Page 43 of The Story of You

“Because my brother will come get me, eventually.”

He had the confidence of an eagle. I liked that immediately. I wanted some of whatever he had. He held out his hand and I took it. “You have a brother?”

“Two, actually. One’s just a baby. The other one’s a teenager.”

“Why did your dad only get rid of you?” Kids could ask each other deep personal questions like that without consequence.

“Not sure. He doesn’t like the baby much either, but he kept him. Silas is his favorite, which makes sense. My big brother is amazing. I don’t tell him too much though or it’ll go to his head.”

I nodded. At the time, he made sense. “I’m Simon.”

“I’m Darius.” He put an arm around me. “Come with me and I’ll show you how to survive around here.”

The Taylors had a farm. They wanted farmhands. They fostered children, mostly boys, to work on said farm or so they said but I think the real reason was they wanted to avoid teen pregnancies so as not to interfere with working on the farm.

“From what I can tell, there’s a system. We’re in the younger group with the nines, tens, elevens, and twelves. The teenagers want nothing to do with us. How old are you?”

“Twelve.”

“Good, same as me. We’ll move up the ranks together when we reach teen status.”

“I thought your brother was coming to get you?”

Darius said that a lot. Talked about it. Reveled about Silas like he was a God. I didn’t believe Silas would come, and I think part of me hoped it wouldn’t happen. I latched onto Darius like a leech. I didn’t know what I’d do without his guidance.

“He will but probably not for a while. I’m sure he’s told Silas I’m with Uncle Pax. Once he realizes I’m not there, he’ll have to figure out where I’m at. There’s also Dad—he’s got some strange hold on Silas. Could take months. Maybe years. But one day he’ll come, and he’ll need me. I’ll have to go.”

I watched him, fascinated, as he deliberated. I didn’t know who Uncle Pax was. “How are you so sure he’ll come?”

“Because. He might be a huge dick sometimes, but Silas always comes through. He knows my wish. He’ll make it happen.”

He was a huge dick, and he was amazing according to Darius. I found it hard to reconcile the two in my twelve-year-old mind. Things were black and white. Shades of grey don’t manifest until you’re older. For some people they never do.

Darius already understood this.

He took me inside the house. “We’ll be missed soon but you got here late, and Terry won’t mind if we’re quick. You probably don’t have any clothes. Let’s get you some.”

The house sat on eighteen acres of farmland. It was large and run down. Ten bedrooms, six bathrooms, and two kitchens. It was old and so the design was weird as if the mad hatter had added to it willy-nilly over the years without rhyme or reason.

Darius led me to the laundry room which thankfully had a large washer and dryer. A lot of other stuff in the house was lacking, it wouldn’t have been out of place for us to hand wash and hang dry our stuff—and when it broke down, that’s exactly what we had to do—but it had a good, working washer and dryer.

At the back was a mountain of clothing, all of it second-hand.

“We get a massive donation once a month, but currently there are ten of us. The donations are random. Getting your size is sometimes difficult and you have to settle for a size up. Don’t go a size down. Mistake.”

Darius tossed clothes at me. “Try these.”

I had a few meager belongings, but they didn’t let me bring much. I took Darius’s suggestions, and we brought them up to our room. My bed was across the room from his. We shared. There was a third bed in another corner. I would later find out it was unoccupied.

He dragged me across the house, through a series of clean but untidy rooms, and to a kitchen that led outside. “You didn’t eat this morning, don’t do that. There are snacks available but nothing substantial until dinner. They serve a big breakfast that’s expected to tide you over while you work out there—never does, but I think it’s as much as they can afford with how many boys live here.”

I hadn’t planned on returning from the bridge. I didn’t think the food should be wasted on me. I had good parents. They loved me. I loved them. I didn’t want to go on without them. Darius saved me. He was too fascinating not to follow off that bridge and by the time we’d made it to the house, I was on tenterhooks, seeing what he’d do next. He climbed onto the counter and reached to the top shelf, pulling out a box of crackers. He went through the fridge to fish out a block of orange cheese. “Eat a few of these then we’ll join ‘em. Otherwise, you’ll pass out.”

He didn’t ask my permission, he didn’t pander to my depression, he simply prodded me a step forward, then another, then another until the only time I thought about my parents was on dark, lonely nights or when we drank beer with our feet hanging off the dock. Even then, Darius would tug me by the wrist and pull me into his bed with him, so I’d have something to hold onto.

We were considered the younger kid group. We got jobs like cleaning out the stables, feeding the animals, gathering eggs, and milking cows and goats. The Taylors didn’t have a lot of the big, expensive equipment other farms had. They had us.

Any equipment they did have was run by the bigger kids. The teens. It wasn’t always a good idea. People nearly lost limbs more than once. They drove them too hard, and equipment broke down. Then we’d have to wait for Terry to fix it and with the amount of stuff on Terry’s to-fix-it list, it was a wonder anything on that farm worked at all.