Ok, I'm stupid. I posted the wrong chapter. Ok, here's the REAL chapter five, "I'm a Loner"
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I buy enough to eat and gamble. I sell my papers alone, every day.
I'm a loner.
I don't have many good friends. I'm afraid to let anyone too close.
I'm a loner.
It's gambling that got my father in trouble, too. One day he bet too high, and couldn't pay.
I'm a loner because my father is an idiot.
But my father didn't die before he'd already paid off a few of his debts. One of them being to a very rich man with no children.
I'm a loner and an orphan, no matter what that bastard says.
My father had run out of money that night, and so the man suggested another way of payoff.
I'm a loner because my father is a fucking retard.
My dad sucked at poker. He really did. But he seriously thought he could win this one. It was double or nothing—he got back twice as much as everything, or he lost everything.
I'm a loner because my father sucks at poker.
You wanna know what my dad lost?
I'm a loner because my father bet his son to regain his salary, and he lost royally.
I can't believe he did that, even today. He bet his own son! And he couldn't even play a decent game of poker. Not like me, but even I'm nothing compared to Spot. I assume you want to know the name of the guy who now owns me.
I'm a loner because of George Conlon.
Yeah. Conlon. Same night he won me (I was only three years old) his wife got pregnant. So he waited a few years to take me so he could make sure his adorable baby boy, Nicholas, would be safe and ok. Then when I was seven, he came back to demand my father give me what he had won, fair and square. My father was out gambling, and the only one home was little seven-year-old me.
I'm a loner because of that night.
I was kidnapped, without care to my feelings or physical condition. All Mr. Conlon cared about was getting the hell out of there before daddy got home. He needn't have bothered. Dad rarely comes back before midnight, and it wasn't even sundown.
I'm a loner because my brother is Spot Conlon.
Spot never asks for help from anybody. I'm not going to be shown up by my little brother.
I'm a loner because whenever anyone gets close to me, they're taken away.
It happened with my dad. I was just starting to forgive him for losing me in a bet, and I was kidnapped. Then, when I was about thirteen and Spot was ten, he ran away. I had just started feeling like he was my brother. And when Alicia Conlon was just starting to treat me as her son, she died from her husband's abuse.
I'm a loner because everyone I truly value dies or endures daily pain.
My adoptive father still beats me, sometimes. But mostly he's preoccupied with Spot, since Spot lives in Brooklyn, whereas I'm in Manhattan. He'd be even worse with me if I stayed in Brooklyn.
I'm a loner because if anyone finds out the truth, they'll all laugh.
I know it. Even the few I consider friends, Kid Blink and Mush, they would look at me and they wouldn't see me as another person, they would see me as a thing, because I was bet and won like just any old pocket watch. They wouldn't see Racetrack Higgins-Conlon. They would see a betting chip.
I'm a loner because I'm Racetrack Higgins, and Racetrack Higgins sticks to the races and the jockeys.
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Ok, the ending needs work. But it's another chapter!
