He was starting to hate everything already.
“Darren’s my brother. He talks about all the kids he deals with,” Bernice said. “He’s sure had some interesting things to say about you.”
Wilford didn’t like being talked about. He liked being told he was being talked about even less. “I’m gonna go outside,” he said, getting up. His hands hurt. His face hurt. He didn’t want to be there, but didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He found the back door surprisingly unlocked, and grabbed a lawn chair from the deck and moved it somewhere out of the line of sight from the back door. He sat down and took a moment to just breathe before pulling his cigarettes out of his inventory and lighting one up. It was hard with his hands all messed up, but he managed it without dropping anything. In less than a week, he’d gone from excitedly looking forward to his birthday at the end of the month to wondering what in the hell he was supposed to do when it came. Maybe then, he could track down Walter and get him to change his mind. Or maybe there was another reason for his parents to have left so suddenly. There was a lot of family Wilford had never met back in Korea. Maybe something was going on and this was all a fucked up misunderstanding.
Wilford wasn’t alone for long. Another kid around his age stepped outside and grabbed a chair to come join him under the sad little oak Wilford was hiding under.
“Hey, man,” he said, sitting backwards on the chair.
“You live here, or are you fucked too?” Wilford asked.
“Nah, I live here. Bernice is my mom. She’s a pretty cool lady,” he said. Wilford recognised him, he realised. They’d had a few classes together. Tanner, or something.
“That’s a surprising change of pace,” Wilford said. He crushed out his cigarette and threw the butt behind the tree.
They fell into the sort of silence that felt like there was more to be said, but Wilford wasn’t about to prompt it. He fiddled with the bandage on his hand, prodding at the stitches underneath. Touching it hurt, but in a weird sort of way that made it hard to stop messing with it.
“Is it true you set some dude on fire?” Tanner asked finally.
“Yeah, right after he stabbed me,” Wilford said. It felt justified, even then. He wasn’t going to sit around and let himself get stabbed.
“Damn, man. That’s cold. Or, not. I guess.”
He laughed, and even Wilford couldn’t help but join in. “I don’t like being stabbed,” he said.
“I guess not. It must be a thing, man. When I was in middle school, there was this kid who didn’t like his teacher, so he set him on fire.” Tanner was still laughing, but Wilford couldn’t believe people still talked about that.
“I didn’t set him on fire. I set his desk on fire. He wasn’t even at it,” he said.
Tanner’s laugh took on an entirely different tone. “Seriously?” he asked incredulously.
Wilford shrugged. “Ask your mom. Apparently your uncle talks about me all the time.”
Tanner started cackling. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” he asked.
Wilford shrugged and lit another cigarette. “Yeah, that’s what my shrink says, too.”
He thought Tanner might fall out of his seat. It was so tempting to push him.
The hearing was surprisingly painless. It wasn’t even brought up that Wilford had set a cultist on fire, which surprised him. He thought the judge would try to bring up anything that had even the most remote possibility to fuck him over, but the whole thing lasted less than a half hour. With a few minor hiccups here and there, he’d held to his probation agreement. Graduated high school, and went above and beyond by bagging a scholarship. Records were sealed, and now he was 18 and too old to hang around in the system any longer.
And that was it. There was no grand ceremony or anything. He was no longer the state’s problem.
Bradley met him out in the hall.
“What’s your plan?” he asked.
Wilford shrugged. He had no idea. Part of him had seriously thought he would have been led away in handcuffs. “Try to find a job and wait for school to start, I guess.”
Bradley nodded. He handed Wilford an envelope. “That’s a gift. I suggest you use it on that car of yours, to get it fixed.”
Wilford peered into the envelope. There was a few hundred dollars in cash in there. “Thanks,” he said, not sure what he’d done to prompt that.
“And these guys should be able to help you get going.” Bradley handed him a business card for a nearby shelter. It sounded awful, but it was better than sleeping on the street. “They got a lot of rules. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing. Keep your head down, do what you’re told, and stay out of fights.”
Wilford nodded, and put the card in with the envelope, before slipping both into his inventory. It was getting pretty packed in there, but he didn’t dare keep anything important in his bags.
“And this,” Bradley said. He pulled something out of his own inventory — a brown, leather-bound journal with a fancy fountain pen. Wilford looked down at both of them, and then back up at Bradley. He hadn’t even thought about this detail in all his other worrying.
“You know how to use it?” Bradley asked.
“Yeah.” He opened up the journal to the first page and wrote down the date and time. He didn’t feel any different. He wasn’t even sure he’d done it right, but he closed the journal and slid the pen into the binding before stuffing it into his inventory as well.
Things could only get better from here, right?
He was exhausted, filthy, starving, and had a mountain of homework to finish. Somewhere in between all that, he still had to find the time to start applying for grants. At least he had a few advantages there, judging by how easily Walter found the money to make up for what their parents couldn’t afford. But financial aid came later. First, he had to get something to eat before he did anything else. Knowing everyone else had already eaten without him, Wilford checked the fridge for leftovers, but found none. Either his mom hadn’t felt like cooking a whole lot, or nobody cared to save any for him. Sighing, he started digging through the fridge for something he could turn into dinner. A sandwich was about all he had the energy for, so he dug through the drawers in the fridge for anything suitable for a decent, dinner-sized sandwich. There wasn’t much, but he found some cold cuts and a few vegetables that looked suitable, and started from there.
It wasn’t until he reached for a knife that he realised everything suitable was in the dish washer. There was a clean cleaver in the block, so Wilford grabbed that to slice up his tomato while a few strips of bacon slowly fried on the stove.
“You know Mom doesn’t like you in the kitchen,” Walter said suddenly. Wilford jumped, nearly slicing his thumb off with the giant knife.
“Yeah, well. You fucking pigs ate everything without me,” he said.
“Because you broke your curfew again.” Walter had a stack of mail he was sorting through, probably thinking it made him look smarter.
“I was at school,” Wilford pointed out. He shook his head and started tearing up the lettuce, not really caring how much of a mess he made.
Walter hummed. “Speaking of school, this looks important,” he said, dropping an envelope down onto the counter. Wilford snatched it up and tore into it.
“And I thought you were supposed to call for a ride if you stay past five?” Walter went on. “Should you even be driving in the first place?”
Wilford had stopped listening to him, and only made a vague noise in response. He had to read the letter twice to make sure it was saying what he thought it was saying. Scholarship season had come and gone, and yet here he was being told that he’d been accepted. Someone ahead of him must have got sniped by the major leagues.
“I’m going to Georgetown,” he said, testing out how it sounded out loud.
“Right now?” Walter asked.
“No, stupid.” He handed the letter over to Walter, still expecting to have read something wrong.
“Where are you going?” their mother suddenly shouted. Wilford turned away from the oncoming storm and focused on fixing his dinner. “What are you doing in here? Look at this mess!” she shouted even louder as she walked into the kitchen.
“Nowhere,” Wilford said with a sigh. “I’ll be done in a minute.”
“You’re done right now. Get out.” She tried to shoo him out, but Wilford held his ground, knowing she’d back down first. He dropped a few slices of bread into the toaster and turned to the fridge to find some condiments for his sandwich. His mom fluttered helplessly around the edges of the kitchen, moving quickly out of the way every time Wilford did anything.
“Wil’s got some big news,” Walter said cautiously. Wilford knew this wasn’t the time to bring up any news, but now he didn’t have much choice.
“Goddamnit, Walt.” Their mother shouted something in Korean while Wilford took his bacon off the heat and popped the toaster up a little early. She was probably shouting at him for swearing, but he’d never know. “So, uh. I got a tuition scholarship for Georgetown,” he said.
“How are you paying for the rest?” his mother asked. It wasn’t the answer he’d expected.
“You?” he said. They’d paid for Walter to go to school.
“Not with my money. Who goes to college to play baseball? You go to college to become a lawyer,” his mother said.
It felt like he’d been punched in the face. Their parents had covered everything Walter hadn’t been able to raise. It had never been stated that the same wasn’t going too apply to him.
“You paid for him to go to college to become a fucking farmer!” Wilford shouted, pointing at Walter with the knife.
His mother started shouting in Korean again.
“I don’t know what you’re saying!” Wilford shouted back.
Still shouting in a language she’d never bothered to teach her children to speak, she grabbed the frying pan from off the stove and tossed it into the sink.
“Fuck you too!” Wilford shouted back. He threw the knife at the floor as he stomped out of the kitchen, ignoring his mother’s panicked screeches. He had the distinct feeling she was going to try to kick him out again, so he saved her the trouble and walked out the front door, slamming it behind him. The sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving just enough light for Wilford to see what he was doing as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his inventory. He couldn’t go anywhere. He’d been cutting things close with baseball and the school newspaper, but his probation officer was willing to look the other way. He wouldn’t have been so willing to look the other way if Wilford had left home. And fucking up his parole would absolutely, without fail, fuck up his plans of getting into any college. Not sure what else to do, he sat down on the front step to wait out the war that was no doubt raging without him.
Eventually, the noise inside calmed down, but Wilford still didn’t dare go back inside until the lights had all gone out. He wondered if Walter would be willing to order him something to eat, since going into the kitchen had clearly been the wrong course of action. When the front door opened behind him, Wilford jumped, expecting round two. But instead of his mother, his father stepped out and sat down on the ground beside him.
“You really did it this time.” He handed Wilford a sandwich wrapped in a paper towel. It wasn’t the sandwich he was trying to make, but it was still dinner so he took it.
“I didn’t do anything,” Wilford insisted. He crushed out his cigarette and tossed the butt into the roses.
“If she catches you smoking, she might actually strangle you,” his dad said.
Wilford looked over at him, calculating the chances of being narced on. It was a non-zero chance, but there was an easy way to make it zero. He pulled his pack out and offered his dad one.
They sat in silence for a long moment while Wilford tried not to straight up inhale his food. He got about halfway through the sandwich before his dad spoke again.
“So what’s this about college money?” he asked.
Wilford nodded, more scared than excited over the situation. “I got offered a scholarship. Just tuition and fees, but that’s more than Walter got.”
His dad nodded. “Your record doesn’t get in the way?”
“I’ve been talking to this guy for two years. He’s aware. My grades are good. I’ve stayed out of trouble. I got six weeks to go and it’s all erased and buried anyway.” He could have really fucked everything up before he’d even started high school, but getting that second chance had given him the kick in the ass he needed to get serious. He’d spent four years playing the game, blending in, and finding things he was good at. Granted, what he was good at was being a nosey snoop and hitting things with a stick, but even those skills could be turned into something productive and acceptable if applied correctly.
“I’ll talk to her,” his dad said with a sigh. “She won’t be happy. She’ll want you to get a job.”
Wilford gaped. “Walt still doesn’t have a job.”
“Walter didn’t shoot the neighbour.”
Wilford inhaled deeply. He wasn’t going to shout. Shouting was what got him stuck out on front step to begin with. “She wants me to get a job, while going to school full time, and playing baseball as a fundamental requirement for getting into this school in the first place?” he asked.
His dad only nodded.
“Can we trade the job for therapy?” he asked.
“Would you go?”
“No, but I’d be eighteen. She wouldn’t be able to know better anyway.”
“Wilford,” his dad started tiredly. “Six more weeks. Just behave for six more weeks. Get a job for the summer, and save up some money. Can you do that?”
Wilford shrugged. He didn’t see why he couldn’t. “Yeah, but I think my alternator’s going out. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to save.”
“I’ll fix your car. But you start looking for a job tomorrow,” his dad said.
Wilford nodded. “All right.” He could do that. He hadn’t planned on spending much of his summer at home anyway, since it was going to be his first summer as a free man since middle school. “I have an eight-page essay due on Friday. Am I going to get my head chewed off if I go inside?”
“Go straight to your room,” his dad said, throwing his own cigarette butt into the roses.
Wilford nodded and stood. Six more weeks. That’s all he had to survive, and then it wouldn’t matter as much if he got kicked out.
The game had been rained out. Bad news for the team, but good news for Wilford. He could finish his article and submit it on time. He wasn’t normally the first one home during the baseball season, so he took full advantage of the quiet house. He found a snack in the kitchen and took it to his room to get to work. With internet access becoming more of a common thing, he’d been assigned do to a piece on keeping one’s personal information personal. Which had required quite a lot of research. And since his probation had no stipulations around internet access, he chose to do his research by hanging out in chat rooms and keeping track of how many people offered up details about themselves with minimal prompting. Apparently all it took was typing “asl” and people would hand over a decent amount of info without even thinking twice. In less than an hour, he had several pages of names, ages, birth dates, approximate addresses, pet’s names, and more just using basic conversational chatter. He probably could have opened up a few credit cards with some of the information some of the people he’d talked to willingly shared.
It had already given him ideas for another three pieces for his portfolio. The internet was a weird fucking place. He loved it already.
He was so involved in his project he didn’t even notice how much time had passed until his watch beeped 5pm. Curfew. He hadn’t heard anyone else come home, but assuming he’d just not noticed, Wilford got up to see where everyone was. Walter only had one or two classes a day as he wound down the last requirements for his degree. He should have been stuffing his face and watching TV. But he was not. Nor was their dad back in his office, doing whatever he did back there when he was home. Becoming concerned, Wilford checked the garage. His mother’s car was in the garage, and his was the only car in the driveway. Maybe Walter’s class was a late one. And maybe there was something wrong with his mom’s car too. That wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibilities. There was a lot that could go wrong with four cars.
He went back to his room to work on his article, but it was difficult to focus. He wasn’t supposed to be unsupervised after 5pm. His PO looked the other way for school activities, since being at school meant he was still under someone’s supervision, but his parents knew he was supposed to be home at 5pm normally. Not that he had any raging desires to burn down the house or anything, but this wasn’t a rule he was too keen on breaking. But they probably assumed he’d be out late, playing at the game. Everyone probably thought they had some time to spare.
An hour rolled by, and Wilford was running out of excuses. He got up to find the phone. The cordless phone in the front room had been left off the charger for too long and was dead. Wilford was not allowed in his parents’ room or his father’s office, but he wasn’t left with much choice. He didn’t even think twice about going into his dad’s office to use his phone. First he called the hotel where his mother worked. She hadn’t been in, and hadn’t called with a reason why. Confused, Wilford called the office his dad worked at. He also had not been in, nor had he called. Something was seriously wrong. Wilford tried to figure out how to call Walter, but he didn’t have anywhere he was supposed to have been other than school, and they didn’t exactly give students dedicated lines. Unable to find a way to call his brother, Wilford dialled the only other number he knew. Some fucking judge or social worker was going to try to spin this as his fault somehow, but Wilford didn’t have a choice. He had to call his probation officer.
Twenty minutes later, he sat nervously on the sofa as a pair of uniformed cops searched the house. Officer Bradley stood in the kitchen on his phone, keeping a distant eye on the situation. Wilford didn’t even want to breathe. He’d been doing everything he was supposed to be doing, and somehow he’d still managed to do something wrong. He was about too lose everything, and he didn’t even know why. Five weeks. That’s all he had to survive, and he couldn’t even manage that.
By the time Bradley was done with his call, the uniformed cops seemed to have finished up with whatever they were doing. They talked quietly, so Wilford couldn’t hear what they were saying, eventually coming to some sort of accord. Finally, the uniformed cops left, leaving Wilford alone with his PO.
“There was a game tonight, wasn’t there?” Bradley asked.
Wilford shook his head. “It was rained out so I came home. I’ve got an article due in a couple of days and wanted to work on that.”
Bradley knew Wilford had worked his way up to senior editor with the school paper. It was another activity that kept him at school at odd hours sometimes. He nodded, accepting Wilford’s answer, and sighed. “How are you doing at school? Still planning on college?”
“I was offered a scholarship at Georgetown,” Wilford said.
“Academic, or athletic?” Bradley asked.
“Athletic.” Wilford wasn’t sure why that was important right now. Right up until Bradley swore under his breath.
“What do you know that I don’t?” Wilford asked.
Bradley looked down at his phone and shook his head. “A social worker’s going to be here in about twenty minutes to pick you up.”
“What?” Wilford demanded. “Why? What?”
“Your dad’s car was picked up from the airport about an hour ago. It was parked in the wrong spot. Do you know where they might have gone?” Bradley asked.
Wilford shook his head. “What about Walt? He graduates in two weeks. He wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“We’ll keep looking for him,” Bradley assured. But for now you need to gather up all your stuff. Any important paperwork you’ll need for next month, your homework. We’ll try to make sure you can play out the rest of your season.”
Wilford shook his head again. It didn’t make sense. Where did everyone go? Why had his dad left his car at the airport? Things were going well. Wilford was going to graduate, and then he’d have a few weeks before he turned 18 and got to move on with his life and put all this bullshit behind him.
“You’re… putting me…?” he couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“When we find your brother, you can go stay with him. But you’re not staying here alone.” It was an order. It was the same tone Bradley used when Wilford got too close to crossing a line that couldn’t be ignored. His stupid, awful parents had gone and ruined everything for him. And they had to have known what they were doing. It hurt. Wilford didn’t know why it hurt. It was a strange sort of hurt he’d never felt before — one that threatened to choke him from the inside.
“Go get your stuff,” Bradley said again.
This time, Wilford stood up. Important papers. That came first. He knew that was all kept in his dad’s office, in the cabinet against the wall. The cabinet, it occurred to him belatedly, his dad kept locked.
“Is it breaking and entering if it’s my own house?” he called out.
Bradley walked down the hall to see what Wilford was talking about. He was already standing in front of the cabinet, trying the drawers just in case. They were very firmly locked.
“Not today, and only if it’s your own stuff you take,” Bradley said.
Wilford nodded. His parents kept a crowbar under the bed (in case of intruders, was the spoken reason. He’d always suspected the real reason was in case of Wilford). He walked straight into their room, and found it under his mother’s side. It had been a while since he’d broken into anything like this, but breaking and entering wasn’t exactly a skill that got rusty. He tried the top drawer first, bending the entire casing to render the locks moot. Nothing of use was in the top drawer, so he tried the next one down. That was where his dad kept everything important. Wilford pulled out a few files and handed them over to Bradley so he could verify what was taken. Satisfied, Bradley handed them back so Wilford could stuff everything safely away into his inventory. He thought about keeping the crowbar, but decided to drop it onto the floor instead. He’d need the space for more immediate issues.
“Do I get to take my car?” he asked. “The title’s in my name. It’s mine.”
“Not tonight. You can come get it tomorrow.”
It wasn’t the worst case scenario, but it made packing difficult. Wilford found every gym bag he had and fished out the biggest one to stuff his homework and important gear into. He couldn’t take the computer. He already knew that, but his dad had a huge stack of floppy disks in his office. Wilford rushed back to grab as many of them as he could carry and started transferring everything he had over to them. He could go into school early and work through lunch to get his article done if he needed to. The computer labs were usually pretty empty, but half the computers seemed to always be broken somehow. He just didn’t understand what was going on. Why this? Why now? It was fucking sabotage was what it was.
There were no other fosters in the house Wilford wound up in. The two other kids in the house were the woman’s children. They were about ten years younger than Wilford, so he barely paid any attention to them. The woman, on the other hand, decided to be a complete megabitch right out of the gate. He hadn’t even been there an hour and she’d already started laying into him.
“If you’re not here by 3pm, I’m calling your probation officer.”
Wilford tried to watch TV through her. It wasn’t exactly easy. “If I’m here at 3pm, I lose my scholarship. Fuck that,” he said. Bradley knew Wilford never went home right after class let out. He wouldn’t care anyway.
“Watch your language, young man,” she scolded fiercely.
“Lady,” Wilford said tiredly. “Shut up.”
She slapped him. She actually slapped him so hard across the face, it upset his glasses. Wilford almost stood up and decked her back, but managed to clamp down on that reaction. He glared at her, taking a deep breath as he fixed his glasses. “Don’t. Touch me. Again,” he said. He wondered how much she’d scream if he ripped out a handful of that bleach-blonde hair, or if years of chemical treatment had dulled her scalp entirely.
There was a phone in the kitchen, just outside of his periphery. Calling Bradley so soon had the potential to come off as causing problems, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to stay there a second longer than he had to. Wilford got up and strode purposefully over to the kitchen.
“Don’t you dare,” the lady scolded. Wilford picked up the phone. There was no dial tone.
“The fuck?” he asked.
The lady stomped over and pulled the receiver from his hand. “No phone after five,” she said, slamming it back into the cradle. “In fact, I think it’s time for bed.”
“Gladly,” Wilford said. He just hoped the bedroom door had a lock on it.
He got out of the house early, taking everything he had with him. He stashed what he didn’t need in his various lockers, and what didn’t fit in those in his coach’s office. He’d barely slept the night before, but that was normal. What wasn’t normal was the ball of rage and tension burning inside him. He finished his article in the computer lab, threw himself into all his class reading, and played way too hard out on the field during practise. They had a game the next day, but he wasn’t being as careful as he should have been. He ignored or brushed off questions from teachers and coaches. He just had to make it a few more weeks. He’d go get his car after practise, and maybe he’d feel a little better.
He was prepared to walk the almost two miles home — to what used to be home — to get his car. He even tried to ignore the green car next to the sidewalk, idling ominously. As he tried to walk past, the car drove forward onto the sidewalk, blocking his path.
“Get in,” the lady said. God, he hated her.
“I’m getting my car. Go away.”
“You’re not walking. Get in.”
Wilford knew better, but there clearly wasn’t any room for arguing. Grumbling to himself, he threw the passenger door open and flopped into the front seat. “Kenmore and Mason,” he said flatly.
She pulled out of the school’s parking lot, and immediately took a left.
“It’s the other way,” Wilford said. He looked around, trying to figure out what in the hell was going on. “Are you taking Twenty-nine? The hell are you doing?” This was not the direction he needed to go to get his car.
“It’s faster.”
Wilford looked at her. Was she high?
They got onto the boulevard, and actually started heading in vaguely the right direction, so Wilford settled into his seat. Right until she blew right past the left turn they needed.
“Hey, dumbass. That was your turn,” he said, pointing back toward the intersection.
“No it wasn’t.”
Wilford knew getting into the car had been a bad idea. They weren’t going back toward her house either, though. Wilford grabbed the door handle so he could bail out and hope nobody flattened him, but the door wouldn’t open and the electric locks had been overridden. “Let me out,” he demanded. He pulled on the handle a few more times, hoping to force his way through. When that didn’t work, he turned to try to force the car off the road. The lady had been anticipating this, apparently, because he got a fist right to the middle of his face. She’d definitely broke his nose. He thought he was going to choke, either from the blood or from the sudden shock of everything.
“Shut up or I’ll hit you again,” she said.
Wilford believed it. He didn’t have anything to use as a weapon. He’d left his bat and gear at school in case she tried to take it, and he had no idea what she was hiding.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded. She hit him again.
Eventually, she turned off the highway. The sun was still up, but everything was cast in long shadows, making it hard to see where they were. It wasn’t a part of town Wilford had ever been to before. It was sparsely populated, and nowhere anywhere near a place Wilford wanted to be. They finally pulled off the road to a fenced-off plot of land with a little farmhouse where two men dressed in all black were waiting. The doors to the car unlocked, and one of the men opened the door and pulled Wilford out, dropping him to the ground.
“Someone’s going to be looking for this kid. Look at those shoes,” one of them said, stepping away.
“Nobody’s looking for this kid. He’s a felon.”
Wilford glared up at all three of them. “Fuck you. No I’m not.”
One of the men kicked dust into his face. “Get him inside before someone sees him.”
Wilford was hauled to his feet and dragged into the house. The entire place was gutted out, with exposed floorboards and drywall. There was a light on in the kitchen, but the rest of the house was dark. They dragged him to a room with dark stains all over the walls and floors, appearing black in the light of a kerosene lamp in the corner. A few more black-dressed people, men and women, walked into the room and blocked the door. There was no window, or if there was, it had been covered over to completely obscure it. Aside from the lamp, there was no other source of light.
“Go choke on a donkey dick,” Wilford spat at them all.
A man dressed the same as all the others, but wearing a huge, ornately-decorated gold cross around his neck stepped into the room. The thing looked like some sort of disco ball as the light from the lamp glinted off all the jewels stuck all over the damn thing.
“Good. We can begin,” he said. He stepped close to Wilford and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him up to a sitting position. Wilford tried to pull back, but the man’s grip was painfully strong.
As he held Wilford’s arm at a painful, awkward angle, he began to say something in Latin, chanting the words with a practised precision. Wilford knew what was going on, but the knife still surprised him when the man brought it into the light with his other hand. It glinted in the flame, almost mesmerising for the few seconds before Wilford’s arm was wrenched to the side and the blade driven through his hand. Screaming and trying to pull away, Wilford reached for the lamp on the table. He managed to grab it, and smashed it into the side of the man’s face. Ignited kerosene flew everywhere, lighting the man and everything around him on fire. As everyone ran to get out of the way, Wilford managed to force his way through the crowd and out of the house. He found the front door and ran down the long, gravel driveway toward the road. The gate was still open, so he ran through it and turned back in the direction he thought they’d come from. He was burnt and bleeding and couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t stop. There was another large building off the road a little ways up, and it had a light on. Wilford sprinted toward it, but when he got to the driveway, he found another locked gate. He manged to climb over it, falling gracelessly off the other side and landing face-first into the dirt driveway. But he couldn’t stop. Someone was probably following him. He ran to the building, fighting back the urge to puke, and pounded on the door without stopping. Finally, it opened from underneath him, and he fell back to the ground.
“Holy shit! Claire! Call the cops!” someone shouted above him.
His glasses were broken, but he had a spare pair and contacts stashed away in his gym locker at school. There were matching lines of stitches on both sides of his left hand, and some puffy, red burns on his right. His nose was definitely broken. He was going to have to sit out the rest of the season. But at least he wasn’t going straight back to some shitty foster home. He got to spend the night in the hospital instead.
“I can’t miss school,” he insisted to anyone who would listen. “I have deadlines and I can’t lose my scholarship. I have to go to school.”
Nobody seemed to care.
Bradley arrived just before midnight, after a pair of detectives had come to take his statement. Wilford could barely even remember what happened, let alone explain it.
“The hell were you doing way out there?” Bradley asked. Wilford couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not.
“I didn’t want to go. The bitch beat me up,” he said. “And you put me there with her.”
“I didn’t put you anywhere. But someone’s going to be losing their job over this one, so take that for some vindication,” Bradley said. He sat down in the chair next to Wilford’s bed. “Where’s all your stuff?”
“Stashed it at school. I thought she might take it.” He realised it was a good thing he’d thought to stash it, because she would have probably burned anything he’d left there before she went to grab him after practise. “Why does everything suck? I’m just trying to graduate. What the fuck?”
“Well, the good news is there aren’t any charges against you,” Bradley said. “But fire? Really? Again?”
“I didn’t—” Wilford started. He realised he wasn’t exactly making it difficult for the judge to find a continued pattern of behaviour, but it wasn’t like he had a choice this time.
“Calm down. I told you there’s no charges, even though some of them are trying to say you attacked them. But fuck them, really.” Bradley pulled out a notebook and flipped through a few pages. “So, here’s what’s going on. You’re going to keep your head down. Get an A on all your homework and tests going forward. Tomorrow morning, a uniformed officer’s going to pick up you and take you to school. Then he’s going to pick you up after school and take you to where you’ll spend the next few weeks until you graduate. I’ve vetted this one personally, so don’t worry.”
“I’m worrying,” Wilford said. “I just got fucking sold to a cult, and you’re telling me not to worry? Where’s Walt? Why can’t I stay with him?”
Bradley frowned in a way Wilford didn’t like at all. “You’re a minor, and he didn’t want to assume guardianship.”
Wilford had no idea what to even start to say. So, they’d found him, at least. Wilford figured he wouldn’t have left with his parents, so close to finishing his degree. But he didn’t expect Walter to completely abandon him as well. “Wh… what?” None of it made any sense.
“Get some rest,” Bradley said, getting up. He pulled an envelope out of his jacket and handed it over. “Notes for your teachers tomorrow, but don’t use it as an excuse to start slacking off.”
Wilford took the note and nodded. “Yeah,” he said numbly. How had everything gone so wrong so quickly?
He went to school. He gave his teachers the collection of notes he’d been given. He rather predictably got benched for the rest of the season, but decided it was a blessing in disguise. It would give him more time to study for finals and make sure his grades were as good as they could be. When the end of the day came, he thought he might go sit through practise anyway, but his uniformed friend was already waiting for him. Feeling like arguing with a cop would probably not be the best thing to do, Wilford stashed anything he didn’t need overnight and followed the officer out to the (thankfully unmarked) car. The house he was taken to wasn’t very far from the school — only a few blocks away. He felt like that was a deliberate decision.
They were greeted at the door by a woman with a large smile and even larger dreadlocks. She ushered them inside and insisted that Wilford sit right down. The house was chaos. Too many kids. A man Wilford assumed was the woman’s husband sat at the table helping a little kid with some sort of reading homework. This place seemed a lot more safe than the previous house he’d been sent to, but it still didn’t mean Wilford wanted to be there. Once the officer went on his way, the woman came and sat down in another chair in the living room.
“So you’re Wilford,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Bernice.”
“Who’s been talking about me?” Wilford asked suspiciously. He was starting to hate everything already.
“Darren’s my brother. He talks about all the kids he deals with,” Bernice said. “He’s sure had some interesting things to say about you.”
Wilford didn’t like being talked about. He liked being told he was being talked about even less. “I’m gonna go outside,” he said, getting up. His hands hurt. His face hurt. He didn’t want to be there, but didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He found the back door surprisingly unlocked, and grabbed a lawn chair from the deck and moved it somewhere out of the line of sight from the back door. He sat down and took a moment to just breathe before pulling his cigarettes out of his inventory and lighting one up. It was hard with his hands all messed up, but he managed it without dropping anything. In less than a week, he’d gone from excitedly looking forward to his birthday at the end of the month to wondering what in the hell he was supposed to do when it came. Maybe then, he could track down Walter and get him to change his mind. Or maybe there was another reason for his parents to have left so suddenly. There was a lot of family Wilford had never met back in Korea. Maybe something was going on and this was all a fucked up misunderstanding.
Wilford wasn’t alone for long. Another kid around his age stepped outside and grabbed a chair to come join him under the sad little oak Wilford was hiding under.
“Hey, man,” he said, sitting backwards on the chair.
“You live here, or are you fucked too?” Wilford asked.
“Nah, I live here. Bernice is my mom. She’s a pretty cool lady,” he said. Wilford recognised him, he realised. They’d had a few classes together. Tanner, or something.
“That’s a surprising change of pace,” Wilford said. He crushed out his cigarette and threw the butt behind the tree.
They fell into the sort of silence that felt like there was more to be said, but Wilford wasn’t about to prompt it. He fiddled with the bandage on his hand, prodding at the stitches underneath. Touching it hurt, but in a weird sort of way that made it hard to stop messing with it.
“Is it true you set some dude on fire?” Tanner asked finally.
“Yeah, right after he stabbed me,” Wilford said. It felt justified, even then. He wasn’t going to sit around and let himself get stabbed.
“Damn, man. That’s cold. Or, not. I guess.”
He laughed, and even Wilford couldn’t help but join in. “I don’t like being stabbed,” he said.
“I guess not. It must be a thing, man. When I was in middle school, there was this kid who didn’t like his teacher, so he set him on fire.” Tanner was still laughing, but Wilford couldn’t believe people still talked about that.
“I didn’t set him on fire. I set his desk on fire. He wasn’t even at it,” he said.
Tanner’s laugh took on an entirely different tone. “Seriously?” he asked incredulously.
Wilford shrugged. “Ask your mom. Apparently your uncle talks about me all the time.”
Tanner started cackling. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” he asked.
Wilford shrugged and lit another cigarette. “Yeah, that’s what my shrink says, too.”
He thought Tanner might fall out of his seat. It was so tempting to push him.
The hearing was surprisingly painless. It wasn’t even brought up that Wilford had set a cultist on fire, which surprised him. He thought the judge would try to bring up anything that had even the most remote possibility to fuck him over, but the whole thing lasted less than a half hour. With a few minor hiccups here and there, he’d held to his probation agreement. Graduated high school, and went above and beyond by bagging a scholarship. Records were sealed, and now he was 18 and too old to hang around in the system any longer.
And that was it. There was no grand ceremony or anything. He was no longer the state’s problem.
Bradley met him out in the hall.
“What’s your plan?” he asked.
Wilford shrugged. He had no idea. Part of him had seriously thought he would have been led away in handcuffs. “Try to find a job and wait for school to start, I guess.”
Bradley nodded. He handed Wilford an envelope. “That’s a gift. I suggest you use it on that car of yours, to get it fixed.”
Wilford peered into the envelope. There was a few hundred dollars in cash in there. “Thanks,” he said, not sure what he’d done to prompt that.
“And these guys should be able to help you get going.” Bradley handed him a business card for a nearby shelter. It sounded awful, but it was better than sleeping on the street. “They got a lot of rules. Just keep doing what you’ve been doing. Keep your head down, do what you’re told, and stay out of fights.”
Wilford nodded, and put the card in with the envelope, before slipping both into his inventory. It was getting pretty packed in there, but he didn’t dare keep anything important in his bags.
“And this,” Bradley said. He pulled something out of his own inventory — a brown, leather-bound journal with a fancy fountain pen. Wilford looked down at both of them, and then back up at Bradley. He hadn’t even thought about this detail in all his other worrying.
“You know how to use it?” Bradley asked.
“Yeah.” He opened up the journal to the first page and wrote down the date and time. He didn’t feel any different. He wasn’t even sure he’d done it right, but he closed the journal and slid the pen into the binding before stuffing it into his inventory as well.
Things could only get better from here, right?
