In Six Years' Time

Create Your Own Psychopath

Sure, hoarding a teenage boy in your garage when you were in your late twenties is questionable at best... but no one knew I was technically an adult.

Hoarding a teenage boy in your garage as a teenage girl was much more socially acceptable, only because it seemed like some forbidden romance and not exactly harboring an almost fugitive.

My plan worked though, as mom had left for work and didn't even peek in the garage. There might come one day that she decides to use the garage for it's intended purpose, but today was not that day and it worked in my favor.

When I woke up, I immediately threw on better clothes than the pajamas I had gone to sleep in and creeped into the garage to see if Jenson was awake.

He was, and it appeared I scared the daylight out of him. He leapt practically nine hundred feet in the air, his bed head as wild as his eyes. I held my hands up in surrender.

"Just me," I muttered quickly, not quite forgetting in the alternate reality, he did shoot up the school. "Came to see if you were hungry. I'm not much of a chef but even I can manage some breakfast foods."

Breakfast foods consisted of toast, eggs, and cereal. I didn't trust myself to make bacon.

Once, with Kace, I thought I'd be a good little future housewife and make my honey breakfast in bed.

What I wound up doing was giving myself second degree burns and spent the morning being bandaged and scolded by my future doctor-husband.

Maybe I wasn't exactly wife material after all.

"What now?" Jenson asked quietly, shaking me from my previous memories.

I looked at his barely touched cereal. "You gotta finish that first," I joked.

He didn't laugh, instead pushing the bowl away. "Not the breakfast, Talia." I almost flinched at how he said my name. He sounded almost bitter. "I meant about me. I'm a runaway. I can't live in your garage."

"I'm thinking about it," I muttered, pushing some eggs around with my fork. I hadn't really thought about the long term, honestly. I had a place for him to stay for a few days at most. But he was quite a bit away from being old enough to live on his own. We could push for emancipation, but I was almost positive he needed parent approval. "Think your folks will let you be emancipated?"

He snorted in reply, looking away in disgust. So much for that.

"Your options are slim." I answered honestly. He looked back at me, almost surprised I didn't sugar coat it. "You can't stay here forever. Legally, I mean. My mom probably wouldn't allow it either." I considered this, and made a mental note to ask later. "I think our only options are to call CPS or—"

"No." He answered brusquely, startling me again. "They already tried to put their nose in our business after the gun thing. My father was not pleased and I have the bruises to prove it."

"All the more reason to tell them," I fired back. "Your father can't fight the law. And win, at least. You'll be put in the system until you're eighteen. But that will give you enough time to get a steady job and—"

He cut me off again, something I was getting real tired of. But his soft voice coerced me to listen. "I have a job."

I blinked. "Oh. You do?"

He nodded, and for the first time I saw his face lighten up. "I work at a mechanic shop. I like tinkering with cars." I could see he genuinely did, too. It was the first time in probably forever I ever saw him look anything other than passive or angry. But he quickly darkened again. "Or, at least, I had a job. The news might have been my resignation letter."