When you grew up in a place like I did you will do anything to just get away, anything to just leave it all behind. Most of the kids in my neighborhood, who got out, just went to bigger cities, to join gangs, sell drugs, or do good knows what else. See the thing is if you're a thug or into drugs, like most of the kids in my neighborhood, you can only stick in one place for so long, with out being arrested and doing serious time.
Yet their where always the locals, the kids that thought they were bad shit in high school and decided to just keep it going on after graduation, if they even made it that far. The number of kids from my neighborhood who actual graduated high school is less then there are on a football team, with the majority of them being girls. Girls, who even after they graduate, don't do anything with their lives, except find their own thug, get married (maybe) and pop out a crack addicted baby. "Always keep hope, look for the best in people and try everything just to better yourself", that's want mom always told me. Yet in a city where, guns, money, drugs and being able to kill with out a second thought, is what you need to survive, it is hard to see the hope, its hard to think that there is something better in life, something more then this, it's even harder when you're a MERCER.
You either love them or hate them, or your just so scared of them you can't even form an opinion about them, in fear of it being one that they would disprove of. They were known as the Mercer brothers, they were feared by most, and for good reason to, from what I have heard. Yet to me they were just, Bobby, Jerry, Angel, and Jackie, they were the mercer brothers, my brothers. They were all older then me, even Jackie was 5 years my senior. Bobby was 10 years older then I, Jerry 8 and Angel was 6 years. We were all adopted by the ever loving and generous Evelyn Mercer, apparently all the lost causes of the foster system, so messed up that no one would take us in so she did. This is the only part that I never liked about being part of a family, you get labeled. My brothers where all lost causes, as some may say. They all came from a background that had all kinds of issues. They had problems before they could even walk. Evelyn took them in because she never thought anyone was beyond saving, no one was beyond hope.
I was different though I wasn't a lost cause; I had no dark past. I was normal, I lived a normal life, my parents loved me, and life was good, not perfect but good. Yet nothing good can ever last forever. My parents died in a car accident when I was 6 years old. Evelyn took me in not because I was a lost cause, but because the other four where. They needed to have a little sister, they needed to have someone to protect and take care of, and Evelyn always wanted to have another girl in the house. They used me, even 11 years later, they use me, and all of them have always used me. Used me to give themselves purpose and direction in life, even after Evelyn died they still used me. I was their innocent in a world that was dark and corrupted, yet they were killing me, slowly but surly without even knowing it they were killing me. I needed to escape, needed to escape the "Mercer brothers", even if they were the only thing that I loved in the world. I would have to give up what I loved to survive, for if I stayed I would surely die. Die because of my brothers, the notorious "Mercer Boys".