InsaneJournal

Current mood:	relieved
Entry tags:	clandestino, father, in my time of dying, laura, mother, nano, niagara falls, nyc, peter

Section 8 (Instalment 1)
Word count: 1 932



The old cliché about choosing the lesser of two evils was, and had been, to the best of Max's knowledge, always just that. A cliché.

There was only a choice between two bad options. Sometimes one could pretend or perceive to think that one of those options was worse or better than the other, but that was little other than wishful thinking. He'd learned that first when he was nine years old. It was... He knew it was no different now.

Then, he'd not made good on his choice until after he'd turned ten. Because, he figured, if both options were bad, and most people didn't even think seriously of the other option, he could at least choose the one where there was a chance of something being better. Of things that he could make as good as possible.

He couldn't make his mother leave. He couldn't make his father stop.

But he could get away from them and not have to see it (and with all the selfishness of a child, it made perfect sense then. For him, it had not been a bad choice. But he'd left her, betrayed her...
And she had betrayed him.)

He spent months planning it. For hours in the library he would research where he could go and what he'd do there. How he'd hide who he was, and how he'd survive.

For how he could get there, he started going to bus stations, train stations. Anything that he could get to for the times he could be out on walks. Some grown-ups were suspicious of a child asking questions all the time; others were friendly and nice; and yet others didn't care. But he smiled and was polite and nice and did look a little bit older than he was and tried to behave older, and it more or less work. By the time the year turned, he had an idea and was working on the details, over and over again. He'd started saving money as soon as he decided he would run away... quietly, and he knew most of this would go on the bus fare, and maybe he'd work to find a secret place to hide the rest when he got there so that when the next winter came, he'd have... something to get himself new clothes so as not to freeze.

He grew quiet at home. Not belligerently quiet - that would have just gotten him, or, more likely, his mom beaten up again only. Not sulky, not angry. Just quiet. Shared less with his mom, almost nothing of significance with his father. They both noticed, but didn't bother him too much about it. Well, his father didn't; his mom would question him, but couldn't make him talk much. (After he started getting called out for 'puppy eyed look' occasions, he decided that he must have started that then, on her. He did recall, the times when he couldn't help recalling, the he would only look at her a certain way, and her green eyes would turn down and she'd stop questioning. That was... both a relief and a sadness. But it worked.)

He also didn't slack at school. He had to be smart about this, right? That meant that he both needed all the knowledge he could get, and school could do that; and it also meant that he couldn't afford to draw suspicions to himself, right? And he didn't. He still did well, as well as always in class; he still played and spent time with his friends. None of them knew, of course, he didn't mention it. He didn't even talk about the time when and after his mom was at the hospital, either. But there was usually plenty enough to talk about, and also to listen about. Nobody realized.

And he took up running - well, not just running, but more extensive exercises, but running was important. He asked his phys ed teacher to help him out with that, and got a program that he stuck to. Mumbled something about older kids trying to get him to do things for them and wanting to be ready - not to fight them, but to get away and make sure that everybody was warned and so on. It worked with that teacher. And, he figured. When he was all alone and a lonely kid with probably other kids, or even adults? He'd better know how to run.

It wasn't until spring that he actually went ahead, though. Once, when he'd been going to the school bus one winter, he'd seen a stranger frozen to death in the snow in the morning. (His mom had been horrified and his da-- his father had been angry, but he'd learned the lesson from it. Winter could kill, if you had no warm to stay in. And he'd have no home and no knowledge, and it was sheer stupidity to leave like that. Worse than staying. So he bided his time... no. He used his time as well as he could.

(Her face got 'graced' by bruises once, in those months. He tried to step between them again. He got kicked on the side of his thigh hard enough to skid across the floor a few steps, and by the time he managed to get back, his father had stormed out of the house already. He'd returned the same day with presents for both. That evening had been possibly the last time he snuggled with her on her comfortable, slightly battered green armchair. It had been long enough since he last had that she didn't even comment on how he was getting too big for that.)

He couldn't tickets on his own. He'd found that out quickly enough when he first started going to the stations. Which was why he'd made provisions for that too. One of the janitors at school, who he'd been talking with even before, got slowly befriended more and more. Max felt a little guilty about using him, but then he helped enough to make sure it wasn't all... one-way, right? So Pierre called and made the ticket reservations for him. A kid could pick up the tickets. But couldn't ... initiate the getting of them. Max didn't get what the actual rule was, but that's what it practically amounted to, after talking with people. If that was the game, so he'd play like that. It didn't matter so much to him what it was, as long as he knew it and played it well.

That's how it'd always been for him. (That's how it'd always be. What he started playing, he made sure he covered well. Superbly. Aaah all the little things he'd try to make sure, about that leaving. Right now, facing a different wall - one no less impenetrable than what his parents had done - he suddenly shuddered thinking of his children doing that. He was blessed... they hadn't. Nor Stephen's.)

And then came the day in April when he just took off in the lunch break. Quietly slipped out of the cafeteria. Dropped the small bag he'd prepared of all things that had his name on them. That meant some of his notebooks too, and he regretted that, but that's how it had to be. He wasn't coming back. He ran all the way to the bus station, and he wasn't nearly as winded as he should have been. Then walked around the station a couple of times, to cool down. He'd be cramped into the bus for a long time. He'd been told it would not be good; so he got as much of motion before that as he could. Then he went in, politely paid for his tickets, and carefully, looking as grown-up as he could and as... not-running-away-from-home as he could, managed to find his way to the bus and up into it and onto his seat. He didn't fidget.

And then the bus left, and he felt like his heart would burst, and he was free and all of a sudden, the sunshine of the day and this feeling, it all made him think it was a brilliant choice, that it was right. He didn't quite understand it. (He wouldn't for a few more years. Then he'd learn to recognize it.) He was ten. Barely that.

The change of buses had to be at Niagara Falls. Mostly because he obviously didn't have the necessary documents to go through a check at the boundary, so he had to cross on his own. Clandestinely.

Max had planned (meaning, he'd asked Pierre to reserve tickets like that for him) on managing to do it in a day. He reckoned, that would be as much as he could afford to before somebody managed to get onto his tracks. And he didn't want to get returned, so he had to do it fast enough.

It turned out much easier, however. Or at least, much quicker. He only spent a few hours watching. And then he started talking with another friend, and then they were discussing the place and then were playing, chasing each other around. And a couple of others - a brother and sister, he found - joined them. And ... suddenly he saw that the checks were... working for bigger people. Nobody really paid attention to kids. The four of them practically crossed the boundary twenty times, back and forth. Before his first friend was called in by his parents. And Max managed to remain on the side that he wanted.

Slowly, very slowly he moved away from the crossing area. Got a chance to pay attention to the place, and it was crazy-busy, there were people from everywhere. But it was also so beautiful that it was, well, what he thought the books would call breathtaking. And he had almost another day here.

He sure enjoyed it, though he tried hard to spend as little of his money as possible. He'd need it later on, even though his hunger insisted otherwise.

He got to the bus station in the evening, and managed to squiggle under a bench and sleep there even after they'd closed off. It was a colder place than he'd ever slept in before, but it wasn't too bad. (Except that it was hard and it smelled, but he was thinking he may get to sleep in worse places in the future, so he manned that up.) And the next day he got on the bus and travelled the rest of the way. And it was scary by now, and it was also amazing. Different country. Different life.

Different Max.

And then there was New York. New York City, that was. (A few times later in life he found it deeply ironic that even with a decade of purposeful wandering, he'd ended up in the same city that he ran to when he was ten years of age and had no idea what the future would have in store for him.)

He'd learned maps of it by heart, over the last months after he'd decided where he'd be going. But maps, maps could only help if you had a goal, a place where you were going. And he had no goal. But to get away.

Well, he'd managed that much. He'd gotten lost in the city. Lost to his parents, at least. And then it was a question of making it through the day, and then the next day. Until... something. Until he was old enough to do something more sensible of himself. Something that a kid of ten couldn't.

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