HIDING - every scar has a story

36. Try.

{Cary}

The dining room was half empty for lunch. Leonard set his tray down next to Karmin and after a second Cary joined them. He ate without tasting much and he didn't speak to anyone. He couldn't help picturing his mother and father in their church clothes, eating lunch at the dining room table with Liam in his swing next to them. He had to quit thinking about them as his family when they didn't want him.

When he went out for a smoke, Karmin joined him. Cary lit one for her and passed it across. "Where's your boyfriend?" he asked without looking at her.

"Omigod don't call him that." Her red mouth sneered and she flicked her hair over her shoulder. Her sweater was too short for her arms; her angular wrists stuck out three inches. "We just, like, fuck around and whatever. Something to do."

The smudge of purple on her wrist caught his eye as she lifted the cigarette to her mouth. He looked away, wishing he hadn't seen it.

She tilted her head at him. "What did you say?"

Cary blinked. He had spoken out loud without meaning to. He looked for cracks in her made-up face, for any sign there was a real person in there.

He spoke softly, his voice flat: "He left marks on you. You shouldn't let him do that."

He got up and left her open-mouthed. She was cussing him out before he got the shelter door open. He rolled his shoulders as it banged shut behind him. Not his problem. It took a couple minutes to figure out he was angry. He seemed to have caught Leonard's bug for caring, and it was pissing him off.

He went to the main office. The staff guy swivelled his chair to face him, in a day-glo blue shirt today.

"You should be watching the ravine," Cary said. "Kids are screwing around down there."

The guy's face was regretful. "Yeah I know. We mostly can't stop it. I mean, we'll try but..."

"Try," Cary said, and left.

///

He didn't want to spend the afternoon surrounded by the dinted concrete walls of the shelter. It was the first hot day of spring, the warmth teasing the barely formed new leaves with a promise of summer. It was the first day Cary could imagine slinging his backpack on and wearing it for any length of time. He passed Leonard playing solitaire in the common room and turned on his heel.

"Hey, Leonard."

Leonard looked up with a smile.

"Karmin is in the smoke pit. Maybe she'd like to play cards with you." She was definitely bored enough. Leonard's smile brightened and he gathered up his deck. Cary hit the sunny sidewalk hoping he hadn't just set his friend up for a chilly rejection.

He got on a bus without thinking much about where it was going. When he arrived at the west side depot he realized he was close to home—to what used to be home. He walked the length of the concrete island in a sea of traffic, trying to convince himself to turn around and go back and hang out at Gazebo Park for the afternoon.

He did the stupid thing instead. He caught the same bus he used to get home from school and texted his mother on the way.

<can you talk?>

A couple minutes later his phone buzzed in his hand. <yes. meet me?>

<YES> Cary couldn't help the caps, he was smiling. He waited a second before answering: <I'll be at the bus stop> with the street address.

<be there when i can> his mother answered.

Cary got off the bus just a block and a half from his house. He wished for a ridiculous moment that he had a hat and a disguise. He sat small at the end of the bus bench, buried in his drawing book.