Page 1 of Ruining Hattie

TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO…

T he little boy’s stomach grumbles and twists with hunger pains. He can’t remember a day, an hour, or a minute when it didn’t feel as if his stomach was eating itself away. Although starvation has been present most of his life, it never gets easier.

His mom doesn’t even notice her own hunger pains anymore, let alone the way her son’s cheeks have sunken in or his hollowed-out eyes.

His mom, with her mouth hanging open, is still slumped in a half-upright position on the couch, one of the two furniture pieces left in their tiny one-bedroom apartment.

Slowly, things have disappeared. His bed.

The kitchen table. The small number of toys he’d accumulated from his mom’s visitors to keep him quiet and away.

She told him it was to pay rent and keep a roof over their head, but he knew they were lies.

On the third time the landlord came to collect the rent, his mom told the boy to go for a walk.

Which turned out to be a regular thing every time the landlord came over.

He’d always be gone when the boy got back, but every first of the month, he’d show back up, and the boy would leave the only safe haven he knew, if you could call it that.

He doesn’t know or care how she convinces the landlord to let them stay, he’s just happy to still have somewhere to sleep at night.

Once when he was nine, they lived outside for six months until one of his mom’s friends offered to let them stay with her.

It was the most miserable time of his life.

Adding the cold to the hunger had been far worse than now.

A lot of guys come around these days. Sometimes they get mad and scream at him if they can’t wake her up, but it’s not his fault. She can’t even wake up when her own child begs and cries for her that he’s hungry.

But he’s grown tired of begging. It makes him feel so helpless. And nothing changes from day to day anyway.

Another pain twists his stomach, and he turns back toward the fuzzy TV, barely able to make out the picture on the screen. It used to work okay, but one of his mom’s guy friends ripped off one of the rabbit’s ears.

Climbing off the dirty floor, he walks over and stands in front of his mom. His hands are fisted at his sides as he stares at her. Seeing her like this used to make him sad. He used to worry that she was dead. Now it only makes him angry.

He watches the other moms outside of their crappy apartment through the dirty glass, holding the hands of their children, walking along the sidewalk. The way they smile down at their kids makes his heart constrict. His mom has never looked at him like that.

He nudges her shoulder, but she barely moves. He pushes a little harder.

“Mom, wake up. I’m hungry.” He despises the note of pleading in his voice, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. He’s too hungry. Too starved. The nausea and the cramping have started.

She doesn’t react.

“Mom,” he says a little louder. When she still doesn’t move, he shakes her shoulders with both of his little hands.

She groans. “What?” Her face screws up and she pushes him back, not bothering to open her eyes.

“I’m hungry.”

“Go away.” She swats her hand in the air and lies across the couch.

“I need something to eat.” He wants to stomp his feet, but he knows only little kids do that.

“So get something.” She lifts one skinny arm and motions in the general direction of the kitchen.

Does she really not know the cabinets are empty?

“Mom, wake up.” His voice hitches at her disregard for his well-being.

When her breathing evens out again, he knows trying to wake her is a lost cause. His hands squeeze into fists, and he lets out an angry grunt before stomping off to the small bathroom.

The little boy can’t wait for the day when he doesn’t have to rely on anyone to take care of him. When he’s an adult like his mom, he’ll take care of himself no matter what.

He stares at himself in the cracked mirror and turns on the water, saying a small prayer that water will come out of the tap. It does, and he splashes water on his face and arms, then a small amount to stick his hair down.

He figured out quickly that if he’s dirty or smelly, his marks are more likely to see him coming.

But if he takes the time to clean himself, they usually think he’s just like any other kid his age.

No one immediately notices his worn clothes and the dirty shoes with holes.

Most people are too busy with their own lives to really pay much attention to him.

He leaves the apartment with one thing on his mind—pickpocket someone with enough cash in their wallet to buy himself a meal at the family diner down the street. The waitress there is nice, and sometimes she sneaks him a piece of pie.

Two hours later, the boy returns to the apartment with a full belly, worried that maybe he ate too much. He’s eaten too fast or too much before and thrown it up only for the hunger to come on faster again, which means everything he did to get food was for naught.

The moment he closes the apartment door behind him, a shiver runs up his spine, and his muscles tense.

He’s here.

Of all the men who come to visit his mom, Stan is the absolute worst.

He always looks at the boy in a way that makes the eleven-year-old want to crawl out of his skin. He doesn’t know what Stan wants to do to him, but he knows it isn’t good. Knows he won’t like it.

Stan walks out of the bedroom down the hall, and a smarmy grin spreads across his face when he spots the boy. The sound of him closing the bedroom door booms through the small apartment. “Glad you’re here, Ty. Thinking maybe you can help your mom out.”

A fission of fear rushes through the boy, but he locks it down, not about to let Stan see it. Showing this man any fear will only lead to his doom.

Stan makes quick work of the hallway, peering down. “Cat got your tongue?” He arches an eyebrow, but the boy still doesn’t say anything. “Seems your mom is down for the count, so I came here for nothing.”

“What’d you want me to do about it?” The boy’s vile comeback is instinctual, and he regrets allowing his anger and fear to rule him. Deep down, he knows that he’s outmatched.

“I know your mom needs some money, and since she can’t give me what I want, thought maybe you could.”

The little boy’s stomach pitches, and he has to bite back the bile racing up his throat. “No.” Though he doesn’t even know what Stan is asking, he knows enough that he doesn’t want whatever he’s offering.

Stan grips him at the back of the neck and tilts his face up so the boy can smell the booze on his breath. “C’mon now. After all I do for you and your mom? You can’t give a little to get a little?”

At the glint in Stan’s eyes, the boy screams for his mother over and over while Stan laughs in his face. When she doesn’t appear, the fracture in the little boy’s heart cracks into shards, ripping at his flesh.

“She’s never coming to save you, boy, haven’t you figured that out yet?” The grip on the back of his neck grows tighter, and Stan runs his hand down the boy’s side to his waist.

Whatever is going to happen next, the boy knows with every fiber of his small being that he needs to leave one of the only homes he’s known and never come back.

He brings his knee up and nails Stan in the groin. The boy flies out of the apartment, down the stairs, and across the parking lot. He continues to run. And run. And run.

When he can barely breathe, he stops and finds himself in a part of town he’s not familiar with.

Staring around, that fear to escape shifts, and he grows scared.

But it’s a different kind of scared than the one he felt at home with his mom.

He whispers that he can do this. He’s grown enough to live on his own.

She wasn’t doing anything for him anyway.

He’s no stranger to having to survive alone.

A few weeks later, the weather is starting to turn, and he needs to steal enough money to get a jacket and better shoes from the secondhand shop down the street. He has managed to feed himself and found a place in the park he can hide out and sleep at night without anyone bothering him.

On his quest to find someone to steal from, the boy loiters on the sidewalk that edges along the park. If he gets caught, the park will give him a better chance of getting away, what with all its winding paths and vegetation and his speed.

He waits until a man walking his dog stops to let the dog sniff at one of the bushes beside the sidewalk. It’s always easier when the person is distracted—people with their dogs, teenagers with their friends, women with lots of shopping bags in hand.

The boy leisurely walks by the man. Sometimes he pretends to bump into people, but other times, like this one, it’s not necessary, because the corner of the man’s wallet is visible in the pocket of his coat.

With a quick reach, the boy grabs and tucks the wallet into his waistband and keeps walking, the man none the wiser as he attempts to pull the dog away from the bush.

He’s just about to walk into the park and his hiding spot to see how much he scored when someone grips his upper arm, forcing him to keep walking ahead.

“Hey!” The boy looks up at the stranger and tries to yank his arm out of his hold, but the man only squeezes harder. “Let me go.”

“You’re coming with me, kid. We’re gonna have a little chat.”

His heartbeat hammers. He’s not afraid of getting caught and getting in trouble with the police.

He’s only eleven, what could they really do?

Put him in some foster home that he can escape from the first night?

But he’s terrified of them tracking down his mom and forcing him to live with her.

He yanks his arm again, but the man’s fingers press into his arm harder.

Once they get behind the jungle gym, the man releases him, keeping the boy’s back to the rock climbing wall and standing wide in front of him with his arms crossed.

“Relax, kid, you’re not in trouble.” The man flicks his gaze down at him, and for some reason, the boy believes him.

It wasn’t until years later that the boy realized just how much that meeting set his life on a path that he never could have predicted.