Chapter Text
The last day of fourth grade dawns bright and early and hot, and Lance walks to school alone with his new GoPhone in his pocket, a gift from his mother for his good grades.
After she’d smoothed his hair out of his face and taken his picture with his siblings, she placed it in his hand and reminded him to get all of his friends’ phone numbers before the end of the day.
“Take lots of pictures, okay, mijo,” she said as she pressed a kiss to his temple. “Hasta luego.”
Now he wraps a hand around the shiny red plastic and squeezes it as he steps up to the crowded front entrance, where Hunk, Ana, and Shay wave to him in greeting.
Lance smiles and hurries over to them, holds up the camera and tells them to say cheese , and he promises himself that he will never let himself lose someone again, ever.
He swears it.
When Keith didn’t show up the following day, his mamá told him not to worry; Keith was probably just busy.
She didn’t start to openly worry until after Christmas.
“Can we just make sure he’s okay?” Lance begged one morning, and she acquiesced and made some phone calls.
Her face was grim when she returned, and Lance didn’t understand the sad slump of her shoulders or the solemnity of her expression.
He waited, childlike, for her to explain, for her to make things better, like only a mother can.
“Mamá?” Lance asked. “Is Keith okay? Where’s he been?”
But she didn’t answer. She just hugged him close to her, told him that they needed to talk, led him to the living room sofa and turned to him so their knees bumped.
“I wanted Keith to have a chance to tell you on his own,” she’d said, and then she explained that Keith was an orphan, he lived in foster care, he stayed in a group home. “A veces kids like that get shuffled around.”
Lance furrowed his brow, “What do you mean?”
His mamá sighed heavily, “There was an... accident at the group home earlier in the year, and they decided it wasn’t safe to keep the younger kids there anymore, so they moved them.”
“An accident?”
“Sí,” she murmured, but she didn’t explain further.
Lance chewed this information over and finally asked again, “So is Keith okay? He wasn’t hurt, right? He’d tell me if he was hurt, so he must be okay.”
His mamá didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she bit her lip and looked away, hoped she wasn’t lying to her son, “Yes, Keith is fine.”
Truthfully, Rosa didn’t know how to tell her son that the incident was the very same event that led to his new friend’s broken arm. She didn’t know how to explain that the investigation determined that the children weren’t adequately supervised and that they had covered up other instances of violence between minors.
A worried frown etched into her features as she thought, but then a small voice prompted, “So where is he now? Can we go visit?”
She took a deep breath and crouched down so that she was on his level, put a hand on his shoulder, “I’m sorry, baby; they’re not allowed to tell us where he is now.”
Lance’s brow furrowed, and his eyes misted as the reality of the situation began to set in. He knew something was wrong when Keith didn’t come back, he knew it. Swallowing, he pushed in, unwilling to give up, “So when can we see each other then?”
Rosa’s mouth pressed into a tremulous line, “I don’t know, nene.”
And then Lance launched himself into her embrace, pressed his face into her neck, and sobbed, “ But we didn’t even get to say goodbye .” He sniffled and coughed, buried himself even deeper in his arms and hiccuped, “Why didn’t he... he t-tell me he-he-he was leaving?”
Rosa hadn’t seen her sweet Lancito cry like this in years, and she teared up too, worried for both of them. Childhood friends came and went, she knew, but Lance bonded fast and hard with Keith, like they were two parts of a greater whole.
She squeezed Lance and tried to allay his most immediate fears, “No, no, baby, he didn’t know. He didn’t know he was leaving, okay? He would’ve told you if he’d known.”
He would’ve tried to run away, she thought to herself. They didn’t tell him on purpose.
“So I’ll n-never ever s-see h-him again?”
Rosa watched as the innocence of childhood had begun to peel away like chips of paint before Lance’s unusually perceptive eyes.
Rosa didn’t know it yet, but nightmares would follow.
She would get a call from Ms. Li, who told her that Lance nearly cried when he saw Keith’s empty desk, and that she was sorry; she promised to keep an eye on him at school.
And Rosa would soothe him when he worried, worried, worried.
When one of his friends was absent from school, or when he thought about having to separate for the summer. When he fretted like he thought they, too, could disappear, uprooted like a precious rose in his garden and discarded like a weed.
When anyone left the house, he would ask when they were coming back, make his family promise not to leave him.
But in that moment Rosa studied her sweet child and tried to bolster him, give him hope, give him strength. She placed a hand on his bicep, looked him in the eye, brown to his father’s ocean blue. “I don’t know, mijo,” she said honestly, and then she closed her eyes, took his hand, and placed it over her heart. She thinks of Keith’s assignment, pinned to her fridge, and she tells her son, “but I believe that there are people who have a way of finding their way back to us, and I know he wants to find his way back to you.”
What I want most is to stay here with Lance.
Keith’s last day of fourth grade comes sooner than he expected, swiftly, like a gavel on the courtroom podium.
Idly doodling on his notebook paper, he doesn’t immediately notice the teacher’s glower coming to rest on him, “Kogane, answer number seven.”
Fuck.
Keith hunkers lower in his seat, like he can hide from the teacher, but he knows it’s useless.
Like many before him, Mr. Iverson had taken one look at Keith’s permanent record and decided he was a discipline case.
He treated him accordingly, like Keith was a particularly nasty bug that he’d like to crush under the heel of his boot.
He’s glad that the year is almost over, though he knows if he were still at City Elementary he would already be finished.
And then Keith frowns.
His new school is nothing like City Elementary. There is no Ms. Li to be ready with a warm smile and praise for his good work. There is no Penny to chitter at him happily whenever he strokes a hand over her soft fur. There is no Hunk, no Shay, no Ana, no one who is excited to see him.
And there is no Lance.
But he can’t change it.
And he can’t go back.
This is his life now.
This is always his life.
So Keith looks out the window and tries to ignore the indignant teacher at the front of the room.
Iverson grumbles something, and the other kids stare at Keith and begin to whisper amongst themselves.
Keith doesn’t want to do this again, wishes Iverson would just leave him alone because he knows how it will go.
No, he wasn’t paying attention, no, he doesn’t know the answer, no, he doesn’t think he’s funny, fine, he’ll go to the principal’s office, and the whole conversation will be peppered with insults and snide remarks about his intelligence and general lack of redeeming qualities.
It’s like a fucking movie he’s seen too many times, and he knows how it ends. He doesn’t want to watch it again.
Like clockwork, a furious Mr. Iverson stalks to Keith’s desk in the back of the room and stands over him like he’s the judge, jury, and executioner.
Though his bulky frame dwarfs him, Keith resists the urge to cringe away, refuses to be cowed.
Fear is weakness, and he can’t afford to be weak. He knows better.
Instead of meeting the teacher’s harsh glare, Keith studies the long, thick scar that runs the length of his forearm and the bend of his elbow. It’s still puckered and red, but he supposes, like all scars, it will fade one day to an unremarkable pink.
It didn’t matter how much it hurt, how deep it ran, it would become forgettable, like him.
Unhappy with Keith’s contemptuous silence, Iverson’s finger taps insistently on his textbook in an effort to get his attention, “Young man, I asked you a question and I expect a response.”
Keith narrows his eyes, bites his tongue until he tastes blood, tells himself that he won’t back down.
A large hand flattens against his desk with a thud, and a few of the other kids jump in surprise, “I’m warning you, Kogane. I am sick and tired of your attitude.”
But Keith holds his ground, holds his resolve, while Iverson glares down at him with vitriol in his brown eyes.
The teacher lowers his voice to a vicious, menacing whisper, “You’re lucky you weren’t born in my day, boy. You’ve been coddled too much. A good paddling would fix you up quick.” Iverson sucks in a breath through his nose, like he’s trying to steady himself, and his tone is laced with threat, “This is the last straw. I am going to ask you the answer to number seven, and you say what?”
And Keith can’t take it anymore.
He thinks about all the things Iverson has sneered at him, all the times he’s implied to the entire class that Keith is stupid.
He thinks of all the times he’s been afraid, right to be afraid, all the times he’s been hurt.
He thinks about all the adults in his life, all the ways they’ve let him down, and he’s mad, he’s so mad.
He’s mad at everyone.
He’s mad at his mom for abandoning him. He’s mad at his dad for going back into that building. He’s mad at his caseworker, at foster parents like Ted and Natalie, at kids like Calvin who ruin everything.
He’s mad that he finally found a place where he wanted to stay, and they fucking took him away and dropped him here, like he’s just another piece of luggage on the baggage claim, like he’s not even a fucking person.
He’s mad that he’s an afterthought, unnoticeable, forgettable.
And Keith mutters, “Fuck you.”
It’s too quiet for the teacher to hear.
“What was that?” Iverson demands.
And Keith stands up so fast that his chair clatters behind him and bounces off the next desk.
He draws himself up to his full height, clenches his fists, and shouts with a voice too thick with emotion right in the teacher’s face, “I said, FUCK YOU!”
Someone gasps, and Iverson’s fist comes down so hard on the desk that the laminate cracks. His face purples with rage. He roars, “Get OUT! Get OUT of my classroom! Get OUT!”
Keith shoves his desk aside and lets it crash to the ground. He gives Iverson a wide berth and marches to the front of the room.
And then he looks back.
The girl who sits behind him is out of her desk, curling behind one of her friends. The other kids have backed away from him and watch him with wary, fearful eyes.
And he hates it.
He hates it so much.
He turns on his heel and bolts from the classroom with his head bent low, with a vice around his heart, with tears in his eyes.
And he’s scared of this feeling, this anger, this thing inside of him that writhed like a living thing. He’s scared of himself.
And he hates it.
The resource officer catches him at the front doors, and Keith just stops. He huffs in a sob and lets himself be led to the office, like a criminal to the gallows.
Because he thinks about the words he wrote so many months ago, a lifetime ago, and what he doesn’t deserve.
Because everyone is right about him after all.
Even if he didn’t know it that morning, it’s Keith’s last day of fourth grade, too, however many miles away he is from City Elementary’s festivities. For him, there are no end of the year activities, no pictures, no ceremony.
Because at his new school it’s only Keith’s last day.
Because today he finally gets expelled.