He was planning on running away that night, totally. I mean he had completely had it with his dad being abusive and all. I mean, hit with belts and shit? Punched and kicked and everything? That just completely sucks. But he didn't end up running away that time. You know the time I mean. It was like the first week of ninth grade or something. Yeah. That's when it was.
He'd been sort of planning on running away with Angela, his little sister that his dad said he couldn't see. Angela was like five or something, and her dad was his step-dad, Joey. Joey married his mom after she split, leaving him with Albert, his crazy abusive dad. Then his mom died like three years later or something, or four years later, I don't know. Three years before ninth grade, anyway. Anyway, he was going to run away to British Columbia with her but Joey stopped them and yelled at him so he went back home.
Craig was like so desperate then, let me tell you. It was this kind of angry despair. He didn't see any way for the whole abuse deal to stop unless he took off. He had a bunch of dough his dad gave him to buy a new camera since he broke Craig's camera in the first place. He broke it when he was kicking the shit out of him. Anyway, he planned on using that money to run away and even tried to get more money, telling his dad the camera he really had wanted was like a hundred dollars more. But his dad didn't bite. He said he'd go with him to the place and haggle with the guy, which of course ruined Craig's sweet plan of getting like a hundred more dollars.
Okay, so at that point Joey calls and tells Albert how he saw Craig with Angela at the park and blah, blah blah. So Albert gets pissed. Like super pissed super fast and Craig sees it, of course he does. Because that kind of pissed off-ness means a beating. Abused kids are pretty keyed into the whole cue thing, you know. Anyway, he wanted to run upstairs and pack some shit, lock his like twenty locks he had on that bedroom door and escape like right out the window. It was a second floor bedroom but there was one of those overhang things that was like the roof of the porch so he could climb down that way and not like break his leg or something.
Well, his dad blocked the stairs and grabbed him by the shirt, he was all calm on the phone with Joey, he sounded real calm like nothing was wrong and he hung up the phone and then he like beat the living shit out of Craig. Beat him like a red headed step child, Jesus, I never seen anything like it. The bruises on that kid, they were like beyond black and blue. He could hardly move. He stayed home half that week with the excuse of being sick. The kid was new, no one knew him except Sean, a little. And people get sick. It's reasonable. Except he wasn't sick. He could hardly even move. He was pissing blood. He cracked a rib for sure, but his dad just taped it, couldn't bring him to the hospital.
So that night or the next night, I'm not sure which, but I know Craig was like in extreme pain on his bed, just lying there. His dad comes in and he gets all tensed up, all nervous. His dad says that things will be fine and get better if he just starts obeying the rules. The rules include not seeing Joey and Angela and being home on time and doing well in school and keeping the house neat and a bunch of other shit. He told Craig he was really sorry about "losing his patience" is how I think he put it, and that it wouldn't happen again, he promised. He'd promised that before but Craig kind of still believed him, or he wanted to believe him. And that beating was so bad that he was scared to try to run away again.
Avoiding Joey and Angela was kind of tricky in a way. He had to avoid Emma and Manny, because Emma babysat Angela and her mom was friends with Joey so you never knew, he might run into them that way. And Manny being Emma's best friend, well, you know. He hung out with Sean, being careful not to let on that anything was remotely wrong.
School wasn't going all that well. He was too uptight all the time, too wound up. He didn't really know what to say to anybody, and it's not like he'd want to invite them over anyway. But he ended up making a few friends, being talkative sometimes and ignoring the whole, "my home life sucks" thing. Emma ended up being a bit of a problem. She kept inviting him over and he kept saying no, and she'd say how Angela would be there and everything and he finally had to tell her point blank, "look, Emma, I can't, okay. I just can't," But she looked at him all critical and was like, "I know your dad doesn't want you to see Angela, but why?" And he'd squirm and lick his lips and look down and admit that he didn't know, that's just the way it was.