'Cause if you never leave home, never let go
You'll never make it to the great unknown till you
Keep your eyes open, my love
So tell me you're strong, tell me you see
I need to hear it, can you promise me to
Keep your eyes open, my love
Keep Your Eyes Open, NEEDTOBREATHE
I pressed my forehead against the chilly window of the car and sighed. My breath formed condensation on the glass, so I drew a smiley face in it. That's not right, I thought, and scratched it out.
"Are we there yet?" I asked the social worker driving the car.
"No, boy," she spat.
"My name is Anthony, ma'am," I reminded politely, because she might have forgotten, and my dad used to tell met hat it's best to be polite when you're reminding people of your name. And I told her as brave as I could, because my dad always told me to be brave. But I wasn't that brave, because it's kind of hard to be brave when you know your social worker hates your guts.
"Does it look like I care?" Mrs. Peyton grunted. "Because I don't. Damnit!"
The car swerved around a stalled truck and my face smashed into the window, hard. "Ouch," I whispered quietly. When I brought my hand to my face, I could feel a hot bruise already rising under the skin. I rested my face against the window and drifted off to sleep.
What felt like a minute later, Mrs. Peyton was dragging me roughly out of the car. I tripped over the curb and fell flat on my face on the pavement. Mrs. Peyton laughed and hauled me up by his shirt collar. She took me around to the driver's side of the car and stood menacingly in front of me.
"Boy, this is your last chance. You mess up, you're headed nowhere fast. Do. You. Understand. What. I. Am. Saying?" She punctuated each word in her last sentence with a rough smack on the face.
"Yes, ma'am," I managed to squeak out. Mrs. Peyton had always handled me roughly, but she had never smacked me around before I got delivered to my newest home.
"Walk," she commanded.
I hefted the half-full garbage bag with my possessions and trudged up the steps to the Craftstman-style house. Behind me marched Mrs. Peyton.
"Hey, Tony," the man at the door greeted. "Wait a damn minute, is that blood?"
I brought a hand to my face again and looked at it wide-eyed when it came back red. "I—"
"Did you do this?" the man asked Mrs. Peyton, voice trembling with barely-controlled fury.
I watched detachedly as Mrs. Peyton landed some last punches to my face and sprinted down the steps. However, she was unable to outrun who I assumed who was my new foster father. I nearly fainted when the man body-slammed Mrs. Peyton into the grass and pulled out – wait, were those handcuffs? I let out a tiny giggle as the man pulled out a flip phone from his pocket and yelled into it.
About ten minutes later, a dark sedan pulled up. Two women and a man emptied out of it. The women moved over to me. I shrank back into the corner of the porch, not trusting the new faces.
"Hey, hey," one said. "We're not here to hurt you."
"That's what they all say," I said sarcastically.
The women looked at each other.
"I'm Kate Todd and this is Ziva David. We work with Gibbs," the first woman introduced.
"Who's Gibbs?" I asked suspiciously.
"He's the one handcuffing your bitch of a social worker," said Kate.
I giggled. "I never liked her."
"You had good reason not to," Ziva said. "She woke up on the wrong side of the couch."
Kate put her head in her hands. "Bed, Ziva. Wrong side of the bed. She's Israeli, Tony."
"Oh."
"Okay, ladies," the man said, striding up the porch. "Go back to the office with McGee and get her processed. I can handle this."
"Okay, boss. We'll let you know what happens. And this is Tony," Kate answered. "Bye, Tony. We'll see you soon."
"Hey, Tony. I'm Gibbs, your foster father. How do you feel?" Gibbs asked me, bending down to peer in my eyes.
I waved goodbye to Kate and Ziva. "I can't see out of my right eye, sir."
Gibbs squinted. "Yeah, you got a helluva shiner there. Let's get you inside and cleaned up. And don't call me sir. I work for a living."
I allowed myself to be led into the house by Gibbs. I sat down on a wooden chair at the kitchen table. I set his garbage bag down next to me.
Gibbs returned with a wet cloth and a bandage. "So, I guess we should probably get to know each other if we're gonna be living together for a while, huh? I'm sorry if this is making you uncomfortable, bud. This is the first time I've had a kid in a long while."
"I'm Tony. I'm twelve."
"That's it?"
I glanced up. "You want to know more?"
"Yes. Hold still," Gibbs responded, dabbing at the sluggishly bleeding cut.
"Ouch," I winced. It wasn't a bad cut, but it stung bad.
"Sorry, bud; I know it hurts. You like sports at all? I used to play growing up."
I brightened. Sports are my absolute favorite. "Yeah, a ton! Baseball is my favorite, then football, and also basketball sometimes, but I haven't played basketball in a while, and I was never really good at it. I'm the best at baseball."
"I never really baseball played past junior high," Gibbs told me, sealing a bandage over the cut. "Football was more my thing."
"I love, love, love baseball a lot."
Gibbs chuckled.
I deflated suddenly as a thought struck me. What if Gibbs doesn't let me play? I never thought of that. Aw, crap.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, sorry," I panicked. How can he read me like that?
Gibbs walked back over from the sink where he had been washing his hands and stood in front of me. He tipped my chin up. "Tony."
"Your hands are cold," I deflected.
"Stop evading the question," Gibbs said firmly.
"I was just, uh, wondering if you were, uh, going to let me play baseball and stuff."
Gibbs blinked. "Why wouldn't I? If you want to play, I shouldn't stop you, right?"
"Well, it's just that some of my other foster families didn't really care about what I wanted because they were too busy knocking me around to ever ask," I replied. "So I just thought this would be the same. You know, nice on the first day and then bad after that. You know the deal."
The same cold fury that had been tinting Gibbs' voice when he confronted Mrs. Peyton rushed back. "You had other families that… beat you?" he asked icily.
"I wouldn't really call it beating, Gibbs," I said calmly, evidently too calmly for Gibbs' tastes.
"What did they do to you, Tony?"
"Um... that's classified?"
"Hey."
"Well, mostly just, uh, I guess, punched me, maybe? I think there were a few kicks involved." I unconsciously brushed a hand over some still-tender ribs. "Yeah, definitely some kicking."
Gibbs closed his eyes, clenched his fists, and started sucking in real deep breaths. I closed my eyes, hung on to the side of the chair, and tried to stop the world from spinning.
I squinted trying to remember. "There was this one family who I think directly descended from the devil. They really, really hated me for some reason. I don't even remember what I did most of the time, but I guess it was pretty bad for them to try to drown me sometimes. The worst was when I screwed up somehow one day and the dad, maybe, tossed me down the basement stairs. Knocked me out cold. That's when Mrs. Peyton took control and got me out of there, before she turned nasty." I paused in contemplation. "That sucked."
I watched in despair as Gibbs suddenly launched himself away from the table. You've really done it this time, Anthony, I thought. Almost had a decent first day. But no, you had to go and ruin it forever, and wait is that throwing up I hear? Great job, Tony, you made him throw up.
I got up from my chair and raced to the bathroom. I nearly vomited myself when I saw Gibbs bent over the sink, heaving.
"Hey, bud," Gibbs said hoarsely.
"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry," I whispered, pleading for Gibbs not to come over and whack me into next year. "I didn't mean to, I promise. Please believe me, please. I really didn't mean to."
Gibbs stood up quickly from the sink and rinsed his mouth. He strode quickly toward me.
I shrank back, expecting a thrashing for making Gibbs throw up.
Instead, Gibbs gathered me into a tight and fierce hug, rocking me back and forth. I willed myself not to cry, but ultimately lost the battle, crying into Gibbs' shirt as warm and strongarms encircled me and made me feel safe for the first time in what felt like an eternity.
"I promise you will never ever have to go through that again, Tony," Gibbs whispered in my ear. "Never."
I knew, just by the way he said it, that he wasn't lying, and he really wanted me here, and he wasn't gonna hurt me. And as soon as I knew that, it felt like a huge cloud had just come away and now the sky was blue and we could finally get back to playing some ball.
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Hey guys! I hope you like this story, and I hope to be updating my other stories soon. Thank you for understanding!