InsaneJournal

Section 8 (Instalment 2, Done?)
Word count: 2 295

ooc: Some disturbing content inside.


It only took Max a few days, barely more than a week, in the city to find out that it was both easier and more difficult than the had thought.

It was very easy to just put away his thoughts of home and all that he'd put behind himself, the comfort, the security. The first few times he did, it was strong, and he wanted to just try and get back. Until he thought of his mother sitting in her chair, that day when he'd come back from school, and how she looked, and how she'd done the same thing - tried to get away, but then returned. Couldn't do it, and it would've been good for her. He'd failed to get her away, or she'd failed to listen to him. Something. After that, he only had to imagine her sitting there, and the thoughts of wanting to go home subsided, went away. It was easy to find places to sleep, even food to eat a lot of the time. It was easy to get around and easy to get away. It was easy to get back to exercising, and easy to explore. Easy to find out all the things that were free and when, and easy even to get himself to take things that weren't his, though he tried to stay away in the beginning (what if he got caught? What if he got caught and they found out who he was and they returned him home? He couldn't do that.)

It was very difficult to not have books to read all the time, to not have school to go to for more learning. It was very difficult to have nobody to talk to (in the beginning, that's just how it was). It was very difficult to decide what to do with all the time he had. True, there were times when he had to seriously attend to the matters of survival, but he was too used to having always... more to do than the main tasks he had - like, school - that he managed to get by and miss having more to fill up his time. It was very difficult getting around - you could get anywhere in the city if you had a map. Or, in his case, not a map, but time to explore. But for that, you had to have something that he definitely didn't have.
A destination.

It only took him a few days in the city to learn his very first lesson there.

It was very easy to run away from something, from somebody. It was very easy to plan it, and sometimes easy to actually execute the escape. And sometimes it was even the right thing, surprising as it was that the right thing could be easy.

But it was very, very difficult to just hang around and try to get by without a goal. Something to work or run or aim towards.

Maybe it was just difficult for him, he thought. Or for some people. But the goal of just surviving, making it through the day, making it through the night, lather, rinse, repeat - just didn't really work. He had to find himself something to occupy his mind.

Or what?

He had no idea. But he hated not knowing what to do.

... it didn't even cross his mind that the problem was called 'boredom'. Max and boredom had been mutual strangers, up to that point, after all. They never got to get closely acquainted either.

~~~

It only took Max a few more days in the city to move past the first bouts of difficulty, of boredom. Took him that long to figure out that he only needed to be committed to something to feel better.

It took him that long to fall in love with the city. (Later, he'd know that it wasn't specifically New York City. even later, he'd learn that it was not falling in love with the city that did it, but falling in love. But right then, those clarifications didn't matter. He was ten years old, after all.) He'd lived in an area that was still quiet and peaceful enough to be considered almost rural. The city... breathed differently. Smelled differently. Looked differently, and by whatever might come, it tasted different. Felt different. It had so much more, so much less constrained.

He understood, in a way, that he could enjoy himself wherever he happened to be. It was something his mom... something that had been told to him earlier. And he'd enjoyed himself back where he'd been before he left there. But this... this was different. It was always different. Always varied. There were rich places and poor places and the differences were amazing. There were safe places and places that already he thought he might want to avoid in the future because they seemed like they'd be dangerous. There were busy streets and quiet streets and streets in-between. There were parks and there were highways and there was the ocean - the ocean! - and there were so many people.

He wondered at himself, a little, how he could have been missing books, when there were people to study from. He could sit around somewhere and just watch them, try to figure out things about them. He didn't dare trying to follow anybody anywhere to see if he was right, but he could watch. And try to figure out. Who was there why? Coming from where? Going where? So many people, so many of them busy, so few of them happy.

Eventually, he dared approach somebody and talk to him. No, not one of the people who were hurrying to work, or home, or wherever. Not the people in the good clothes who had places to stay and so on. No, he had been watching some of the homeless people too, and finally braved going to talk to the one he was least afraid of. Just... talk. He'd missed talking with somebody. Having them listen to him a bit. Reply with something new that was meant for him to hear. It wasn't much of a conversation, since Max panicked that he'd say something that would make the man find a way to get him home. And, he had to admit to himself later, the man hadn't been exactly up to full mental capacity either. With all the babbling about the same kind of fish over and over again. At least he hadn't asked him for money.

But it still had been talking with somebody. And he hadn't done anything to him. So maybe he wouldn't go crazy just being alone or anything?

~~~

It only took Max a couple of more weeks in the city to really get into trouble.

It wasn't a huge amount of trouble, really, not what he'd come to see as trouble in the years following. But it was trouble enough, and for a ten-year-old whose worst experience had been his father's raised voice and flying fists, it seemed definitely like it was a lot of trouble.

He'd grown overconfident, that's what it was, and it was a mistake he never really repeated, as such, again in his life. He thought since things had started alright and had worked out, he was fine and he was going to be fine.

Of course, that obviously did not take into reckoning the rest of the homeless people, and especially children, roaming or hiding around the streets of the city. He was not exactly competition for the gangs. Or not yet. They waited, he learned later, to see which of the children would survive, before they interfered. (And that thought always brought a jab in his memory about the girl from the group he'd grown to run around with, and how she's been deemed a threat later and had been found shot and he learned who had done it and that's how he'd learned that they waited for the kids to grow up some, but he'd not been able to do anything. But that wouldn't come until years later.)

No, but he was a threat to other children his age. He was their age, he was alone, and they didn't know where he was coming from and he was taking up things that they 'could' have. And he was smart, and many of them envied him that.

It was a simple case of waiting for him to round a corner after he'd stolen a bit of food before having him kicked in the stomach as soon as he'd be out of sight. "Give it up." He took out everything that he'd taken without complaining. There were four of them and he was already on the ground, couldn't exactly run. "Don't you ever go stealin' from here ever again! This is our street, and two over this way and that way! 'ear me good?"

Max had nodded, and the large dark-skinned boy had nodded to the strong red-haired one and he'd kicked him again, and again, till Max was crying, curled up on himself. He didn't beg them to stop. But when he was asked if he got it, he nodded, and forced a 'yes' out, even though his lip was bleeding and swelling up and it hurt a whole lot.

He waited for their running steps to stop sounding, then moved, ouched, then forced himself to move till he was leaning up against the wall. He'd ploughed his way through one self-help medicine book which was mostly incomprehensible, but he'd remembered a few bits. Like, that if there was a broken bone on his limbs, he'd not be able to move his fingers and toes. Which is what he tried first, on his left leg, which hurt a lot, just below the knee, but that seemed to be alright, toes wiggling in the too-large, trash-found shoes. Then he tried to flex the fingers of his left hand, right one holding the spot above the elbow that had sported a bad kick. It hurt, a lot, but he could do it.

Good. No broken bones. The rest was supposed to heal on its own, right? No big kicks on the head, and not much on his stomach or back, really.

He counted himself lucky.

But dammit it hurt. The way he paid more attention to his senses normally? It hurt a whole lot. He became a lot more careful about where he was taking things from.

~~~

It only took Max a few more weeks in the city to fully learn how much he'd been wrong about survival on his own being easy.

He'd laid low after he got beat up. It'd made for a lot more hurt in his stomach, and usually when he did stand up he was light-headed and all, but he was limping and not looking good, and nobody'd probably let him in a store, let alone walk out of it unsuspected. There were trash bins though. For a while, his stomach turned bad when he tried to eat something that was stinking, or that he had to take ants off of, but he got over that while he was the most hungry. It was supposedly food. Maybe some bread that was thrown out because it had gotten stale (hah, what's the problem with stale bread anyway?) or mouldy (he could tear that away!) that was prize find, since that was usually thrown away in its own plastic wrapping and wasn't hit by the worst of the trash rot. Sometimes, people even threw out jars from stuff that had a whole lot more to eat in them - peanut butter, marmalade, honey, all sorts of things. Finding that along with bread? Was a feast for a while.

He still wasn't getting enough to eat, and he could tell by how his bones started sticking out from his skin. He'd never been stocky or plump really, but he'd not been skinny either. With the running and stuff, he'd gotten used to being strong, and having muscle to his frame, and it seemed to be gone now a lot. Except that he didn't have much energy to start exercising again.

One morning, there was food that somebody'd left on a paper plate outside the place where he'd crawled in to sleep. Bread and cheese, and an apple. He blinked and looked around, but nobody could be seen on the quiet street, and nobody was looking out windows. He thought for a moment, then slipped back into his hole, and pulled the food with him. It couldn't have been out for long either, or something - cats, probably - would have scavenged the cheese.

He took a few hungry bites, and then his stomach complained at how fast he was eating, and he spent some time just fighting to keep it down. Then he went on eating more slowly. It took him a long time to finish the simple food, but he did keep it down. And he felt good after it.

Using a sharp rock, he scratched 'Thank you' on the paper plate. He crawled out of the hole and left the plate, looking around again, with the same luck in finding out who it was. He walked away, and realized he didn't have to limp anymore.

With some more ups and downs, it got better after that. He did avoid locations where kids seemed to be leisurely lounging around pretty carefully after that. True, he didn't manage it completely, but he was a fast learner.

An ability that he kept even when he was no longer on the streets, or hungry, or alone.

~~~

It only took Max a few months in the city before he got killed. Almost. For the first time.

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