Keith has always been lost.
He knows that.
He isn't going to lie if you asked him if he thinks he belongs because he knows he doesn't. He hasn't and will never feel like he does. As a child, Keith didn't speak until the age of four and until that age, his father was in a constant state.
"Why isn't he talking, Merriam?" The man had fretted, eyes wide with concern, staring hard at the little boy before him who only stared back. His dark eyes, large and seemingly bottomless. "He should be saying stuff by now, not-not- whatever this is!"
"Shh, Kevin. You know how kids like to stare," His mother had smoothed the brooding man, "Give him time," She'd offered, her voice soft, "He'll talk when he's ready."
Keith made his debut whilst he was sitting in his mother's lap. The woman, pale and fair with long, dark hair falling over her shoulders was reading a book with Keith perched on her knee. When suddenly, little Keith with his chubby little hands pointed a finger at a particular word and read it as clear as day, "Keith!"
She looked at him, stunned, "Keith?"
"I am Keith."
From that moment his mother never looked at him with the same eyes again. She could tell that the child she gave birth to, was beyond her in all ways unimaginable.
The disconnect between them happened here and from then, to Keith. They didn't feel like his nor did he feel like theirs. He was confused then, when he declared his name. Why was she so shocked to hear what he called himself? Were they calling him something else ? He wasn't sure and when he listened, he couldn't tell.
He ran away a couple years later at the age of seven. Unafraid of the world and it's many dangers. It was on the spur of a moment kind of thing. He had been walking home from primary school that day, miserable and tired but triumphant at having successfully escaped Kenzie's cooties. When he felt a tug, then it was a pull, in what direction? He couldn't recall, he just knew he had to be somewhere else.
The tug told him to look, for what? He didn't know but he knew where it was pulling him. Somewhere with mountainous hills and rocky terrains and where he lived, had nothing of the sort. Only concrete and wooden buildings surrounded him no matter how far he wandered. They found him a week later, four days of travel away, rooting around for food in a garbage can.
They kept a closer eye on him after that but that didn't stop him from running away once more at age, eleven and then again, at fifteen. All the time, going in the same direction.
His parents couldn't understand what they'd done wrong. When they asked, the answer they received only baffled them more.
"I was following the pull."
What pull? They wanted to ask but they were more terrified of the answer that they would receive. Keith wasn't a troublesome child, not at all but something about him scared them. Made them worry and because of this, they couldn't connect with him. Not with the way he would stare them with his dark eyes as though they were complete strangers, as if he knew nothing about them.
"Mom, am I adopted?"
His mother had sputtered and chuckled nervously as those words fell from her child's mouth, "Of course not, sweetie. What makes you think that?"
If his question had worried her, it did nothing in comparison to how his reaction made her feel. Thick brows scrunched up in a frown and a small pink lips pouted as shoulders slumped followed by a bowed head, "Oh, okay."
It hurt her heart the way he walked away, almost as though she had just shattered his hopes and dreams as opposed to lifting his spirits.
Later, when Keith's brother and sister were born, ten minutes apart, Keith wouldn't touch them. He didn't know why and he couldn't place it. Having younger eyes looking up to him felt plain wrong but something in him was tremendously excited and somewhat fearful.
