Fate's Cruel Hand

Chapter 4

Hayden

Present Time

I sat casually at my table in the food court of the mall. I was going to need a new place to go soon, The employees were starting to recognize me. I swept my eyes across the food court again, to anyone else it would look like I was waiting for someone to join me. In reality though I was just looking for rich people, they could usually spare some things. Today I was looking for some new clothes. Mine were falling apart, and I hate to say it but even my beloved leather jacket was pretty much disintegrated now.

I swept my eyes across the cafeteria again and zeroed in on a family of four who had just sat down a few tables away. They looked rich enough with their expensive looking clothes. The young girl had on diamond earrings and the rest of them sat straight as a board. I even spotted the mother glance at the other customers in disgust. I hated rich people, they thought they were so much better than the rest of us, that they deserved better lives than the rest of us. I just hated them. Which is partly why I always tried to take from the rich people.

Yes I'm a thief, what are you going to do sue me? I only steal what I need to survive. And I only steal from people who don't need what I'm stealing. I don't like stealing, I hate it actually, but I've got no money and nobody wants to give a job to someone who doesn't have an address or a college degree. So I, unfortunately, have had to resort to stealing.

Back to the family, the boy there looked about my size and he had a shoe box from the Vans store and some bags from Abercrombie & Fitch on the floor next to him. I sighed, I hated this part, the part where I actually had to do the stealing. But if I didn't do it then pretty soon I would be walking around naked. I felt the overpowering guilt about what I was going to do and swallowed hard, shoving it down.

I stood up and grabbed my jacket from the table. I walked towards the table where the family sat, making sure none of them where watching me. As I approached the table, the little girl stared at me for a moment and my breath hitched in my chest. But then she looked back at her mother and continued whatever conversation they were having. I think I heard something about a party?

I shook my head, it doesn't matter, all that matters is that bag and that box. I stepped behind the boys chair and tripped, like an arms flailing things flying trip. It took me a while to perfect this move, but once I had it helped me greatly. The whole family turned to look at me in disgust. I uttered a quick 'sorry' and looked around the floor for my jacket, it was behind me. It had conveniently landed right on top of the shoe box.

I crawled over to it and the boy scoffed and muttered something before turning back to the conversation. Everyone else did as well, I wrapped the jacket around the box and grabbed the bag, quickly standing up. I walked quickly towards the exit, only glancing over my shoulder once I reached the door. None of them had noticed me take the stuff.

I sighed as I pushed the door open, slinging my jacket over my shoulder so it didn't look like I was stealing the shoes, I hoped they were the right size. I started down the sidewalk, there was a McDonald's on the other side of the parking lot. I hated being embarrassed, and I hated stealing, but I had to do both in order to survive.

I couldn't get a job because I had been fired from so many, and I had a terrible attendance record at all of them. Plus being from the Acres family and being put on the streets, nobody wanted anything to do with me anymore. I stopped as I reached the restaurant, if you could call it that.

I may have been much more used to the 'poor people ways' then the rest of my family was, but McDonald's had always just been something I couldn't bring myself to accept. I didn't like any of their food, they were always out of ice cream. And one of the two times I went there they ran out of Sprite. Who runs out of Sprite?