Somebody to Love Me

by Smitty91

Alvin struggles to cope with child abuse while attempting to find a loving parent. Rated T for subject matter. This story is set in an alternate universe.

7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

It was one of the worst nights of Alvin's life and would effect him up to present day. Because of that night, he became terrified of the dark.

After coming out of solitary, he barely talked. He mostly kept his head down and looked at the floor. He sat alone when he did eat. He slept in his bed ninety percent of the time. While in school at the hospital, he barely spoke. He stopped caring. He pulled himself inside his mind and his body went on autopilot. He did what he was told, said what they wanted him to say, took what they wanted him to take. He didn't even remember much of the rest of the stay after that night in solitary. He just existed.

Finally, Friday arrived. He was asked to go and meet with the social worker. He was told that still a group home was not able to be found. He was told they decided that based on his behavior (or lack thereof since they'd broken him) he would be allowed to return home. However, there would be some stipulations.

He was not allowed to be alone with his brothers, ever. He was to be supervised at all times. If he did go anywhere with anyone, Dave was to be informed of who he was going with, where he was going, a contact phone number for the place, and when he was to return home. He was not to go anywhere without Dave's knowledge period. When he returned home, was of this was explained all over again. He mostly just slept. He was still inside himself. Over the course of a few days, he began to come back out of himself.

That following Friday after being released from Van Nuys Psych under Dave's watch, Dave had him come with him to the new school he would be going to called Tobinworld. He would be sent to Tobinworld since the last one expelled him for the bloody nose incident that he didn't even do.

The lobby of the school was like a hotel lobby. It had a double grand staircase and looked pretty nice, but that was for show. There was no tour or anything. They met with the principal and did a meeting to decide which classroom Alvin would be placed in. He had the weekend to get ready.

By Sunday, Alvin was more or less back to his old self, but not without problems. The damage had been done. The last stay effected him. In addition to the new school, Dave had him seeing a therapist at the Glen Roberts Child Study Center in Glendale. He first started seeing a female therapist. He didn't mesh well with her at all.

On that Sunday evening, Alvin was looking at the new school as a brand new start. Dave took him to get new some new things for school. However, they came to find out most were not allowed. No backpacks were allowed. Students were to come with nothing but shoes, socks, pants/shorts, a shirt, and a jacket for when it got cold. Nothing else. Nothing in their pockets.

The following morning, the bus arrived and Alvin was picked up around eight am. It sucked being picked up in that bus. It was a forty-foot bus with "TOBINWORLD" written on the side. He was about sixteen and a half, almost seventeen, when he started going to the new school. It was a summer school. He had a feeling that this one would be the worse school yet. The school was located in Glendale, California.

There was a staff member, besides the bus driver, that was on the bus in case one of the kids needed to be restrained and was also there to search the students if they saw a bulge or suspected one of them had something in their pockets. Because of this rule, Alvin's backpack stayed at home, but he figured his wallet, keys, and a pen he got from the ninety-cent store wouldn't be a problem. He was wrong. Once on the bus, a staff member asked him to stand back up. He then asked Alvin, "What's that in your back pocket?"

Alvin said, "My wallet." Not only did the guy take his wallet, but also his house keys were taken away on the bus. He asked, "What are you doing?"

The guy told Alvin, "Students are not to have anything on their person but their clothes and shoes."

The pen wasn't found on the search by the male staff member on the bus. Alvin explained that the items were his, that the wallet had his ID and some money, and he needed his keys as he was a latch key kid, (well, he was before his last stay at the hospital), and the keys were for his bike lock and so forth. He was told he would get them back at the end of the day. He was ticked off to have his things taken from him.

The school treated students like they were little kids, although Alvin felt more like he was going to prison. The students were never alone for one second from the time they were picked up to the time they were dropped back off home. They had a staff with them at all times. The staff all wore blue shirts with "TOBINWORLD" that had a rainbow over it on the front of their shirts. They really stood out on field trips, like when they went to the city library and such. If someone had to go to the bathroom, they had a staff member with them standing right behind them while they took a pee. The school totally felt like a prison to Alvin. There security cameras, locked gates, and staff all over the place. Alvin figured that the staff might as well have had them all in handcuffs and in cells. His first day there he was actually attacked and almost killed, and by a staff member of all people.

It was a summer school of sorts. Alvin came into the classroom, took his seat, and was given class work. He took out an ink pen he had bought at the dollar store and began doing his work. One of the staff members known as "Sabas" came up to him and accused Alvin of stealing his pen. Alvin told him, "You're mistaken. This pen belongs to me." He went back to doing his work.

Sabas ordered Alvin to give him the pen. Alvin refused. He then tried to snatch it out of Alvin's hand. He failed. Then he lunged at Alvin, pushed him back in his chair, tipping him backward in his desk, breaking the table that was behind him in half and smashing the fan that was on the table into pieces. Alvin ended up on the floor on his back with Sabas on top of him. The pen flew from Alvin's hand on the way down and landed by the wall under the window.

Sabas then pulled Alvin from his desk (it was a desk combined with a chair) and he put Alvin on his stomach. That's when he noticed the pen by the window. He picked up the pen and said, "Now who has the pen?"

Alvin told him, "Good for you."

Sabas was holding Alvin down on the ground. Another staff member from the classroom next door heard the crash and came in. The other staff member came in to help hold Alvin down. He assumed Alvin was "going off." Mind you, Alvin wasn't fighting back. All of a sudden, his arms and legs were extended out like he was flying. That's when Sabas put his elbow into Alvin's right shoulder blade and began pressing and drilling it in until Alvin was screaming out in pain. The more he screamed, the harder Sabas pushed his elbow into Alvin, smiling as he did it, obviously getting a lot of enjoyment from causing Alvin pain.

Alvin was struggling to get Sabas off of him to stop the pain. Sabas and the other staff member added more weight to his back. That's when he began having trouble getting a breath from all the weight on top of him. He began moving, trying to shift their weight so he could breath. As time went on, he was having a harder and harder time breathing and thus, was struggling more and more, panicking, trying to get air. This went on for about thirty minutes.

He was suffocating. He began to become lightheaded and very dizzy and his eye sight began to get blurry. He was about to pass out. He knew he was about to die and was having mixed feelings. On one hand, he didn't want to die. But on the other hand, he was tired of being hurt by people and was looking forward to his life ending so he didn't have to be hurt by people anymore.

Then, suddenly, they both shifted their weight at the last second and he was able to get a breath. Then he was finally let up. He was helped up and told to go down to the black top to meet with the other kids.

He walked down the grand staircase and saw Dave sitting waiting to meet with the principal for an IEP meeting. Dave didn't even notice Alvin's red face, his tear-stained face. He didn't even realize that had they not shifted their weight at that time, he wouldn't be there for the IEP anymore; he would be there to claim Alvin's body.

Alvin walked by him and walked out the door, which opened to the black top. Sabas stopped Alvin when they got outside and put his mouth to Alvin's ear and whispered, "If you do anything I will kick your ass, I don't care". The incident report that was filed by Sabas read:

"Student kicked and punched staff and needed to be restrained on the floor for a time of thirty minutes. Student attempted to continue attacking staff. Incident resulted in minimal injury to student and bruises on staff."

Alvin had never hit any staff member at any time. Besides screaming in pain, he hadn't resisted the staff holding him on the floor at all except for trying to shift their weight when he was suffocating. But of course, according to the school, he was lying and he was suspended for three days for attacking staff.

Once he got home, the staff member on the bus returned his wallet and keys to him. It was later worked out that he would have permission to have the items as he needed to have them. The other issue with Tobinworld was his therapist appointment.

The center that was doing the therapy was three blocks away from the school, but because of the school's policy, Alvin couldn't just leave the school. He had to get on the bus and be driven home to his front door. They would wait until he closed the door before they drove away.

The problem was that Alvin lived clear across town. It took him almost an hour to ride his bike all the way back to the school, and then ride the three blocks past the school he had to go. One of the staff stopped him when he passed the school one time. He was asking how Alvin got back there. Alvin told him, "I have a therapist I see just three blocks away."

But because of their policy about not letting students be alone and having them have to be dropped off at home before they could go anywhere else, Alvin had to take the school bus home, to get his bike, and ride all the way back to where he just came from to go to his therapist's office. It was stupid.

It would have been so much less of a headache to step outside the school and catch the city bus as there was a stop sign right in front of the school and take the bus three blocks to my therapist's office and then take the city bus home. But, nope. That would have been too simple.

Alvin was also running into some issues with the first therapist and I was soon transferred to a new therapist named Derrick Mason. He came to help a lot. He had been in the practice for much longer and knew it was sometimes more effective to throw away the book sometimes. Over time they built up trust. In Alvin's past, Derrick Mason was one of few therapists who was able to help him cope with the abuse at home, the hospitals, and at school.

The psychiatrist, who also worked at Glen Roberts Child Study Center, didn't, however. She decided to put Alvin on a medication called Depakote. Along with a nasty taste, the medication made him sleep almost constantly. He was awake to eat meals and pretty much was sleeping through school. After a few days of this, he told Dave he wasn't going to take it anymore.

Dave decided to start crushing the pills up and putting them into Alvin's food. He was eating a hamburger one evening for dinner, though something didn't taste right. He began to tear apart the burger patty and discovered chunks of the Depakote pills. He threw out the hamburger and took out a can of corn and ate that for dinner. For months he wouldn't eat anything unless he saw it being prepared from start to finish, or that it came out of a sealed can that he opened himself.

Something else was starting to happen around this time as well that made things even more difficult. Since Alvin had been ten (as far back as he could remember) he had had the ability to pick up on others' emotions. After some research, he found that this gift was called being an "empathic." In short, he was able to pick up on the emotions of those around him. Mind you, he wasn't able to do this with everyone, and it was without choice. He had thus far been unable to choose with whom a connection was made or when. It was quite random. Often he feel it to be both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing in that it helped him better help others. In other ways, it was a curse in that there were some things he could rather go without feeling. Going to such special education schools with such a gift made it difficult. Some of the kids cycled through emotions like people flipped through channels on a TV. He had some difficulties with this gift at all of the schools. However, the students going to Tobinworld were far more emotional than other kids he had been around. Many students in the classroom he was in cycled through different emotions swiftly. They would have a meltdown if one of the staff took one of their points away. The student would actually break down crying and begging, "No, no, no, please don't! Pleeeaaassseee!" If the staff member didn't give the point back from them begging, the kid would then go into full meltdown mode and start overturning their desk, throw books, and so on.

Sometimes Alvin would get so frustrated and fatigued that he would just need a break from the exposure, even if that meant a bathroom break. During PE time, he often sat alone about ten or more feet away from any people.

Back when all this was going on, Alvin wasn't even aware he had this gift. He just thought all these feelings he had were all his. It was confusing because he couldn't understand why he would suddenly become upset when nothing was going on around him to trigger anger at the moment. He just knew that when he sat alone he felt better, calmer. He didn't know why. It wasn't be for another ten to twelve years before he would learn exactly why.

But the school would observe his troubles with emotions and he was falsely diagnosed as "Severely Emotionally Disturbed" (SED for short). The schools did not recognize such gifts, so he was pegged with SED.

About six months into the school year, Dave found out that Alvin could qualify for Social Security Disability and applied. Alvin was approved a few months later. SSI issued a $1,700.00 check for back pay that he would have gotten had he been approved the day he applied. A back pay or "retro" check was what they called it. They told Dave he could take a portion for rent, so he took the check and deducted rent for the few months they were waiting, some $800 or so dollars. The rest was used to buy some clothing, his own TV and VCR so Alvin tape the home improvement shows that were on while he was at school so he could watch them later, and some other odds and ends.

He also got a CB radio that he got much use from. He loved being able to talk to other people. The family lived close to the five-lane freeway so he frequently talked with the long haul truckers and stuff. It was a good stress release. He told his brothers, "Don't ask me how," because even he had no idea. He came up with a rig to boost his signal, with which he managed to get an extra four or five miles off of it, but what he didn't know was that he was bleeding over onto other frequencies.

Alvin found this out one morning the school bus pulled up while he was chatting with this long haul trucker who was heading to Portland. He was saying his goodbyes and apparently it was bleeding over onto the school bus radio frequency. When he got on the bus, some of the students told him they could hear what he was saying on the bus radio and from then on Alvin had to watch what he was saying when the school bus was due to arrive.

Most of Alvin's free time after school, though, was spent at Griffith Park. After getting home he would make a snack and then head off on his bike. He would go to Travel Town where he would ride the scaled down steam trains for only fifty cents a ride. The box cars had the ceiling removed and three seats per car were added. He rode in a seat inside the scaled down model. It was fun. Other times he just rode around the park hanging out. It was nice to be away from people and just chill in nature either just hanging out or meditating. He loved it there.

Later in the school year the family moved down the street to a two-bedroom apartment. Dave and his girlfriend Joanna were having problems. She often drank a malt liquor called "King Cobra." The drink would often make her violent. She hated Alvin's brothers with a passion. One time one of Alvin's brothers was being disrespectful towards Dave and apparently Joanna got tired of it because she got up and pinned Simon to the wall by way of putting her hand around Simon's neck.

Some other issues that occurred when Joanna got drunk was when she ripped out all the telephone lines in the house once. She grabbed the line that was stapled to the wall and just started pulling it from the wall. Another time while staying with Alvin, his brothers, and Dave in Baldwin Park, she took Dave's wallet and used the money to go get drunk and ditched the wallet in some bushes. Thankfully, the wallet was recovered later so no cards had to be canceled and replaced.

There was another time when they were in Baldwin Park and Dave and Joanna were staying over, she was drunk and then got a bottle of octane booster and was pouring it on a rag and sniffing it on the back patio. Dave had gone out to tell her dinner was almost done. She looked up at him and said, "Please don't melt me".

She would often leave, get drunk, and arrive back home later. Alvin was in bed one evening. They had just moved four blocks down to the two-bedroom apartment from the motel Dave had been staying in. She had just come back from drinking, but was still drunk. She was knocking on the living room window, asking Dave, "Dave, let me in, I'm cold." When Dave wouldn't let her in, she started hollering that he was an asshole, going on and on. Then she started in talking crap about Alvin. "At least my sixteen year old son isn't still wearing diapers." Dave had found Alvin's stash of diapers from time to time, but Dave just thought Alvin liked wearing them; he didn't know Alvin was wearing them for the bed wetting problem.

During this time Dave and Joanna broke up. It was something they would often do. They broke up and get back together about one to three times a year, on average, although it was less as the years went on. Maybe it had something to do with her not drinking as much, but while in the two-bedroom apartment Dave wanted some female company and invited over a co-worker from the telemarketer room he worked for. A girl named Jenna Gibson. She was a nice girl, more or less. Dave had a fling with her for a few weeks while Joanna and him were split up. It never was dull in the house. There was always something going on.

Because they only moved four blocks away, Alvin was still having to go to Tobinworld. Sabas spent most of the year calling him names like, "White boy," and other remarks, anything he could think of to get him upset so Alvin would try to leave so he could justify slamming Alvin to the floor, claiming Alvin was "going off." He seemed to get some sort of sick pleasure out of hurting Alvin. Sabas was one of those guys who pushed weights, drank body building shakes, and stuff. He brought a big jug of body building mix with him and would mix up container after container. He was always looking for a chance to get into fights to have a reason to hold down a student and do things to cause pain, to show he was in charge and that if you crossed him, you would know pain. Alvin found him to be a very disturbing guy.

It was during this time that Alvin began cutting. When he was doing it in school, it was mostly with tacks and things. He was having trouble dealing with Sabas's comments and such, as well as dealing with the emotions from the other students in the classroom. When he was injuring himself, it would dull the emotions and bring him some peace. He would feel calm. He got into the habit of whenever someone did something to him, said something to him, or when he was picking up emotions from others that he didn't like feeling, he would injure himself. He had no idea what he had started and it quickly got out of control fast.

Sabas was constantly trying to get at him. He looked for any reason to slam Alvin on the floor, claiming he was "going off." He would do his name-calling thing, calling Alvin "white boy," tell Alvin he was worthless and so on until Alvin decided to get up and try to step outside the classroom to cool down, and then he would slam Alvin to the floor and hold him down.

There was a period of time when Sabas was even keeping Alvin's lunches from him. The school had these flash cards they were doing in the mornings. They gave the students flash cards and a timer that counted down seconds. The goal was to memorize the cards and do as many as they could in a set period of time of about forty-five seconds. Unfortunately, Alvin had reached a point that he was not going to improve unless he had more time. However, they had a rule that said each student had to improve by two cards per week. No excuses. He just wasn't able to do any better. Because of this, he reached a point where he didn't take part anymore. He was tired of getting frustratingly upset at not doing any better, and then having Sabas come over and tell him, "You had better do better." In addition, Sabas told him, "If you refuse, you will have to write out of the dictionary for three hours." To hell with that, Alvin thought. I'm not going to copy out of any dictionary, certainly not for three hours. He went on to tell told Alvin, "Unless you do the three-hour dictionary writing, you won't get anything, including lunch." When lunch came around, he would place Alvin's on the table next to Alvin just out of reach, but just close enough for Alvin to smell all day. This went on throughout the week.

On Monday, it was a new week, but Alvin still refused to get himself all worked up over the cards. He knew he couldn't get any more. Because of this, Sabas would start the dictionary threat again and Alvin didn't get his lunch for another week. This went on for over two months. By the middle of the first week Sabas started keeping Alvin's lunch from him, Alvin had begun making himself a larger breakfast, and would just have lunch when he got back home.

The school also had a problem with Alvin because he wouldn't pick anything in their reward room place. In the room the students made a long term contract for prizes. The contracts were behavior related. That's what the school was all about. Behavior. Learning classwork came second. The contract was for things like "I will sit still in my seat for a whole week" or "I will not refuse commands for at least three days" and so on. Some of the prizes in the room were model cars, sweaters, baseball hats, stickers, coloring books, and so on. Basically, things for all age groups. However, Alvin didn't find anything interesting, and since they didn't do cash rewards either they had nothing he was interested in to be doing any kind of contract for, first of all. And second of all, the reward system again made him feel like he was being treated like a small child.

Alvin understood the kids there. Mentally speaking, many were very much younger than their age. When he would be in the high school classroom, for example, and when one of them would lost their points they would have a meltdown similar to a toddler would have, begging Mommy not to take the toy away and then when she didn't give it back they would throw themselves on the floor and kick and scream. But in this case, instead of throwing themselves on the floor, they would overturn desks and throw schoolbooks. But all in all, many of the students had the mental age of toddlers who were trapped in the bodies of fifteen to seventeen year old teenagers. At times it was quite surreal to watch these almost grown adults flip out over losing a point on their daily point sheets.

It was the same thing with the "class store." Kids would flip out if they couldn't get what they wanted from the closet. The biggest item was a can of soda. Alvin didn't see what the big deal was. They could've easily gone home and went to the corner store and bought one when they got home.

Again, it was the same thing with the on-site Baskin Robins ice cream store. They got one, two, or three scoops of ice cream based on their points. The kids would have a meltdown if they were one point away from being able to get the third scoop. Again, Alvin couldn't understand why they simply could not wait until they got home to get a bowl of ice cream from the freezer.

Alvin knew he wasn't like most of these kids. The school's point system didn't work on him. He wasn't going to cry, scream, and beg for the staff member to give him a point back. There was actually a time where one of the aids tried reverse psychology. Alvin found it funny.

When he didn't do something they wanted him to do, they would say something like, "Alvin, if you don't do your assignment, I am going to give you a point!" Instead of threatening to take a point, they threatened to give him one. They just couldn't figure me out.

The problem was simple, He just wanted to be treated with respect, not treated like a five year old. Simple as that. If the staff did just that they could've gotten along with Alvin just fine. Most of the staff were used to babying most of the students. They were not used to handling a student that didn't have the mental age of a five or six year old.

Sabas was all about brute force and doing what he could to make whoever crossed him suffer. Midday on one Friday, the class went to what the school called the "Teen Lounge" for a hour as they did every Friday. Alvin had lost too many points by that time, but he didn't care. He was told he could work on the classroom computer while they were gone by the teacher.

Alvin was left in the room with Sabas and another student. While on the computer Sabas stood by the classroom door standing guard and the student came up behind Alvin and placed a noose made from a jump rope around his neck and began pulling. He did his best to pull and get his neck out of the noose. Meanwhile, Sabas stood there and did nothing. Then the student came at Alvin and attacked him. Using take down methods taught to him by his godfather, he was able to defend himself and place the student safely on the floor and hold him down. When the class began walking back, that's when Sabas got involved. He grabbed Alvin off the student and pushed him into his chair. He lost more points for "Attacking a student."

A few days later, another incident happened. One of the students, a kid named Carlos Covell, asked to see some of the short stories Alvin kept on a disk. Alvin showed him, but when he got the disk back it was erased. He was pretty angry. He reported it to the teacher, but nothing was done, so Alvin took the kid's tokens as payment for the erased disk.

The tokens were used by the school to rate a student's behavior during the day along with a point system with a possible five points per hour. Based on the number of tokens one had they were given a choice of which reward at the end of the day they got, such as a candy bar or a bag of chips.

Taking the tokens didn't do anything. The teachers kept track in other ways. The tokens were for kids to see how well they were doing by how many were in their cup at the edge of their desk. Alvin was angry that all that work he had done had just been deleted with nothing done about it. He wanted some justice, so in anger he took the tokens.

What he should have done was kept a backup disk. When he interacted with the kids he saw them as fifteen and sixteen year olds, not toddlers in a adult body, so the thought that a kid would find it funny as hell to delete my stories never crossed his mind.

He had to stay behind that day while the rest of the class went to Baskin Robins that was on the school. Of course he was left with Sabas. It was no more than two minutes that he began messing with Alvin. He had Alvin stand up and shoved him against the closet door and began searching his pockets for the tokens. He had already put them in the teacher's cup that had the rest of the tokens. They were not on his person.

He then pushed Alvin into sitting back in his desk. He took Alvin's hands and forced them onto the desk palms down. Alvin had his hands clenched into fists, holding them against his chest at the time. Sabas grabbed Alvin's hands, put them onto the desk, and began mashing them down until they laid flat. It hurt, but Alvin kept picking them up and telling him to back off and leave him alone. Sabas kept grabbing Alvin's hands and forcing them back onto the desk palm side down.

When Alvin wouldn't sit with his hands flat on the desk palms down, Sabas resorted to name-calling again, telling Alvin, "You're a waste of time, you're a lost cause." When Alvin made eye contact with him he said, "Why are you looking at me? Are you gay? You're gay, huh? We should put you in the other class with Freddy." (Freddy was the cross-dresser that was in the classroom next door.)

The day finally came to an end. By the end of that day Alvin couldn't take it anymore. Day after day he took his verbal abuse and being physically abused by Sabas. He decided he was going to end his life. He was walking out to get on the school bus. On the way to the bus, the teacher stopped him to talk to him for a second. The teacher told him, "Don't do anything rash. It's not worth it." Then he walked away. How did he know what Alvin was thinking? Did he have a clue what had gone on in the classroom that day? He wasn't there to see any of the abuse. Sabas made sure when he did it no other staff were around. Did he know what Alvin was about to do? Who knew. The odd thing was that the teacher's comment made Alvin reach out one more time for help to make Sabas's abuse stop.

That evening after Alvin was dropped off at home and took off on his bike. he rode to his therapist's office and told him if no one was going to do anything about Sabas he was going to end his life to make the abuse stop. He decided to send me to Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital once again. Once he got home the mobile psych team and a ambulance arrived shortly after he got back. This time he was held for three days.

Thankfully, not much happened, only that he got yelled at for talking to the "rainbows." Yeah, Alvin thought the dude was nuts too. Apparently during the time between his last stay and this one they had made some changes. All kids there under the age of ten were called rainbows.

On his second day there he walked by this kid's room. He was about six years old. He was sitting on his bed crying, looking out his wire mesh window at the white brick wall of the building next door. The only thing outside the window was a bush with no leaves. He wanted to go home.

Alvin walked in and sat down next to him and asked him if he knew what his name was. It was Tyler. Alvin asked him how old he was, and he told Alvin six. What a six year old could possibly do to be put in a psych ward was beyond Alvin, who put his arm around him and told him it would be okay, that he would be going home soon. That's when a small blue bird landed on one of the branches of the dead bush outside.

They were talking about the bird when a staff member walked by and saw Alvin talking to Tyler. He came in and told Alvin that he wasn't allowed to talk to the rainbows. Alvin thought he was nuts or something. When Alvin asked, "What are you talking about?" he replied, "Tyler is a rainbow. You're not supposed to be talking to him." It was on the next day that one of the staff explained to Alvin what the whole rainbow thing meant.

Finally on the third day Alvin was released and sent home and Dave believed him about the abuse. According to the school Sabas lost his job and a note in his file was added so he could not work with children in the future. At least there was some justice in the world.

They were already planning to move again, this time to North Hollywood. When he got out of Van Nuys Psychiatric Hospital, Alvin was terrified of school. He flat-out refused to go back to Tobinworld, so they waited until they moved to North Hollywood. From there, Dave tried to find another school, but he was pegged as a problem student and no one wanted to take him. She found a school called "New School". Already Alvin was getting bad feelings about the place before they'd even stepped foot inside.

Just like Tobinworld, New School looked good in the lobby. They did a tour, but they weren't able to see any classrooms because the students were too out of control. Going down one hall, they saw a student locked out of a classroom. He was banging on the door, screaming to let him in or he would kick someone's ass and so on.

Then Alvin got this feeling that there was a "time out" room on the site. As it turned out he was right. When he asked about it, the woman said, "Yes, there is a "time out room" on the site, but you are not allowed to see it." Can you say red flag, Alvin thought.

They then sat down and began paperwork.

The lady asked Alvin, "So, Alvin, what is it that you want to do with your life?"

Alvin said, "When I turn eighteen, I'm planning on dropping out. I'm fed up with being assaulted by staff and students. I'm fed up with being afraid to go to school.

She said, "If you're just going to be dropping out in four months, then it's not worth doing the paperwork."

So they went home and Alvin stayed out of school for the remaining four months. He dropped out for his own safety. He was tired of getting an anxiety attack every morning waiting for the bus to arrive, wondering if Sabas was going to hurt him that day, or whether was it going to be verbal assault, or refused to be given his lunch. He never knew what was coming, so it caused him to have anxiety attacks.

On December 26th, 1998 Alvin turned eighteen. Because he switched from a child to an adult status, SSI canceled his disability. They felt he was able to work. He had always been interested in going into law enforcement, but due to his problems he wasn't able to do that. So he went to the next best thing: security. And he was actually very happy doing that, for the most part. He decided to give it a try. Looking through the paper, he came across a company called Phil Am Security.

The company was a bit off, to say the least. First of all, they didn't have Alvin take any tests, and at the time he wasn't aware that he needed to apply for a guard card. They gave him a uniform and he had to buy his own badge which the company was supposed to already have one for him.

His first day at work was very enlightening about the company. He was put with a partner and sent over to a high-risk building where crime was a daily occurrence. The first major red flag was his partner. Growing up he had always been drawn to CO2 air guns, so he was a bit shocked to see a BB gun in his partner's gun holster. This made him quite uneasy. When he asked his partner about it, the guy told Alvin that he didn't have a carry license and had his real gun under the seat in the truck.

The next red flag was the following week. Alvin went to work that night and the owner drove him and several other guards out to an apartment building in San Bernardino, California. They had to stop at the police station because apparently the owner of the security company he was working for didn't check with the local police. Apparently the uniform happened to be the same style as their local sheriff's department, so the police office was instructing him to change the uniform design/color so as to not be mistaken for the local police officer.

So they ended up basically hanging out at the apartment building the owner of the company had as a client for several hours. It was very boring being there all day and basically just sitting around munching on food all afternoon. They didn't really secure anything. A week later when the pay check came out, it didn't include the ten hours Alvin had spent at the building in San Bernardino. When he confronted the owner about it, he told Alvin that it was done on his off time, even though Alvin had been in full uniform. Alvin made a few calls to the labor board. They were able to get him paid for those ten hours.

The fourth red flag was that the owner didn't pay his employees with checks. He paid them with cash that came right out of the ATM. No tax information, nothing. This was the last needed red flag for Alvin, on top of the report from the labor board that the company was not legit or legal. It was one of those hole in the wall types of companies. Alvin quit that same day.

About a week later he found an ad for another security company called "Initial Security". It was a company based out of Santa Fe, California. His first site they gave him was a six-story assisted living home in Glendale, California.

Basically, once per hour, Alvin went from floor to floor, checking to make sure the building was secure and all that. He was also given a pager so, should any of the residents need help, they could page him to their apartment.

It was these types of places that Alvin felt the most happiest. The reason was because he felt happiest when he was able to help people. He got great joy from helping the residents. For example, people would come in with several bags from the store, but couldn't get them all in the elevator before the door closed, so Alvin used his key to lock one of the elevators open, helped the person put everything in there, and once on their floor, lock the elevator again and help the person get their bags to their apartment, and then turned the elevator back on. He could just see that they were grateful for the help.

One night, this woman paged him about a break-in. When he got up there, she informed him that someone was coming in through the air vents and taking dresses from her closet. Clearly, no one was coming into the apartment through a three-inch high, six-inch long air vent. But for her, she believed it. To help her feel safe, he opened the storage room on the other side of the vent to show her the room was empty and locked. Then, to further help her feel safe, he told her he would check on her apartment and make sure the storage room was secure. He figured he might as well since he had to be there anyway every thirty minutes to check the floor, so it really wasn't any big deal, but it really helped her feel safe. It really was nice to feel that he was able to help people directly like that. Sure, he could have helped the public as a police officer too, but he wouldn't have had as often the chance to directly help people like he could working as private security.

In addition to working at the assisted living homes, he also worked at a few other locations, including a bank, the roof a factory to watch for fires while they were upgrading their systems, watched a temporary parking lot while the place was building a multi-level parking structure, among other places. He worked with Initial Security from mid-January of 1999 until the end of December 1999.

He relocated along with Dave and his brothers up to Stockton, California in January of 2000. The apartment wasn't quite ready yet, so they were sleeping on the floor at Dave's parents' house up in the mountains. It was harder to conceal the accidents in such a situation. What he did was he folded up a bath towel underneath him to lay on with a Food 4 Less shopping bag under that. In the morning, if he was wet, he would quietly get up, change his clothes, and place the towel in the clothes hamper. It wasn't the best situation but it worked. After all, due to being in such a remote location, using the diapers just wasn't practical. He just had to do what you could to manage the problem.

They were only up there for about three weeks when the apartment was finally ready in Stockton. It was a rainy day on the day they were moving in. It was a three-bedroom apartment and was the first time Alvin had his own room. It sure made managing the wetting much easier. About four or five days later, he began working for Pinkerton Security.

He worked for Pinkerton Security only for a year and a half. At first things went good. Sadly, it wasn't always good.

About three months after moving into the Stockton apartment, Alvin began having day time accidents. Thankfully, many of the day time accidents happened near or at home. The ones that did occur during work were small enough to be able to be taken care of swiftly in the mens' room so no one noticed.

The uniform was black pants and a blue shirt. The black pants helped to cover any small accidents. Alvin kept a spare pair of pants in his duffel bag for accidents that weren't able to be hidden. At the time he was working more as a rover, working places where people had called off and they needed a temp. Some of the locations were, for example, a guard shack checking in trucks, watching a closed office building, and he worked at a recycling yard once.

The recycling yard was the place he almost broke his neck. It was very dark, so there was no lighting. He was doing a round and there was one of those sloped down ditches for trucks to back into so that the back of the trailer would be at the same level as the ground. He almost stepped of the edge, which led to about a four to five-foot drop.

It wasn't too long, though, before the day time wetting accidents were coming so frequently and becoming larger in quantity that he had no choice but to start wearing the diapers during the day in addition to at night. At least with the diapers, the only one who would know he had an accident was himself. He kept two or three diapers in his duffel bag from then on out.

At first, it was a bit difficult going to work wearing a diaper. He was very nervous. Wearing one at home is one thing. No one was around him. But wearing one at work took some getting used to. He managed to discover a few tips through trial and error that helped keep the fact that he was wearing diapers a secret.

The first was wearing the underwear over the diaper. Not only did it keep the kind of puffy diaper more flat, but because the underwear was snug, there wasn't the normally noticeable rustle of the plastic outer cover of the diaper. Just in case there was a plastic rustle, he kept a plastic bag in his pocket just in case someone asked, he could pull out the bag and say that it was the bag they heard. He also normally kept his keys in his pocket. He began using a key clip on his belt so every step he took make the keys jingle, which also helped cover up the noise. He guessed he did a good job keeping it discreet because in the end, no one at work knew he wore diapers. They had no idea.

While roving, he had been requesting a stable location to work. He was posted at a mental health center in Stockton (1212 California Street in Stockton, California).

It was a very large mental health center. They had one four-story building for children who needed therapy. Then they had the larger adult section at the other end of the property. The adult section included a day treatment program. They had social workers for those in group homes and such that handled their money and other affairs of those not well enough to do it themselves, groups, individual therapy, and they had three psychiatric wards, which was where things got out of control.

Up to this point, Alvin had managed to keep control of the nightmares and flashbacks of the abuse when he was in the psych ward as a child. It was there, but he was able to live a pretty normal life. However, working at the psychiatric hospital, he knew he was going to have problems.

He accepted the site as he needed a stable pay check, but asked that very same day to be moved to a different location as soon as one was open. He figured he could probably keep it together for a short time. He figured something would be found in a few weeks.

Well, a few weeks turned into months. He had already begun having problems there due to being exposed to the psych ward during his shift. If that wasn't hard enough, he was having difficulties with the staff. Even so, he found himself going back to work at the mental health center. During nine to ten pm, they had a shift change where staff for the next shift would come and need to be let in. However, at the same time, Alvin would get calls from the staff on the psych wards for roll away beds for patients when they had more patients than they had beds. Everything he tried to do to get both jobs done failed. He was one guard and doing two jobs at once just wasn't going to work, but he tried anyway.

First, he tried leaving the door to get the beds and then let in anyone who had to wait. They didn't have to wait longer than ten minutes at the most. He was reported for making the staff wait to be let in, so the next night he waited at the door and had the staff asking for the beds wait until ten pm. He got reported for not getting the beds.

Because of the stress from working at the mental health center, he decided to disclose his adult baby side to Dave, his girlfriend, and his brothers. He had reached a point where the stress caused from hiding being an adult baby was getting to be too much. Being an adult baby helped him be calm, to relax, and he had reached a point where he wished to expand on his role playing to be more than just a pacifier or a baby bottle. Since he lived with all of them and they would most likely find out soon, he felt they all needed to know. So around May or June, he decided to sit Dave down and explain to him about the diapers, that they weren't just a fetish, that he had made that up as a quick answer so Dave would drop a uncomfortable subject. So he sat Dave down and told him that the diapers were really for managing bed wetting accidents. There was the adult baby side of him he wanted to share with Dave and those in the house so he didn't have to keep hiding everything as well, but he felt if he shared both the bed wetting and adult baby side of him at the same time it would be a bit of an overload, so he decided to share only the bed wetting information for the moment. He was tired of having to sneak the diapers in, sneak out the dirty diapers, and be on constant watch of anyone coming near where he had the stash of diapers. By having Dave know about the diapers Alvin no longer had to be stressed out wondering if anyone would find out.

When he first shared his adult baby side with Dave, his first response was, "What will people think?" Alvin didn't plan on telling every single person he came into contact with about it. He only told Dave, his girlfriend Joanna, and his brothers because they all lived with him and were bound to find out sooner or later. When he told Dave about it, Dave had many questions, as one would expect. Alvin did his best to answer as many questions as he was able to. Some of the questions he still didn't have answers to himself. All he knew was he was tired of not being able to have adult baby furniture or adult baby clothing and stuff because he had to be hiding all of this. Once Dave was told about Alvin's adult baby side he began to slowly buy the adult baby things he wanted to in order to make the role play more fun. He got his first sleeper about two weeks later from an adult baby who didn't want it anymore. About two months later he built his first prototype adult-sized crib. The original was made of only paper. He took sheets of printer paper and folded the sheets into two-inch wide bars and stapled them all together to form bars. Once the bars were created, it gave him the dimensions he needed in order to make the wooden crib. Two weeks after he made the paper bars prototype, he made a list of supplies needed. After Dave left for work, he took his bicycle and a cart that was attached to it and went to Home Depot to buy the supplies. Then he went home and started construction. In about six hours he had it all together and in working order.

He didn't plan on Dave finding out about the crib the way he did. He came home from work and went upstairs and opened Alvin's door to ask him something. Whatever it was Dave wanted to ask him Alvin didn't know because Dave didn't do what he walked in the room to do. He stopped in his tracks a few feet into the room, looked at the crib, and kept repeating, "Oh, my God . . . oh, my God" while walking backwards out of the room. So it didn't go as well as Alvin had expected.

It was Dave who decided to bring in the apartment building manager and coworkers from work he was friends with to see the crib. If he was so worried about people finding out, then why did he insist on bringing people around to see the crib and other adult baby things Alvin had? Alvin didn't understand that.

A few months after they got to Stockton for the first time, Alvin got to use Dave's computer on the Internet. He was spending some time looking for information on adult bed wetting. Sadly, most of what he found was message boards that had been taken over by some pretty mean people. Anyone asking a question or looking for support was met by cruel remarks. For example, one reply to a post asking for suggestions to reduce wetting was, "Just put a rubber band around Mr. Happy." Another suggested a zip tie. Just stupid remarks – mean, heartless remarks. Soon he had reached a point where he more or less gave up trying to find a supportive place.

That night in bed, something occurred to him. Since he couldn't find the support he was looking for, perhaps others out there had the same problem. He sat down and drew up ideas for plans of exactly what he was looking for. The next night was when the idea for a website site was born.

The next day he set out to find a website to use to make the site with. He quickly learned that many sites required the person running it to know HTML. Since he didn't know this computer language, he had a problem. How was he going to build a site without knowing HTML? It wasn't long before he came across a company called Homestead.

Homestead used drag and drop programs to build the sites. One had to choose what items they wanted to use, drag it to where they wanted it on the page they were making, and let go. From there one had the choice to change the colors, text, or whatever. For those who did still use HTML from time to time, they had a box one could click on and drop on the page and put in their HTML as needed. From that moment on, Alvin decided homestead would be the engine of his site.

When he first started using Homestead, the program was very new. It was back in June of 2000. At that time it was free. About a year or so later was when they began charging for the service. They had a service for as little as five dollars for five pages, and for those wanting a .com address, they charged a one time ten dollar fee and then two dollars a month for the .com address.

But clearly Alvin needed much more space that just five pages, so he paid about thirty for several gigs of space for all the things he would do on his site, but it was worth every penny if it helped just one person, so he gladly paid it every month.

Alvin first officially opened his website in June of 2000. Working on this site was where he spent his free time from the time he got off work until the time he went to bed. Every free minute was spent on not only running it, but doing his best to meet each member on chat or messenger or something more real time than a post. Sadly, the site had grown much larger from the six pages it was back in 2000. Sadly, he didn't get nearly as much free time to spend in the site's chat room as he did at the start.

Whatever needed to be done to help someone, Alvin did it. He liked making a difference in peoples' lives when he could. The members on the site were the first things he thought of when he woke up, and the last thing he thought of when he went to bed. He cared about everyone on the site like his extended family, and that was the environment he kept on the site, that of a family helping each other when needed.