FicWad

*]You'd think after five and a half years, moving again wouldn't be that big of a deal. The truth was, I'd actually gone through six different places in only half a decade. Six different lives, six different sets of people.

They were all the same.

It was usually some middle-class, bible-thumping family that got the bright idea into their heads that maybe adopting some 'poor, lost little soul' (i.e ME), who was in desperate need of nurturing and a second chance at life, would help redeem themselves in His eyes.

And what if they didn't want a second chance?

I knew I didn't when I was twelve, and I didn't now.

I guess I could say I've been 'condemned from childbirth up'. If I was a box of cereal or macaroni, there'd be a good chance the nutrition facts label on the side consists of 'condemned from childbirth up' where there's usually an expiration date.

And I'm guessing it probably started when my father decided he didn't want a baby, and my mother certainly didn't need a baby. He left her as soon as she dared show him the pregnancy results. Just packed up and ran for it.

More precisely, took a one-way bus to Brooklyn and never came back.

At least, this is what I had the chance to read from the adoption files.

All the same, the next afternoon I was en route to the playground for my 'alone time'. This would officially count as the anniversary of my first trip here and my first day in what I'd dubbed as Unidentified Outskirts of Chicago.

Also know as, Red Quailcreek.

From a distance, silhoetted in the watery sun, I saw a little figure sitting on the edge of the yellow plastic slide on the far end of the playground, head bowed and chin in his hands.

I skidded to a stop, slightly drawing up dust, and stared at the top of his little head.

Shit.

I spun on my heel and speed-walked as fast as I could back in the direction I'd come.

"Lady!"

My face froze and I hit myself in the head with both my fists as I turned around, clenching a handful of hair.

"Wh--?"

Something thin and small came hurtling at me and attached itself to my leg. I threw my arms out for balance and when I'd managed to steady both me and the little thing clinging to me, I looked down.

Hayden's huge hazel eyes were staring back up at me.

"You came back!" He squealed, burying his little face in the faded denim of my jeans. "You came back!"

I closed my eyes and counted to three. I didn't even get past one, so I opened again and rolled them at the top of his head. "/Yes,/, I came back. Now can you leggo of me?"

"No."

I shifted my weight to my other foot and tried to raise my leg a few feet into the air. Hayden gasped and clenched tighter as he went up, little fingernails digging into my calf.

"Now are you gonna let go?"

Hayden struggled to keep his legs wrapped around mine. "...No."

I shook my leg. Nothing fazed him.

"I'm not letting go..." He insisted. Then, he started to slide sideways off my leg, his face falling into surprise as he swung around and under. "I don't want you to leave."

Eh. The guilty pit in my stomach just got an upgrade.

Now he was clutching the underside of my leg.

"Kid, you don't know when to give up."

"Will you come to my house now?" said Hayden's muffled voice from the underside of my leg.

"Will you let go of me?"

Hayden started giggling from his awkward position. "Deal."


He lied.

You can't tell me a five year old doesn't know how to lie. They're all born with it, and they'll keep it till they're six feet under.

Fifteen minutes later I find myself walking back down the Hayden's street. It would be considered a sense of déjà vu, but the deadweight clinging to my leg was definitely not there yesterday.

And it would have been less than seven minutes, but it's hard to walk with one leg thirty pounds heavier than the other, especially when said leg won't
shutup.

"-and I'm five but I'm not in kindergarten 'cuz I'm a latey, well that's what my brother calls them since I was borned after the day kindergarten starts, so I'm going next year in the falltime but I don't like falltime, how come falltime is too cold and I have nasal problems and the air is full of this stuff which makes you sneeze and when you sneeze its not fun, it hurts my nose, did you know I have freckles on my nose? I gots one...two...seventy-thirty...twelve..."

Don't ask me how he was able to count without being able to see them, and I wasn't about to spend the day teaching him that seventy-thirty does not come after '2'.

When we finally got to his house, Hayden refused to let me go until he showed me his Spiderman costume. Therefore, I clomped up the front porch stairs with my strange growth and Hayden instructed me to open the door, like he was a miniature Napoleon and I was his faithful white steed.

I was little more than nervous about going into someone else's house with a five year old for backup, but I couldn't just /leave/.
I didn't intend to walk off with somebody else's small child on my leg.

The house was quiet and dark when I stepped inside. There was a set of stairs off to the right and a dining room. On the other side was a hall and a bathroom. Hayden didn't hesitate; he commanded me down the linoleum tiled hall and into what appeared to be a living room. The TV in the corner was playing alternative music videos on ear-drum bursting decibles and a couch coupled with a cluttered, stained coffee table lined the wall.

It looked just like my house, only smaller.

Well, more like all the houses. Unlike the other neighborhoods I'd lived in, it wasn't exactly 'middle class' and 'bible-thumping' was a laugh.

"Kid, is anyone here?"

Hayden looked around. "That's my brother," he informed, pointing his little finger to the couch. A misshapen lump I hadn't noticed before was a blanket.
"He's watching me, 'cuz Daddy's at work and Kevin is twenty-thirty and he lives in another town but I forgot the name but it thymes with Leh-rove-no---Meh-rove-no-Teh-rove-um..."

I walked cautiously toward the lump on the couch and tried to peer under the blanket. The only thing protruding was a hand hanging over the side of the couch and wrapped around a Gibson guitar.

"He's watching you? I guess that doesn't include making sure you don't run away all by yourself, huh?"

"---or its Hel-rove? I dunno. I had a turtle named Helga once but she got/ roadkilled/-"

"Hey," I said over the music. I nudged the hand with my brown Chuck gently. "Wake up."

The thing under the blanket groaned and shifted slightly, but didn't get up.
"Wake up, bastard."

I tapped what I hoped was it's head. "I'm talking to you."

No response.

"---Daddy said Helga ran away but I knows so turtles don't run, and---"

That's it. The headbanging racket was making the throbbing in my head worse. I grabbed the kid, who was still going on about his turtle, pried him from my leg, and dropped him brusquely in the lap of the 'lump'.

"Oof!"

That certainly got someone's attention.
Hayden didn't weigh a lot but when you drop thirty pounds on a pressure spot, you notice.
The lump sat bolt upright and whipped the blanket off its head.

"What the fuck was that--Hayden--"

Hayden laughed, clapped his little hands, and climbed over 'lump', landing on the floor.

His blue baseball hat was slanted on his head and pushed down over his eyes. He started mumbling incoherently and feeling around blindly for the fringe of his blanket."Jeesus--Hayden---"

He grabbed something--thigh. He froze for a full minute. Even his breathing seemed to vanish.

And then he slowly lifted the brim of his hat.

"Shit."

"Um, hi."

Lump went a shade of red not known to humankind and sank slowly back onto the couch, his hand frozen around half of my leg. My heart had officially stopped and dropped somewhere around my stomach area.

Hayden came out of nowhere, jumped up on the edge of the couch, and yanked Lump's hand away from me. "That's my girlfriend, Patrick, and you can't have her!" He scowled.

It was like watching another Hayden as Lump's wide eyes traveled back and forth between me and his little brother, except with carmel brown.

Hayden was still defending his territory.

I awkwardly leaned around Hayden and cleared my throat. Watching some random Family Feud after being recently groped by a complete stranger was too much for me to handle. "Yeah, er, I think I'd better go.../now./"

Hayden piped up at once, turing on me with a puppy-dog face premade.

"But-but-but-but-"

"Later /later/, kid, I promise." I said , voice shaking.

I scooted out of the room and as soon as I made it into the hall I fell into a full-tilt run and slammed the door behind me, not bothering to see if Lump or Mini-Lump was following me.

All I could concentrate on was my heart still going as fast as my feet.

Shit, you messed up big this time.



[*
[*author's note:
As of June 26
There are chapters and supplement on the way. Please don't give up on this story yet, and if I'm asking you too, known as the ficwad story abortionist, you know you should.
If I continue to get support, there is a better chance of this baby getting its full (hypothetical) 9 months in the oven.
Ahem.*]