two
[ — the system]
He was almost eight years old when Ben died.
They’d gone to get ice cream.
To date, he hated the stuff.
For the second time in his short life, he found himself at a police station, surrounded by people he didn't know. This time though, he was covered in blood, and unlike when his parents died, he knew exactly what had happened.
He remembered May bursting through the police station doors and scooping him up into her arms with no regard toward his blood-soaked clothes. Police officers shook their heads and whispered, “wrong place, wrong time,” before apologizing profusely and offering their condolences.
May just held him close to her; jaw set, face stony.
He remembered looking up at her, her hands absent-mindedly running themselves through his curls before dropping to his face to gently wipe his tears away.
“I guess it’s just you and me now, Pete.” She’d whispered. "Let's go home."
________________________________________
They buried Ben next to his parents.
The funeral was bigger than he'd expected. People from all over New York joined them at the Synagogue to pay their respects. The crowd was made up of mourners who had been touched by Ben in some way; either affected by his heroic acts as a firefighter, or simply from knowing him through the presence he'd had in their community.
Ben had almost been larger than life like that.
May had tucked Peter into her side in their seats, and he noticed the slight tremor in her hands when the Rabbi started speaking. But her eyes stayed dry, and she accepted the flag his colleagues placed in her hands afterward, her face hard.
Peter had thought it was ironic that they’d given her a flag, as if a piece of cloth could replace the man she’d loved for twenty years. May never commented on it though; instead she shook the hands of his co-workers, and Peter followed suit, wanting to help her by putting on a facade of strength in the face of the terrible sadness that threatened to swallow him whole.
Once the funeral procession was over, she and Peter caught a taxi home, the flag still held tightly between May’s trembling hands, her face stony.
They ate pudding one of the mourners had brought over, and then they’d curled up on the couch together and promptly fallen asleep.
They sat shiva for a week afterwards, and Peter watched the grieving friends, neighbors, and community members come and go, offering their condolences, or simply sitting with May when it was clear she wasn't in the mood to talk. Each of them let themselves in to their home, taking their shoes off at the door and finding somewhere to sit while Peter focused on bringing May food and drinks, that she hardly touched. She seemed to be shrinking in on herself, the grief clear in her eyes, even though the tears never fell.
For the whole week, he was allowed to stay home from school, to which May explained to him that it was a time for them to grieve.
“Grief is normal, kiddo.” She said softly, on the fifth morning of Shiva, after she found him curled in a ball on the couch under a mountain of blankets, quietly crying. He'd woken up that morning, and the wave of sadness that had washed over him felt like a tsunami.
“Why does it hurt so much?” He asked, pitifully wiping at his teary eyes.
For five days he’d managed to hold himself together, to put on a brave face and pretend like everything was okay. But it’d caught up to him, and there was no stopping the emotions that ripped through him.
May sighed and pushed his hair out of his eyes before kneeling beside him and taking his hand in hers, thoughtfully tracing the back of his palm with her thumb.
“Because we loved him.” She said simply. “It’s our bodies way of telling us to slow down and accept that something terrible has happened. It’s part of why we sit Shiva. To allow ourselves the time to just…grieve.” Her shoulders raised in a slight shrug. “You know, when we sat Shiva for your parents, Ben didn’t move from the bench by the front door for four days. I didn’t see him get up for food, or water, or even to use the bathroom. I don’t know how he did it. If I hadn’t seen him fall asleep each night, hadn’t wrapped a blanket around him myself and checked his pulse, I would have sworn he’d died, too.”
Peter watched her from watery eyes and cleared his throat. “I didn’t know it made him so sad.”
“Oh, yeah, kiddo. Like you wouldn’t believe. He loved your parents, so, so, so much.” She paused, biting her lip. “I think the only thing that made him sadder was that we didn’t have you there with us. We weren’t able to be there for you, like we wanted to. And I’m sorry for that, Petey. We really did try to get you. We never wanted you to be away from us for so long.”
Peter squeezed her hand reassuringly. “I know.” He said, solemnly.
And it was true. He did know, now.
While Ben had made it clear that he wasn’t trying to replace his dad, he’d unintentionally cemented himself as a father figure. Every win Peter had, he celebrated. Every loss, he mourned. He’d patched Peter’s injuries, opened up his home, and taken in a kid that never should’ve been his problem to begin with. He’d packed his lunches, and listened to his problems, and became so intrinsically engrained in Peter’s life, that the loss of him felt like a gaping hole had opened up in Peter’s chest. He was pretty sure that nothing would ever be able to fill it.
“Do you think he’s watching us, now?” He asked, quietly.
May hummed, thoughtfully.
“I’d like to think so.” She finally said. “So, how about this.” She stood, tugging the pile of blankets gently off of him. “How about we live the life we know he’d be proud of? We’ve got two more days of Shiva, so we’ll sit together for those and feel all of our emotions. We’ll mourn him, like we did your parents. After that though, we’re gonna try to do the hardest thing in the world. We’re gonna try to live, without him. We’re going to go to school, and work, and we’re going to remember him on rainy days, or whenever neither of us can get the fireplace to work. We’ll remember him at dinner time, and in the morning when we first wake up and it takes a minute for us to realize that he’s gone. We’ll remember his dopey grin and his penchant for going out in the first snow storm of each year, because ‘he’s from New York, and New Yorker’s don’t get cold.’ We’ll remember how much of a baby he could be when he got sick, afterward, everytime, without fail, and how he liked to read the newspaper, even though we both teased him for it. We’ll remember how Halloween was his favorite holiday, and how he accidentally set off the fire alarm with his fog machine last year. We’ll remember how he fell through the ceiling trying to get the Christmas tree out of the attic, and how he loved flannel shirts and dogs in costumes.”
She blinked, taking in a shaky breath, the memories clearly overwhelming her. “We’ll remember how brave, and strong, and good he was. And the grief won’t be easy, not at first. It’s going to take up a lot of space. But that’s okay. We’ll let it. Because it deserves to have that space, for a little while, at least.” She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. “But I know your uncle wouldn’t want us to dwell on it, not forever. He’d want us to live. To do the things we love, to be around people we care about, to be happy. I don’t mean that you’ll have to push your emotions down, because I don’t ever want you to do that. I want you to be able to tell me how you’re feeling, always, okay, Peter?”
He nodded and May let out a soft breath. “Okay.” He agreed.
“Don’t ever feel like you have to hide how you’re feeling from me.” She said, fiercely. “We’re the only family we’ve both got left, and I want you to know you can always, always, talk to me. But we’re not going to let grief overwhelm us. Not forever. Because that isn’t what Ben would’ve wanted, for either of us. Right?”
“Right.”
________________________________________
His time with May only lasted three years.
During which, she became everything he’d ever needed.
She was loving and kind, and always there to dry his tears, or to lend an ear whenever he was upset. She changed her schedule and moved them into a smaller apartment, decorating it with photos of her and Peter, interspersed with a few of Ben.
The loss of him still hung heavily between them. Even though she tried, again and again, to assure him that Ben dying wasn’t his fault, he’d still end up crawling into her bed every other night, crying at the memory of his uncle collapsing in front of him, his blood splattering on his shirt. Her words of assurance were never quite enough to chase away the memory of him falling to his knees and doing everything in his power to keep Ben from dying, as blood drenched his hands and dried under his fingernails.
“How’re you feeling?” She’d ask every morning when they got up for breakfast.
The days of frequently home-cooked breakfasts were long gone with Ben, but May made sure he never went hungry. Milk and cereal became staple household items, just as certain as May’s emotion checks on him.
“Bad.” He’d say honestly, most mornings.
She’d nod thoughtfully, and come up with a solution for how to make his day better. He always had a new school project they had to focus on one day, or she’d plan to take him to dinner at the nearby Italian place the next, or they’d wind up in Central Park to paint with watercolors and just talk. Anything to get his mind off things and make his day better.
She became his closest confidant, and the first person he wanted to tell anything to. She went to every school event, and took the crappy night shifts at the hospital to make sure she never missed any big events. Night shifts brought in more money, but they were never as comfortable as they’d been when Ben was alive. Peter never complained though; he knew just how hard she was trying to make sure he was happy and living, just like she’d told him they would after Ben died.
He knew she didn’t like to dwell on the past.
She’d never admitted it to him, but she was barely holding it together. She’d never expected to gain a child and lose her husband in such a short time frame, but she never, ever complained, nor did she make him feel like he was any sort of burden.
Instead, she forged ahead, focusing on the future. She made sure there was always food on the table, that he got to and from school every day, and that she went to work at her nursing job, just like she’d said they would. They found a new normal, carving out a life that worked for them, unconventional as it may have appeared to any outsiders.
When he came home with a black eye and broken glasses because one of the boys at school had snapped them in half, she marched into the principal’s office that same day and demanded a meeting with the kid’s parents.
She didn’t even admonish him for getting in a fight.
“I’m never, ever going to be mad at you for standing up for yourself, Peter. You’re just as important as anyone else, and you should never, ever let someone else make you feel small.” She’d said, after coordinating a meeting with the other boy’s parents and getting permanently banned from school grounds for snapping his mom’s glasses in half in retaliation, the heat of her anger overwhelming her more rational self.
After years of not fitting in, she was the only person he felt truly understood him. He could barely comprehend how much she juggled; all he knew was, that even though superheroes were real, she was the closest thing he’d ever encountered that actually embodied what it meant to be one.
So, when she died, it hit him like a ton of bricks.
It was the same reason he learned to never expect anything good to last.
________________________________________
It was a rainy Friday night and May was working the night shift when it happened.
He knew something was seriously wrong after he'd waited three hours past the time she was supposed to get home. He tried her cell first, but it rang out until her voicemail sounded, bright and cheerful, even as dread filled his stomach. He wound up calling the hospital, hoping he would get ahold of her supervisor, or someone, anyone, who would assure him that everything was all right and it was all some big misunderstanding. Surely she was just running behind on her charting and hadn't had the chance to check her cell.
He called the front desk next, and the line rang almost twice as long as May's cell had before finally revering to a busy signal. Only then did he do what May had always told him to do if a situation like this were to arise, trying to desperately to tamp his panic down.
“Peter, if for some reason, you can’t get ahold of me, call 9-1-1. The people there used to work with Uncle Ben. You know they’ll take care of anything you need. But that won’t ever be a problem. You know I always answer my phone.” She’d said, sounding so self-assured he had no reason to doubt her.
And she’d been telling the truth.
She'd never missed a call from him before, not until that night.
________________________________________
He was placed in a foster home within hours of the news.
They told him she hadn’t felt any pain. The aneurism she’d suffered meant she likely hadn’t even known what was happening, or so they said. He’d hoped that was true, and not just a lie they told little boys to keep them from crying.
Not that he’d cried. He’d been bracing for something happen, ever since Ben died. He didn’t know how to explain it, but it was like he’d had this little feeling at the back of his neck, where his spine met his shoulders—like the split-second instinctual warning that buzzed through the body before glass shattered against a hard surface.
Danger! It screamed. Beware!
He’d been walking on eggshells for years without even realizing it; absentmindedly anticipating that the other shoe would drop, eventually. He’d come to accept the fact that nothing good ever lasted with him in the picture. May had told him he was important, that he had value, and that no one should ever make him feel small. But that was hard thing to believe when everyone he’d ever cared about died.
He didn’t feel important. He felt like Death itself was chasing him, and since it couldn’t seem to catch him, it took everyone he loved instead.
Sometimes, he found himself wishing it would just take him.
He’d stared at his social worker across the table from him, the same man who’d shown up the night his parents died, after the police had come to collect him. Peter was older now, but Josiah’s words still rang clearly in his ears.
“That’s just the way things are. Some of the social workers care, they really do, but they’re severely underpaid and overworked to the point of exhaustion. So they don’t really do the checkups on the people they’re supposed to.”
It made him wonder if the man across from him even remembered him, or if he had had to read a file before coming in the room to meet him for the second time in his short life.
It didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was that Ben and May were gone—along with any sense of normalcy he’d once had—and at ten years old, he was placed with his first foster family.
________________________________________
They Finn’s were relatively nice, at first.
They fed him, bought him clothes, made sure he brushed his hair before he left the house, and that he ate something before he got on the bus to go to school. It took some time for the cracks to show, but when they did, they were hard to ignore.
They all pretended like his foster mother didn’t hide in the bathroom at the end of the night, a bottle of vodka in one hand, her painkillers from her car accident in the other. They all avoided his foster father when he drank one too many beers and his temper would flare as his voice, and sometimes hands, rose whenever Peter happened to be in the way.
Peter knew the man had a temper, but he’d never been hit before.
It started out as a quick cuff to the back of his head. He hadn’t managed to bring Mr. Finn the remote for the TV in a timely fashion, and the slap to the nape of his neck startled him. It didn’t leave any lasting damage outside of a red hand print that didn’t fade for a few hours, but Peter had been so surprised he’d almost dropped the glass of water he’d been carrying. Neither adult commented on the slap; they simply went about their business like it was the most normal thing in the world. Peter was a little shell-shocked by the whole ordeal, having never even been so much as spanked by his parents or Ben and May. Physical punishment wasn’t something their family did; not ever.
The next time he was hit, it was because he had forgotten to wash out his cup from breakfast.
The slap made his cheek sting and tears well in his eyes from the surprise of it.
“Your mom works too damn hard to keep this house clean for you to be leaving your shit out every morning. Clean up after yourself.” Mr. Finn said darkly. His eyes were bloodshot, despite the early hour, and his breath hot as his hands squeezed Peter’s shoulder painfully, forcing him to look him in the eye.
”You should never, ever let someone else make you feel small.”
May’s words sounded in his head as he shrunk back from the angry man, his face still stinging.
”She’s not my mom.” The words were small, but fierce, and Peter found him straightening his shoulders in defiance. He hadn’t even meant to say it; the words had just slipped out, May's words intermingling with his thoughts and giving him the strength to defend himself.
It was the first time he learned that standing up for yourself, especially to an adult, came with consequences.
It was not a lesson he would soon forget.
When he got to school that day, he pulled his hoodie up over his hair, the shadow of it covering his hair and the black eye that was slowly taking up space on his face. His sleeves hid the red welts from the belt he’d been whipped with, and he spent the whole day trying to keep himself from crying. It wasn’t until lunch period that the words his foster father snarled at him finally stopped sounding in his ears.
“You ungrateful little brat.” He’d growled while unbuckling his belt. “How dare you. You think we want you here? All you are is a drain. On our food, our money, our kindness. How dare you disrespect my wife like that. I’m going to teach you a lesson, boy. And you’d do well to remember it.”
He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d made it to school on time, after. It was as if his mind had blocked out what followed, though he still remembered the first strike of Mr. Finn’s leather belt meeting his skin, and the white-hot pain that had exploded through him. He remembered curling up in a ball and trying in vain to protect his head. Unfortunately, the position had left him vulnerable to being kicked, and the man charged with his care wasted no time in taking advantage of that. His ribs ached for the entire day, and his head throbbed from where Mr. Finn's boots had slammed into it.
When he snuck off to the bathroom during English, he raised the sleeves of his jacket and stared in abject horror at the red welts still imprinted on his skin. They were raised and angry; hot to the touch and stinging, even then, hours later.
All he could do was lock himself in a bathroom stall and cry.
________________________________________
Mr. Finn called the foster agency three weeks later.
He told Peter's social worker that his arm had been broken when Peter got into a fight with another boy at the park. Nevermind the fact that Peter hadn't been to the park since May died, let alone the fact that it'd really been broken when he'd been trying to keep Mr. Finn from coming into his room, his face white with rage after Peter had gotten a C- on his history test.
When he'd gotten home, he'd handed over his report card before scurrying towards his room, like a dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Mr. Finn had followed, the sour scent of alcohol permeating his hot breath against the back of Peter's neck. He'd tried to shut the door quickly, but Mr. Finn had grabbed the middle of his forearm and he'd been caught between the doorframe and the older man's grip. He'd struggled, bucking wildly, but Mr. Finn had yanked him back.
They'd both frozen at the audible crack of his radius breaking, and before Peter could even process the pain, his mind went into overdrive, trying to protect him. He'd collapsed into a heap of unconsciousness before either of them could blink.
When he woke up, Mr. and Mrs. Finn were both sitting in the armchairs on either side of his hospital bed, looking more put together than he'd ever seen them look before. His arm was wrapped in a lime-green cast, and Mr. Finn wouldn't make eye contact with him.
When his social worker arrived, he overheard their quiet whispers in the hallway.
"Look, Mr. Harper. We've taken a lot of troubled boys in before, you know what our track record is like. But I've never housed a child as difficult as Peter. He has a temper. He's always moody, and the attitude he has given to me and my wife...well, I just don't think he fits in well with our family dynamic. I mean, for Christ's sake, the boy got into a fight on the playground. What kind of example does that set for our daughters?"
Peter had laid in his hospital bed, staring at the lime green of his hard cast, the painkillers in his system dulling the pain to a low hum, Mr. Finn's words bouncing through his skull. While part of him knew none of what had transpired his fault, there was a smaller, darker part of him that questioned if that was really the truth.
He had been moody, ever since May had died. He could barely keep his emotions in check. He rarely smiled, and when he did, he knew it looked forced, because it was.
He wasn't happy. He hadn't been happy for a long time.
He didn't know if he'd ever be happy again.
When Mr. Harper let himself back into his room, the Finn's didn't follow.
Peter glanced up at him, his face hard. He knew he looked like the angry, jaded boy his foster father had described him as, but he couldn't help it. It was the injustice of it all, that got to him. He knew it was pointless to try and defend himself; Mr. Harper would never believe him, even if he tried to tell him what had really happened. So he didn't bother.
"Peter," Mr. Harper said with a sigh as he sank into one of the chairs beside his hospital bed, "just what are we going to do with you?"
He found that he didn't have an answer.
________________________________________
The next house they placed him in made the Finn's residence seem like a paradise.
Every time he walked through the front door, there was a terrible, desperate longing that flooded through him.
For May and their cozy apartment.
For familiarity.
For comfort.
But those things weren't meant for him; they never had been.
Instead, he was placed with the Burns, and he quickly came to the realization that they were the kind of people Josiah had warned him about. He didn't understand how they'd ever been allowed within a 10-foot radius of children, let alone paid to look after any.
They barely acknowledged him, at first. Both of them were out of the house consistently, and while Peter assumed it was for work, he was never entirely certain of what they did to make a living. Whenever they were home, they holed themselves in the single bedroom, loud music thumping from under the crack in the door, shaking the walls and keeping him awake until the small hours of the night.
The "bedroom" they showed him his first night there was hardly that. In fact, one wouldn’t even venture to assume it was a bedroom, but more so a small closet that his twin sized bed had somehow miraculously been shoved into. Only an old shower curtain covered what would have been his doorway, and he had to pull a light connected to a bare bulb to see anything once the curtain fell shut behind him.
Small as it may have been, at least it was his, a fact he tried to remind himself of nightly.
Still, he found himself missing May every waking moment.
He'd retreated in on himself; slowly becoming a hollow shell. His grief had become a great, all-consuming presence that chipped away at the little parts of him that still felt human. It felt like there was a weighted chain wrapped so tightly around his throat he could hardly breathe. Any time things started to look up, some fresh new horror would be doled out and another heavy link was added to the chain.
This time, when they hit him, he expected it.
It had become increasingly clear that people like the Finn's, and the Burns didn't do well with having their authority questioned, even if that was never his intent. He learned quickly that it was best to not fight back, or argue, or try to defend himself.
He'd learned the hard way what those things would result in, back at his first foster home.
Instead, he imagined what May would have done, if she'd still been alive to see what was happening to him. He knew she would have hugged him, and urged him to talk about why he was having problems with classmates; why they pushed him around at school. She would've listened as he told her what his foster parents did to him, how they treated him as little more than a bug beneath their shoes; an inconvenience they'd been saddled with.
In these fantasies, he imagined her bursting through the paint-peeling doorway, her eyes blazing with righteous fury as she staved off his so-called foster parents before scooping him up to take him back home with her; like she had after Ben died. He knew the bullies at school wouldn't have stood a chance against her either—she would've gone to the school and raised hell again until someone got involved and did something to protect him.
She never would have laid a hand on him.
She never would've let any of them lay a hand on him.
He found himself wondering, often, how so many of his foster "parents" had gotten past the security checks that she and Ben had had to go through. Eventually, he found it was best to not dwell on those thoughts for too long. Doing so only made the homesickness worse, and besides, there was no changing his circumstances. He was stuck wherever the foster system put him, at least until he was 18.
He reminded himself that he had to be brave, like Josiah was. He knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it was just so far away he didn't know if he'd ever get there.
Josiah did. He'd whisper to himself, whenever his thoughts got to be too much. Josiah did, and you will, too.
Aside from the size, or lack thereof, of his room, the apartment itself wasn’t the worst.
Sure, the smell of cigarettes seemed to seep into and stain every inch of the house. The walls, which he assumed had once been white, seemed to buckle under the yellow tint from years of smokers living between them. But he was grateful, at least, to have somewhere to lay his head each night.
Every night, he'd pull the two pictures of him, Ben, and May out from under his pillow and gently trace their faces with the tips of his fingers. He did it so often, the ink eventually began to fade and their features slowly started to disappear. Once it was clear he couldn't do that anymore and his thoughts began to meander towards the tantalizing idea of running away, he forced himself to think back to his time at the half-way house with Josiah.
Though he'd only been there for six months, he’d heard enough horror stories from several of the older foster kids who'd run away once or twice. Every time, it had sounded more like a nightmare than a feasible option. They'd talked about going hungry, or sleeping on the cold pavement whenever they could find a spare spot, of strange men who whistled at them and didn't take no for an answer, and he forced himself to be grateful for his own circumstances, no matter how horrible in comparison.
And for a while, he could stomach it. He even tried to make the best of it, he really did, but the overall atmosphere of the Burns’ apartment was slowly beginning to beat him down.
Day after day, he found himself rushing home from school, papers flying out of his backpack as he raced to beat his foster parents back to the cramped one bedroom apartment. In the months since he he'd begun living there—whenever they deigned it appropriate to actually acknowledge his presence—they'd made it clear that he was expected to clean and cook if either of them were going to be out late, which they both frequently were.
Peter didn’t mind the cooking aspect much, especially after having learned how to do so with Josiah and Ben. Plus, because of how frequently he was left to fend for himself, his mind would eventually wander into the dark abyss of his roiling survivor's guilt. Cooking was one of the few things that took his full focus and concentration, and it temporarily made it possible to turn the dark thoughts off.
On the nights he didn't leave their food in the microwave or oven for them to enjoy whenever they decided to finally return home, if she beat Mr. Burns home, Mrs. Burns would settle herself in front of the TV to mindlessly stare at whatever show was playing, hardly ever saying more than two words to him. He'd deliver her dinner to the little tv-stand table she kept by the couch, and she'd usually only offer a grunt of acknowledgement before tuning back into Judge Judy.
Peter ended up watching a lot of Judge Judy those few months.
By the time he was rehomed again, he’d hate even the mention of it.
________________________________________
After about four months with the Burns, things began to escalate.
Even though he thought he'd mentally prepared himself for something to go wrong, as he always had before, the sudden shift in the Burns' attitudes startled him.
He'd gotten used to them ignoring him over the course of his time there. They typically left him alone, so long as there was dinner ready when they got home and the apartment was clean. He couldn't pinpoint exactly when the change happened, but four months into living there, the Burns seemed to morph into different people.
They became angrier, snapping at him anytime they noticed him, even though he was practically a ghost in their home. Every time he turned around or did something even remotely expected of kid his age, Mrs. Burns would maliciously reference Judge Judy, warning him in explicit detail how he’d be punished for his actions, to which she always followed through. She seemed to have this idea that she was judge, jury, and executioner when it came to punishing him, and Mr. Burns was hardly any help once she'd set her mind to something. Sometimes, he even joined in in whatever twisted form of justice she decided to mete out that day.
They constantly seemed to be on edge. They were angry and paranoid at the most random of times, and he was the one to suffer for it. More than once, he went to school and asked to stand at his desk—too sore from a belt-whipping or whatever punishment they’d deemed fit the night before—to sit for 8 hours straight. If his teachers thought this was odd, they never commented. His classmates though, they were merciless with their taunting. He did his best to ignore them and keep his head down, trying to remain as invisible at school as he once had been at home.
Despite his best efforts, tensions at home continued to rise, and he found himself trying to return to the invisibility that had once shielded him. The Burns, in turn, got angrier, and meaner, and their nightly music parties only got louder. Though he never saw what they were doing behind the closed door of their bedroom, he had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't anything good. Most nights, he only knew they'd finally fallen asleep once the music shut off around 3 or 4 a.m. More than once, he came home to a noise complaint from their landlord taped to the door, which he carefully discarded in an effort to prevent being punished for something out of his control.
With every day that passed, he shrank more and more into himself, only speaking when spoken to, and praying for the days when they'd hardly noticed him.
But luck and prayer had never been on his side, and it wasn't long before everything came to a head.
________________________________________
He wasn’t entirely certain of the events had transpired in his removal from the Burns' residence.
All he remembered was being dragged out of his bed by his hair at 2 a.m. by Mr. Burns, who'd yanked him into the kitchen, where, half-asleep, he watched their screaming match begin anew.
The house was a wreck, with trash strewn across the floor, dishes in the sink, couch cushions pulled from their traditional spot, and the tv sporting a giant shatter that hadn’t been there when he’d finally managed to fall asleep.
Half-delirious with exhaustion from a day of dodging bullies at school and the tightrope he was forced to walk at home, he would have thought they were just having some sort of collective manic episode. He would have continued to think that, had it not been for the needles lying on on the coffee table in the middle of the living room, their syringes filled with some thick, cloudy, and unknown substance.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Burns sported thick rubber-like ropes around their upper arms, which they waved wildly about as they got in each other's faces, profanities spewing from their mouths. Mr. Burns' normally sallow-face was ruddy-red with rage and he was breathing so heavily, Peter was certain he was about to pass out. None of the words he screamed made any sense, and having no clue what was happening around him, Peter waited, his scalp tingling from where he'd been dragged by it. He stood awkwardly in the kitchen while Mr. Burns threw dishes around him, flinching when one flew an inch past his head. His hands rose to cover his face and ears, his heartbeat erratic in his chest.
His flinch seemed to set something off in his foster father, who continued screaming nonsense around him to the point that Peter dropped into a crouch. It didn't deter the man, who had stepped so close that Peter could smell the thick stench of sweat on him as spittle flew out of his mouth and spattered across Peter’s face. He remained as still as possible—a deer in headlights; a statue trying to avoid detection—praying the floor would open up and swallow him whole.
While he’d been privy to both of their tempers—and subsequent punishments—after a bad day at work or wherever they spent their waking hours, he had never seen either of them like this.
He gaze was involuntarily drawn to Mrs. Burns, who had collapsed on the couch at some point. She looked like she was asleep, though he wasn’t sure how she managed to keep her eyes shut with all of the ruckus going on around them.
Mr. Burns noticed him staring and took it as a personal affront.
His hand shot out, shoving Peter back against the wall behind him and knocking him off balance. Because of his size and stature, he wasn't sure the older man realized how easily he would overpower him. Or, if he did, he simply didn't care. The blow forced him to sprawl out, simultaneously knocking his head against the wall and hardwood floor, and causing stars to dance across his vision. Blinking dazedly, he looked up at his foster father, whose eyes burned with what felt like hatred. He'd learned, long ago, that meeting the eyes of those who hit him only made them angrier, but he couldn't help staring up, trying to silently implore mercy, to no avail.
Mr. Burns wasted no time in raising his foot and slamming it down on his shoulder, fury clear on his face. Peter couldn't even find it in himself to scream; he was fairly certain that he had become entirely numb to pain at that point.
Everything after that was a blur.
________________________________________
By the time his foster parents had sobered up enough to notice his broken collar bone, he had passed out from the pain.
They must have taken him to an emergency room at some point, because when he woke up next, he was back in a hospital gown and hooked up to morphine, with only his caseworker in his room.
There was a brief discussion of putting him back at the Burns' residence, but ultimately no one seemed to think that was the best course of action.
Instead, he found himself back in the foster home he'd first met Josiah in, though the older boy was long gone by then. Mr. Harper had left him with a stern warning to "be on his best behavior" because, evidently, due to his "frequent placement status" and reported "behavioral issues", there was a good chance they weren't going to be able to place him with another "nice family".
He wondered, at what point in time he'd become the problem child in everyone else's eyes. He'd never had that title, before.
But it seemed like it was going to stick.