A/N: Hmm...I think this chapter is a little random. You be the judge, I guess.
Chapter Four:
In Which John Gets Robbed
The attic was just as cold as Andrew said it would be and dusty enough that John spent a good part of the night sneezing. He didn't sleep very well, but he was glad that he was at least under a roof. By the time he woke up, school had already started, so he snuck quietly out the window and decided to just hang around for the rest of the day.
It was the time of the year just after winter and right before spring, when the ground was dry but the weather was chillingly windy, and it would only get worse before it got better. John went to an arcade so he could stay indoors. He didn't play any games, however; he only had twenty-three dollars and nineteen cents, and food wasn't cheap.
He wondered if this really did make him homeless. It was a strange thought.
No matter what, he wasn't going back. Those people hated him; they wanted him dead, and John sure as hell wasn't about to give them that pleasure.
He had never felt ashamed about his family before; he had always demanded pity from anyone who knew about his home life. In the hardest times, pity was the only form of kindness to hope for. But after that Saturday, pity became such a trivial, undeserved thing compared to people like them. They deserved pity. John deserved to go shrivel up in a corner and die sometimes, because he always treated people the same way that his parents treated him.
Brian wanted to kill himself – John was afraid to die. Andy was trapped by the people he loved most – John was free and defiant. Alison was treated like a ghost – John was treated like a warlord. Claire felt hopeless and pointless even though everyone loved her – John was…John was…
Claire.
There were some things he just couldn't think about.
Before that Saturday she was just a stuck-up beauty queen, and John thought he deserved so much better. Now he felt inferior next to her, like she was too great to even consider. He was shit compared to her.
(He couldn't forget when she had come into the closet with a look on her face like she was made only for him. No one else had ever looked at him like that before, and maybe, in the end, that's what made her so special.)
He stayed at the arcade until they kicked him out for loitering. And that wasn't fucking fair.
For lunch he went to 7-11 and bought a couple of those coconut ball things, which tasted pretty disgusting but were relatively cheap and made him not-hungry. Then he went to the park and took a nap on a bench (good god – he was homeless) for about an hour. It was freezing, but it passed the time.
The reason he woke up, however, wasn't the cold.
"Hey, Johnny," said someone. It was a woman.
Shit.
John opened his eyes and sat up. "Hey – uh – " He wished he could use his sleepiness as an excuse as to why he couldn't remember her name. (Even with girls he had run into a hundred times, he was never good with their names.)
She was dressed in a long fur overcoat that was open enough to reveal a lacy undergarment and a bit of her chest. John blinked a few times before his eyes moved to her face.
"Uh…Linda?"
"Miranda," she corrected. "Close enough."
"Right," he mumbled."
"Sure is chilly. What brings you to the park bench, Johnny? Aren't you supposed to be in school?"
"Aren't you supposed to be working?" he asked. "Does this look like a dark alley to you? Your customers aren't gonna know how to find you."
"I was taking my dog for a walk" – John took note of the obvious lack of canine – "and saw you lying around, so I thought I'd come and get the rest of my money."
John was taken aback. "Hell no!"
"Oh, come on, Johnny," she said, grinning. "Do we have to go through this every time?"
"I already paid most of it, bitch," he snapped. "That's not fucking fair. You fooled me; I was drunk and you failed to tell me that you were for sale – "
"I'm not asking what's fair. I'm asking for my money."
"It's kind of a bad time."
Miranda let out a long sigh. "I thought you might say that. It's not very considerate of you, Johnny; you have to remember what I'm going through too, you know. You think it's all good times for me?"
"Kiss off."
"Fine. But just to let you know, you're too deep of a sleeper."
John swore at her as she walked away, secretly breathing a sigh of relief that she was giving up so easily. He watched the back of her fur coat get farther and farther away until it disappeared, and he thought about how she was such bad luck and that she was just like every other girl. Whore or not, they all had their fun with him and then treated him like he owed them something.
(Sometimes, though, he thought that it was better than being completely ignored. He'd caught Claire staring a few times, but she'd still neglected to speak to him at all.)
The thought to check his money didn't occur to him until Miranda was completely out of sight. He shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out…
One dollar and a nickel.
John swore and kicked the side of the bench, but that just made his foot hurt.
--
A/N: Y'all review now.