Jerome dragged himself out of bed, and walked to the bathroom like a drunken zombie. He splashed cold water on his face. He could hear the already traffic filled roads of New York City. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, knowing that this would be his last moment of privacy for the day. Once the other boys were out of bed he wouldn't be able to get a word in edgewise, not that he would want to anyway.
The older boys tried to beat him up every chance they got, and the younger boys teased him for the way he woke up at night screaming with cold sweat drenching his body. It had been months since he had gotten a full night's sleep. Seven months and six days to be exact. Seven months and six days since he had been thrown in the dump he now called home, seven months and six days since his parents had died in the fire at their old home and he had been dropped unceremoniously into the NYC Home for Orphaned Boys.
At first he had been in a state of shock, and then he refused to believe that all of it was real. He tried desperately to wake from the nightmare that had masqueraded as his life. But as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months it began to sink in. He knew that his parents wouldn't just walk through the door and wrap their arms around him like he had hoped they would. They wouldn't throw their arms around him and shower him in kisses, they wouldn't cry with him and apologize for being gone so long. They wouldn't do any of that. Because they were gone. They were never coming back, he would never see them again, and he would never hear his mother saying, "Believe in yourself Jerome. If you believe you can do it, you have already won half the battle," in her soft southern accent, and never hear his father say, "I know you can do it Champ." He would never have any of that again because they were dead and he was still here.
Jerome was shocked out of his depressing remembering by shouts from his previously silent bedroom. By the sounds of it, the other boys had started a pillow fight. Jerome hurried back to the bedroom to protect his things from the soft, but still damaging, feather filled projectiles.
YOU ARE READING
Through the Portal
FantasyA teenage boy from our world is magically transported through a portal to another world, right in the middle of a battle. He is saved by the girl leading the battle, and she takes him back to her castle where he is cared for. The fighting for the gi...
