When Broken Joy Took Flight (1/3)
TitleWhen Broken Joy Took Flight (1/3)
Artist chosenfire28 aka the most patient and wonderful person ever
Beta ashe_frost thanks SO much for reading.
Fandom American Idol RPF
Rating R
Word Count22,000
Pairings Adam Lambert/Kris Allen, Adam Lambert/OMC, Kris Allen/OMC, Adam/Brad Bell, Kris/Cale Mills
Summary a requested fic for ladyelphaba who PM'd me the longest prompt ever, which I'll summarize as White Oleander inspired Kris and Adam in foster care fic. Submitted for au_bigbang
Warnings Dub-con (Consent issues everywhere really). Underage sex. Language. Stockholm syndrome. VERY INTENSE SITUATIONS THAT MAY SET OFF TRIGGERS-lots of not nice things happen so be fully forewarned that the majority if this is intensely unhappy. Character death (though not Kris or Adam).
Disclaimer Everything I know about foster care is limited, and although it isn't portrayed in the best light in this story I understand there are both good and bad foster care situations. This story is not meant to be a moral upon that. It is merely an approximation of one possibility. Also, I do not own any of the characters retained within
Author's notes Some not so nice things happen. Several characters are named after American Idol individuals, but do not necessarily represent them in the whole. Title taken from a song of Bernard da Ventadour.
Part One Part Two Part Three
What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps. ~Euripides, Hecuba
~
The book was well-worn, pages discolored and bent from rereading, the cover wrinkled and stained. Kris held it close to him. He worried that Tati might make him sell it, just as he had had to sell the guitar. He could still feel the strings under his fingers; sometimes he woke with his hands shaped in familiar chords.
So the book stayed hidden or in his possession, a short message scrawled just on the inside of the cover:
"Just in case." ~A. L.
It was the only thing Kris had besides the chipping paint on his thumb that the last six months had even been real, the only evidence that Adam had been real. Kris wasn't letting either the book or idea of Adam go any time soon.
The book was a special shield whenever Alex looked at him, his blue eyes boring into Kris's brown ones, and Kris would feel his palms go clammy, so he would picture the book and remember Adam telling him that if he didn't want to be taken advantage of, he had to pretend like he didn't care if he was taken advantage of. If he had no interest, neither did the predator.
So Kris would look at Alex, and hope he pulled off the combination of indifference and hint of disgust that Adam had perfected so well. It seemed to work.
*
Tuesday was the day before trash day in most of the neighborhood, so that was when Tati went scavenging for her things to sell. All the kids were supposed to go, too, but Kris hated it, not just because it was smelly, but the scavenging reminded him of losing the two things that had kept him sane: his guitar and Adam.
Kris thought about pretending to be sick, but Alex was lying on the couch and watching him. He was always watching.
"You do not look so good," he said.
Kris shook his head. "I'm fine. See you around."
Alex said nothing as Kris left, but Kris could feel Alex's eyes even as he left the house and turned the first corner in the road. Kris had never been watched so much in his life. Alex was Tati's boyfriend, and well, an adult. Kris panicked even thinking about it, but Adam came to mind-as he always did-and Kris calmed. After all, Adam had said Alex was the type who liked it any way he could get it. He was creepy and beautiful. Kris admitted there was a certain attraction to him, and if the situation were different, he might have considered it. Possibly.
While the others ate lunch, Kris sat in the truck and held the book Adam had given him. He wanted to throw it away so many times, but Adam had sworn by it, and Adam had been the only tolerable thing about the whole of his time in Tati's home.
So Kris began to flip through the pages, wondering what was so good about the book anyway.
When he saw pages of loopy handwriting, glued ever so carefully into the spine of the original book, he realized what Adam had really left. Kris looked up, to make sure no one else could see. He didn't think anyone would care about Adam's personal thoughts, but he'd never thought he would willingly let go of his guitar either.
He began to read.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
So I guess you figured it out. I had you pegged at about a week or so in. Maybe someday you'll tell me whether or not I was right.
See, you always wanted to know everything. I told you the past wasn't significant.
I lied.
Everything I am is because of what happened to me, and there are so many lessons I learned that you shouldn't have to. So I began to write it down.
Unlike me, there is a distinct possibility you may walk away relatively normal. Fit for society. Please.
Take care of yourself.
For me.
I suppose I should begin with my mother. She is, after all, why I ended up here, digging through garbage for the crazy Russian and reselling it for cash. And meeting you.
My first memory of my mother is riding the train from London to Cambridge. She was reading one of her slim novels with a foreign name. She never read mass-produced novels, and often told me if she caught me reading any of that trash, she would disown me on the spot.
Leila Lambert was if nothing else, blunt.
My mother wrote novels, the same slim kind she read, the kind that were critically acclaimed and made no money. I read one once. I didn't understand it.
Then again, I've always liked trash. (Perhaps that’s why I never ran from Tati. Then again, by the time I arrived there, what I liked never really mattered anyway.)
One of my teachers in those early years called me precocious because of my large vocabulary. I could have told her that I didn't know any other way to speak. It was either speak my mother's language or not be heard at all.
(I often think this is the reason I make sure to be noticed, because frequently in those early years I was left to my own devices, and the only way to get attention was by being different, whether it was speaking her language or wearing glitter.)
So we moved to California right when I turned seven, a magical year, in some places. In order to make money to support us, my mother had to go into editing the very trash she mocked. Sometimes I would go with her, quietly observing the people in the office, trying to absorb how everyone acted around each other. America was unfamiliar, and even though I wanted to stand out, I learned a lot of social cues from that office.
Which is probably why I tend to be so forward and unfiltered.
The problem with having a mother who treated me as an adult never really surfaced until I figured out I was gay.
I was about ten, and one of my mother’s 'friends' was visiting. He was from Louisiana, and I loved listening to him talk. When all my classmates were talking about girls and cooties, I was thinking of him.
I didn't even know what gay was, until I told my mom.
"Excuse me?" She asked.
"I said, I think I like boys better than girls. Is that bizarre?"
Her face was blank, and then turned thoughtful. "Tchaikovsky was gay."
"Is that what that is? Liking boys?"
She nodded and held me close. "Listen to me, dear Adam, you must know this: there are many people who would hurt you because of what you are. So don't blurt it out, okay?"
I nodded. I told no one else. It was like a secret that bound my mother and I close, even though she never mentioned it again, and never asked me if I was sure. She had taught me never to say anything if I wasn't sure.
The next day, she sat me down with some books, a condom, a banana and some lube, and explained more than I had ever wanted to hear from my mother about sex. She never blinked, never blushed. Simply showed me, and made me repeat her words so she knew I understood. In her mind, there was never any doubt that I could handle it.
My mother always had 'friends' over. I knew what they were, but for some reason she always called them friends. It was the only instance in my life where she treated me like a child; where I felt like one. Obviously she wasn't going to let me share time with them, but I wondered why she didn't call them her lovers, even before I came out. I wanted to learn all her secrets, and she would not tell me one.
So I watched, and gleaned what I could from what little I saw. I discovered that looks meant a lot, that a certain amount of charm overcame some looks, and that there were certain men never to be touched, only to be disdained. I learned the many differences in a touch of the hand on an arm. I learned thirty kinds of laughter. I found out that everyone had a weakness.
My mother's was Gregory. (I'll return to him later.)
My mother always wanted me to be a musician, like Tchaikovsky, I deduced. She tried to give me piano lessons. I discovered I was not really that good. Then we moved to violin. Finally, she caught James and me singing in his apartment.
James was our next door neighbor. I highly suspected he was gay, but I never found out for sure. He liked my company because I would help him read lines for his next project. James was an actor, a word my mother always pronounced with a sniff. But she let me hang out with him because he was smart, and because it gave her free time to write, or do what she liked. When she was around James and I discussed Ibsen and Chekov. When she wasn't, it was Sondheim and Gershwin.
She came home early one day as we were singing, and looked at me imperceptibly. When she took me home, she said, "I don't have money for lessons. Things are too tight. But the radio is free. You listen to the good ones and you learn. You sing."
That is when I began to study music. My teachers were Puccini and Poison and so many others. I would flip the channel randomly each morning, listening carefully and learning the same way I had learned all my social cues.
By the time I turned twelve, even James said I sang better than a lot of his friends. Sometimes he would take me to meet them, under the guise of going for a walk in the park, and there, there I learned everything. They were open and loving, and didn't give a shit about who you were, just who you could be. For the first time in my life I fit in, I could be anyone or anything, as long as I was somebody. I didn't get to go often, but those moments were the ones I held dear in my heart.
My mother never noticed the change. She was delighted in the new Adam I presented her, the one who could speak of words in the same way she could. She didn't know it was me pretending, that I was just trying to reach the enigma of her heart. For those precious last months, it felt like I knew her.
Then there was Gregory.
My mother always had some sort of attachment: she always told me that no one looked good without a little bit of pretty on their side. That was one of her requirements in everything. She liked things to be cleanly. Beautiful. Streamlined.
Guess that was one of the reasons she always sighed at me when I started to gain weight, when I deliberately picked at early pimples just to get her to look at me. We first met Gregory at the office. He was middling in looks, and didn't speak well. So when he first paid my mother any attention, she dismissed him out of hand.
Instead of backing off, like any other man would have done, he simply nodded once and said. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."
My mother was incensed about that, so mad she wasn't able to write a thing that night, so mad she despaired over eight little words, crossing them out and rewriting them. In a way, he had succeeded in getting her attention, because he hadn't followed the routine. I could see it, but she could not.
It escalated to the point where he simply handed her tickets to the philharmonic. They were performing Schoenberg and she said yes. I couldn't believe my ears when she said yes, but later she told me it was the Schoenberg that sold her, not the man.
We met him outside of the hall, her in an ethereal white dress, me in slacks and a button down, him in a worn suit that didn't quite match. She sniffed quite loudly when she saw his appearance, but didn't say anything. He winked at me, and I grinned. I immediately liked him.
I remember that night so clearly.
At first the music hurt my ears. But the more I listened, the more I began to put the pieces together, it all fit, like a strange rainbow of sounds, purples and oranges and greens, alien and beautiful. I remember the way my mother's face looked: rapt, peaceful, even happy, and Gregory on my other side, watching her and me and the orchestra, as if we all belonged to him, as if for one moment, we were together. It was as if I had family.
She let him escort us to the car, even let him press a kiss to her forehead. She said nothing on the way home. Nor did I. I was still hearing the harmonies play out in my head, and hoping that maybe this change in course would change my life.
Oh how prophetic that turned out to be.
The rest of that month was spent in half meetings with him, my mother dancing around the fact that she was interested in someone who was not in her circle of acceptable men. Gregory had neither the looks nor the charm to overcome the lack of them. But he had a certain flair, and he was persistent.
When he quoted Sylvia Plath and gave her a bunch of dandelions, she finally agreed to a real date.
That summer is always so shaded for me. We were happy, the three of us. Sometimes I didn't get to go, but that was all right, because my mother was beaming at me later and writing furiously. She had never written fast, but that summer, she couldn't write fast enough.
I think James saw what was happening, because he always took my excitement in stride, and calmed me down. There was a look in his eyes, and now, when I think on it, that said he knew exactly what Gregory was.
I didn't read him at all. He managed to convince my mother to go see a movie without subtitles. He managed to get her to wear jeans and go to a baseball game. He talked to me about music without condescending my opinion, and asked me if I had any boyfriends. In lots of ways, I fell just as hard and just as fast as my mother.
So when he stopped showing up to our house I was devastated. My mother didn't speak of him, only looked at me with red rimmed eyes and politely asked me to shut up. When we sat outside his house and watched it I realized he had broken up with her. She stared at the window, as if willing him to come out and explain.
When I saw him one day, with another woman, blonder, thinner, younger, I stared at him. He looked at me impassively, so I walked up to him and asked.
"When are you coming home, Daddy?"
I walked away smiling. I had at least scored a small point for my mother. Of course he called her and accused her of playing mind games. She said she hadn't said a word to me and hung up. She looked at me a long time, and laughed.
"That was a lovely idea."
What I didn't realize then was that I set her on the path that came next. I encouraged her behavior for the next week, culminating in what was then the worst night of my life...
At first it was phone calls, made from a pre-paid cell phone, her breathing and him angrily hanging up. Then she arranged to be wherever he was, always with a reason for her to be there, never speaking to him, ignoring his increasing frustration with an inhuman calm that I recognized. It was my mother in her element, in control of everything.
But it escalated, until the point we were in his apartment, trashing his things, burning the pages she had written that summer on his bed. I thought it was over then, because she seemed relaxed. But the next day, after the cops had left, me being her alibi, she was even worse. The anger had turned cold, and calculating.
For the first time in my life, I was scared of my mother. I wanted it to stop, but I didn't know how. I thought of calling him a thousand times, trying to warn him that something inn my mother had snapped, that he had finally broken what little bit of sanity she had left.
But then I remembered he had hurt me as well and hung up the phone halfway through dialing, and ignored everything by going to James's apartment and delving into Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Not a week after the incident at his apartment, she broke in again, stealing files from his personal office, burning some, defiling others. It made no sense to me. I could understand everything that had happened up to this point. But what did his work have to do with my mother's ego?
He came to our apartment then, raging, knocking on our door. He kept yelling for my mother, begging for me to let him in. I sat in a corner of my room and covered my head. I didn't even move when my mother came in and said he was gone, a faint splatter of blood of her jeans and a kitchen knife in her hands.
She wrote for the next two days, her eyes ablaze and her face pale and determined. I knew better than to bother her, and James was at a job, so I simply laid in my room and hummed to myself, wondering when my mother would return to herself, when everything could keep playing out as it had, imperfect, but normal.
I peeked at her journal, something I would have never dared. It was a piece of paper, all medical jargon, with the warnings carefully blackened out. I didn't know what the drugs were, but I didn't have to. She knew I knew too, a gleam in her eyes when I begged her to take me on a trip, for us to go driving. I hated aimless travel and she was aware of it.
"Don't worry, Adam," she said, "I have it perfectly covered."
I almost picked up the phone again, but what could I say? How could I tell him that I thought my mother was planning something, but I didn't know what? I had already partaken in the vandalism, so I was already complicit in her crimes. Plus he had broken her. Had taken what little mother I had and broken her. So maybe an upset stomach was a small price to pay.
Two days after I read her journal the police came again. They said words I had heard a million times in James’s apartment, scripts about being arrested. Gregory was dead. It was then I knew that she had gone further than I could have ever imagined. My mother smiled and told me not to worry.
"They have nothing. Soon enough, we will have everything. I'll be back baby."
I shuffled over to James's apartment, and waited. A week passed, and nothing. Finally, a woman with a clipboard and a name tag that said Kelly came by. She said she was from Social Services. James shrugged at me.
"I'm sorry kid. I wish I could keep you. But I can't. I'm so sorry."
I had little time to gather anything, so I took my mother's three novels and a picture of us from London, smiling together on the beach. She had her arm around me and looked calm.
The next few months… I only remember bits and pieces. The doctors said I was in shock, because I had been removed from my home. I think it was that my mother had actually gone through with it. I believed her capable of many things, but murder? That was not one of them. Yet she had surely killed Gregory.
I remember seeing her once, drugged up and zoned out in jail. I remember the trial was short, and that she didn't even look my way. I remember being asked a million questions by several policemen and women, and answering none of them. I remember biting someone who tried to steal one of my mother's books, and hiding in the corner, my skin flushed with color for once, instead of the sickly white it had been since I arrived at the home.
There were noises here, characters, and I absorbed them all in the way I always did, still trying to work out how my mother could have killed someone, how I had ended up in a room with fifty-eight brown ceiling tiles and plastic bed sheets. Strangely enough, my skin cleared up for awhile, and girls started looking at me. I did not encourage or discourage them, merely watched them in detachment, moving through the days like a machine. Get up. Eat. Shit. Shuffle.
I finally received a placement eight months to the day my mother was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and I walked away from my bed without any look backwards. The social worker was a woman. I think her name was Lizzie. I don't know. She talked too much.
It took an hour and half to get there, so there was a lot of talking. I had told her that I was gay, and I didn't want anyone who would try to convince me otherwise. So she had found me an open household she said. Rosie had religion, but not in a way that would affect me. Rosie liked it both ways, Lizzie told me under her breath, and lived with a young man named Ryan. Lizzie said Ryan was her boyfriend, but she wasn't sure exactly.
The drive was uneventful, except the house became more rundown, the shrubbery more dried out, and the children wilder. We pulled up to a trailer, where a man sat outside, fiddling with a radio. He looked up at me and smiled, his teeth bright.
I had met Ryan. And so my life changed course again.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Kris shut the book. He didn't want to read it, he knew who Ryan was. Adam would sometimes mumble his name at night, his voice conflicted. Ryan was…
Complicated.
Kris frowned. He missed Adam, and reading his words made it worse, not better. Adam had been his guide for the last six months and now everything was empty without him. Kris felt like he was stumbling along okay, but he hurt.
Adam had left him a journal and a broken heart, no expectation that he had any intention of waiting for Kris to age out, no word of where he had gone, just a look and a few whispered words in the night.
"It's better this way."
How was it better? Better for Adam maybe, because he could go anywhere now, could be the person he wanted to be without someone constantly monitoring him. Adam had the luxury of freedom, and Kris was stuck in this home with Tati. And Alex.
Alex: blond, beautiful, dangerous; what he wanted, he took. He was careful around Kris though, because if Kris said a word to a social worker, Alex would be arrested faster than he could say stop.
But it never got that far. Alex's hand would linger, but never long enough for anyone else to notice. Except Adam, but he wasn't there anymore, and it wasn't his business was it? Adam had left, and what he had to say didn't matter any more.
Kris lay in bed, pretending to be sick while the others went hunting for treasures. He wasn't, but he had no energy to go anywhere. He had picked up Adam's journal a thousand times and put it back down. Maybe he wanted to learn the lessons in real life. Maybe then he could turn away from his best friend and leave him in a hell hole forever.
"You aren't sick."
Alex.
"No."
"You are lonely, instead, no?"
"Yes."
It was obvious Kris was lonely. Adam had filled enough space for three people, so of course his leaving left Kris empty. Not to mention the way he left, with few words and not even the hint of a hug.
"I could make you less lonely."
Kris said nothing, so Alex sat on the bed and ran his finger down Kris's cheek, rubbing his arm lightly.
Kris swallowed, but his eyes never left Alex's.
"You know what I want," Alex said, his voice low.
Kris still said nothing, a voice in the back of his head screaming for him to do something, and it sounded suspiciously like Adam's, so he didn't listen. After all, Adam had left, so his voice didn't matter anymore.
So when Alex's hand wandered to the zipper of his jeans, and laid flat against his underwear, Kris closed his eyes.
"Tell me what you want," he whispered.
Alex sighed. "Just let me."
Kris opened his eyes and nodded as Alex stripped off his pants, fingers caressing the goose bumps that arose. Kris watched as Alex took off his own pants, his cock straining against his underwear.
"You'll need to get up."
Kris moved, slowly, as if in a dream sequence, so Alex pulled him up and turned him around, his body pressing against Kris's, hard and hot.
"I tell you to do something, you do it quick, understand? We do not want anyone to know do we?"
Kris nodded and then said, "No. This is between us."
"Good boy. I always knew I liked you."
Kris breathed as Alex took off his underwear, and bent him over the bed, hands spreading his butt cheeks.
"Let's see how much he spread you."
Kris knew who Alex was talking about. Still said nothing. He was scared and excited, and slightly disgusted, but for the first time since Adam left he was feeling, so he didn't even care anymore. He let out a breath when Alex stuck a two fingers in, swallowing as three followed, stretching and burning so fast.
"So fucking tight. Jesus," Alex muttered, and Kris heard crinkling and muttering. "Wanted you so long."
The last whisper was breathless, and then Alex was in him, hard and fast and and Kris grunted as Alex drove him into the bed, pounded into him, moaning, his hands on Kris's hips, driving over and over again. Kris breathed, because it hurt, yes, but not nearly as much as he expected. Soon enough there was just friction, enough for him to begin to feel something, and then it was over before Kris could even count to twenty, Alex shivering and screaming, collapsing with a sigh.
"You better clean up any mess before Tati comes home. We can do this again. Soon. I don't know if I can wait again."
Kris nodded, and waited until Alex left before curling into a ball on the floor. He didn't even know if he could move. He slowly gathered his clothes and crawled to the bathroom. It hurt.
But at least he felt something.
It doesn’t matter how you feel, Kris. You have to show them that you don’t feel anything. That way they can’t hurt you. That way, they don’t win.
Kris walked into the kitchen the next morning and poured himself some cereal. He admitted he had made a mistake. He probably shouldn't have let Alex fuck him. It had certainly distracted him, but it hadn't done any good, though.
“Good morning. Are you feeling better today?”
Kris picked up his bowl and turned around. Alex. He shrugged.
“I’m okay.”
Then he walked-not without some effort, but damn if he was going to let it show-into the living room, and cheered himself with the confused look on Alex’s face. Perhaps Alex had wanted to hurt him, to try and dominate him. Alex seemed the type. What he didn’t understand was that Kris hadn’t slept with him because he had felt intimidated; he had slept with Alex because he hadn’t felt anything at all.
Kris realized now the next move was his. But he didn't know what it was; for the first time he was on his own, and he had to make decisions for himself.
Kris ignored all the noise in the room as he put his bowl away and went to his bedroom. He picked up the book, weighing it in his hands. He had to admit, Adam had guided him through a lot, even before he left. Maybe that was why he wrote it all down. Kris sighed, and opened the journal.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I had been around James’s friends enough to know when I was being looked at, and since Lizzie was at the door talking with a woman I presumed to be Rosie, I knew his eyes were on me. At first I didn’t know why, but then I remembered my hair had grown out a little, and turned more of a sandy blond than its usual orange. My face was clear, and a growth spurt had left me lean and lanky. So, for the first time in my life, I was looked at and admired. It was but a flash of a moment, but I saw it.
I was fourteen years old.
I felt myself flush, and toyed with my hands. I didn’t know who this man was, but he obviously belonged to my new home. There was no way I was ruining that.
“Adam, come here,” Lizzie said.
At the door stood a walking cliché: Rosie (“Ms. Patterson,” Lizzie had warned, knowing I often called my mom by her first name) had just enough make-up on to show that she was a woman, but her clothing did its best to hide it.
“Hello, Ms. Patterson,” I said, looking her in the eye, but not holding out my hand.
“Well, aren’t you a gentleman? Everyone ‘round here calls me Rosie. Except Ryan over there, but don’t you mind him, he’s just quiet. Why doncha come in and you can get settled?”
I followed her inside.
“You’ll be sharing a room with Michael, he’s at school right now. We also have two girls, Carly and Allison. They’re also in school. Now I have to know, are you a friend of God?”
I looked at Lizzie, who winked at me, and nodded for me to answer truthfully.
“Actually, um, Rosie, I’m Jewish. Lapsed, but Jewish nonetheless.”
“Oh. Well then. Do you have any clothes other than that?”
I looked at my jeans and t-shirt, gleaned from the donation pile at the home. “No.”
“We’ll take you shopping then. Get ya something nice to wear.”
“Okay.”
Lizzie pulled me aside then and gave me a number I knew I wouldn’t call unless I was bleeding to death, because even though it was in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t a sparse bed covered in plastic just in case I decided to wet the bed. At least there wouldn’t be (I hoped) crying in the night, or people trying to steal the shoes off your feet.
*
Shopping with Rosie was an adventure. Her tastes ran very pedestrian, and I found myself in corduroy pants and a button down shirt. My mother would hate it. I embraced it, choosing to play grateful son for awhile, because Rosie seemed to like it.
(You’ll notice a pattern soon, Kris, that I tended always to play a part, probably from the moment I realized that it made life just a little more stable. Guess that makes you wonder who I was playing with you then? I’d like to say it was Adam, but I don’t know. I do it without thinking any more. But more of that later.)
She even asked me if I wanted to see my mom. At first I almost said no, just to spite her for leaving me to fend for myself in the worst possible places imaginable, but she was my mother, so eventually I said yes.
Rosie talked most of the way there, asking me questions about my childhood, about what holidays we celebrated, or how big my birthday parties were. I didn't tell her that my mother didn't believe in holidays sponsored by Hallmark and that birthdays were only a reminder that she was another year older.
The prison itself was fairly nondescript from far away. It didn't look like anything except for the fence, and then as we got closer, the bars.
My mother wasn't allowed to hug me, but she gave my hand a brief squeeze when the guard wasn't looking. I felt guilty for almost saying no to seeing her.
"Are you okay?" She asked.
I shrugged. "I don't have plastic on my bed anymore, so I guess I'm doing better."
She smiled. "Well, that's good."
"It would be better if you were home and everything would go back to the way it was."
"Now Adam," she sighed, and I knew I was going to get one of her tidbits of advice. "Life is about change. And sometimes it isn't good. Sometimes our little joys get broken."
I nodded, swallowing any form of retort. After all, she had never been nurturing to begin with, so why expect a change from her? Next thing I knew she would say "Changes happen to people, not within them."
"Look at it as a way to gain strength. You must be strong to stand against the wind that is society."
(She said that. I'm not kidding)
"Okay, Mom."
I didn't tell her that I hadn't cried, because then she would think something of it, or make some other sort of statement.
"I want you to write me."
"I can do that?"
"Of course. I don't know if they'll read it, but I want at least one or two letters from you, to know how you are doing."
I smiled then. She wanted to hear from me. Maybe, just maybe, she was changing.
I waved goodbye, feeling warm for the first time since I had walked into her room and discovered her crying over Gregory. Maybe things would be okay.
For those first few months, it was almost normal. I discovered that Michael was a trouble maker who snuck out at every opportunity, that Carly was mostly quiet, but when she wanted to be heard… And Allison.
I never wanted a little sister. Ever. But the first time I met Allison, she blinked and gave me a hug, saying it looked like I needed one, then asked me if I wanted to hear about the life cycle of a cricket. She liked bugs. Rosie did not.
We got along just fine, Allison and I. I think-I'd like to think I was Adam with her. She somehow conned me out into the sun despite my skin, and somehow had me holding crickets for her while she drew them. She was extraordinary.
I discovered that Rosie was a recovering alcoholic and recent convert to religion in general. So Wednesdays were combined church meetings and AA. She left us with Ryan, even though he probably wasn’t an appropriate baby sitter. But he was pretty relaxed, and handled whatever came in the same calm way he handled everything. I was the oldest (besides Michael, but he had left), so I got to stay up, and we would play checkers and listen to records.
Ryan liked to sit outside and smoke, so Rosie wouldn't have to smell it in her house. The first time he pulled out the joint I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. James’s friends smoked pot regularly, and it never bothered me then. If Rosie ever found out, though, I had a feeling that Ryan was in deep trouble.
After all, Rosie had found God and rid herself of the evils of drugs. But Ryan was cool. He and I discussed the music in the records, and I confessed my secret desire to be a singer or an actor or both. He told me I could do anything, and if his hand lingered too long on my back I ignored it, because he paid attention.
My mother's letters only went so far.
He listened to what I wanted, instead of telling me what I should want. I fell and I fell hard. After all, he fit all the things I seemed to like best in a guy. I should have been creeped out, but what you have to remember is that my mother had never taught me boundaries as far as sex was concerned.
Safety, yes. Boundaries? No.
It didn't even occur to me that the flirting was wrong until Rosie pulled me aside after one of her Wednesday meetings and pushed me into a wall, her nose inches from my face.
"Don't think I don't see you."
"I don't-"
"You know perfectly well what," she interrupted. "I see you two, all flirty and close. One: he's my boyfriend. Two: if I even think you've lured him into bed, I will have you flying out of this house so fast you won't know what hit you. Three: don't tell me it's him, because any sane man would know better. After all, fifteen gets you twenty."
She stalked away. I knew what she was talking about. I knew all about pedophilia and statutory rape.
But those weren't me. I wasn't being pressured at all. Anyway, we were just flirting. It meant nothing.
My mother wrote me several letters, full of implied concern and wanting to know details. I sent her back airy replies saying Ryan treated me like a kid brother and that nothing was wrong. After all, what she didn't know… It wouldn't have been the first or last time I kept secrets from her.
But six months after my arrival Rosie started to drink again, just a little bit, and Michael looked at me before disappearing again and said, "Don't worry. In another four months she'll find God again and we'll all be in church singing His praises."
One unspectacular Wednesday she took Carly and Allison shopping, and I was supposed to be at school for some math fair thing. I hadn't done a project so it was pointless. So I came home early and no one was there. I heard noise in the workshop and went there.
Ryan was fixing some shelves, his shirt long gone, sweat tracing the muscles of his torso, just a slight shade lighter than his arms. My mouth went dry and any greeting I had was swallowed up by a rush of blood. Ryan continued to work, until his eyes happened to turn my way.
He looked at me then, eyes darkening as they swept up and down. I blushed because it was probably obvious what I was feeling, my dick straining against my jeans for anyone to see. Ryan put down the hammer and walked over to me.
"I'm thirsty," he said quietly.
"I-I-I-can get you something," I managed to choke, trying to tear my eyes away.
He shook his head and smiled. "Not like that."
Then his hand pushed me, until my back was against the wall, and his face was right in front of mine.
"Tell me no," he whispered.
I blinked, then my hand reached up and pulled him forward, our lips meeting softly at first, then I opened my mouth, inviting him to touch, wanting him to do whatever he wanted. My whole body felt strung out and electric, his body barely brushing against it. Then he stepped into the kiss and I could feel his cock hard against mine, even through our jeans, and I sighed.
Then Ryan stepped away and my face must have fallen because he placed a hand on my cheek and smiled. Then he was on his knees, his hands unbuttoning and pulling, and I watched as he put his mouth around my dick, all the way at first, then his tongue swirling around, and I couldn't look any more because it was too much. I lost control, my hips jerking as I came, and I kept my eyes closed as he buttoned me up and stood.
"You know why that happened?" he whispered, his hands on my hips.
I shook my head.
"So the next part lasts longer."
I opened my eyes then and looked. I had read the books, wanting to know, so I knew that there were many options as far as the next part.
"What's the next part," I breathed, hoping I sounded excited instead of scared.
"The next part," Ryan said, kissing me and nipping my lip, "is where I fuck you. I assume that's what you want."
Oh how I wanted it. I had wanted it since he had first laid eyes on me. That's what I felt in my state of euphoria.
"Yes," I said. "Lead the way."
Ryan led me into my room. "Get undressed while I get something."
I stripped and waited, my cock already hardening again, then Ryan was back, and his hands ran down my chest and lightly stroked under my balls. I arched under his touch.
"Please."
"We'll get there. Don't worry," he said.
He stood and undressed, and I stared at his cock, red and dripping already, and began to breathe a little faster.
"Can I?" I whispered.
He nodded and I reached out, tracing the length with one finger. Ryan's eyes closed and I wrapped my hand around him, pulling gently, then stroking again.
His hand took mine away and he knelt down. He kissed me again, and whispered in my ear.
"Not too loud now."
I held back as his fingers stretched me, just long enough for me to think it was forever, but not so long I completely fell apart.
He had done this before.
Then he pushed inside me, slowly at first, his eyes rolling back as he thrust, it felt weird and at first I thought I was doing something wrong, because I didn't feel anything except his movement inside me, then his hand was on my cock, and the added friction was enough to take me over, Ryan's shudders following mine moments later.
We lay there for a moment.
"Rosie's going to be back soon," I said.
"I know."
We cleaned up and he stole a kiss, whispering in my ear, "You were perfect."
It was everything I wanted to hear; it was everything I was supposed to.
The second time, hard and fast on the floor of the woodshed, I felt everything and I couldn't contain my smile. That whole summer we couldn't keep our hands off each other. We thought we were so careful, the two of us. The one night in July, where I fumblingly fucked him, then again in the morning, with assurance I never knew I had. He whispered his love in those stolen moments and I whispered it back.
You may wonder what in the hell I was thinking. Understand this: I made all my choices consciously. That being said, for the first time in my life, I had someone who was completely focused on me. It was thrilling and intoxicating, and also for the first time in my life, I acted my age. I damned all the consequences and followed my heart. Well, my dick, but at that age whose heart isn't tied there?
But I did love him, and every time we were together I began to believe in a future where there was no one else. Ryan would whisper his worries and I would shake my head and tell him it was okay. I understood better than anyone else.
It was November and it was raining. That was the end of my time with Rosie. Allison was following tracks of some sort, excitedly yelling about migration to Carly. Michael was off again doing whatever.
I was lying in bed and ignoring my mother's last letter, which had been vague and distant and all her usual tricks to try and get me to pay attention to her. But I had Ryan. So what did I care about her?
Ryan and Rosie were arguing again, and I could vaguely hear them through the wall. Then it came.
"I know why you won't fuck me! You're getting it on the side with the little fag! I'm not fucking stupid! Wait till I tell his fucking social worker! Then you'll be the one getting it!"
"You know what Rosie? I'm done!"
Then I heard Ryan storm out. I was already on my feet, my mother's books in my hand and headed to the window. Ryan would wait until I got out. I just knew it.
"Think he's gonna wait for you? He's just after the next piece of tail, you dumb queer."
I didn't even turn, didn't even process the noise as a gunshot. I didn't even feel it at first, the shock propelling me to the floor. It wasn't until Allison's hand was in mine, and her voice was calling out, to the phone I later realized, that I began to feel pain.
*
The next two weeks are pretty lost to drugs. Allison was there. I didn't think of it at first, but then I realized by saving me, she gave up her place in Rosie's home. She had no idea that she would have been taken from there anyway. She didn't even get to keep her crickets. She was shuffled away with a squeeze of my hand and a shy smile and I never saw her again.
A nurse brought in a letter from my mother, three pages long and tear stained. I didn't read it at first.
When you come back to me, I can breathe again
So maybe my mother loved me after all. When I look at it again, I realize the phrasing told the real story. As per usual, it was never about me. But I didn't know that then.
I knew Ryan couldn't come. After all, that would be dangerous. But I knew he was waiting. He loved me.
The police kept coming and asking me questions. I answered none of them. After all, if I got Rosie in trouble, she would rat on Ryan (not that she hadn't already, but it was my word against hers, and I had said he hadn't touched me.) But if she was arrested, in my head, Ryan would never come for me. It didn't matter what the truth was, or if the police ended up arresting them both. To me, if I said nothing, then Ryan would be able to take me away from everything.
So I shut up and waited. It took until January for me to achieve something resembling a hobble. My back felt like it was going to tear apart. I looked at it in the hospital mirror, the small puckered scar just shy of my spine.
Not quite as good a story as yours, but my story, nonetheless.
I think reality came in two forms: the hospital switched me from their pain meds to the ones the state would pay for, so gone was the constant high, the state of calm that came with the haze of narcotics. Secondly, as my new social worker led me out of the hospital, there was no tanned face, no sign Ryan was anywhere in sight. A part of me still hoped.
As we drove away from the hospital I began to realize that he wasn't coming, that he wasn't waiting. That maybe he didn't love me after all.
In a month, I would be fifteen.
I had already decided I would never let anyone in like that again.
In a month, I would be fifteen, and I had already learned the great art of lying, even to myself.
Part One Part Two Part Three
Artist chosenfire28 aka the most patient and wonderful person ever
Beta ashe_frost thanks SO much for reading.
Fandom American Idol RPF
Rating R
Word Count22,000
Pairings Adam Lambert/Kris Allen, Adam Lambert/OMC, Kris Allen/OMC, Adam/Brad Bell, Kris/Cale Mills
Summary a requested fic for ladyelphaba who PM'd me the longest prompt ever, which I'll summarize as White Oleander inspired Kris and Adam in foster care fic. Submitted for au_bigbang
Warnings Dub-con (Consent issues everywhere really). Underage sex. Language. Stockholm syndrome. VERY INTENSE SITUATIONS THAT MAY SET OFF TRIGGERS-lots of not nice things happen so be fully forewarned that the majority if this is intensely unhappy. Character death (though not Kris or Adam).
Disclaimer Everything I know about foster care is limited, and although it isn't portrayed in the best light in this story I understand there are both good and bad foster care situations. This story is not meant to be a moral upon that. It is merely an approximation of one possibility. Also, I do not own any of the characters retained within
Author's notes Some not so nice things happen. Several characters are named after American Idol individuals, but do not necessarily represent them in the whole. Title taken from a song of Bernard da Ventadour.
Part One Part Two Part Three
What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness,
pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps. ~Euripides, Hecuba
~
The book was well-worn, pages discolored and bent from rereading, the cover wrinkled and stained. Kris held it close to him. He worried that Tati might make him sell it, just as he had had to sell the guitar. He could still feel the strings under his fingers; sometimes he woke with his hands shaped in familiar chords.
So the book stayed hidden or in his possession, a short message scrawled just on the inside of the cover:
"Just in case." ~A. L.
It was the only thing Kris had besides the chipping paint on his thumb that the last six months had even been real, the only evidence that Adam had been real. Kris wasn't letting either the book or idea of Adam go any time soon.
The book was a special shield whenever Alex looked at him, his blue eyes boring into Kris's brown ones, and Kris would feel his palms go clammy, so he would picture the book and remember Adam telling him that if he didn't want to be taken advantage of, he had to pretend like he didn't care if he was taken advantage of. If he had no interest, neither did the predator.
So Kris would look at Alex, and hope he pulled off the combination of indifference and hint of disgust that Adam had perfected so well. It seemed to work.
*
Tuesday was the day before trash day in most of the neighborhood, so that was when Tati went scavenging for her things to sell. All the kids were supposed to go, too, but Kris hated it, not just because it was smelly, but the scavenging reminded him of losing the two things that had kept him sane: his guitar and Adam.
Kris thought about pretending to be sick, but Alex was lying on the couch and watching him. He was always watching.
"You do not look so good," he said.
Kris shook his head. "I'm fine. See you around."
Alex said nothing as Kris left, but Kris could feel Alex's eyes even as he left the house and turned the first corner in the road. Kris had never been watched so much in his life. Alex was Tati's boyfriend, and well, an adult. Kris panicked even thinking about it, but Adam came to mind-as he always did-and Kris calmed. After all, Adam had said Alex was the type who liked it any way he could get it. He was creepy and beautiful. Kris admitted there was a certain attraction to him, and if the situation were different, he might have considered it. Possibly.
While the others ate lunch, Kris sat in the truck and held the book Adam had given him. He wanted to throw it away so many times, but Adam had sworn by it, and Adam had been the only tolerable thing about the whole of his time in Tati's home.
So Kris began to flip through the pages, wondering what was so good about the book anyway.
When he saw pages of loopy handwriting, glued ever so carefully into the spine of the original book, he realized what Adam had really left. Kris looked up, to make sure no one else could see. He didn't think anyone would care about Adam's personal thoughts, but he'd never thought he would willingly let go of his guitar either.
He began to read.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
So I guess you figured it out. I had you pegged at about a week or so in. Maybe someday you'll tell me whether or not I was right.
See, you always wanted to know everything. I told you the past wasn't significant.
I lied.
Everything I am is because of what happened to me, and there are so many lessons I learned that you shouldn't have to. So I began to write it down.
Unlike me, there is a distinct possibility you may walk away relatively normal. Fit for society. Please.
Take care of yourself.
For me.
I suppose I should begin with my mother. She is, after all, why I ended up here, digging through garbage for the crazy Russian and reselling it for cash. And meeting you.
My first memory of my mother is riding the train from London to Cambridge. She was reading one of her slim novels with a foreign name. She never read mass-produced novels, and often told me if she caught me reading any of that trash, she would disown me on the spot.
Leila Lambert was if nothing else, blunt.
My mother wrote novels, the same slim kind she read, the kind that were critically acclaimed and made no money. I read one once. I didn't understand it.
Then again, I've always liked trash. (Perhaps that’s why I never ran from Tati. Then again, by the time I arrived there, what I liked never really mattered anyway.)
One of my teachers in those early years called me precocious because of my large vocabulary. I could have told her that I didn't know any other way to speak. It was either speak my mother's language or not be heard at all.
(I often think this is the reason I make sure to be noticed, because frequently in those early years I was left to my own devices, and the only way to get attention was by being different, whether it was speaking her language or wearing glitter.)
So we moved to California right when I turned seven, a magical year, in some places. In order to make money to support us, my mother had to go into editing the very trash she mocked. Sometimes I would go with her, quietly observing the people in the office, trying to absorb how everyone acted around each other. America was unfamiliar, and even though I wanted to stand out, I learned a lot of social cues from that office.
Which is probably why I tend to be so forward and unfiltered.
The problem with having a mother who treated me as an adult never really surfaced until I figured out I was gay.
I was about ten, and one of my mother’s 'friends' was visiting. He was from Louisiana, and I loved listening to him talk. When all my classmates were talking about girls and cooties, I was thinking of him.
I didn't even know what gay was, until I told my mom.
"Excuse me?" She asked.
"I said, I think I like boys better than girls. Is that bizarre?"
Her face was blank, and then turned thoughtful. "Tchaikovsky was gay."
"Is that what that is? Liking boys?"
She nodded and held me close. "Listen to me, dear Adam, you must know this: there are many people who would hurt you because of what you are. So don't blurt it out, okay?"
I nodded. I told no one else. It was like a secret that bound my mother and I close, even though she never mentioned it again, and never asked me if I was sure. She had taught me never to say anything if I wasn't sure.
The next day, she sat me down with some books, a condom, a banana and some lube, and explained more than I had ever wanted to hear from my mother about sex. She never blinked, never blushed. Simply showed me, and made me repeat her words so she knew I understood. In her mind, there was never any doubt that I could handle it.
My mother always had 'friends' over. I knew what they were, but for some reason she always called them friends. It was the only instance in my life where she treated me like a child; where I felt like one. Obviously she wasn't going to let me share time with them, but I wondered why she didn't call them her lovers, even before I came out. I wanted to learn all her secrets, and she would not tell me one.
So I watched, and gleaned what I could from what little I saw. I discovered that looks meant a lot, that a certain amount of charm overcame some looks, and that there were certain men never to be touched, only to be disdained. I learned the many differences in a touch of the hand on an arm. I learned thirty kinds of laughter. I found out that everyone had a weakness.
My mother's was Gregory. (I'll return to him later.)
My mother always wanted me to be a musician, like Tchaikovsky, I deduced. She tried to give me piano lessons. I discovered I was not really that good. Then we moved to violin. Finally, she caught James and me singing in his apartment.
James was our next door neighbor. I highly suspected he was gay, but I never found out for sure. He liked my company because I would help him read lines for his next project. James was an actor, a word my mother always pronounced with a sniff. But she let me hang out with him because he was smart, and because it gave her free time to write, or do what she liked. When she was around James and I discussed Ibsen and Chekov. When she wasn't, it was Sondheim and Gershwin.
She came home early one day as we were singing, and looked at me imperceptibly. When she took me home, she said, "I don't have money for lessons. Things are too tight. But the radio is free. You listen to the good ones and you learn. You sing."
That is when I began to study music. My teachers were Puccini and Poison and so many others. I would flip the channel randomly each morning, listening carefully and learning the same way I had learned all my social cues.
By the time I turned twelve, even James said I sang better than a lot of his friends. Sometimes he would take me to meet them, under the guise of going for a walk in the park, and there, there I learned everything. They were open and loving, and didn't give a shit about who you were, just who you could be. For the first time in my life I fit in, I could be anyone or anything, as long as I was somebody. I didn't get to go often, but those moments were the ones I held dear in my heart.
My mother never noticed the change. She was delighted in the new Adam I presented her, the one who could speak of words in the same way she could. She didn't know it was me pretending, that I was just trying to reach the enigma of her heart. For those precious last months, it felt like I knew her.
Then there was Gregory.
My mother always had some sort of attachment: she always told me that no one looked good without a little bit of pretty on their side. That was one of her requirements in everything. She liked things to be cleanly. Beautiful. Streamlined.
Guess that was one of the reasons she always sighed at me when I started to gain weight, when I deliberately picked at early pimples just to get her to look at me. We first met Gregory at the office. He was middling in looks, and didn't speak well. So when he first paid my mother any attention, she dismissed him out of hand.
Instead of backing off, like any other man would have done, he simply nodded once and said. "I'll talk to you tomorrow."
My mother was incensed about that, so mad she wasn't able to write a thing that night, so mad she despaired over eight little words, crossing them out and rewriting them. In a way, he had succeeded in getting her attention, because he hadn't followed the routine. I could see it, but she could not.
It escalated to the point where he simply handed her tickets to the philharmonic. They were performing Schoenberg and she said yes. I couldn't believe my ears when she said yes, but later she told me it was the Schoenberg that sold her, not the man.
We met him outside of the hall, her in an ethereal white dress, me in slacks and a button down, him in a worn suit that didn't quite match. She sniffed quite loudly when she saw his appearance, but didn't say anything. He winked at me, and I grinned. I immediately liked him.
I remember that night so clearly.
At first the music hurt my ears. But the more I listened, the more I began to put the pieces together, it all fit, like a strange rainbow of sounds, purples and oranges and greens, alien and beautiful. I remember the way my mother's face looked: rapt, peaceful, even happy, and Gregory on my other side, watching her and me and the orchestra, as if we all belonged to him, as if for one moment, we were together. It was as if I had family.
She let him escort us to the car, even let him press a kiss to her forehead. She said nothing on the way home. Nor did I. I was still hearing the harmonies play out in my head, and hoping that maybe this change in course would change my life.
Oh how prophetic that turned out to be.
The rest of that month was spent in half meetings with him, my mother dancing around the fact that she was interested in someone who was not in her circle of acceptable men. Gregory had neither the looks nor the charm to overcome the lack of them. But he had a certain flair, and he was persistent.
When he quoted Sylvia Plath and gave her a bunch of dandelions, she finally agreed to a real date.
That summer is always so shaded for me. We were happy, the three of us. Sometimes I didn't get to go, but that was all right, because my mother was beaming at me later and writing furiously. She had never written fast, but that summer, she couldn't write fast enough.
I think James saw what was happening, because he always took my excitement in stride, and calmed me down. There was a look in his eyes, and now, when I think on it, that said he knew exactly what Gregory was.
I didn't read him at all. He managed to convince my mother to go see a movie without subtitles. He managed to get her to wear jeans and go to a baseball game. He talked to me about music without condescending my opinion, and asked me if I had any boyfriends. In lots of ways, I fell just as hard and just as fast as my mother.
So when he stopped showing up to our house I was devastated. My mother didn't speak of him, only looked at me with red rimmed eyes and politely asked me to shut up. When we sat outside his house and watched it I realized he had broken up with her. She stared at the window, as if willing him to come out and explain.
When I saw him one day, with another woman, blonder, thinner, younger, I stared at him. He looked at me impassively, so I walked up to him and asked.
"When are you coming home, Daddy?"
I walked away smiling. I had at least scored a small point for my mother. Of course he called her and accused her of playing mind games. She said she hadn't said a word to me and hung up. She looked at me a long time, and laughed.
"That was a lovely idea."
What I didn't realize then was that I set her on the path that came next. I encouraged her behavior for the next week, culminating in what was then the worst night of my life...
At first it was phone calls, made from a pre-paid cell phone, her breathing and him angrily hanging up. Then she arranged to be wherever he was, always with a reason for her to be there, never speaking to him, ignoring his increasing frustration with an inhuman calm that I recognized. It was my mother in her element, in control of everything.
But it escalated, until the point we were in his apartment, trashing his things, burning the pages she had written that summer on his bed. I thought it was over then, because she seemed relaxed. But the next day, after the cops had left, me being her alibi, she was even worse. The anger had turned cold, and calculating.
For the first time in my life, I was scared of my mother. I wanted it to stop, but I didn't know how. I thought of calling him a thousand times, trying to warn him that something inn my mother had snapped, that he had finally broken what little bit of sanity she had left.
But then I remembered he had hurt me as well and hung up the phone halfway through dialing, and ignored everything by going to James's apartment and delving into Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Not a week after the incident at his apartment, she broke in again, stealing files from his personal office, burning some, defiling others. It made no sense to me. I could understand everything that had happened up to this point. But what did his work have to do with my mother's ego?
He came to our apartment then, raging, knocking on our door. He kept yelling for my mother, begging for me to let him in. I sat in a corner of my room and covered my head. I didn't even move when my mother came in and said he was gone, a faint splatter of blood of her jeans and a kitchen knife in her hands.
She wrote for the next two days, her eyes ablaze and her face pale and determined. I knew better than to bother her, and James was at a job, so I simply laid in my room and hummed to myself, wondering when my mother would return to herself, when everything could keep playing out as it had, imperfect, but normal.
I peeked at her journal, something I would have never dared. It was a piece of paper, all medical jargon, with the warnings carefully blackened out. I didn't know what the drugs were, but I didn't have to. She knew I knew too, a gleam in her eyes when I begged her to take me on a trip, for us to go driving. I hated aimless travel and she was aware of it.
"Don't worry, Adam," she said, "I have it perfectly covered."
I almost picked up the phone again, but what could I say? How could I tell him that I thought my mother was planning something, but I didn't know what? I had already partaken in the vandalism, so I was already complicit in her crimes. Plus he had broken her. Had taken what little mother I had and broken her. So maybe an upset stomach was a small price to pay.
Two days after I read her journal the police came again. They said words I had heard a million times in James’s apartment, scripts about being arrested. Gregory was dead. It was then I knew that she had gone further than I could have ever imagined. My mother smiled and told me not to worry.
"They have nothing. Soon enough, we will have everything. I'll be back baby."
I shuffled over to James's apartment, and waited. A week passed, and nothing. Finally, a woman with a clipboard and a name tag that said Kelly came by. She said she was from Social Services. James shrugged at me.
"I'm sorry kid. I wish I could keep you. But I can't. I'm so sorry."
I had little time to gather anything, so I took my mother's three novels and a picture of us from London, smiling together on the beach. She had her arm around me and looked calm.
The next few months… I only remember bits and pieces. The doctors said I was in shock, because I had been removed from my home. I think it was that my mother had actually gone through with it. I believed her capable of many things, but murder? That was not one of them. Yet she had surely killed Gregory.
I remember seeing her once, drugged up and zoned out in jail. I remember the trial was short, and that she didn't even look my way. I remember being asked a million questions by several policemen and women, and answering none of them. I remember biting someone who tried to steal one of my mother's books, and hiding in the corner, my skin flushed with color for once, instead of the sickly white it had been since I arrived at the home.
There were noises here, characters, and I absorbed them all in the way I always did, still trying to work out how my mother could have killed someone, how I had ended up in a room with fifty-eight brown ceiling tiles and plastic bed sheets. Strangely enough, my skin cleared up for awhile, and girls started looking at me. I did not encourage or discourage them, merely watched them in detachment, moving through the days like a machine. Get up. Eat. Shit. Shuffle.
I finally received a placement eight months to the day my mother was sentenced to life in prison without parole, and I walked away from my bed without any look backwards. The social worker was a woman. I think her name was Lizzie. I don't know. She talked too much.
It took an hour and half to get there, so there was a lot of talking. I had told her that I was gay, and I didn't want anyone who would try to convince me otherwise. So she had found me an open household she said. Rosie had religion, but not in a way that would affect me. Rosie liked it both ways, Lizzie told me under her breath, and lived with a young man named Ryan. Lizzie said Ryan was her boyfriend, but she wasn't sure exactly.
The drive was uneventful, except the house became more rundown, the shrubbery more dried out, and the children wilder. We pulled up to a trailer, where a man sat outside, fiddling with a radio. He looked up at me and smiled, his teeth bright.
I had met Ryan. And so my life changed course again.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Kris shut the book. He didn't want to read it, he knew who Ryan was. Adam would sometimes mumble his name at night, his voice conflicted. Ryan was…
Complicated.
Kris frowned. He missed Adam, and reading his words made it worse, not better. Adam had been his guide for the last six months and now everything was empty without him. Kris felt like he was stumbling along okay, but he hurt.
Adam had left him a journal and a broken heart, no expectation that he had any intention of waiting for Kris to age out, no word of where he had gone, just a look and a few whispered words in the night.
"It's better this way."
How was it better? Better for Adam maybe, because he could go anywhere now, could be the person he wanted to be without someone constantly monitoring him. Adam had the luxury of freedom, and Kris was stuck in this home with Tati. And Alex.
Alex: blond, beautiful, dangerous; what he wanted, he took. He was careful around Kris though, because if Kris said a word to a social worker, Alex would be arrested faster than he could say stop.
But it never got that far. Alex's hand would linger, but never long enough for anyone else to notice. Except Adam, but he wasn't there anymore, and it wasn't his business was it? Adam had left, and what he had to say didn't matter any more.
Kris lay in bed, pretending to be sick while the others went hunting for treasures. He wasn't, but he had no energy to go anywhere. He had picked up Adam's journal a thousand times and put it back down. Maybe he wanted to learn the lessons in real life. Maybe then he could turn away from his best friend and leave him in a hell hole forever.
"You aren't sick."
Alex.
"No."
"You are lonely, instead, no?"
"Yes."
It was obvious Kris was lonely. Adam had filled enough space for three people, so of course his leaving left Kris empty. Not to mention the way he left, with few words and not even the hint of a hug.
"I could make you less lonely."
Kris said nothing, so Alex sat on the bed and ran his finger down Kris's cheek, rubbing his arm lightly.
Kris swallowed, but his eyes never left Alex's.
"You know what I want," Alex said, his voice low.
Kris still said nothing, a voice in the back of his head screaming for him to do something, and it sounded suspiciously like Adam's, so he didn't listen. After all, Adam had left, so his voice didn't matter anymore.
So when Alex's hand wandered to the zipper of his jeans, and laid flat against his underwear, Kris closed his eyes.
"Tell me what you want," he whispered.
Alex sighed. "Just let me."
Kris opened his eyes and nodded as Alex stripped off his pants, fingers caressing the goose bumps that arose. Kris watched as Alex took off his own pants, his cock straining against his underwear.
"You'll need to get up."
Kris moved, slowly, as if in a dream sequence, so Alex pulled him up and turned him around, his body pressing against Kris's, hard and hot.
"I tell you to do something, you do it quick, understand? We do not want anyone to know do we?"
Kris nodded and then said, "No. This is between us."
"Good boy. I always knew I liked you."
Kris breathed as Alex took off his underwear, and bent him over the bed, hands spreading his butt cheeks.
"Let's see how much he spread you."
Kris knew who Alex was talking about. Still said nothing. He was scared and excited, and slightly disgusted, but for the first time since Adam left he was feeling, so he didn't even care anymore. He let out a breath when Alex stuck a two fingers in, swallowing as three followed, stretching and burning so fast.
"So fucking tight. Jesus," Alex muttered, and Kris heard crinkling and muttering. "Wanted you so long."
The last whisper was breathless, and then Alex was in him, hard and fast and and Kris grunted as Alex drove him into the bed, pounded into him, moaning, his hands on Kris's hips, driving over and over again. Kris breathed, because it hurt, yes, but not nearly as much as he expected. Soon enough there was just friction, enough for him to begin to feel something, and then it was over before Kris could even count to twenty, Alex shivering and screaming, collapsing with a sigh.
"You better clean up any mess before Tati comes home. We can do this again. Soon. I don't know if I can wait again."
Kris nodded, and waited until Alex left before curling into a ball on the floor. He didn't even know if he could move. He slowly gathered his clothes and crawled to the bathroom. It hurt.
But at least he felt something.
It doesn’t matter how you feel, Kris. You have to show them that you don’t feel anything. That way they can’t hurt you. That way, they don’t win.
Kris walked into the kitchen the next morning and poured himself some cereal. He admitted he had made a mistake. He probably shouldn't have let Alex fuck him. It had certainly distracted him, but it hadn't done any good, though.
“Good morning. Are you feeling better today?”
Kris picked up his bowl and turned around. Alex. He shrugged.
“I’m okay.”
Then he walked-not without some effort, but damn if he was going to let it show-into the living room, and cheered himself with the confused look on Alex’s face. Perhaps Alex had wanted to hurt him, to try and dominate him. Alex seemed the type. What he didn’t understand was that Kris hadn’t slept with him because he had felt intimidated; he had slept with Alex because he hadn’t felt anything at all.
Kris realized now the next move was his. But he didn't know what it was; for the first time he was on his own, and he had to make decisions for himself.
Kris ignored all the noise in the room as he put his bowl away and went to his bedroom. He picked up the book, weighing it in his hands. He had to admit, Adam had guided him through a lot, even before he left. Maybe that was why he wrote it all down. Kris sighed, and opened the journal.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
I had been around James’s friends enough to know when I was being looked at, and since Lizzie was at the door talking with a woman I presumed to be Rosie, I knew his eyes were on me. At first I didn’t know why, but then I remembered my hair had grown out a little, and turned more of a sandy blond than its usual orange. My face was clear, and a growth spurt had left me lean and lanky. So, for the first time in my life, I was looked at and admired. It was but a flash of a moment, but I saw it.
I was fourteen years old.
I felt myself flush, and toyed with my hands. I didn’t know who this man was, but he obviously belonged to my new home. There was no way I was ruining that.
“Adam, come here,” Lizzie said.
At the door stood a walking cliché: Rosie (“Ms. Patterson,” Lizzie had warned, knowing I often called my mom by her first name) had just enough make-up on to show that she was a woman, but her clothing did its best to hide it.
“Hello, Ms. Patterson,” I said, looking her in the eye, but not holding out my hand.
“Well, aren’t you a gentleman? Everyone ‘round here calls me Rosie. Except Ryan over there, but don’t you mind him, he’s just quiet. Why doncha come in and you can get settled?”
I followed her inside.
“You’ll be sharing a room with Michael, he’s at school right now. We also have two girls, Carly and Allison. They’re also in school. Now I have to know, are you a friend of God?”
I looked at Lizzie, who winked at me, and nodded for me to answer truthfully.
“Actually, um, Rosie, I’m Jewish. Lapsed, but Jewish nonetheless.”
“Oh. Well then. Do you have any clothes other than that?”
I looked at my jeans and t-shirt, gleaned from the donation pile at the home. “No.”
“We’ll take you shopping then. Get ya something nice to wear.”
“Okay.”
Lizzie pulled me aside then and gave me a number I knew I wouldn’t call unless I was bleeding to death, because even though it was in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t a sparse bed covered in plastic just in case I decided to wet the bed. At least there wouldn’t be (I hoped) crying in the night, or people trying to steal the shoes off your feet.
*
Shopping with Rosie was an adventure. Her tastes ran very pedestrian, and I found myself in corduroy pants and a button down shirt. My mother would hate it. I embraced it, choosing to play grateful son for awhile, because Rosie seemed to like it.
(You’ll notice a pattern soon, Kris, that I tended always to play a part, probably from the moment I realized that it made life just a little more stable. Guess that makes you wonder who I was playing with you then? I’d like to say it was Adam, but I don’t know. I do it without thinking any more. But more of that later.)
She even asked me if I wanted to see my mom. At first I almost said no, just to spite her for leaving me to fend for myself in the worst possible places imaginable, but she was my mother, so eventually I said yes.
Rosie talked most of the way there, asking me questions about my childhood, about what holidays we celebrated, or how big my birthday parties were. I didn't tell her that my mother didn't believe in holidays sponsored by Hallmark and that birthdays were only a reminder that she was another year older.
The prison itself was fairly nondescript from far away. It didn't look like anything except for the fence, and then as we got closer, the bars.
My mother wasn't allowed to hug me, but she gave my hand a brief squeeze when the guard wasn't looking. I felt guilty for almost saying no to seeing her.
"Are you okay?" She asked.
I shrugged. "I don't have plastic on my bed anymore, so I guess I'm doing better."
She smiled. "Well, that's good."
"It would be better if you were home and everything would go back to the way it was."
"Now Adam," she sighed, and I knew I was going to get one of her tidbits of advice. "Life is about change. And sometimes it isn't good. Sometimes our little joys get broken."
I nodded, swallowing any form of retort. After all, she had never been nurturing to begin with, so why expect a change from her? Next thing I knew she would say "Changes happen to people, not within them."
"Look at it as a way to gain strength. You must be strong to stand against the wind that is society."
(She said that. I'm not kidding)
"Okay, Mom."
I didn't tell her that I hadn't cried, because then she would think something of it, or make some other sort of statement.
"I want you to write me."
"I can do that?"
"Of course. I don't know if they'll read it, but I want at least one or two letters from you, to know how you are doing."
I smiled then. She wanted to hear from me. Maybe, just maybe, she was changing.
I waved goodbye, feeling warm for the first time since I had walked into her room and discovered her crying over Gregory. Maybe things would be okay.
For those first few months, it was almost normal. I discovered that Michael was a trouble maker who snuck out at every opportunity, that Carly was mostly quiet, but when she wanted to be heard… And Allison.
I never wanted a little sister. Ever. But the first time I met Allison, she blinked and gave me a hug, saying it looked like I needed one, then asked me if I wanted to hear about the life cycle of a cricket. She liked bugs. Rosie did not.
We got along just fine, Allison and I. I think-I'd like to think I was Adam with her. She somehow conned me out into the sun despite my skin, and somehow had me holding crickets for her while she drew them. She was extraordinary.
I discovered that Rosie was a recovering alcoholic and recent convert to religion in general. So Wednesdays were combined church meetings and AA. She left us with Ryan, even though he probably wasn’t an appropriate baby sitter. But he was pretty relaxed, and handled whatever came in the same calm way he handled everything. I was the oldest (besides Michael, but he had left), so I got to stay up, and we would play checkers and listen to records.
Ryan liked to sit outside and smoke, so Rosie wouldn't have to smell it in her house. The first time he pulled out the joint I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. James’s friends smoked pot regularly, and it never bothered me then. If Rosie ever found out, though, I had a feeling that Ryan was in deep trouble.
After all, Rosie had found God and rid herself of the evils of drugs. But Ryan was cool. He and I discussed the music in the records, and I confessed my secret desire to be a singer or an actor or both. He told me I could do anything, and if his hand lingered too long on my back I ignored it, because he paid attention.
My mother's letters only went so far.
He listened to what I wanted, instead of telling me what I should want. I fell and I fell hard. After all, he fit all the things I seemed to like best in a guy. I should have been creeped out, but what you have to remember is that my mother had never taught me boundaries as far as sex was concerned.
Safety, yes. Boundaries? No.
It didn't even occur to me that the flirting was wrong until Rosie pulled me aside after one of her Wednesday meetings and pushed me into a wall, her nose inches from my face.
"Don't think I don't see you."
"I don't-"
"You know perfectly well what," she interrupted. "I see you two, all flirty and close. One: he's my boyfriend. Two: if I even think you've lured him into bed, I will have you flying out of this house so fast you won't know what hit you. Three: don't tell me it's him, because any sane man would know better. After all, fifteen gets you twenty."
She stalked away. I knew what she was talking about. I knew all about pedophilia and statutory rape.
But those weren't me. I wasn't being pressured at all. Anyway, we were just flirting. It meant nothing.
My mother wrote me several letters, full of implied concern and wanting to know details. I sent her back airy replies saying Ryan treated me like a kid brother and that nothing was wrong. After all, what she didn't know… It wouldn't have been the first or last time I kept secrets from her.
But six months after my arrival Rosie started to drink again, just a little bit, and Michael looked at me before disappearing again and said, "Don't worry. In another four months she'll find God again and we'll all be in church singing His praises."
One unspectacular Wednesday she took Carly and Allison shopping, and I was supposed to be at school for some math fair thing. I hadn't done a project so it was pointless. So I came home early and no one was there. I heard noise in the workshop and went there.
Ryan was fixing some shelves, his shirt long gone, sweat tracing the muscles of his torso, just a slight shade lighter than his arms. My mouth went dry and any greeting I had was swallowed up by a rush of blood. Ryan continued to work, until his eyes happened to turn my way.
He looked at me then, eyes darkening as they swept up and down. I blushed because it was probably obvious what I was feeling, my dick straining against my jeans for anyone to see. Ryan put down the hammer and walked over to me.
"I'm thirsty," he said quietly.
"I-I-I-can get you something," I managed to choke, trying to tear my eyes away.
He shook his head and smiled. "Not like that."
Then his hand pushed me, until my back was against the wall, and his face was right in front of mine.
"Tell me no," he whispered.
I blinked, then my hand reached up and pulled him forward, our lips meeting softly at first, then I opened my mouth, inviting him to touch, wanting him to do whatever he wanted. My whole body felt strung out and electric, his body barely brushing against it. Then he stepped into the kiss and I could feel his cock hard against mine, even through our jeans, and I sighed.
Then Ryan stepped away and my face must have fallen because he placed a hand on my cheek and smiled. Then he was on his knees, his hands unbuttoning and pulling, and I watched as he put his mouth around my dick, all the way at first, then his tongue swirling around, and I couldn't look any more because it was too much. I lost control, my hips jerking as I came, and I kept my eyes closed as he buttoned me up and stood.
"You know why that happened?" he whispered, his hands on my hips.
I shook my head.
"So the next part lasts longer."
I opened my eyes then and looked. I had read the books, wanting to know, so I knew that there were many options as far as the next part.
"What's the next part," I breathed, hoping I sounded excited instead of scared.
"The next part," Ryan said, kissing me and nipping my lip, "is where I fuck you. I assume that's what you want."
Oh how I wanted it. I had wanted it since he had first laid eyes on me. That's what I felt in my state of euphoria.
"Yes," I said. "Lead the way."
Ryan led me into my room. "Get undressed while I get something."
I stripped and waited, my cock already hardening again, then Ryan was back, and his hands ran down my chest and lightly stroked under my balls. I arched under his touch.
"Please."
"We'll get there. Don't worry," he said.
He stood and undressed, and I stared at his cock, red and dripping already, and began to breathe a little faster.
"Can I?" I whispered.
He nodded and I reached out, tracing the length with one finger. Ryan's eyes closed and I wrapped my hand around him, pulling gently, then stroking again.
His hand took mine away and he knelt down. He kissed me again, and whispered in my ear.
"Not too loud now."
I held back as his fingers stretched me, just long enough for me to think it was forever, but not so long I completely fell apart.
He had done this before.
Then he pushed inside me, slowly at first, his eyes rolling back as he thrust, it felt weird and at first I thought I was doing something wrong, because I didn't feel anything except his movement inside me, then his hand was on my cock, and the added friction was enough to take me over, Ryan's shudders following mine moments later.
We lay there for a moment.
"Rosie's going to be back soon," I said.
"I know."
We cleaned up and he stole a kiss, whispering in my ear, "You were perfect."
It was everything I wanted to hear; it was everything I was supposed to.
The second time, hard and fast on the floor of the woodshed, I felt everything and I couldn't contain my smile. That whole summer we couldn't keep our hands off each other. We thought we were so careful, the two of us. The one night in July, where I fumblingly fucked him, then again in the morning, with assurance I never knew I had. He whispered his love in those stolen moments and I whispered it back.
You may wonder what in the hell I was thinking. Understand this: I made all my choices consciously. That being said, for the first time in my life, I had someone who was completely focused on me. It was thrilling and intoxicating, and also for the first time in my life, I acted my age. I damned all the consequences and followed my heart. Well, my dick, but at that age whose heart isn't tied there?
But I did love him, and every time we were together I began to believe in a future where there was no one else. Ryan would whisper his worries and I would shake my head and tell him it was okay. I understood better than anyone else.
It was November and it was raining. That was the end of my time with Rosie. Allison was following tracks of some sort, excitedly yelling about migration to Carly. Michael was off again doing whatever.
I was lying in bed and ignoring my mother's last letter, which had been vague and distant and all her usual tricks to try and get me to pay attention to her. But I had Ryan. So what did I care about her?
Ryan and Rosie were arguing again, and I could vaguely hear them through the wall. Then it came.
"I know why you won't fuck me! You're getting it on the side with the little fag! I'm not fucking stupid! Wait till I tell his fucking social worker! Then you'll be the one getting it!"
"You know what Rosie? I'm done!"
Then I heard Ryan storm out. I was already on my feet, my mother's books in my hand and headed to the window. Ryan would wait until I got out. I just knew it.
"Think he's gonna wait for you? He's just after the next piece of tail, you dumb queer."
I didn't even turn, didn't even process the noise as a gunshot. I didn't even feel it at first, the shock propelling me to the floor. It wasn't until Allison's hand was in mine, and her voice was calling out, to the phone I later realized, that I began to feel pain.
*
The next two weeks are pretty lost to drugs. Allison was there. I didn't think of it at first, but then I realized by saving me, she gave up her place in Rosie's home. She had no idea that she would have been taken from there anyway. She didn't even get to keep her crickets. She was shuffled away with a squeeze of my hand and a shy smile and I never saw her again.
A nurse brought in a letter from my mother, three pages long and tear stained. I didn't read it at first.
When you come back to me, I can breathe again
So maybe my mother loved me after all. When I look at it again, I realize the phrasing told the real story. As per usual, it was never about me. But I didn't know that then.
I knew Ryan couldn't come. After all, that would be dangerous. But I knew he was waiting. He loved me.
The police kept coming and asking me questions. I answered none of them. After all, if I got Rosie in trouble, she would rat on Ryan (not that she hadn't already, but it was my word against hers, and I had said he hadn't touched me.) But if she was arrested, in my head, Ryan would never come for me. It didn't matter what the truth was, or if the police ended up arresting them both. To me, if I said nothing, then Ryan would be able to take me away from everything.
So I shut up and waited. It took until January for me to achieve something resembling a hobble. My back felt like it was going to tear apart. I looked at it in the hospital mirror, the small puckered scar just shy of my spine.
Not quite as good a story as yours, but my story, nonetheless.
I think reality came in two forms: the hospital switched me from their pain meds to the ones the state would pay for, so gone was the constant high, the state of calm that came with the haze of narcotics. Secondly, as my new social worker led me out of the hospital, there was no tanned face, no sign Ryan was anywhere in sight. A part of me still hoped.
As we drove away from the hospital I began to realize that he wasn't coming, that he wasn't waiting. That maybe he didn't love me after all.
In a month, I would be fifteen.
I had already decided I would never let anyone in like that again.
In a month, I would be fifteen, and I had already learned the great art of lying, even to myself.
Part One Part Two Part Three