Whimpers

Chapter Seven: Bad Little Boy

Kaelan's POV

I thought she'd seen something. The way she was talking, I was sure she'd seen or heard something incriminating. I'd even let myself wonder, for a very brief second, what she'd do about it. But she hadn't. It was just a feeling I'd gotten. A wish. She wouldn't have been able to do anything anyway, and my mother would punish me if Freyja, or anyone, told. This wouldn't be a normal punishment either. Mother often reminded me of what she would do if someone found out. She reminded me, and sometimes she showed me.

The doctors hadn't yet given me a general check up. I had to leave before then. I had to, or my mother... well, you get the point. There was no practical way for me to get through a doctor's check-up without them finding something. They'd ask me to breathe deeply so they could hear my lungs and my chest would constrict with the pain. They'd touch me somewhere or press on my stomach and I'd flinch. They might take an x-ray (even though that wouldn't be for a general checkup) and find all the improperly healed bone fractures. Or, the obvious, they'd ask me to lift my shirt, and find the mottled bruising that ran the course of my whole torso.

Mother walked into the room wearing less jewelry than usual. She had that 'if you make one wrong move, Imma beat your clown ass into the dust' smile that she reserved just for me. At least she smiled. I dropped Freyja's hand, internally apologizing for the disappointed look she gave me. It was better than having Mother suspect her. If there was anything that made Mother angrier than the thought of me having 'little friends to blab to' about her secrets, it was the thought of me having a little girlfriend to blab her secrets to.

She told me to get up, that we were leaving. I stood. My steps were shaky. I could practically see Freyja jumping up to help me. Mother would hate that. I sent Freyja a warning look, doing my best make her to back off. She seemed to get the message, but she also seemed confused. I watched anxiously to see how Mother responded to Freyja's presence. My eyes darted from one to the other as I did my best to stand straight and look as if I [wasn't] battling a wave of nausea-inducing light-headedness, but both of them only seemed to regard each other with a slight suspicion. Mother turned away from Freyja so quickly that you'd think she didn't even care. Only the fact that I'd grown up around her made me think otherwise.

Mother led me to the car, walking me past some slightly disgruntled hospital staff. Hospitals weren't allowed to keep you without you or your legal guardian's permission, but they liked to think they were.

Outside, it was raining. It wasn't the pouring rain that made you cold, wet, and depressed though; it was the sort of rain that I liked. The kind that made you want to dance in it and look up at the sky and open your tongue so that you could taste bits of the clouds. I looked over a Mother. I could see her still trying to keep up pretenses as we walked out of the worst possible place for us to keep my injuries hidden. It was only by the time we were in parking lot E, and her car, a bright red Subaru, was well within sight, that she finally dropped the act.

"Why did you let them take you to the hospital after last night?" she demanded, grabbing me by the arm and crushing it in her grip as we continued to the car. "Were you TRYING to get me locked up? Do you WANT to go into foster care?"

My head was already lowered, so I didn't need to do that any more. "No, ma'am," I mumbled, staring, my eyes out of focus, at my shoes.

"Explain yourself then, boy!" she shrilled. We reached the car. She went around to the passenger seat and opened the door for me, shoving me in. The rain poured down from all sides as I sat in my seat and gritted my teeth. "You know what? We can save this for home. I'm already far too stressed to deal with your pathetic nonsense."

I nodded again and wrung my hands together to stop them shaking. They kept shaking all the way home. When we pulled into the driveway, I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. All the deep breath actually accomplished was reminding me that my shirt was covered in dried vomit.