Page 59 of Broken Pieces
I drop to the mattress and rip off the blanket to get to my backpack. I drag it closer and pull the zipper open. One side’s torn, the teeth don’t close properly, but I force it open anyway.
I grab the jeans crumpled by the wall and shove them into the bag. The black hoodie goes next, then the socks at the end of the mattress, one balled, the other inside out. I lean down and scoop up the two shirts from the floor, shove them in until the seams bulge.
The blanket waits at my feet. Thin. Frayed. Mine.
I roll it tight and cram it into the top of the backpack, and push down with both hands. The zipper fights me the whole way, but I drag it closed, teeth grinding, until it zips shut.
I cross the room to the wardrobe. My dirty laundry sack hangs off the hook. I yank it down and twist the strings tight around my wrist. Then move back over and lift the pack off the mattress. The straps digging deep into my shoulder.
This is it.
Every fucked-up, used-up piece of my life, shoved into bags that barely hold. Everything I can carry. Everything I have. And it still doesn’t feel like enough to outrun this place.
I turn to see the kid with his face in the book is now watching me.
I look past him. Past all of this, I don’t give him anything. I shift the bag higher on my shoulder and turn to the door.
I don’t say goodbye.
I just keep moving, slipping down the hall, shoulders brushing cracked plaster, and step through the open door without so much as a pause. I don’t bother closing it. I leave it wide open, a final fuck-you to a place that never gave a shit about me.
Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I cut across the yard.
I reach the fence, find the hole I tore months ago in a rage, and push through, the jagged wire snagging my sleeve as if even this place doesn’t want to let go.
I have nowhere to go. No one waiting. Just a backpack that digs into my spine and a night dark enough to swallow me whole.
But that’s always been the story, hasn’t it?
I was born disposable.
Shoved between broken walls and cracked floors. Handed off, passed around, forgotten. I learned early how to fight. How to stop asking. The world never opened its arms to me. It opened its jaws.
So I keep moving.
Just me and this pack full of fuck-all, dragging my shadow down streets that don’t give a shit who I am.
If survival’s all I’ve got, then I’ll take it. I’ve been doing that since I was a kid. No backup. No safety net. Just fists, scars, and whatever the hell gets me through the next day.
Chapter Nine
Zane
Thesun’salreadyupwhen I jerk awake.
The bench under me is hard as shit, my spines twisted wrong, neck aching from slumping too long against the rusted pole.
The bus stop’s dead quiet, nothing but the groan of traffic bleeding through the distance.
There’s a bottle cap under my boot, a smear of old gum dried on the concrete by my hand. A trash corner of the world, and somehow it fits.
Perfect place for a guy like me.
My mouth is sour, stale from sleep and the storm that ripped through me last night. Every swallow tastes like rust. I drag my hands down my face, palms scraping over grit that never leaves. My shirt hangs heavy on me, creased and stiff from wearing ittoo long. The bench digs into my back, unforgiving, but I don’t move.
Moving feels worse. Moving means thinking.
Both bags are still with me.
