Pink Walls

Bonus Chapter [2.2]

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PART TWO. don't know if I should include a warning but smol Kayden gets uncomfortable :(

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"Well, well. If it isn't the right-hand's little charity case."

The woman that had been designated the leader of our group sneered the moment she saw me. Even if she hadn't said a word, I would have been able to tell that she didn't like me. People rarely did, and despite having been homeless for months they could still sniff out the fact I came from 'money'.

It was unsettling, to say the least, and this designer sweater-no matter how fuzzy or faded it was-wasn't helping.

I swallowed the greeting that was about to leave my lips, now understanding why Frank had warned me about being polite. A part of me wanted to say 'hi' but that would have definitely gotten me a beating. . . somehow.

I was sure of it. There was just something about this group-about today-that put me on edge. Everything felt so wrong. Well, more wrong than usual.

"Cat cut your tongue, Charity?" she asked and I shook my head.

"Good," she said, to fill the silence. "I like my men that way."

The girls in the group laughed. If a sound was piercing to the ear and stewing with danger, it could still be called a laugh, right?

When she stopped looking at me, I took a step back and tried the best I could to blend in.

She had already singled me out and that was a bad thing. If a fight started, she would have numbers on her side since there were only two other guys in our group of eight, and none of them looked in the mood to trade punches for someone they didn't know.

As they all continued discussing the plan for our initiation mission, I felt my attention drift away. I wasn't really part of the group anyway-I was more like a shadow and I liked it that way.

It was only three months ago that I realized that when I didn't speak, I was very good at not existing. Like furniture in the background of a photo, people paid me no mind. And what people didn't mind, they didn't touch. . .or beat up.

I wished I discovered this back when I had to attend dinner parties every night, it would have made things more bearable then, being the sole shadow beneath a spotlight.

Would I have burned away and disappeared? Or melted into the floor and let people walk over me?

"Hey. You listening to me, punk?" Sabrina asked, and I knew she was speaking to me.

I hadn't been listening, but for some reason I was good with names. I picked them up from conversations whether I cared to or not.

I nodded thrice without saying a word, and waited for her sharp gaze to shift to someone else before letting out a breath of relief.

It was times like these that made me wonder if coming to this half of the country had been the right decision.

Sure, it had been necessary, to avoid all the cities where my father's influence could reach.

The treatment I faced in places where every tabloid, magazine, newspaper and blog was talking about the incident, was something I never wanted to relieve but I didn't expect to still see inequality in a city that advertised itself as being the land of the free.

I suppose that if the city was filled with enough people like me-who came here from asylum-in the end it would be no different than the rest of the country.