Trust- Boreo

Pippa

6 days later

"Is there anything else? Any relatives you know? Where is your father?" Theo was so tired of these people asking him about his father. He couldn't stay with him. He had left he and his mother long ago. Took off without a word. And he couldn't stay with anyone else. All that he could think about was that soot covered, barren wasteland of fallen cement and ruined paintings. The overwhelming smoke that felt like it trapped him in a black pool of breathlessness. Away from her. 

So Theo just shook his head.

"I don't know where he is. I don't have anyone to stay with." Theo says bluntly. He was seated on a hotel couch, staring at these two strangers who were too kind. Too understanding. He wished they could be more direct with him. He knew that they just wanted to hurry up and resolve his situation and get their paycheck.

The TV droned on in the distance, like a faint whisper in the back of Theo's head. "The Metropolitan Museum of Art is still picking up the fragments of a terrorist attack.... at least 15 reported dead... dozens injured..." One of the strangers stood up to turn off the TV, while the other kept speaking.

"We're glad you're not too hurt after everything that happened." Obviously, they meant physically hurt. After the TV was turned off, the two strangers looked at each other. They had worked with CPS for a while, but every time they had to do this, time and experience didn't make it any easier. "We have to get one thing clear. Your mother, she's dead. It was quick and painless. Hit in the head with flying debris." Both of them took a deep inhale as they kept going. "Theo, we just want to help you settle down. It's hard, but we have many people to support you. You can always have a shoulder to lean..."

Out of the hundreds that came to that museum every day... out of all the hours of the day they could have been there... out of all the exhibits, the paintings, the paths..... 15. His mother was one of them. That kind, sweet angel, sometimes hot-headed and easily angered, but still his mother, the one who wanted nothing more in life for him to be happy.

Theo listened to them drone on and on. It felt like every adult was telling him this. Telling him the same advice. When he went back to school, all the teachers were telling him to "let off steam" or "fall back on people." Even the principal, who Theo considered having some fault in mother's death because he ordered him to come to school with his mom about the smoking issue, tried to be nice to Theo.

He was given various pieces of advice he found hard to really help. How would throwing ice at a tree ease his memories about his mother? How would writing down how he felt erase all of the pain, the regret, how much he longed for her? Hobbies? Almost everything he did lead him back to before she had died.

So Theo just drifted along in his own thoughts, nodding when he had to, sometimes mindlessly muttering out "yes sir, no sir" whenever they asked him a question. It was simple. 

The rest of his time speaking with them went dully. They agreed that Theo could stay with his friend, Andy Barbour, until they figured out something. But honestly, Theo started to feel uneasy. A part of him wondered if it would be better if he lived alone. A thought that would have never occurred to him before all this.

In a way, it was like her death marked the separation of two halves of his life, despite him being only 12.

Everything felt hazy to him. It was odd. He remembered settling down with his friend, Andy, at his giant home in downtown New York. He tried to enjoy spending time with Andy's parents and with Andy himself. But he was always out of place. Never quite... belonging. A misfit. 

He found himself eating less and less, and he knew the concern Andy's mother showed him had to be from necessity. He didn't think that she thought of him as her own, even if she thought so herself.