Finders Keepers

♙ || тнree (I)

♙ || ❝goт a proвleм, vιllegaѕ?❞

♙ neхт υpdaтe - [ jυly ѕevenтн - тwenтy ғoυrтeen ] [ still editing ]

♕ⓑⓛⓐⓘⓡ P.O.V

My father was a cheating, lying, good-for-nothing son of a bitch. Period. End of story.

I wasn’t able to remember too much about him, except that his drug of choice was a narcotic he liked to call Tracy.

It was his best friend when he needed one, wife when he decided to miss the one that had left him, and kid when those extremely rare moments came around where he decided to act like a father.

He had one kid. Me. Bred and born from a woman who also could have cared less. My mother.

She left when I was thirteen. I remembered that day as vividly as the stars I saw every night before I went to sleep. Only difference? That day was a whole lot bleaker than the sky I’d glance at every night. I hated looking at the sky, it made opportunities seem infinite and heaven seem a lot closer than it actually was. And for me, there was no point looking up when I knew I was travelling in the other direction. Fast.

My mother had packed her bags and claimed she was going on some trip far away from where we were at the time. A small lower-class neighborhood in western California.

I’d waited on our stoop every day after school  hoping I’d see a beat-up, Mustang with a terrible white paint job pull up into the driveway with my mother in the driver’s seat. I realized that day was never going to come when I turned fourteen, and then I turned fifteen, and then I turned wise enough to know that anyone who had left for as long as she had was either dead or gone.

In her case, I hoped it was both.

Then on one faithful day during year sixteen, she showed up again. Pregnant I might add, with my little half-brother, Rylan. She’d been gone for three years, but acted as if she’d just made a quick trip to the grocery store. Without an explanation, and without a single thought to the trauma she’d put both my dad and I through, she moved back in to our lives, and into our house.

I’d blame myself sometimes for the way things turned out. I didn’t want to have anything to do with her or the bastard kid she’d brought along for the ride. Three years. Three goddamned years she was gone, and she decided to return pregnant? I, for sure, was not going to greet her with open arms. Anyway, her stay was short. She’d given birth to Rylan.

And a couple of months later? She’d offed herself. I came back to a house with a strung-out father, crying little brother, and a gun in the hand of my mother who’d blown her brains out against the wall.

I cried for a while; for days on end I would think back to the scene and just … cry.

At one point I wanted to take the easy way out too. I wanted to sit where she had and take the same gun and put it to my head. And then I’d look at my brother. My little, innocent, half-brother who had no idea what was going on; he was the epitome of every feeling I’d felt for the three years my mother had disappeared. There was something about him that sparked this instinct deep from within me to protect him with all that I had. And so like any protective sister would’ve done in his case, I went to child services.

Why? Because it was their slogan. Helping desperate children that were considered unsafe in their current place of residence.

There I’d met a lady. I couldn’t remember her name, now. I know, it sounds stupid for me not to recall the name of a lady who’d separated my brother and me for almost a year and a half. She threw me in a group home, and up until now I was still unsure of what temporary arrangement they’d made for Rylan. They’d weaned him off breast milk earlier than was recommended, since my mother wasn’t alive to feed him anymore.