Chapter 02: The Boy

[Turn away now before you know what you get yourself into, this section contains a lot of miserable events, with no happy ending, turn away now before having your day ruined!]

One of the miserable items that I have in my room is a hot wheels car, it was a gift from a boy who was in a miserable situation in his life. We would find ourselves meeting up at the swings a lot but then we stopped meeting each other, not because we stopped getting along, but because he had to do something about his miserable situation. Sometimes when I have nothing to do, I would just sit on the swings, and hope that he might shows up again.

This story takes back eight years ago, while I was getting kicked out of the basketball team. It was the usual routine, join a team, become a bench warmer for not being good enough, have them value you as useless, get kicked out. I've been through this three other times. I play basketball not because i'm good at it, but because a basketball was gift to me from my late mother, my last memory of her. I treasure it more than my own life, I never left the apartment without it, but now I keep it inside a safe where it's impossible to get inside, even if you were the greatest thief or had an atomic bomb, you will never find a way inside.

After tripping on my shoelaces and missing the winning shot for my team, it seemed they had enough of me and was about to kick me out, but since I already knew what was going to happen next, I left on my own. Walking down, holding the ball in my hand, I was wondering what mom was making for dinner. I tripped on my shoelaces again, landing on my face, the ball rolled out of my hand, across the street, and stopped after making a bang when it hit a dumpster next by Little Ceasers. After rubbing my nose a couple times, I looked around and saw the ball by the dumpster, I looked to the left and right of the empty street before making my way across. I made my way towards the dumpster and while picking up the ball I saw a glimpse of a boy laying on the grnm;ound.

I slowly made my way towards him, he was beat up, badly, and whoever did this to him probably thought that a person was nearby and ran away in the back alley. There were bruises all over his arms and legs, his face was bleeding from his nose and mouth, he also had a fist size black outline around his eyes. The first thing I thought was was he dead, so I went up to the boy to see if he was breathing and sure enough, he wasn't. I looked around and saw a telephone booth, I was about to get it up to go call the cops but it seemed like he wasn't dead after all. He grabbed my arm and told me that he knew what I was thinking but he said he was fine, obviously he wasn't but I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but maybe I shouldn't have. As he struggled to try and get up a gave him a hand, after thanking me, he stumbled his way into the back alley and I thought that was the last time I would see him.

I made my way back home, dribbling my ball, in my mind I was thinking who could've done that to the boy and if they were still around here. Before I could think about it more, I found myself running, I had a gut feeling, a bad one. I went into the apartment, paced my way up the stairs, each step making a louder creak than the previous one, and opened the door. It was my mother, she was on the ground, I found myself struggling to call an ambulance, my mom was on the ground and I wasn't here to help her. I was crying at age 13, but I couldn't do anything about it, mom was dying.