He was eleven when his mother died.

She'd overdosed. While his father sold drugs, his mother took them. Heroin and drugstore aspirin. This was why, later, when he was offered syringes, he declined. He'd ruin his lungs with cigarettes and drink until he passed out, but his mother was a cautionary tale he never told but never forgot.

He was eleven when he left Tulsa. It was on a bus with bars on the windows and filled with his kind. What adults liked to call 'The Wrong Crowd'. A year ago, he'd been scared of them. Now, they were the only place he felt he belonged.

The bus was on its way to a reformatory. There was one closer to home, but Dallas's father chose New York. As far away from him as possible. Dallas had always wanted to go to New York. He just never thought he'd only see it from a glorified prison cell.

Reform school. Ha. Tim Shepard had already been there. Tim Shepard, the most dangerous preteen Dallas knew, had only gotten more dangerous in reform school.

Dallas checked his hair in the glass between the bars. He fidgeted, thinking if he could have one wish granted right now it would probably be for a cigarette. There were no convenience stores to rob in reform school. 'What's the point of a convenience store if it's not convenient', Dallas thought, but said nothing out loud. Someone was whistling in the back. It wasn't any song Dallas knew. Sounded country.

Really, if he could wish for anything, it would be his mother living. She, even drugged-up as she was, wouldn't have let him get sent away on this bus. She would have at least argued to keep him at home. Even if she hadn't won, at least Dallas would know someone cared.

'How come every chair I sit in is so damn uncomfortable?' He shifted again and sighed, letting his head fall back. His neck pressed against the hard plastic of the seat. It was cold against his skin.

He pushed down the inside part of him that was scared out of his mind. Re-froze. This was no time to be a sissy. He was done crying.

Still, a sliver of his cold-hardened heart yearned to be a normal eleven-year-old boy. One who went to normal school instead of prison with a slightly less harsh name. One who was kissed on the head by his living mother and called son by his loving father, a boy who wore his light hair short and liked playing baseball with his friends after his normal school day, a boy who the neighbors called nice, a boy who could grow up happy. A boy who someone loved.

But that was a stupid fantasy. He was real.

Harshly so.

It took approximately three weeks from the time that Dallas Winston entered reform school for him to leave it. It was not an authorized departure. It involved kicking several teachers, breaking a window, and calling the principal a word that would get his mouth scrubbed with heavy duty cleaner had he been caught.

He laughed the whole time he was running away.

It was the last instance he'd laugh for a long time.

New York wasn't like Tulsa.

It was big.

It was humming.

It was unforgiving.

People didn't talk right. Their voices were different and wrong…strangely terrifying. Their eyes were terrifying. They were just people.

It was Dallas who was different.

But he knew he was never going back to reform school. He'd die in the street if it meant keeping his pride. He'd freeze to death as long as no one knew- his reputation would live on and that would be enough.

He would no longer fear these streets. He knew these streets would fear him.

It didn't quite work out the way he'd hoped.

He found a gang. He knew they took him in because of his fighting skill. No pity involved. There was something about Dallas that rejected pity- even skinny and sick-looking and hollow-cheeked, his pride was his defining feature. He knew he was dangerous. He knew he scared the people who saw him.

He knew that what he'd done when he was ten was a stab, and he could do it again on anyone who tried to cross him.

Hurting people wasn't that hard so long as he didn't look into their eyes. When he didn't see their pain, he could pretend he wasn't wrong. Dallas first mugged someone when he was eleven-and-a-half, and that was when he learned that guilt had to be swallowed down alongside tears. He bought himself satisfaction with the crumpled money he held in his hands after his attacks, greenish paper against pale and dirty skin. Bloodstains in his clothes and behind his eyes when he closed them were a fair enough price to pay in exchange for a meal, or at least that's what Dallas led himself to believe.

He told himself he was doing okay. He slept at allies' (he had no friends) places and sometimes even stayed in a motel for a night when he'd saved up the money. It was the closest he came to luxury- taking hot showers and sleeping in beds with mattresses and clean sheets. It was frivolous but he thought if he didn't give himself at least one bit of real pleasure, he'd lose his mind.

He ate acceptably for his circumstances. He was thin and his clothes all hung off him in a way that suggested malnutrition, but he never came close to starving. Dallas was doing as well in New York as an eleven-year-old on his own could.

If nothing else, Dallas Winston was smart. He didn't go to school, but he learned far more in the streets of New York City than he ever could in a classroom.

His problem was how alone he felt. He talked himself out of it. Wishing for someone to stroke his hair and tell him he'd be okay after he first broke ribs in a fight, when he first coughed blood onto the pavement, was weakness.

On the coldest nights, when winter came, he convinced himself he wasn't cold. Walking down the street in his worn-out sneakers, past the department stores advertising Christmas presents and happy families, Dallas didn't cry because he knew the tears would freeze in his eyes.

When he was twelve, he found a puppy.

It was curled up, a little puppy in a big box on the side of the street. He knew he couldn't keep it- he lived without a home, he could barely feed himself, and sometimes he slept under the balconies of apartment buildings, thirty feet above him.

But the dog was so small. It looked at him with the biggest, darkest eyes he'd ever seen. It was pleading- and Dallas usually hated beggars, but this…its ribs were showing, and for the first time in months he felt a spark of…compassion.

It let out a weak whimper.

He couldn't stop his heart from breaking just a little.

He reached into the cardboard box and pulled out the tiny creature. It had dark fur that matched its eyes and Dallas could feel each one of its bones. He cradled it to his chest, not even caring if someone he knew were to drive past. It was shivering.

"It's okay, baby." He whispered to it. "I'm gonna get you somewhere safe."

Talking to a dog. Living on the streets must have sent him off his rocker. But the puppy looked sad and small and Dallas thought if he didn't talk to it then who would? As long as he didn't give it a name it would be fine.

He tucked the slightly squirming puppy underneath his oversized jacket to keep it warm, then began to walk, stopping every once in a while to give it a reassuring stroke to the head. For all he knew, this dog could have rabies or some other disease dogs carried. He shouldn't be doing this.

Halfway to his current living situation- the cellar of a fellow gang member's house (spider-infested but better than outside), he realized how crazy he was being. A dog? He felt bad for a puppy? What was he thinking? He was Dallas Winston, the twelve-year-old killer (who'd technically never killed anyone but he was good enough in fights that people assumed he had). Compassion, caring… these were things he'd left behind years ago when he first made the choice to be a hood. And yet here he was, holding a puppy to his chest in an attempt to keep it warm.

He pulled the tiny body out of his jacket with intention to drop it on the ground and walk away. But its eyes caught him again- those longing, inky pools, and another pang of sympathy rushed through him like hunger.

He couldn't keep it. That was an impossibility. But there was an animal shelter across the street…maybe someone could adopt the poor thing and give it someplace decent to live. A real home.

Dallas walked the two blocks to the animal shelter and took a deep breath before pushing the door open. A bell jingled cheerily, causing him to flinch. He wouldn't admit that he was nervous coming in here. How bad he looked was an apparent fact even after not having looked in a mirror for months. He was obviously a hoodlum, and he could be chased out for that. There was the added threat of one of his fellow gang members seeing him soft. That might have been a greater fear.

The woman behind the counter looked surprised to see him- but anyone would be. Dallas was an odd sight, having not yet hit puberty but still being intimidating even when he was looking pointedly down at the holes in his sneakers.

"Can I help you?" She said, more politely than he'd expected.

"Um." Dallas said. His own voice tasted strange in his mouth. Suddenly too young and too hard for that youth. "Um." He said again, banishing his unsure tone. "The sign on your door said you accepted donations."

The woman's eyebrows rose until Dallas couldn't see them under her bangs. "Why, yes," she said, "would you like to make one?"

Dallas took the tiny puppy from his jacket and set it on the counter. He said, "Make sure it gets a good home."

He turned around and ran out of the shelter before the woman could comprehend what had happened, leaving the bells jingling behind him.

The chest part of his jacket felt empty without the warmth of the puppy next to his heartbeat. He pushed away thoughts of its big black eyes and went to find a street fight he could join.

Hurting people was a lot easier than caring now.