The softie of the mobfamily turned badass.
Chapter 1:
"So me and Robby hooked up last night." My best friend Haily told me, sounding real smug about it. I rolled my eyes and pulled out a tenner. She snatched the money from my hand.
I so needed to learn not to bet against her. At least not when it came to guys. She always won. I swear, the girl had ablosutely no qualm when it came to her picking up a guy.
"I wonder what his girlfriend will say." I muttered.
My best friend shrugged. I knew, she didn't care.
"She deserves better if the bastard would cheat on her with me."
"Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, Hailes." I smirked.
"Talking about sleeping at night." She wiggled her eyebrows suggestivly.
"Where were you tonight? Your bed was empty and unslept this morning when I woke up."
I hadn't been able to sleep, laying awake and worrying hadn't been that appealing. Wondering if they'd finally come, and take me home.
Home?
It wasn't my home anymore, it hadn't been for six years.
I had kept running the events through my head, over and over again. What had I done wrong? What had happened six years ago, that they had wanted to send me away?
It was useless, I had been ten and couldn't remember.
So instead of overthinking it, like I had done the last six years, I'd gone running.
I loved running, I never felt so free, so liberated as when I ran with the sent of the woods in my nose. I loved experiencing nature, I loved the feel of mud under my feet, I loved jumping in a lake at one in the morning, and knowing that I was free.
I loved living. The real live, when you made every day as if it was your last. That's what I learned here.
Here, a fucking camp full of former deliquents or problemchilds who were forced to endure the hard army-like training to get them back in line of what was assumed to be the right social behaviour. Every day we were dragged out of our beds at five in the morning, the first thing I saw when waking up was the mud where I was pushed in with my nose because I needed to go deeper while doing push-ups.
Most kids stayed here for less than a year before going home.
I've been here for six years, never allowed home by my father, not even during the holidays. I'd become to hate my own father, not for putting through this shit. I could handle this hellhole, I'm stronger that I look.
I hated him for being the cold bastard he was, the person who hadn't so much as wrote one letter to his own flesh and blood. No phonecalls, no message passed by my brothers, who actually came to visit every holiday.
I loved my brothers for that. They were my connection to the knowledge that I was more that this sad kid, forced in trainingscamp. They were the ones that let me know that I was more than a number. Number 15C, if you must know.
And of course I had Haily. She had become more and more important to me over the last two years. I hadn't seen my brothers in the last two years. The only explanation I got was a letter which said: 'He knows.'
That's all it had said, but it had bee enough for me. My father had found out and prohibited them to come and see me.
It could have broken me, but it didn't. It had fueled my hate.
I coughed and glared meanly at the cigarette, dangling from my best friend's mouth.
"I thought you said you gave up smoking?"
She ignored my question.
I rested my head agains the wall of the waitingroom. It were the last days of august. This meant that most kids here were going home, their parents came to pick them up. I sat here every year with the rest of them, but I wasn't excited, I knew no one was coming for me.
"He's not going to let you stay this time." Haily suddenly spoke.
I lifted my head curiosly.
"My dad." She explained.
Haily's dad was the director. Some incident with shoplifting had made him put his own daughter in the trainingcamp.
"It's not that he doesn't like you." I scoffed at those words.
Being friends with Haily was almost a safeguard to getting into trouble. Her dad couldn't like me. He probably blamed his daughter's behaviour on me.
"To the contrary, he loves you. He knows you're a good influence on me and regrets that I am a bad one on you. But that's not the point. He knows you are a good kid, Peyton. And you're eighteen now, you can't stay here anymore. And that's for the best. Why haven't you been applaying for colleges like me? We're both seniors now. We took the same classes and you're much smarter than me."
I looked at her strangely, to see if she were kidding. Apparently not.
"Hailes, I'm sixteen. Why would you think I'm eighteen."
Her eyes widened.
"Because" she streched the word.
"you've been here six years and you're only allowed here from the age of twelve."
That made me shut up. Son of bitch, I had been ten.
"I was ten." Was all I said.
"They're still not going to come, Hailes. He wanted to get rid of me. I'm not a deliquent, even your dad knows that."
The naughty glint, that I had come used to over the years, appeared in her eyes. I rolled mine. That glint announced trouble, lots of it.
"What are you up to?"
She retrieved her carkeys.
"Go change in some normal clothes, I'm giving you a ride home."
This was a bad idea. But I had come to like bad, it was a nice distraction from my empty, hollow, little life. So I did what Haily said and started to pack, something I hadn't done in a while. I changed from my uniform to a loose washed of blue jeans and a nice low cut red top. Being friends with Haily had his advantages, like lots of shopping trips to the mall, even some small holidays with her and her family and than you had the countless times when we had snuck out. I slung the brown leather jacket over my slim shoulders and looked around the room that had been mine room for the last years.
I wasn't going to miss it.
let me know what you think of this one:D
