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He's small.
He hurts.
It seems so much safer here, hiding in the corner, but his mother says he needs to come out and get cleaned up because they have to run.
He doesn't want to run, but he trusts his mother.
They run.
“Again?” JD asked, frowning as he looked up at the building, not sure why they bothered. It wasn't worth enrolling him again. He never got to stay anywhere. He never got to do more than end up on the bad side of the popular kids again and again, and while she always thought the next town would be better, it never was.
“Give it a try,” she said, leaning over to kiss his cheek.
He grimaced, making a show of wiping it off. He was way too old for her to be pulling those kinds of stunts, but she liked to tease him. “Gross, Mom.”
She smiled at him, but it didn't last. “I'll be working late and won't be able to pick you up after school. You can walk back okay, right?”
He nodded. He had two good legs, despite some attempts to change that fact, and the first few days in any new town were usually safe enough. That feeling never lasted, and she'd be telling him to grab his bag and get in the car, driving off in the middle of the night again. “I'll be fine.”
“I know. I just... you know I worry.”
He forced a smile, trying to reassure her. If she didn't go to work, they'd leave again, and he didn't want to move. He'd like to finish school in peace, and he was sick of running, even if he knew they had to. Nowhere seemed to be safe for long, not that she didn't try. He knew she did her best, and it wasn't like either of them had asked for this.
She gave him another wave and drove away. He didn't wave back, aware of the eyes on him.
He set his backpack on the ground and took his coat out of it. She didn't like the coat, either, but now that she was gone, it was going on. He'd won the battle about what color to dye his hair this time, and the coat fit.
He felt safer with it on, and there wasn't much left that gave him that feeling.
That monster had taken it all away, and if he found them, he'd do it all again.
He shivered, telling himself not to think about his father. He had enough bad to worry about with another new school.
He didn't want to go in. There was no point, not really, since they kept having to leave in the middle of the night, and he wouldn't get anywhere in his classes, already behind and never going to catch up to the others.
He should just ditch, let his mother think he'd tried it, and he'd find somewhere he could take a GED test after he'd studied up for it. She wanted more for him, and he knew it, but they were never going to get it like this. College was out of the question—they couldn't afford it, his transcripts were a mess, and he wasn't smart enough for it anyway.
She just dreamed of him being better than he was. He wasn't, but she needed her dreams to keep going, or she'd quit altogether. She almost had once, in a bathroom in Kansas. He'd seen how close she came, and so he did this, putting on the smiles, pretending he was fine, never letting on if the bullies got bad or he failed a class.
She had to believe for a little bit longer.
He just had to fake it for another day.
He lit a cigarette and took a drag, still debating over going into the school, standing on the steps and leaning against the rail. He knew his mother hated him smoking, but he found they calmed him down, and he couldn't always be hitting up the nearest convenience store for a slushie.
She'd freaked out one too many times to make that an option, really. If he went out for a little bit, long enough to smoke, she didn't wake up, but if he took a walk or went to the store, she woke and panicked, thinking he'd been taken. He couldn't do that to her.
He also couldn't sleep through his own nightmares and he needed something afterward. These worked, sometimes. Alcohol was better, but it was even harder to get his hands on unless she had already drank herself to sleep on one of her really bad nights.
He took a drag and looked down the steps at the kids coming up the other side of the railing. One in particular caught his eye. She was wearing a black skirt with ridiculously blue tights, and he wanted to tease her about that, but when he saw her face, he felt like he'd been kicked in the gut.
He knew what that felt like, and he was definitely reliving it now. This girl... something about her... it was like being sucker punched, and yet he didn't hurt. He couldn't hardly breathe, but that wasn't that unusual for him, either.
He hyperventilated more than he wanted to think about, but then his early years came back to haunt him more often than not, and he could never be sure what would set that off.
She seemed to have noticed him, too. Her pace up the stairs had slowed, and she was getting bumped by other traffic, but she didn't even seem to notice as she kept her eyes on him.
A couple more steps and she tripped, almost falling flat on her face. A terrible part of him wanted to laugh. The rest of him heard his mother's voice in his head and rushed down to help her up.
She looked up at him, blowing hair out of her face.
“Greetings and salutations,” he said, holding out a hand to her. She took it, her lips fighting toward a smile as she did.
She brushed off her knees and pushed back her bangs. “Thank you. I'm not normally that much of a klutz.”
He shrugged. “I'm not usually this much of a gentleman.”
She turned her head to the side. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I've made it two whole minutes without laughing, and I helped you up. That's got to be a record or something.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I'm highly flattered,” he said. “And hey, you never know. You might have saved me from my own tumble down the stairs. I think it's actually more dangerous. Gravity would have taken me straight down or something like that.”
She looked down at the bottom of the stairs as if picturing him there. “Maybe. It depends on a few factors.”
“Factors?”
“Velocity and acceleration... and mass...” She looked at him, licking her lips as she did. “And thrust...”
“Really.”
“That's all physics,” she said a bit too quickly, flushing red.
“Hmm. I didn't know any of that,” he told her, leaning in. “I don't suppose you're available for any kind of... private tutoring.”
“Tutoring?” she gulped out, eyes a little wide. “Why would you—”
“Just transferred. I'll be behind in all of my classes, but maybe you could help me catch up.”
She nodded. “Yeah, sure. I could probably do that. But it would cost you.”
“I'm sure we could come to some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement,” he said, grinning at her, feeling bolder than he had in seven years and more schools than he wanted to think about.
“You never know. My price might be too high.”
He looked down at his jacket and shrugged. He didn't have much of the money, since that was mostly his mom's tips—cash was always easier to run with than anything they might keep in a bank, and they didn't have to worry about missed paychecks that way.
“Admittedly, I don't have much money right now, but I'd be willing to work out some other method of payment.”
“What, like sexual favors?”
“If you insist.”
She went even redder than before, and he kind of figured she was more of an innocent than she wanted him to believe. Still, she squared her shoulders, trying to stand tall and unaffected. “We'll see.”
“Definitely,” he said as she started climbing the stairs again, even if he knew getting involved with her was a huge mistake he should never, ever make.