I had to make it outside the city. That was my best chance of getting away. I didn’t dare go to the police. I knew the senator would make things worse for me if I was caught. I just had to keep going and hope that I could get out of the city and find someplace new to live.
✯✯✯✯✯
I shot up in bed, sweat dripping down my face and my heart pounding in my chest. I had dreamt that I was back in that basement. I flicked on the nightstand light and glanced around the room. I was in the panic room at Reed Security. I wasn’t in the senator’s house. In fact, he was dead and so was my mother. I was safe. Still, my body shook from the dream and I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I would see the dark basement and feel the walls closing in on me. No matter how many times I had been down in that basement, coming back up was always worse.
I got up and went into the living room, trying my best to be quiet. I didn’t want to wake up Florrie and Alec. They would worry about me, and I didn’t want them to. With them, I felt like a normal kid. I could be myself without them knowing what happened at the senator’s house. I never told them, and I didn’t plan to. I knew they wanted me to open up to them, but they were separate from my old life, and I wanted to keep it that way. To them, it was like I didn’t trust them, but in reality, I was trusting them to keep me away from what my life had been.
I turned on the TV and stretched out on the couch. The light helped me to push my dream to the back of my mind. I found a Christmas show on the Hallmark channel, figuring that it was supposed to be fun and joyful, and that would help my dream disappear. Within an hour, I felt myself drifting off to sleep. When I woke up, Alec was sitting in the chair across from the couch, staring at the TV, but not actually watching it.
“Did I wake you up?”
He turned to me and grinned. “No, kid. I was getting up to train.”
“Oh. Is Florrie awake?”
“Yeah, she’s in the shower. Couldn’t sleep?” he nodded toward the TV.
I shrugged. He nodded, obviously wanting to ask me more questions, but he didn’t.
“You know you can talk to me, right?”
“I know.”
“There’s nothing that Florrie and I wouldn’t do for you.”
I knew that he wanted to help, but I just couldn’t talk to him about that stuff. I liked that he didn’t know everything that had ever happened. When he found the senator was the one I was running from and why, he was so angry. I didn’t want him to be angry. I liked both of them so much, and I just wanted to be normal with someone.
“I think I’ll go get ready for school.”
I stood and walked toward my bedroom, but Alec snatched my hand and pulled me toward him as he stood, wrapping me in an awkward hug. I hadn’t gotten a hug in years. It felt so weird to be getting one now. But I really liked it, and Alec made me feel safe. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my face in his chest. I felt like such a sissy for needing this, but it felt right. I must have stayed like that for a good five minutes before I finally pulled myself away from him and slunk off to my room. When I came out fifteen minutes later, ready for school, I was smiling.
✯✯✯✯✯
I was struggling with my math homework. I was technically a freshman in high school, but the teachers said that I needed harder classes. So, I was doing the harder work, but sometimes it felt like they had it wrong. I couldn’t figure out how to do these problems and I didn’t want to ask for help yet.
“Hey, Reid. How’s it going?”
I looked up at Kayla and my mouth dropped. She was so pretty. Like, the prettiest girl I had ever seen. I really liked her, but she was older than me by four years. She already had the body of a woman, but I still had the pudge of a kid. I mean, I was skinny and everything, but I didn’t have muscle like Alec. I was nowhere near that. But I wanted to be like that someday. I wanted to have so many muscles that no one like the senator could ever push me around again.
“Uh…hey, Kayla.”
She smiled at me and my heart sped up. She was so pretty. I couldn’t stop staring.
“Do you need help?”
“Sure,” I said quickly, not wanting her to leave yet. I loved having Kayla around. I knew that something had happened to her a few months back, but no one spoke of it. For a while, she wasn’t around, and I didn’t know what happened, but then she came back to school and started training again. Sometimes she would freak out and run away. I wanted to chase after her, but the one time I tried, one of the teachers told me to leave her alone. For some reason, I really wanted to know what was bothering her. It wasn’t like I could help her at all. I was just a kid. But I felt like there was something about her that I felt some kind of connection with.
“Okay, so Geometry.” She sat down next to me and her leg brushed against mine. I swallowed hard when I felt myself hardening.
