Okay you guys! This is big! Get a drink, find a comfortable position, play some tunes, I've written an eighteen thousand word chapter about Alexander's first ever foster home. Tbh, 13 year old Alex is freaking adorable. This is taking a break from the rest of the story but the next chapter will be back on track. This is my Christmas present to you guys.
There are some OC's in this, but Ned is taken from history. He was Hamilton's childhood friend and possibly his brother. Though in this, they're just friends. There's some Spanish and French too, some isn't translated just because it wasn't super necessary to. Just, 'Au clair de la lune' means in the moonlight, yeah?
Trigger Warnings: Parental death, panic attacks, child abuse, starvation, very brief mention of self harm, bullying/ fighting, anxiety, depression, overdosing, swearing.
Merry Christmas!
His duffel bag is heavy, weighed down by the books he couldn't bring himself to leave behind. The ones that didn't sustain too much water damage, or just float away like bodies downstream.
Mrs. Newson's heels click against the wood of the stairs, he watches them as he walks behind her, the under-soles are a dark, murky burgundy.
They approach the landing, some boys stick their faces cautiously out from behind doors and some stand on the thresholds of their own rooms, most are his age, some a little older. All though, are hard looking, tense and hollow-cheeked.
"There are around two dozen boys here, twelve sleep in this corridor, twelve in the next. We room two at a time, so you'll be sharing. This won't be a problem, I hope."
Mrs. Newson's last words, they weren't a question. Alexander isn't going to protest this.
His room is right at the end of the corridor. In the doorway, a tall, pale boy with wiry arms and conker brown hair stands. His arms are folded, he wears jeans and a tattered looking brown sweater.
"This is Ned Stevens. He's fourteen, been here five months. Drop your stuff, Alexander."
Alex hastens to obey, stepping past Ned quickly, pressing himself up against the wall so he doesn't hit the boy and dropping his bag at the foot of the bunk bed.
"Ned, if I hear of any bad behaviour, any fights, you'll both be eating leftovers for a week. And if he starts anything, come straight to me."
Alex shifts uncomfortably at these words, his eyes cast down on the floor. Ned moves slightly backwards and exhales a quiet, "yes, ma'am."
Mrs. Newson nods once and turns around, clicking back down the corridor and retreating down the stairs.
Instantly, every boy in the corridor turns to him. They scramble over each other, vying to come close to him, the taller ones crane their necks to watch him curiously.
"Where have you come from?"
"Do you have any food?"
"How old are you?"
"Is this your first home?"
"Are your parents dead?"
"Why is your hair so long?"
Alex starts somewhat, stepping away from the noises, nearly tripping backwards over his duffel bag and reflexively shoving his hands in his pockets, squeezing the fabric hard.
"I... I just turned thirteen."
One boy, he's maybe fourteen or so with sandy blond, elastic hair, looks him up and down in vague distaste, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.
"You have an accent. Where are you from? You don't look American."
Alexander shrugs and digs his hands further into his pockets, subconsciously taking another step backwards.
He's not learnt much about American culture, bar the fact that Americans don't like people like him, people that are from where he is. James told him that, maybe a year or two ago. He remembers asking James what he meant when he said 'people like them'.
James had waved his hand knowingly, as though he was extremely knowledgeable in such matters and said, "'people who eat ajilimójili or... have dark skin.'"
Alex remembers thinking that he wouldn't be very popular in the States, because everything his mom had cooked with ajícitos, he'd loved, and in the summer, his skin goes as dark as the smooth, brown stones that James taught him to skip at the beach.
"I'm from the... The Caribbean."
The boys regard him for a few moments when he says this. Some look a little distasteful, the older ones mostly, the younger ones look slightly awed and one boy, he stands a little taller than average, though he can't be the oldest, looks positively delighted. He has dark skin and a lithe sort of body, with teeth that gleam white against his complexion.
"You're- you're from the Caribbean? Where?"
Alex prays, hopes to God that this boy is from Nevis, even Saint Kitts. He's not seen him around before, doesn't recognise his face, but then again, he and his family were outsiders on the island. They weren't exactly accepted by everyone.
"Nevis."
The boy's smile fades and his looks at his feet, shrugs and pulls a face.
"Haiti."
Alex shrugs and puts his hands back in his pockets. Haiti, it's pretty far from Nevis against the scale of the Caribbean. A bigger island, more people. Then the boy speaks again.
"Tu parles français?"
You speak French?
"Ce n'est pas mon premier langue, alors, c'est compliqué... Mais je le parle."
Uhh, It's not my first language, well, it's complicated, but I speak it.
The Haitian boy looks delighted, Alexander is about to ask for his name when another boy stood in front of him pushes him aside, shoving to get closer to Alex. This boy is maybe fifteen or sixteen, he's the tallest of the lot and teenage skinny, with long limbs and a defined Adam's apple.
"Do you have any food?"
Alexander steps back a little and shakes his head, slightly nervous. He's never really trusted boys his own age, or ones a little older than him. In middle school on Nevis, they'd always push him around the place.
"No... No, I don't."
The taller boy frowns and jabs a finger at his chest, backing him a little closer to the wall and staring at him with clear, grey eyes.
"Listen, there's a system around here about food. You share any extra you get. It doesn't matter if it's a candy bar from Dev or an orange. Oldest gets first dibs, you get what's left."
Alexander frowns, a million thoughts all race through his brain at once. Voicing them all seems unwise and time-consuming, so he asks his most pressing ones.
"Who's Dev?"
The older boy sighs and itches at a spot below his lip.
"Caretaker. Gives us food sometimes."
Alex nods, still frowning.
"Doesn't seem very fair though, what about the younger kids? What if—"
The boy takes a handful of his shirt and pulls him forward so that they're looking at each other eye to eye. Alexander yelps somewhat and stumbles, nearly losing his balance.
"That's the system. It ain't gonna change."
Alexander gulps, says nothing.
"Keep talking shit like that, I'll make sure you don't get any food here for a week. All of us is hungry enough as it is, no one cares if some new kid doesn't get meals."
Alexander bites back the urge to correct the boy's grammar. His English is patchy, to say the least, but even he knows it's 'all of us are'.
The older boy lets him go and everyone retreats back to their rooms, silent. Ned looks him up and down, indifferent. At least he's not pinning Alexander to a wall, but he's not exactly welcoming him either. Well, it's not like Alex expected a party anyway.
"Dinner will probably be ready in about half an hour. It's Sunday so we just do what we like. As long as we're quiet and stay out of Mrs. Newson's way, we're fine."
Alexander nods, a little taken aback by the chaos of the last few moments.
"Who was that? The tall one?"
Ned looks up from where he's rearranging a few meagre possessions on the bedside table. There's only one and he's got all his stuff out on it. Where will Alex put all his books?
"That was Jason. He'll be sixteen soon."
Alexander nods, moving towards his bag, beginning to unpack. He can only take out some of his clothes and all his books have to remain in the duffel, the room's too small for both his and Ned's things.
He decides that there are more pressing matters to deal with than space and pulls off his coat. It's at least three sizes too big. His mom says—said that he'd grow into it, he hopes she was right. If he does he'll grow to be about six feet tall.
He doesn't want to think about his mom any longer though, he'd much rather find something else to occupy his thoughts. Unfortunately, there's not much in this place that seems to inspire much interest in him and the books in his bag are so well read, the edges of the pages are slightly worn where he's thumbed through them.
But he takes one out anyway and opens it to the most recent page, stroking the paper sadly where it's creased and stained with dirty water. Ned watches him curiously for a moment before starting towards the door.
He opens it, his footsteps retreat down the hall and then Alex hears his voice greet someone further down the corridor.
Finally, he is alone.
It's only on the third night that he has his first dream. He hates them, he positively despises these dreams. Ever since the hurricane, they've generally taken on that sort of theme. It's always the same. He'll hear the sound of debris; corrugated iron, tree bark, branches, hitting the roof, breaking a downstairs window.
Then he'll see the body of an old man floating face down on what used to be the street outside, puffy with decay, purple lips and wild hair.
The dream sometimes culminates there, but if that's not enough to wake him in a cold sweat, he'll see police cars swarming the local train station that ran twice daily across the island. He might, if he's really lucky, see the body bag they wheeled out twenty minutes later. The one his cousin's pieces were in.
He doesn't say body, that implies a whole of something. Something singular.
Well, that second night, that's exactly what happens. He gets really lucky.
He wakes up screaming.
The back of his neck is damp, his hair sticks to his skin there like paper mâche. He hears the yell reverberate eerily through the house and he jerks upwards, his forehead smacking hard against the underside of the bunk bed.
He yells out again at the sudden, sharp pain and hears Ned groan above him.
"Alex, what the fuck?"
He doesn't respond, just hisses in pain and sees stars, his world flashing momentarily white.
Ned's head appears over the side of the bed, looking down on him blearily through the half-light. More than half of his expression is angry, but there's a small mixture of concern and confusion there too.
It's probably more instinctive concern than reactive though, he doesn't actually know Alex or give a fuck about him.
Then, there are footsteps hurrying along the hallway outside and the door is swung open violently. Above him, Ned retreats quickly back under his covers and feigns sleep.
Mrs. Newson stands in the doorway, her expression livid.
Alexander reels and he clutches his head in agony, his breathing short. He doesn't know what's going to happen now, he's only ever dreamt like this in front of people at his cousin's place and once in the back of a foster worker's van. Normally, he takes care of this stuff himself. Normally, when this happens, he just does his best to not have a panic attack and try to sleep.
Mrs. Newson is clad in her pyjamas and a robe is pulled haphazardly around her. She strides over to where he's lying, struggling to breathe, and pulls him roughly to his feet by his wrist.
"Downstairs. Now."
He hastens to obey her command, walking quickly behind her, one hand still clutching his forehead, wincing. He wonders if it's bleeding. It hurts enough to be.
She leads him into the boys', well, Alexander would call it a common room, but that would be unbelievably British. He'll say it's a sitting room.
So, she pushes him into the boys' sitting room. Alexander waits, his bare feet cold on the floorboards and his hands shaking despite his best efforts to still them.
"Can you explain what that was?"
Alex shifts back a little, his heart hammering. His stomach is doing that horrible thing where it feels like its floating, like he's in an elevator that's moving upwards at one hundred miles an hour.
"I—I just had a bad dream."
Mrs. Newson looks even angrier than she had thirty seconds ago when she was pushing him here. She places her hands on her hips and her eyes glitter furiously.
"Remind me again, how old are you?"
Alexander bites his lip and looks at his feet, feeling shame and guilt course through him. She should be angry, he should feel ashamed. He's not a fucking baby.
"Thirteen."
Mrs. Newson nods in an imitation of understanding and then, quick as the flash of a whip, grabs his face with her thumb and forefinger, pressing down hard between his jawbones. He gasps at first but holds his breath, watching her.
"While you are here, this will not happen again. Do you understand me?"
Alexander can't speak, she's pressing down too hard on his face, so he nods slightly instead, a quick up and down. Any more movement would hurt his still throbbing head.
"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, Alex."
She presses down a little harder and her face is the picture of malice. It's not pretty, to see someone young so angry. Mrs. Newson can't be older than thirty-five.
He lets out a garbled sort of noise, hoping she'll accept it as agreement and nods a little harder. Tears are stinging his eyes.
"Good, good. Now, it's three AM yeah? You're going to stand here until everyone else wakes up at seven, okay?"
Alexander's stomach drops and he steps back a little, the sudden urge to flee arising now that she's released his face.
"Listen, Alex. You're gonna stand in this corner until then. If you don't, if you sit down or move, it'll be worse for you."
Alex doesn't even have time to nod or protest before she's pushed him into the corner of the room, caging him in with her arms and looking down at him with a mocking sort of smile.
She lifts a carefully manicured finger to tilt his chin upwards so that they're looking at each other eye to eye and smiles.
"Shh, listen, it's okay. It's for your own good. Do you understand me?"
What can he do but nod?
She smiles one last time and leaves the room, her slippered footsteps padding softly over the floorboards. She switches out the last light in the hallway so that they are both drenched in dark, the sound of bedclothes whispers in his ear and then, a door closes.
He is utterly alone, in utter pitch.
Now, of course, Alex could sit down. He could sit and wait until just before seven and stand up before Mrs. Newson wakes up. But, if he does, he stands a huge chance of falling asleep there on the floor. He doesn't want to contemplate what Mrs. Newson might do if he disobeys her, if he explicitly goes against what she's asked of him.
But he is so, so tired.
He hadn't really noticed before how exhausted he's been these last few days, he's always comforted himself in the knowledge that he'll have a bed to sleep in come the end of the day.
Yet now, this same exhaustion is pressing down upon him like a boulder, as though he's freaking Sisyphus or something.
But he stands anyway, leaning his head against the wall and closing his eyes. His legs burn after what can only be around twenty minutes yet he knows he has another three and a half hours to go.
The sitting room is messy. Mrs. Newson will have them all clean it up in the morning, no doubt. But right now there are puzzle pieces scattered across the floor from where the younger kids were playing earlier and the cushions on the sofa have been knocked from their places, lying like fallen dominoes on the floor.
He wonders if tidying up the room will ease the anger Mrs. Newson feels at him. It might, though, he risks the other boys calling him a suck up. Anyway, Mrs. Newson told him not to move, so he's going to take this command at its most literal.
He starts losing track of time then. The curtains are thick, heavy ones and block out every inch of the night sky. He doesn't have a watch and he isn't sure if there is a clock in here. Besides, even if there was, it's too dark to see anything in great detail.
He's never fallen asleep standing up before, but now, he does just that. His head droops forward like a sodden newspaper, his chin tucked into his chest and his frame leant heavily against the wall.
It's not comfortable, it's hardly even bearable and he's not exactly asleep either, but he's too tired not to. He's hovering in the nebulous vicinity of sleep, but sometimes the scale tips, and he's brought back into consciousness.
After, well, he supposes it must have been four hours, he hears the first footsteps on the stairs outside. The door of the sitting room opens and the boy Jason shares a room with, Alex thinks his name is Michael, walks in.
He's half dressed in jeans and his pyjama shirt, his hair tousled with sleep and his feet bare. His eyes skip immediately to where Alexander stands in the corner, by now, weak at the knees.
Michael raises his eyebrows and walks towards the curtains, pulling them open with a flourish. Alexander hisses and flinches away as the light burns his eyes, but Michael pays him no mind, just flops down on the couch and crosses his legs.
"So you were the one who screamed last night?"
Alex nods dumbly, he's too tired for any words to form on his tongue, they melt like snowflakes whenever he tries.
"Sucks to be you. How long you been standing there?"
Alex holds up four fingers and Michael winces, leaning his head back into the sofa cushion and stretching. Alexander envies the sleep in the corners of his eyes, the drowsy stiffness in his joints, the curls that a good night's sleep have put in his hair.
He hears the sound of a door being opened and Mrs. Newson's heels click across the floorboards in the corridor. Alexander straightens up instinctively, pushing off the wall and lowering his eyes to his hands.
He senses her presence in the doorway and draws in a sharp breath, his stomach tight. Mrs. Newson's heels click towards him and he feels one of her hands touching his face again. He waits for a slap, or for her to squeeze hard at his face like she did last night, but she merely tilts his chin up, staring into his eyes shrewdly. She's all dressed and made up, eyeliner streaked dark under her lashes.
"Michael, was he standing up when you came in?"
Alexander resists the urge to close his eyes or look away, instead staring directly into Mrs. Newson's face.
"Yes, Mrs. Newson, he was."
She smiles and moves her hand from his chin, turning away from the exhausted boy and walking to the kitchen.
"Very good. You two, tidy the place up. You can get dressed then, Alex."
He takes a tentative step forward and instantly, his legs buckle. The only thing that keeps him from crashing completely to the floor is the wall, which he manages to grab at the last moment and steady himself with.
Michael laughs and throws a puzzle piece into the box, tutting slightly as Alexander tries to catch his breath.
He helps tidy up slowly, and one by one, the other boys trickle down. Jason raises an eyebrow at his evidently bedraggled appearance but says nothing, flopping back onto the couch and watching the younger kids and Alex tidy up.
Ned comes down a minute or so later. He makes a beeline from Alex, pushing through the waist height crowd of kids play fighting.
"You okay?"
Alexander shrugs and tosses a cushion at the sofa, it lands and someone straightens it out for him.
"How long did she make you stand?"
Alexander sighs and looks in distaste at a sticky patch on the floor, he thinks one of the kids spilt their juice or something. He doesn't question why Ned knows she made him stand. He can't be the first person Mrs. Newson's punished in this way.
He holds up four fingers and Ned blanches slightly, biting his lip and looking Alex up and down.
"Go get dressed, you look like shit."
If there's one thing he's going to have to become accustomed to here, it's being insulted and having to pay it no mind.
The next time it happens, because of course, he'll dream again, it's never only once, he doesn't scream.
Somehow, maybe it's because he has a cold, maybe it's because his throat is dry and scratchy, the yell that would normally force from his mouth gets stuck and he only lets out a harsh gasp.
He still, however, sits up suddenly and yet again, his head thunks hard into the underside of the bunk bed. Harder than before, and in the exact same, sore spot.
He touches the area with his hand, clutching his head in agony. He can feel a swollen lump there and when he draws his hand away, there's blood on his fingers.
He groans again into his fist and curses under his breath, biting down on the corner of his pillow.
His head throbs, it's all he can do to keep himself from whining out loud. Ned tolerates him better than Jason or Michael do, but he would certainly be annoyed if Alex woke him a second time.
Sleep doesn't come so easily after that, and when it does, he's not so sure whether it's bona fide sleep or injury-induced. There's every possibility he's hurt his head bad enough to make him lose consciousness.
He wakes up perhaps a little later than he might have usually, his throat burning and his lips dry. He feels ill, it could be that the cold he's refused to do anything about is getting worse. Ned is turned away from him, pulling on an old, tattered hoodie. They both have school today, though Ned's in the year above him. Alex doesn't particularly know or like many people in his class, he tends to keep to himself.
Ned turns around and his eyes fall upon Alex, they widen and he steps a little closer.
"What you do to your head?"
Alex sits up, his movements are cautious and he winced as a beam of light from the window hits his face.
"Woke up again, hit it."
Ned shrugs, already turning back to the chest of drawers to close them.
"At least you didn't wake anyone up."
Alexander makes a humming sound of agreement and gets up slowly, moving towards the drawers to pull out some jeans and a shirt.
Ned leaves then, the sound of breakfast being eaten downstairs is audible even up here and no one wants to miss out on any sort of meal.
Alexander now understands why the boys asked if he had food on his first day.
They don't get fed near enough here, and that's coming from him, the kid who's lived off a diet of tinned food and too-ripe fruit for the past three or four years. After his father left, meals went down in both quality and quantity.
Generally, they get two meals a day and sometimes, a snack after school. You have to eat what you're given, or someone else will for you. Usually, breakfast is toast, fruit and some juice, two days a week they get meat and Michael and Jason get coffee.
He dresses quickly and brushes his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, vying for space with Sumon, a plucky, brown-skinned thirteen-year-old that gets in too much trouble with Mrs. Newson for breaking things. He's a little clumsy but Alex thinks he likes him, at least on a superficial level. He's fiercely protective of his little brother Amir, who's only five. He reminds him a little of James.
The breakfast table often resembles a war zone. The younger kids shove and fight each other for food, but the older ones have learnt more cunning, sly ways of getting more than their share. Micheal, especially, has a strange talent in persuasion. He often convinces the little ones to trade larger amounts for smaller ones, half a sausage for a slice of bacon or something of the like.
Mrs. Newson doesn't supervise the morning meals, if she did then there'd be a lot less fighting and thieving. Instead of her, that young one, Alex doesn't know his name, supervises.
He's no older than twenty-four, but he's got such a grandiose ego that he thinks he has the right to hit them. This wouldn't grate so much on their nerves, except that he expects them to just take it. Michael got in trouble once for pushing him. He'd called him a prick, said he wasn't so much older than he was. Alex doesn't like either Michael or Jason, but that moment had earned the former a little more respect in his eyes.
At least half of the food off his plate has been taken, and the portion was meagre anyway, but he sits and eats everything quickly and without complaint. Only Michael and Jason get coffee, and only twice a week, so he just drinks the too-watery juice and watches their steaming mugs enviously.
The young one, Alex is just going to call him that, despite the eleven years he has on Alex, is watching him from across the room with folded arms and half-lidded eyes. They're all still half asleep.
"Kid, what you do to your head?"
He looks up from his juice, everyone's eyes turn to him.
"Hit it against the bed."
The young one motions for him to stand up and Alex stuffs the last of his toast into his mouth, chewing the food hurriedly and wincing as it slides sharply down his throat. But he's not going to allow himself to go hungry. Well, hungrier.
He's led to Mrs. Newson's room and feels his hands twisting nervously in front of him. The young one knocks three times on the door before entering, pulling Alexander roughly inside by the fabric of his jumper.
Mrs. Newson is all made up, as usual, she doesn't do her make-up as nicely as his mother did, though. He remembers her showing him the way she'd mix lipstick colours together to create the perfect shade, he'd loved watching it. That was before he got old enough to realise boys weren't supposed to like that sort of thing.
"Hey, this kid's got some big cut. Just thought you should now."
Mrs. Newson puts down the paper she's holding and stands up, walking over to Alex and tilting his face up by his chin. He hates this habit of hers. It makes him feel like some sort of object, something to be inspected.
"Did you dream again?"
He closes his eyes, draws in a deep breath, nods and then speaks in a soft, breathy whisper. He's terrified.
"I didn't..." Fuck, he doesn't know the English word for grito. He substitutes it for something else instead, frustrated with himself. He should know this.
"I was quiet. I'm sorry."
The young one, Alex must learn his name, laughs from where he stands by the door.
"You have them well trained."
Mrs. Newson pays him no mind. She examines the cut on Alexander's head and leans closer over him, not touching the injury but looking at it closely.
"Well done. You've learnt. Peter, find some bandages."
Ah, so his name is Peter. Peter, then, walks from the room towards the kitchen. Alexander is unsure whether to follow or not.
"Go, then. You'll be late to school otherwise."
He hastens the room, walking quickly to the kitchen where Peter is pulling a first aid box from the cupboard. His forehead is bandaged quickly, so he looks a little like one of those soldiers from the pictures of World War One they see in History class.
But he's no soldier, just some stupid kid who had a nightmare. He does wish he were as brave as a one though. That might help him here.
He's been at this place for a month now and he's no more settled than he had been when he'd arrived. He misses James, he misses his mom, he misses his cousin, he misses his island.
Sometimes he'll be walking down the street, to school maybe, or shopping for Mrs. Newson, and he'll hear something. Maybe it will be a snatch of a Celia Cruz song or the smell of Arroz con dulce. Then all of a sudden, he'll want to cry.
It's all he can do to run back to the house, unpack the shopping and crawl under his duvet, hope no one disturbs him.
And then there's Mrs. Newson. She's hot and cold, he never knows whether she's going slap him or smile. He'd almost rather she hates him all the time than leave him guessing as to what mood she'll be in every given day. At least though, he's not the only boy to receive this treatment from her.
She's strict with all of them. She made Jason go without food for a day two weeks ago because got in a fight with that Edward kid, she slapped Ned last week because he talked back and Sumon is always getting his meals taken from him for making a mess or breaking things.
She doesn't hit the little ones at least, no boy younger than eleven gets it too bad from her, she just takes away their toys or tells them off. Alex supposes that experience in itself is terrifying enough.
Since he's started living here, he's dreamt about his past five times. Of these, he's woken Mrs. Newson up thrice.
Each time, she gets angrier. She screams at him, tells him he's worthless, tells him he's the only kid here to do this, that even five-year-old Amir causes less trouble than he does. He supposes she's right. He knows he's more trouble than he's worth.
The first time it happened, he merely had to stand for the rest of the night.
The next time, she makes sure he doesn't sleep in Ned's room for the next three nights. He stands instead, and when he can't stand, he crumples into a collapsed heap to the floor. Ned is always there in the mornings to help him to his feet before Mrs. Newson awakes though.
Alexander doesn't think Ned likes him very much, but he's saved him from the wrath of Mrs. Newson more than once. He almost trusts him now.
The third time he wakes up screaming, he's terrified. The fear squeezes around him like a fist the very instant his scream dies down, bouncing off the walls, soaking back into his body and making his very heart hum with anticipation.
He sits frozen in his bed, Ned can be heard swearing quietly above him, they both know what will happen now.
Mrs. Newson pulls him from his bed, not caring when his head whacks hard into the ladder that leads to where Ned sleeps. He's practically dragged downstairs and towards the kitchen.
The house is dark and quiet, though underneath doors he can see the faint slivers of light that suggest the people inside are awake. Of course they are, everyone wants to hear Mrs. Newson have a go at the new kid.
He doesn't know why she's pulled him to the kitchen though, and this only makes the knot in his stomach tighter, because normally he stands in the living room. This change in routine means that he has no idea what is going to happen now.
She grabs a fist full of his t-shirt, twists her wrist so the neckline is pulled tight enough to choke him and slaps him hard across the face with her free hand. The clap of her palm across his skin cuts through the air around them like a knife, he thinks the boys listening upstairs will be able to hear it. This is the first time an adult— no — anyone has ever hit him like that, directly across the face, intentionally powerful, calculated, without regret, to hurt.
"You are thirteen years old!"
She yells this so loudly that he knows the boys upstairs will be able to hear her. He knows he's woken them all up, and none of them are able to fall asleep so quickly as to miss this. Occupational hazard of being a foster kid; sleep never comes easy.
"I am sick of this! Can you not learn to keep your mouth shut?"
She shakes him slightly and he's straining to get away now, all sense that tells him to just take it is overrun by pure survival instinct.
She tugs a little more forcefully at his shirt so he's being choked even harder now. He can hear a ripping, straining noise and knows the seams on his shirt are splitting. It's a cheap one he fished from the lost and found bin at school, couldn't have been more than two or three dollars at target.
She opens the back door that leads to the small, dingy garden at the rear of the house. It's overgrown with weeds and shrubs, ivy has taken over the fence, weaving it's infiltrating arms through every crevice and nook in the garden. Rusty, broken plastic toys that foster kids of the past must have played with sit decaying by the far wall. Maybe they're from a time when this place was run by people who cared.
Mrs. Newson pushes him over the threshold and he trips over his feet, crashing onto the concrete outside and feeling his knee collide painfully with the rough ground.
It's freezing outside. It's barely March and he's not used to how cold New York gets, Nevis around now would be in the seventies, but here in New York, it gets no higher than thirty-three at night. The door slams behind him and he hears a key twisting in the lock.
Shit.
He stands up, shaking, unsteady, and runs back over towards the door, pulling frantically at the handle and scraping at the lock with his fingernails. Rust and dirt collect under them, this place is falling into disrepair.
"Please! Please! I'm sorry! I-I'll be quiet! I'll do better!"
He gets no response, merely the sound of a door closing and faint footsteps on hardwood floor. He lets out a choked sob of anguish and yells through the door one last time, banging his fists against the frosted glass desperately. His palms sting now, sharp and burning.
"Please!"
He slides down against the door, feeling tears swell and fall freely down his face. The adrenaline so sharp and abundant in his veins from moments ago is now speeding up his heart rate, his breathing too. He grasps a fistful of his own hair and pulls, hard. He knows the warning signs of a panic attack, knows that now, that's exactly what's happening to him.
His head thunks hard against the cold plastic of the back door and he starts to feel his breathing truly accelerate, the way it always does when he gets like this. He remembers the first time this happened, it was back when mom was still alive. He's always been a bit of a wimp. Mom had called it 'anxiety', but the boys at school had just said he was a pussy. It's kinda difficult to shake that mentality off.
He thinks the first time he had one of these panic attacks was in sixth grade, his first year in middle school. He was bullied a bit there, some guys had ganged up on him, did all the cliché things like tripping him up in the hall and stealing his bag. But at one point, it had gotten so bad that those boys had tormented anyone who came near Alex too, so consequently, he'd had pretty much no friends.
He remembers his first panic attack had been in the morning, when he'd tried to feign being ill to get out of school. His mom had seen through his poor pretence and insisted he go, culminating in a subsequent row and panic attack on his part.
But he's too cold to think of anything past his current situation, past the blood, oozing from a fresh cut on his knee and the usual throbbing at his temple from where his head hit the bedpost.
He wished he'd worn his hoodie to bed. Ned does. Alex had always found it odd before, but now he thinks he understands the idiosyncrasy a little better. You never know when Mrs. Newson is going to get angry at you, maybe Ned's endured something like this before.
He stands up, wincing and looks around the garden for the best place to try and sleep. There's no shed or any sort of shelter in the garden, or he'd go straight for it. Instead, he figures it's best to sleep as close to the wall of the house as possible. It's one of those ugly, cuboid houses that they built for army men's families back in the 60's. There used to be some sort of military base about a mile east of here, it functioned during the Vietnam war but has since been knocked down.
He's digressing. His point is that this house it old. The insulation isn't very good so the outside walls of the house should be warmer than anywhere else in the garden.
He curls up on top of a tarpaulin sheet someone's laid down on top of the patio and pushes his body as close to the west-facing wall of the house as he can. He's still freezing, his t-shirt is doing absolutely nothing to keep him warm and the neckline has ripped away from the rest of the shirt, a result of Mrs. Newson's rough handling.
He's not sure how much longer he can take this place.
He wakes up the next morning to Peter stood over him, nudging him in the ribs with the tip of his shoe.
"Hey, kid, wake up."
He starts, scrambling to his feet and brushing himself down of the dirt and grime that's settled onto him from the patio. Peter wrinkles his nose and steps back a little. God, how Alexander hates him.
"You should take a shower."
Alexander hates the showers here. There's one washroom, it almost resembles a school bathroom with four cubicles, two showers and some sinks along the wall. The only trouble is, the plumbing in this place is as old as the building itself, so the water often tastes a little metallic and if you're not quick to shower in the mornings, all the hot water will be used up and you'll have to shower under a freezing spray.
"Fine," he acquiesces, ignoring the look of distaste Peter shoots him at his supposed aversion to showering. It's not that Alex isn't a clean person, it's just that putting twenty-four boys in one house and giving them one bathroom never results in facilities that can be called totally hygienic.
He feels like crap this morning. That cold he mentioned, well, it comes as no surprise to Alex that sleeping outside has drastically worsened it. When he looks in the bathroom mirror, his nose is red, his under eyes puffy and his eyes watery. He looks straight out of a Kleenex advert.
He showers, the water is lukewarm bordering on cool and he has to fill the bottle of shampoo with some water and shake it around a bit to get some of the product out and into his hair. He's learnt to be good at being resourceful with these sorts of things. He's got most of it from his mom, she always managed to turn fridge leftovers into a substantial meal and make the remnants of a soap bottle last another week.
He remembers in the tropical, rainy season around October every year, they'd all have to line their shoes with cardboard to stop water soaking through the holes in them.
He dresses quickly and makes his way downstairs for breakfast. It's Saturday, so there's not really a set time for when you have to eat your morning meal. But there might as well be, for if you're too late downstairs, your food will be pretty much all gone.
Mrs. Newson, unusually, sits on the sofa in the sitting room. Normally she'd be in her office or bedroom around now, but there she is, scrolling through her iPhone, legs crossed professionally.
Alex wonders why she never got into something more rewarding, financially at least. She's not a stupid woman, she could do better for herself than foster care work. Maybe no one else would hire her. Probably because she's a fucking psychopath.
"Alex."
He bites the inside of his cheek and rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet awkwardly, nervous. She was in a bad mood last night, it seems all too probable that the same mood has carried over into this morning.
"After the incident last night," she smiles cruelly and he shivers somewhat, "I thought it might be a good idea to see a doctor, maybe get something prescribed."
His heart grows cold. He doesn't know what 'prescribed' means, (is it the same as prescrito?) but he knows 'doctor' alright...
And he's not going to let that happen. Even if she has to beat him black and blue and drag his cold corpse to the hospital, he's not going, at least not willingly.
The memories flood in as the dam is opened, they pour like torrents of icy water and invade every nook and cranny of his mind. Everything he's tried so hard for months to repress, to shut into some dark and undisturbed corner of his mind, it all resurfaces instantaneously.
"No... Doctores... No llamas a nadie... No podemos permitírselo."
His mother coughs violently and through the haze of his own fever, at the very peak of its heat, he sees her eyes are milky and unfocused.
"Mama, necesitamos ayuda, por favor!"
He moves to stand up but his legs buckle and he collapses back into their bed, trembling, his nose running. He's never been this ill before, he feels as though every part of his body is on fire.
His mother pulls him close with gentle, frail arms and he rests his head on her breast, breathing in the faint smell of perfume and cooking. She's warm against his hot cheek, too warm, but he doesn't care. She starts to sing to him.
"Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot," she coughs but continues her lullaby anyway, her voice husky but sweet. His eyes flutter shut. He is so, so tired.
"Prête-moi ta plume, pour écrire un mot. Ma chandelle est morte... Je n'ai plus de feu..."
He falls asleep with her voice singing softly out to him, it is like a blanket, dappled moonlight wrapping him in a silver embrace, just like the lullaby says. She has him, and he has her. They're all each other needs, they'll be okay. Au clair de la lune.
When he next awakes, her arms are limp around him, she's fallen asleep holding him. They've both been so ill, and she works so hard. Alex faintly thinks that she deserves some rest. He rolls over to look at her and lovingly brushes a dark strand of hair from her face. Her skin is cold. He sits up and shakes her slightly, through his delirium believing she is only asleep.
"Mama? Réveillé... Mama?"
She says nothing, does nothing, her body merely falls limp, her head lolling backwards to expose the sickly colour of her skin.
Then, there is the sound of an ambulance's sirens and the screams of red and blue lights. He's still holding tightly to his mother's torso, but her skin is ice. He knows in his brain that she will not awake, but his heart refuses to let him leave her. She'll be lonely if he does.
He is in hospital. Everything smells like bleach and antiseptic and suffering. Now he knows why his mother doesn't like this place. Where is she?
He's fighting to get away from the gloved hands that hold him down but something is injected to the smooth, exposed crook of his elbow. He's sobbing openly now as his consciousness is stolen from him.
"MAMA! Mama!"
Mrs. Newson is watching him curiously, probably taking in his clenched fists, the way his lip trembles.
"Something the matter?"
He's having trouble staying standing up. He wants to sit down, or even fall down. He needs something solid beneath him. But he can't, that will get him hit. He can't...
"I-I... No, please... I don't want to."
He can feel tears welling up in his eyes and shakes his head defiantly, stepping backwards from Mrs. Newson in terror.
"You will do exactly as I tell you, Alexander."
Her face has taken on that same, malignant expression he's come to associate with pain. He shakes his head yet again and feels tears fall hot down his cheeks. Mrs. Newson stands up, her furious expression changes as quickly as if it meant nothing, she's smiling horribly now. This endless back and forth petrifies him.
"Are you crying, Alex? Really?"
He looks around wildly for some sort of escape route, but Peter stands too near to the door for him to make any successful dash for freedom.
"You're such a baby Alex, disobedient too."
He shakes his head again, harder this time, and backs away. Peter is watching the scene with narrowed eyes, they dart back and forth between Alexander and Mrs. Newson as though he's watching a tennis rally.
"Please, Please, I'll stop, please. Ne me faites pas!"
Mrs. Newson takes a step towards him and he cowers back, raising his hands to protect his face and heaving a loud sob. He thinks he might sense someone else's presence in the doorway, but he doesn't care. Once he's started slipping back into French or Spanish, it's clear he's too far gone to notice details.
"Speak English, Alexander. No one likes a disobedient kid, let alone a stupid one."
He whimpers and tries to move towards the door, but Peter's grabbed him hard by the arm. He struggles and kicks out, yelling and screaming in what language, even he's not sure.
"Laisse-moi partir! Laisse-moi partir! Arrête! Mierda!"
Let me go! Let me go! Stop! Shit!
He hears a group of footsteps on the stairs and the sound of boys' voices. He knows people are watching, but he doesn't care, he doesn't care that throwing tantrums is something seven-year-olds do, not thirteen-year-olds.
Mrs. Newson's hand collides with his face, the cracking sound rings around the room painfully, but this only stills him momentarily, he won't go to hospital, he won't, he won't...
Peter seems to be having trouble holding him now. Alex is scrawny, but he has tough little fists that pound hard against any inch of Peter's body that he can reach and sharp elbows that flail wildly as he struggles. Alex can hear him cursing and Mrs. Newson seems to be at a loss as to what to do.
Then, Peter raises a large, powerful hand and flies it straight into his stomach, knocking all the breath out of his lungs and making his stomach close in on itself in agony. He falls to the floor in a small, bony heap, gasping for air and sobbing all the while. He's sure he looks fucking pathetic.
He thinks he hears someone's voice, one of the boys most likely, say 'Christ', but he doesn't turn to see who it is, nor does he particularly care. Mrs. Newson is going to make him see a doctor, and all he knows about them is that they've cropped up around every single bad thing that has ever happened his entire life. His and his mother's illness, her subsequent death, his cousin's suicide, the hurricane...
"Alexander?"
Mrs. Newson's voice is calm, it makes his current position all the more humiliating because there's such a contrast to her voice, sotto voce and collected and his trembling shoulders.
"Would you rather go to a doctor today and not have nightmares again or continue to wake the entire house every night? Because, I assure you, if you decide on the latter I will continue to punish you for it."
He feels another sob swell in his chest, he's caught between two choices, each as appealing as the other, an impossible decision. The only logic he can really apply to the situation, in his compromised state of panic, is that choosing to go to the doctors might result in his worst fears, and choosing not to will definitely end worse for him.
Still, does he face his irrational and ingrained yet terrible fear or his reasonable but less in-trenched one?
"Please d-don't make me go. J-je ferais tout..."
Mrs. Newson clearly is not putting this subject up for debate. She's going to make him go. Even if he refuses, the dreams will only continue, only get worse, then she'll have to take him to someone. She's hardly going to let them continue.
"Get a coat and shoes on, Alexander, this isn't a choice you're allowed to make yourself."
He's still clutching at his stomach in agony. Peter is strong, he's got a hard punch and he knows exactly how to make his hits hurt. He's sure he'll lift up his shirt later to find purple and blue bruising.
He drags himself to his feet and runs from the room, pushing past a group of boys collected in the hallway, Jason, Michael and Ned among them. They say nothing, though he doesn't like the look he sees in Jason's grey eyes. It's hard, uncaring and cold, with, he fancies, some sort of dry mirth over the whole display too.
He clatters up the stairs, bursting into his and Ned's room and collapsing down onto his bed. He can't say no to going, he has no other choice. He doesn't own his time anymore, he can't decide what he wants because if he disobeys, he's made sleep outside, or not sleep at all, or hit.
Slowly, miserably, he lifts up his shirt and examines the sore, tender skin of his stomach. Where Peter punched him is red and aggravated looking and doubtless, it will bruise dark soon.
He pulls on a jumper and a ratty, quilted parka he stole from the PE changing rooms at school. In his defence, he's sure some 6th grader had just abandoned it, because no one in their right mind would want some shitty, tattered old puffa leaking stuffing.
He puts on a pair of chuck taylors his mom had managed to buy him last Christmas. His shoes are normally the only relatively new item of clothing he owns, because he's at that age where his feet grow so fast it's all he can do to wear one pair for longer than ten months or so.
He just showered, but he washes his face again anyway. He's a mess, his eyes are red, the skin around them is blotchy and now, feeling worse than ever, he's positive he's getting sick. Which he decidedly detests, more than the average person would.
It just reminds him all too well of scorching, aching fevers and that lightheadedness you get when you've gone too long without eating. He's spent his whole life never living in conditions under seventy-five degrees, and suddenly, he's in a place where thirty is the regular. It's wreaking havoc on his senses.
He can hear Mrs. Newson yelling his name from downstairs and he winces slightly, backing further away from the direction of her voice and drawing in on himself, like he's a piece of burning paper, curling inwards as it's slowly devoured by flames.
She yells again about thirty seconds later when he doesn't respond but this only makes the grip his fingers have on the edge of the sink tighter. His knuckles are white now. He can't go. He can't go, he won't go. He swore to himself he wouldn't let her make him.
He hears footsteps on the stairs. They don't click like heels would and sound a little lighter than Mrs. Newson's, but he still cowers away in fear. Ned walks into the bathroom, his face a little irritated, though he's evidently making an effort to appear non-threatening. Mrs. Newson must have sent him up.
"Alex, come on, you know you have to go."
He draws in a harsh breath, making no move away from Ned but none towards the door either.
"She's only going to get angrier if you keep her waiting."
He rakes a hand through his hair, which has grown to his chin now, it's really far too long, and bites down hard on his lip. Ned steps forward, takes a firm, determined hold on his arm and walks him towards the door.
Alexander is tempted to dig his heels in, refuse, kick up a fuss, but he's caused enough trouble already. The boys will have lost any respect from him that they might have had after he'd withstood Mrs. Newson's many punishments and he has no desire to sink himself further into the metaphorical mire.
He walks downstairs with Ned to where Mrs. Newson is waiting, donning her black coat and shoes, looking extremely impatient. She snatches his wrist from Ned and twists it painfully, bending down a few inches to look him straight in the face.
"You have already tried my patience far too many times, Alexander, do not make matters worse for yourself."
Grabbing her car keys off the table by the door, she pushes him out into the driveway and they leave.
Jason must really, really hate him. Ever since he arrived, made himself a target as a quiet, weird little immigrant, he's not been able to shake off this boy's dislike of him. Since the incident of a few weeks ago, when he refused to go with Mrs. Newson to the doctor's and had to be literally beaten into submission by the combined forces of herself and Peter, Jason's stepped up his game a little.
None of the boys will talk to him anymore, and he suspects this is Jason's doing. Even Ned, who had tolerated Alex better than the rest, only ever speaks to him when he absolutely has to. Alex is an introvert by nature, but there's a difference between thriving in your own company and total isolation. In that latter state, he merely wilts.
Jason seems to enjoy making his life harder, daily. If Alex is showering in one of the cubicles in the bathroom, he'll run into to all the free ones, flush the toilets and turn on all the taps so that the shower runs burning hot or freezing cold. Jason must enjoy the way Alex screams in surprise, the absolute psycho.
He's also noticed that his food portions have been steadily halving themselves, and though Mrs. Newson despises him, he doesn't think she's the person responsible.
Honestly, he dares Jason to do his worst, if he can. Alex isn't sure what he could do to make this place even more unbearable, he's the unhappiest he's ever been, he's not sure things could get any more miserable.
He takes pills for what the doctor called 'night terrors' now, Prazosin. If he takes half a pill once a day, between five and eight o'clock, his sleep is dreamless and undisturbed. He guesses this is an improvement, but for all he despised his dreams, they were the only times he got to see his mother and brother's faces.
Now he has to work with any happy memories he's got left, but they're all tarnished by knowledge that James is three thousand, four hundred and fifty-nine miles away from him in London and his mother is buried in a grave one thousand, seven hundred and sixty-three miles away on Nevis.
He looked up the distances on a school computer.
His saving grace, really, is school. He hates most of his classmates, and the majority of his teachers get on his nerves, but he gets to study books that he's always wanted to read and learn about everything from ancient history to the workings of cells to technology. Not that his school is a particularly good one, in fact, it's the opposite.
They have one science lab that the nearly two thousand students use in rotation and a dingy gym that smells like feet. It's not particularly pleasant, so Alex normally skips gym class. He doesn't think about what his mom would say if she knew.
But his school has a library, small and underfunded as it is, and a very small portion of teachers that really do care about their subjects and students, among these, his English and politics teacher, Mr. Livingston.
He's lucky to be able to do politics, actually, but they were given a choice between an extra language, Spanish or an elective of politics, shop class, or computer science. He spoke Spanish fine already, what was the point in taking it over something he's had a fascination in from a very young age?
So, school is his escape, strange as that sounds. His English isn't incredible and he has a pretty noticeable accent, but he's adapting fast, working harder than he ever has before.
He only wishes his mother was here. She'd be so proud of him.
It's after one of those long, gruelling days at school, working with very little food and sleep in his system, that he returns to a house in which Peter has left for the evening and Mrs. Newson has gone shopping.
Jason and Michael are sat in the sitting room, hogging the static-y, decade-old TV. He thinks they're watching some film, a horror by the looks of it. Some character's just been decapitated and little Amir, the five-year-old kid, is watching on in terror as the murderer licks blood off their axe. Jason and Michael seem oblivious, or more likely indifferent to the mere baby sitting behind them and laugh at the film stupidly.
Normally, Sumon would never allow this to happen, but Mrs. Newson's chosen him to help her with the shopping, so he's not here to stop this.
Alex darts forward and takes the little boy's arm, guiding him off the sofa and pulling him away from the TV. His nose is running (they're all ill, winter doesn't take kindly to malnourished foster kids after all) and his dark eyes are bright with tears. He's only a child.
"Seriously? He is five years old!"
Alexander gives Amir a gentle push into the hallway and closes the door behind him, turning furiously to where Michael and Jason have paused the TV. He doesn't know why this has angered him so much. Maybe he's just doing what he knows his brother would have done, maybe it's because he likes Sumon and knows he's not here to help, maybe it's just that he dislikes Jason and Michael.
"He could have left, we weren't stopping him."
Jason's twisted around to glare at him, sitting up a little straighter where he's sprawled on the rug.
"Jesus, he's five years old, he is not responsible for nothing he does!"
He recognises his double negative almost as soon as he says it. It's one of those grammar things he almost always gets confused over. It makes him sound like a Victorian street child. Nevertheless, he holds his ground.
Alex clenches his fists, all the eyes in the sitting room are trained on him, there are maybe ten or so boys, all scrawny and hard-faced, watching the scene before them with varying degrees of apprehension and glee.
"Fucking killjoy, there's a reason no one likes you."
He doesn't know what a killjoy is, but he can pretty much infer from the context it's been used in, and it's not very nice. It only makes his fists clench harder. His nails dig into the skin of his palms, a new habit he's begun when he really wants to talk back to Mrs. Newson or Peter, but can't.
"You're pathetic, you act like you're so-"
Jason stands up, stretches out two, scrawny but tough arms and shoves him hard, so that he loses his balance stumbles into the door.
"You little shit, you think you're so smart, someone needs to punch some sense into you."
Alexander regains his balance and glares at Jason, stepping forward and pushing some hair from his eyes. It sounds stupid, but right now, he just wants to fight someone, something. He needs the rush, something to distract from the emptiness he feels all the time.
"Oh yeah? Try me. I don't think you have it in you."
Jason glances behind him at where Michael still sits on the rug, shrugs and then, with alarming speed, flies straight at Alexander, knocking him backwards onto the rug and pinning him down with strong hands and sharp, bony knees.
Michael stands, raising a hand to cover his mouth where a grin of glee and incredulity has split his pale face.
Alexander gasps in a sharp breath and grins, spitting some hair out of his mouth and looking up at Jason with seething, mocking eyes.
"Is that all you've got?"
Jason laughs sarcastically and presses more of his body weight down against Alex, his knee is digging painfully into the vulnerable skin and bone of his bicep.
"It's funny, you think you're tough, but you're just some weird little kid with more issues than sense."
Alexander laughs and strains uselessly against the older boy's weight, his chest heaving and his veins bubbling and coursing with adrenaline. This is good. This makes him feel something.
"If there's any negative correlation between those things, then you really must be an idiot."
He's really quite proud of that retort, they did correlations in math class and it sort of just came to him. He doesn't have time to think much more about this because Jason has shifted his grip and weight for just long enough to punch Alex hard in the jaw, knocking his head sideways with the force of it, cursing at him under his breath.
"Let's hope there's a positive one between how many times I hit you and whether you finally shut up, shall we test it out?"
Alexander grins again as Jason reaches back his fist, his knuckles are already raw looking and Alexander has a feeling they'll be bloody by the time they're through.
"Yeah, but I warn, I don't give in easily."
Jason laughs —possibly at his halting English— and then he's a torrent of fists, bony knuckles colliding again and again with Alexander's face. His nose, his eyes, his cheekbones, his jaw. Michael is urging him on and at their right, Alex vaguely sees a few boys stand up and leave. No one wants to be around when a fight like this breaks out.
Jason pauses for breath and uses the brief interlude to rub his sore-looking knuckles, staring into Alex's presumably mess of a face with dry triumph.
Alexander won't stand for it. Jason thinks he's weak, that after he's been hit a few times, he's rendered useless. He intends to prove this asshole wrong.
He pretends to be disoriented, (it's not difficult, in truth, he is) letting his head thunk heavily onto the rug and taking deep, ragged breaths. Jason watches him, flexing his fingers and rotating his wrists in a manner that Alex suspects is more for show, a display of power than anything else.
Then, he sits up, pushing Jason's body off him with a massive effort and swinging hard at his face, using his nails and elbows and fists in any way he can, utilising his bony limbs to maximum effect, his knuckles tough and hard, burning in protest as they collide again and again with Jason's face.
He can feel flesh in his nail beds.
Michael is yelling and Jason is swearing, he thinks he's saying things too, but they might not be in English, and then Jason has picked him up and is throwing him hard at the floor.
Alex lands heavily, out of breath and winded. Jason kicks him hard in the ribs once, twice, three times before stamping on his left hand and letting out a long string of expletives.
"Shit, I'm surprised you had it in you, man. Guess I always took you for a pussy."
Alex sucks in another, laboured breath and looks up at Jason, sure his eyes are full of hate.
"Vete al infierno."
Go to hell
Jason kicks him once more in the side, for good measure and then turns back to the TV, where Micheal has paused whatever film they were watching.
Alexander lies there on the floor for another minute or so, the adrenaline that had filled him to a bursting point is now slowly trickling away, consumed by the void that's constantly threatening to encompass him. He just feels sort of empty again.
He picks himself up, stands shakily and flips Jason off, before limping from the room. The remaining boys watch him as he moves gingerly, he's not sure how to read their expressions. Fearfully awed? Glad?
He goes first to a mirror, to assess the damage. It's pretty bad. His lip is split, his left eye is rapidly bruising and swelling painfully, so he can barely see out of it. He doesn't think Jason looks too much better, to be fair.
He's got to have some cuts on his face from Alexander's nails and he's pretty sure he got a few good hits in before Jason threw him to the ground. He's got to admit though, that Jason got him better than he did Jason.
Mrs. Newson's not going to be pleased at all. If there's one thing she punishes the worst above all, it maybe ties with Alex's nightmares, it's fighting.
To be perfectly honest, he doesn't even care anymore. She can starve him or deprive him of sleep all she wants, it's nothing he wouldn't willingly inflict on himself he could be bothered.
He enters his room, there are homework books and papers scattered across the desk. He has work due in tomorrow, and he couldn't care less about it.
He climbs into his bed, pulls the covers tightly around himself and just lies there. Not sleeping, because he's not taken his meds and can't guarantee that he won't dream, but not really thinking either. He's just sort of laid there.
Mrs. Newson will come home in about an hour. It'll only be a matter of time before she sees his and Jason's faces, and since no one else is beat up like them, it'll be obvious they'd fought. Alex wonders lethargically how she'll punish them this time. Will it be taking away their food, or sleep, or hitting them? Or will she get creative with it this time? After all, some could argue that out of the two dozen boys here, Jason and Alex annoy her the most.
She evidently sees Jason's face almost the moment she walks in the door. Alexander hears her keys in the lock and the familiar sound of high heels on hardwood. The forebearer of pain. She talks in her usual, snappish, concise manner along the hallway and then, there's a pause.
Alexander can't hear what's going on, only imagine. The entire of the downstairs floor is silent, like everyone down there has suddenly vanished. It's indescribably eerie.
Then, her voice splits the silence loudly, piercingly, painfully. He jumps. She's calling his name.
He stands up and begins the walk downstairs, shoving his hands in his pockets and letting some hair fall into his face. He reaches the top of the staircase and comes into full view of Mrs. Newson, Jason, Michael, Ned and Sumon.
He's sure his face is far worse looking than Jason's, his eye has swollen up so much that he can barely see out of it and his entire face throbs. Blood has crusted over his lip, it stings like salt rubbed into a wound.
He walks down to where they stand in the hallway, pushing his fists hard against the fabric of his pockets and keeping his eyes lowered. He doesn't really care what happens now, but he's still uncomfortable under this sort of scrutiny.
He stands in front of her, only about three-quarters of a metre away from Jason, who's holding his head a little higher than Alexander, less uncomfortable, less nervous. He knows Alex started this, he knows Alex is going to get the brunt of this punishment. He probably knew this all along. It's probably why he let Alex provoke him.
Mrs. Newson stands in silence for a moment, Alexander not daring to look up at her, keeping his eyes focused ardently on the wooden floorboards. Then, like she did that first night he'd woken her up, she reaches out and grabs his face, hard, forcing him to look up at her. He grunts in pain, his bruised and throbbing face set alight with a fresh wave of pain at her rough, sudden movement.
She takes in his injuries for a minute, her grasp getting tighter and tighter on his face, hurting so much that tears sting his eyes.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?"
Michael speaks up then, stepping forward from where he stands behind Jason.
"He started it, he said-"
Mrs. Newson turns to him and fixes him with a glare that would make a better, braver man cower. He blanches slightly and steps back, watching Alexander hatefully.
"Jason and I fought," Alex supplies, with no trace of resentment.
Mrs. Newson turns to Jason this time and fixes him with a fierce stare.
"And what could he have said to provoke..." She gestures towards the various cuts and bruises mottling Alexander's face wordlessly.
Jason puffs out his chest and glares over Mrs. Newson's shoulder at Alex, holding his head a little higher than advisable. He should know by now that Mrs. Newson doesn't like it when they get too confident. He's playing with fire by being so smug.
"He practically asked me to punch him, called me pathetic, told me to 'try him'."
Mrs. Newson turns back to Alex, her eyebrows raised, slightly incredulous that the usually meek, quiet kid could have a fiery side.
"This is true?"
Alex nods, lifting his gaze to fix Mrs. Newson with a defiant stare, because at this point, he doesn't even care.
"Yeah, and I meant it. He is pathetic. He was watching some stupid horror film, and Amir was there, he-"
Mrs. Newson holds out her hand to stop him and Alexander falls silent, his chest heaving with rage.
"Go fix your face, it's a mess. Come back downstairs when you're done."
He glares at her, shoves his hands back in his pockets and slouches back upstairs without a word. He knows every dirty look will dig him further and further into this stupid hole he's made himself, but can't find it within him to regret anything.
He washes his face, scrubs the blood from his lip and fixes his hair. In all honesty, he doesn't look much better after it all. He can't hide the bruising, or the redness, or the swelling.
He trudges back downstairs and into the living room, where he hears Jason's voice. No doubt, the boy had used Alex's absence as an opportunity to besmirch him even further to Mrs. Newson.
He walks into the room and stands by the door, refusing to sit down next to Jason, who is sprawled lazily across the couch as though he hasn't any worries whatsoever concerning his present situation. Surely he realises that though Alex is going to get it worse than him, he'll still be punished.
Frankly, Alex thinks this is a little unfair, because though he did provoke Jason, that much is true, Jason is sixteen. He, in the eyes of most adults, should be more mature than allowing thirteen-year-olds to pick fights with him. He did also fuck up Alexander's face far worse than Alex did his.
Mrs. Newson stands in front of the couch, turned to face him as he walks into the room. Her eyes rake over his appearance, hardly improved from moments ago and she sighs in displeasure.
"Alex, I have to say I'm surprised."
He glares at her but says nothing, drawing circles on the floor with the tip of his foot and letting some hair fall into his face.
"Do you know how it looks, how it reflects upon me, if you go into school looking like this?"
Jason says nothing, merely crosses his legs and watches Mrs. Newson in an almost convincing pretence of understanding.
Alexander, however, is not so adept at holding his tongue or keeping his thoughts to himself. He just goes and makes the situation worse for himself.
"But it's fine that we all go in half-starved and exhausted, is it?"
Mrs. Newson stands up, livid. He doesn't think he's ever heard anyone talk to her like that, normally the extent of the other boys' impertinence is a 'whatever' or an eye roll. This is different.
So, of course, she slaps him, hard enough to make his cheek sting sharply. That was to be expected, though. She hit Ned on one of her bad days because he rolled his eyes at her, frankly, he's surprised she didn't do more. It must mean that whatever punishment she's thought up for him is pretty substantial.
She turns from him to Jason, who is watching Alex with near confusion. Possibly due to his bravery, more likely due to his stupidity.
"You. You're going to make breakfast tomorrow and clean the sitting room for the rest of the week. That is less than you deserve, next time, I won't be so lenient."
She's right, it is less than he deserves, at least in proportion to what Alex is going to get. He can't bring himself to regret anything he's said or done in the last hour but he doesn't like the consequences very much.
Then, to his utmost confusion, she turns and leaves the room.
Jason watches him, confused, for a moment before standing up and shrugging.
"If I'm not mistaken, you're fucked."
Alex rolls his eyes, his heart pounds in his chest.
"Piss off."
Jason is right. He is indeed fucked. This becomes more apparent later in the evening. He's late to go down to dinner for a number of reasons. Firstly, he fell asleep and only woke up to Ned's footsteps across the floor of their room, secondly, he couldn't really be bothered to get up and thirdly, he doesn't want to see Mrs. Newson.
He does go down eventually, but it's not to much hope that he'll get anything. Mrs. Newson surely intends to punish him, he'll be lucky if he eats any time in the next week, here at least.
Sure enough, he's taken one step into the dining room when he catches Mrs. Newson's eye. She shakes her head, stands up and points towards the door he's just come through.
He shrugs and turns back around, ignoring the hunger burning in his stomach. Breakfast this morning had consisted of juice and at school, he'd had an apple. He doesn't particularly care about eating, but it does physically hurt not to. He'd rather just feel nothing, oblivion.
He walks back upstairs, curls back up underneath his bed covers and lies there until he hears the other boys' footsteps on the stairs, ignoring the homework he's got to do for the next day, trying to ignore how hungry he is and simply pitying himself. Because, at this point, he thinks he deserves that much.
He's brushing his teeth in the bathroom when he hears Mrs. Newson's footsteps climbing the stairs. He spits and rinses hurriedly, watching the door with apprehension and taking a few, almost subconscious steps back.
She stands in the doorway, observing him for a moment and then jerks her head in the direction of the stairs. He sets his toothbrush down by the sink and follows her downstairs, Jason watches him from the dimly lit doorway to the left of his and Ned's room.
He guessed this would happen, it seemed likely after the events of today. He only wonders if the method of punishment tonight will be standing in the sitting room or sleeping outside. He despises them both, not sure which one he'd rather endure. If he sleeps outside, at least he sleeps and if he stands in the sitting room, he doesn't, but then at least he's warm.
She pushes him into the living room and he lets out a small sigh. He's wearing his hoodie, of course, sleeping in the garden would have been horrible, but he would have slept at least and he's better clothed for it now.
Mrs. Newson backs him into the corner of the room. He hates this, it makes him feel like some kindergartener. In his elementary school, when they were really little, Amir's age, maybe, they had a 'time out corner' where kids would go for fighting or eating glitter or something. He finds the whole thing patronising now, despite the fact that Mrs. Newson, however horrible she is, would never deprive a kid Amir's age of sleep like this.
"Frankly, you've acted like a child today, Alexander, but that comes as no surprise."
He resists the urge to do something inflammatory like roll his eyes and looks, instead, at his feet.
"You've moved from some forgotten spot in the Caribbean to the foster system, and you'll move from juvie to prison if you don't check yourself."
He physically rather than metaphorically bites his tongue at this, livid. He fought one kid, and because this woman wants to humiliate him and has some messed up, classist, racist ideas, he has to put up with this.
"Do you understand me?"
He says nothing, does nothing.
"Do you understand me, Alexander?"
She repeats herself more forcefully this time and— again with the face grabbing! Her fingers press hard into a bruise along his jaw and he hisses in pain, looking up at her hatefully.
"Yes."
She nods once, he is seething, clenching and unclenching his fists. Mrs. Newson turns then, walks towards the door and then stops in her tracks. Without looking back at him, her hand on the doorknob, she speaks again.
"I don't need to remind you of the consequences if you sit down or move, do I, Alexander?"
He pauses for a beat or two, considering his options. Oh, how he would love to say yes, or respond insolently, tell her to piss off or something equally disparaging. How he would relish in the sting when she slapped him for it, or the the fury in her eyes when she turned to face him. He could live off that feeling, he thinks, the adrenaline of expectancy, of tension.
But he is afraid of this women, despite the toughness he's let grow like a shell around him these last few months. He's still just a scared little kid. He's only thirteen, scrappy, hungry, crumbling. He holds his tongue. Because as much as he feels he deserves to be slapped and punched and beaten, the very human, survivalist part of him retains its last shreds of self-preservation.
"No, Mrs. Newson."
She nods, still not facing him and walks from the room, closing the door behind her and cutting off the last slice of light from the hallway outside. He slumps, leaning heavily against the wall.
How did he get here?
The next week doesn't pass, it drags, taking Alex with it, moving excruciatingly slowly. He stands for the entirety of that first night, Mrs. Newson looks surprised when she walks in the next morning to see him awake and upright.
She doesn't give him breakfast that day. He still has to sit at the table though, Peter watches him malevolently from across the room. The other boys sit around him, eating. He folds his arms on the table and rests his head on them, not sleeping, just shutting everything else out. No one disturbs him, he thinks they pity him. Though, evidently not enough to give him any of their food.
School comes and goes, he sleeps in most of his lessons. The teachers don't care. They're used to washed and rung out teenagers. He's just another foster kid, skinny in his too-big jumper and thrice rolled jeans.
He goes to a vending machine at lunch and manages to bang at the side in such a way that a Hershey's bar falls into the opening below. He eats it outside, under the shadow of the maths building. No one disturbs him back here, only the occasional stoners and junkies come to trade edibles, get high and play hacky sack.
Mrs. Newson puts him in the living room again that night, after dinner, of which he wasn't allowed to eat. He doesn't even blink in surprise this time. She thinks she's broken him. Maybe she has.
Jason sneaks a girl into the house a few nights later.
Mrs. Newson is out shopping, Peter's gone home. Jason brings her home after school and leads her up the stairs, in the direction of his room.
She's quite pretty, Alex supposes. She's got short, dirty blonde hair with Avril Lavigne eyeliner and nicotine fingertips. Her clothes are rough and worn looking. Maybe her family's as poor as they are. On her wrists, she has inch thick stacks of bands and bracelets, they shift aside as she holds Jason's hand, Alex sees red gashes on the skin there.
She looks about Jason's age, maybe she goes to their school. The girl shoots him a look as Jason pulls her by the hand into his room, it's hard, it's a clear warning, but it's almost pitying too. Jason puts a finger to his lips before he closes the door.
Michael's been kicked out into the sitting room, he looks a little grumpy. You can hear Jason and the girl laughing upstairs. The window of their bedroom is open, Alex thinks they're smoking out of it. Sumon's shut Amir up in his room with a picture book for the time being and shoots Alex an exasperated look when they pass each other in the hallway.
Later, through the rather thin walls, they hear more than just laughter. Alex puts a pillow over his head and tries to sleep, praying that Mrs. Newson doesn't come home. They'll all be in for it if she does.
Jason and his girl are lucky. She leaves about ten minutes before Mrs. Newson's car pulls up in the driveway and Jason's fanned the smell of whatever they were smoking out the window. Michael slinks back in later, Jason and him can be heard arguing heatedly that very evening.
Alex hasn't eaten properly in days and Mrs. Newson's showed no signs of letting him rejoin breakfast or dinner. Once a day, she might toss him an apple or a granola bar, she doesn't want him to starve to death, but it's not enough. He's not grown a millimetre since he arrived here three months ago and he thinks he's gotten even scrawnier.
He's grown adept at stealing food from the school cantine.
If he walks to the fridge there, grabs a sandwich and then submerges himself in the throng of kids that flock the hall, he can slip past the paying point and out into the courtyard unnoticed. He does this only when he has to, because his mother taught him that stealing was wrong. He only resorts to this when black spots threaten to overcome his vision. When it's imperative he eat.
After four or five days, Ned's started throwing him concerned looks in the hallway at school or when they brush their teeth beside each other in the bathroom. He still comes down to the sitting room in the morning to wake Alex before Mrs. Newson, make sure she doesn't catch him asleep on the floor. Sumon presses an extra granola bar into his hand the same day and jogs off, not looking back.
He'd thanked Alex on the day he'd fought Jason, for helping Amir, Alex supposes he feels partially responsible for what happened. He doesn't know how selfish Alex is, that he wasn't fighting for Amir, just for himself.
His grades are sinking. He got an A+ in his last English essay, this time around he barely scraped a B. Mr. Livingston watches him closely now from his desk, sighs in disappointment when Alex sleeps in class but doesn't question it. He's probably been let down by enough promising, disenfranchised kids before now. Why is Alex any different?
He's found it harder and harder to function. These days, getting up from the floor of the living room where he's crumpled up like a piece of rubbish, exhausted, takes so much effort.
By the time he gets to school he doesn't have energy for anything else. At lunch, he steals his food and goes to the library. On his better days he'll pour over books, sometimes he merely sleeps. The librarian's grown used to him. She doesn't say anything when he ignores the bell and skips fourth, she lets him hang around even when he should be in class.
It's the early hours of a Sunday morning when he does it.
Ned's not sleeping in their room tonight, he's gone on some mandatory, overnight field trip that Alexander is surprised their school could even afford, though he thinks some politician might have stepped in to help as part of some campaign. Give some 'poor, disenfranchised delinquents' a fun day out. Alex thinks that he'd rather their area have street lights at night or better water.
He's all alone, starving despite being allowed to eat both breakfast and dinner and he's stressed. He has a project due in tomorrow that he hasn't even started. He probably won't even turn up to the class to be totally honest, but he's disappointed in himself. He's failed his mother. These days he only really gets Cs, his math teacher told him the other day that he was failing their quadratics unit. He found that he didn't even care.
His Prazosin, the pills he takes for his nightmares, sit in their little bottle on the chest of drawers. It's half empty, the prescription will have to be renewed sometime soon, there's maybe a dozen pills left.
He stands up from where he's curled up on top of his sheets and opens the bottle, pouring the pills out onto the top of the drawers. The pills bounce and roll in different directions, little ovals, gleaming in the light. They look strangely enticing. A smooth, shiny exterior, all so perfectly round.
This is strange, he's not thinking clearly tonight, his thoughts are elsewhere. On Jason and his girlfriend, the cuts on her arm. On Amir and Sumon, who might be adopted sometime soon, apparently. He prefers to think about other people's business, their struggles, their lives. It's easier than his own, he can tell himself that at least he doesn't have it as bad they do.
Well, at least he used to find comfort in that. These days, it's hard to think these other boys have it worse than him. Sumon and Amir have each other and Jason seems to enjoy time with his girlfriend.
He takes the pills in one hand and feels them against his palm, observing the strange, smooth sensation against his skin.
He wonders what would happen if he were to take them. Maybe he should, he has nothing to lose. It might be easier, less work, less bother to just end it all here.
Mrs. Newson's probably right. He'll move from the foster system to juvie to prison, he already steals on a daily basis. He hasn't got James, or his mom, or his cousin or his home.
He doesn't really see why he's still here, hanging around in this place with people who don't care about him, people who are, rather than merely indifferent towards him, actively malevolent.
He sits on the floor, leaning his back against the side of his bed. Alex watches the pills pensively. He's not really scared, he feels a little flat, if he's honest, like three-day-old seltzer water.
The sky outside is dark. It's really early in the morning, the dawn hasn't even broken over the tops of the houses across the street. It won't for a few hours yet.
He looks around the room, taking in the tattered blinds and graffiti-ed chest of drawers. Some foster kids of the past have written their names on it.
'Jake was here', 'fuck off', 'Nathan's mom is fat', and the usual teenage boy obscenities.
It all seems so stupid to Alex. Why do people feel the urge to forever imprint their names into things they touch? School desks, walls, wardrobes, boyfriends and girlfriends. He doesn't like the idea of it, it feels like ownership, ownership of things that don't belong to anybody specific. This wardrobe doesn't belong to 'Jake', it doesn't belong to Ned or him, or Mrs. Newson. It's for everyone. Just like the wall someone's written their name on by his school doesn't belong to that person, it's the city's wall.
He's losing his mind.
He takes the pills.
No water, no buildup. Twelve or so of them, tipped down in one go, sharp and clustering in his throat until he closes his eyes and swallows with a mighty effort.
He reads then, waiting for something to happen. A dozen pills isn't too much, but these things are really, really strong. He can only take half of one a day, the doctor warned him not to accidentally double dose. Now he's going to double dose twelve-fold. On purpose.
He reads through an English textbook, testing himself, seeing how well his brain is working as time passes. At first, everything is normal. He can remember dates, words for different literary techniques, the characters in certain books. Twenty minutes later, however, the definition of pathetic fallacy fails him, as well as the year Edgar-Allen-Poe published the Raven. In another twenty minutes, he can't even read the words on the page. They're blurring in and out of each other, making him dizzy. He has to shut the book.
It's five minutes before he loses consciousness, leaned against the side of his bed. An empty bottle of pills beside him and an English textbook on his lap. The light is still turned on, his bedroom door is open a crack. The blind casts a striped shadow onto the street outside, frost grows on his window pane. The house sleeps.
Alex is still in exactly that position, limp and slumped, when Ned comes home early the next morning. He pushes open the door, only to find it blocked by Alexander's foot. He forces it a little a little harder, leans his weight heavier against the door and steps in, freezing in the doorway when his eyes fall on Alexander. Ned yells.
Alexander does nothing, his head lolls slightly forwards. Ned kneels down and shakes him violently. His eyes open a crack and he groans, flopping onto his stomach. The older boy seizes his arm, drags him from the room and into the hall, as fast as he can. He's seen the empty pill bottle, the blueness of his younger roommate's lips. He knows what he's done, frankly he shouldn't be surprised. They've all wanted to, they've all thought about it. Everyone, well, maybe except little Amir.
Alex isn't heavy at all, but Ned isn't strong either. He pulls the younger boy to the bathroom, cursing loudly and leans him over the toilet. He has no idea if this is what he should do, he has no idea if it will work, but he has to do something, right? He can't possibly make things worse.
Grimacing, Ned holds open Alex's jaw and sticks his fingers down his throat, trying to make him get sick. He needs to throw up whatever he took. He also needs to be careful not to choke him.
Alex fights him off, sluggishly. His arms sleepily hit Ned in the chest, but the older boy doesn't falter. Alexander gags, Ned pulls his hand away, and then, the younger boy gets sick.
Ned wrinkles his nose, looks behind him into the hallway and yells out for Sumon. No one comes. The boys might think this is another one of Alex's nightmares, they've probably gotten used to blocking out nighttime yelling. He swears loudly, grabs Alexander's arm and pulls him from the bathroom.
At the top of the stairs, he realises he has to carry him. He can't risk hurting Alex by dragging him down the steps. He pulls him onto his back and hurries as fast as he can to Mrs. Newson's room, pounding violently on the door.
She looks, for a moment, furious. Her hair is tied in a low bun and she's only wearing a night slip, it's early yet. Maybe five or six.
Then, her eyes fall on Alexander. He's leaning heavily against Ned, unconscious, blue lips and pale skin.
"Call nine one one, now."
Alexander wakes up in hospital. He knows he's in hospital by the smell, bleach and antiseptic, and by the whiteness of everything. Bone white, sun-bleached skull white.
There's a nurse stood by his bed, doing something with her back turned away from him. He can feel panic drenching him, rising like a tide inside him. He sits up, wanting to get out of this bed, to leave this place.
The nurse turns around, sees that he's sat up and starts slightly.
Alex doesn't care, he wants out of here, he wants to get away from this room, this nurse, this building. She's holding a syringe in one hand, like the one they injected into him when he was ill with that fever, after his mom died.
He squirms away from her in the bed, backing himself up against the wall in terror. She won't touch him with that thing, she won't touch him period. He just wants to go home. By home, of course he doesn't mean Mrs. Newson's house, he means Nevis. He means his mom and his brother.
Why is the simplest wish so impossible, why can't it just be so?
The nurse puts the syringe down slowly and holds out her hands, showing him that they are empty. His fears are not dispelled, he'll only calm down when he's away from here.
"It's alright, it's alright. There's no need to be frightened, I just need to get a doctor."
He shakes his head frantically and makes to stand up, but something is attached to his arm. A needle, it stings painfully when he tries to pull away from it.
"No doctores, je voudrais partir, je voudrais partir! Laisse-moi partir!"
No doctors, I want to go, I want to go! Let me go!
She moves towards him but he jumps back, his head pounding and his throat burning. He feels ill, so, so ill. Taking a dozen strong, sympatholytic pills does that to you.
"Leave me alone, I want to go!"
A wave of dizziness crashes over him and he closes his eyes, doing his best not to sink down back into the bed, he just wants to leave, he needs to get out of this place.
Another nurse stands in the doorway, holding a clipboard and looking shocked. He walks quickly into the room and Alex backs further into the corner, feeling even more closed in, more trapped.
"Alexander, you just need to get some rest. No one wants to hurt you, you're sick, you just need to lie down."
He looks around wildly for any route of escape, brought back to about a month ago when he'd tried to resist Mrs. Newson taking him to a doctor. He pulls again at the needle that leads into his arm and hisses in pain at the sharp sting. It doesn't give, it's secured by surgical tape and he hasn't the courage to pull any harder.
"Don't pull at that, you need to lie down."
The male nurse moves forward, Alexander can't get away— he's backed into the corner of the room, kneeling on his bed The male nurse attempts to placate him, throwing the other nurse behind him a pointed look.
She nods and jogs from the room, Alexander still pushing himself firmly into the corner protecting himself with outstretched arms.
He stays like that, trying to defend himself, his anxiety spiking higher and higher as the male nurse tries to talk comfortingly to him.
It's only five minutes until footsteps return in the corridor, two sets of them this time. The first, female nurse walks in the door closely followed by Mrs. Newson.
Alexander freezes.
She's dressed in her usual black. A blazer and skirt, hair tied half back, makeup impeccable. Her expression is a thin veneer of concern and worry, though Alexander knows this is entirely false. She wouldn't have cared if he had actually died, beyond the repercussions it would have on her.
She steps forward and immediately, the panic floods back into him. He tries to move along the wall, away from this woman but has no where to go. He shakes his head violently, feels tears well up and holds his hands up over his face.
"Je— Je voudrais— I want to leave!"
He sees, through the gap between his arms, Mrs. Newson glance awkwardly at the two medical staff. She reaches forward, attempting to placate him and touches his shoulder gently. He shivers.
"How are you feeling? Are you alright?"
Her face is turned away from the two nurses. Her eyes are warning, cold. She's telling him to calm down, to act normal, to lie back. Otherwise they'll be consequences.
He holds his breath, lies back onto the bed and grits his teeth. His stomach churns with either illness or fear, probably both.
The nurses look at each other and the second one, the man, picks up the syringe from where the woman had laid it down.
"You need to have this shot, is that alright?"
He widens his eyes and looks in fear at all of them. He doesn't want this, he doesn't want this, he doesn't want—
He's fighting to get away from the gloved hands that hold him down but something is injected to the smooth, exposed crook of his elbow. He's sobbing openly now as his consciousness is stolen from him.
"MAMA! Mama!"
He sucks in a sharp breath, shaking his head slowly and feels the insatiable urge to flee again.
"I don't... Please..."
Mrs. Newson narrows her eyes and glares at him sternly, tilting her face about thirty degrees away from the nurses so that only Alex is privy to her expression.
"Alexander, it's only one injection."
He's not scared of needles, or the pain. He's scared of the memories, of what last happened when he was given a shot. One moment, with his mother, the next, surrounded by strangers.
He takes a deep breath, looks away and holds out his arm. The male nurse moves forward, readies the syringe and then injects it quickly into the side of his bicep. It hurts a little, but it isn't the pain he's afraid of. Nothing happens instantly, however. Unlike last time, he remains conscious and lucid. It is as though nothing has happened. He breathes a sigh of relief.
"Can we have the room, please? If there's nothing else you need to do?"
Mrs. Newson looks from one nurse to the other politely, Alex feels his heart rate begin to speed up. He is glad there's no beeping machine there by his bed like in the movies, otherwise the nurses would be able to see and hear his fear.
"Of course, yes."
The male nurse seals the syringe in a small, plastic bag and they both leave, closing the door behind them.
"What in God's name were you thinking, Alexander?"
Her voice is low and deadly, like the ominous hissing of a snake before it strikes. He backs away slightly, reaching his hands up tentatively to hide his face.
"I— I don't... I'm sorry."
She throws her hands in the air and scoffs, shaking her head in exasperation. As though he's not made his bed rather than tried to kill himself.
"Do you know the repercussions this could have, on me, on you? Did you honestly think it would work? Alexander, people don't die from taking twelve sleeping pills!"
He drops his head and shrugs, watching his hands in shame. He's an idiot. He's messed everything up, he couldn't even kill himself right.
"I... I..."
Mrs. Newson laughs sarcastically.
"Don't waste your breath, it's not going to change anything. You can't stay at the house anymore, you'll be re-homed. Frankly, I'm glad. You're more trouble than you're worth."
He says nothing, she told him not to waste his breath.
"You think a group home is bad? Alex, you had a good deal where you were! You'll spend the next five years shoved through foster homes. You probably won't be adopted, you're too old for that, but you won't turn eighteen for a few years yet."
He scowls and pulls at his hospital gown. He doesn't like not being in his own clothes. He doesn't like that someone changed him out of them.
"I had a 'good deal' at yours, huh?"
Mrs. Newson looks as though she'd like to hit him, but of course, he is ill in hospital and her hits tend to be hard enough to leave redness afterwards. One of the nurses would see.
"Yeah, you did. Trust me, group homes are the only places for kids like you. Do you really want to be staying with a different family every other month, total strangers?"
He says nothing, just looks at his hands and bites his lip. She's scared him now. She's right, too. He doesn't want to be staying with total strangers in new houses every month. He likes at least some semblance of permanence, of routine. Even at Mrs. Newson's, he'd known what to expect from her.
She steps back slightly, shakes her head and walks from the room.
It's the last time he sees her.
Peter brings his things around later, in his duffel bag. The next day, his social worker visits to talk to him about his next placement, the Harveys. He leaves the hospital that night.
It's only in the back of his social worker's car that he opens his duffel bag. Something falls out from between the pages of his English textbook.
A slip of paper.
Amir's made him a get well soon card. He's drawn Alexander, himself and Sumon in crayon, stick figures with hair and clothes. When he opens it, there are three different types handwriting inside.
The large, spiky one of Amir that merely reads his name, misspelt, the smaller, rounded one of Sumon that reads 'Get well soon, good luck— Sumon' and right in the corner of the card, Ned's handwriting. It simply reads, 'We'll miss you. Get well soon — Ned.'
Alexander won't miss Mrs. Newson, or Peter, or Jason, or the hunger but he will miss Ned's quiet personality and protectiveness, Amir's childish innocence and Sumon's sense of humour. He supposes there's something to be said for the group aspect of Mrs. Newson's foster home. He'll miss them too.
