It will keep happening.
We both know that truth in our bones. Henderson doesn't need a reason and he doesn't follow any kind of predictable schedule. Sometimes weeks go by without any violence, long stretches of relative peace where we almost start to relax. And then sometimes it's three nights in a row, three nights of belt strikes and shouting and pain. There's no predicting it, no preventing it, no pattern we can learn to avoid. All we can do is survive it when it comes and recover in between.
"Then you keep taking the cuts," I say steadily. "As long as you need to. Even if your grade drops all the way down to a failing grade. Even if you have to run laps every single day for the rest of the school year. Even if Coach Bryant hates you and thinks you're the worst student he's ever had. None of it matters. We do what we have to do to survive."
"Coach Bryant is going to hate me," Ivan says miserably, and I can hear how much that bothers him. He's a good kid, wants to do well, wants adults to approve of him even after everything those assholes put him through.
"Maybe. Probably," I admit, because there's no point in lying to him about this. I think about all the adults who should see what's happening to us and don't—the teachers who notice we wear the same clothes three days in a row because we don't have enough to rotate through, the cafeteria workers who see us shoving extra food in our pockets because we're not sure when our next meal will be, the neighbors who must hear Henderson yelling late at night through these thin walls.
None of them do anything about what they see. None of them want to get involved because getting involved means paperwork and phone calls and complications. Coach Bryant will be no different from any of them.
"But here's the thing about adults like that. They don't actually care about us as people. They care about their jobs, their comfortable lives, not having to deal with problems that require extra effort. As long as you're not causing them too much trouble, as long as you're not making their lives harder, they'll leave you alone. They'll punish you with laps and lectures and bad grades, but they won't dig deeper. They don't want to know what's really going on. Knowing means they have to do something about it."
Ivan is quiet for a while, turning this over in his head, processing these hard truths about the world. I can almost see him adjusting his understanding of how things work, adding this new piece of truth to everything else I've taught him about survival. It hurts to watch. He's too young to have to calculate how much pain he can endure versus how much risk he can take.
"Okay. I'll take the cuts. I'll run the laps. Whatever I have to do."
"That's my boy," I say, squeezing his shoulder with genuine pride. "And hey, listen, it won't be forever. The weather will turn cold again eventually, probably by November. And they'll switch back to indoor PE and sweatpants. You just have to make it through the spring and summer, that's all. A few months."
"The spring," Ivan repeats, like he's trying to make himself believe it's possible, trying to convince himself he can endure that long. "I can make it through the spring. I can do that."
"You can make it through anything," I tell him with absolute certainty. "You're tougher than you give yourself credit for."
He doesn't look like he believes me, and that's okay. I don't need him to believe it right now. He'll learn the truth of it eventually. I'll make sure he learns, the same way I've made sure he's learned everything else he needs to know to survive.
How to read Henderson's moods from the sound of his footsteps, how to disappear when things get dangerous, how to take a beatingwithout crying or begging. And now this—how to hide in plain sight, how to let people think the worst of you because the alternative is so much worse, how to endure punishment and judgment because it's better than the alternative.
We sit there together until the sun starts dropping toward the horizon outside the window, and then we both hear it. Henderson's truck coming up the drive, the familiar rattle and whine. We both tense up automatically, our bodies responding to the sound before our minds can process it, listening carefully to the way the door slams when he gets out.
We're trying to determine what kind of night this will be. Tonight, it's not too bad. He's tired, not angry. Just the normal slam of a man who's worked a long day and wants dinner and beer and television. We'll probably be okay tonight. Maybe.
"I should go start on my homework," Ivan says, even though we both know homework is the last thing on his mind right now. It's just an excuse to have something to do with his hands and his brain, some way to pass the time until dinner, until bed, until another day begins and we have to survive all over again.
"Yeah," I agree. "Me too."
But neither of us moves for another few minutes. We just sit there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the last of the daylight drain out of the sky outside our window. Tomorrow Ivan will walk into PE class and lie to his coach, and the coach will think he's a lazy kid who doesn't care about physical fitness or education.
And Ivan will accept that judgment without defending himself because the truth is too dangerous to tell, because telling the truth means losing me. And he'll run laps around that football field, probably for weeks, maybe for the rest of the semester, his legs aching where the belt left its marks and his lungs burning. He'll be doing this while the other kids play kickball and have no idea what it costs him just to be there at all, just to show up every day.
And I'll be here when he gets home. I'll ask him how it went and he'll tell me the truth, and we'll figure out together how to handle whatever comes next. Because that's what we do now. That's who we are to each other.
Two kids against a world that doesn't even know we're fighting.
I think about what's going to happen when I turn eighteen, when I age out of the foster care system and there's nothing legally keeping me here anymore. I try not to think about it too much because it makes me feel like I'm drowning, like water is closing over my head and I can't breathe. But sometimes the thought creeps in anyway, unwanted and unavoidable.
Four more years for me until I'm eighteen and free. Six more years for Ivan until he ages out. Four years until I'm legally an adult and the state stops being responsible for me, and then what? What happens then? I leave him here alone with the Hendersons? I abandon him the same way everyone else in his life has abandoned him, the same way every adult has failed him?
I won't do that. I don't know how I'm going to prevent it yet, don't have a concrete plan, but I won't do that to him. I'll figure something out before that day comes. I'll find a way to stay, or a way to take him with me when I go, or something. Some solution that doesn't involve leaving him behind. I'm not leaving him here alone. I'm not letting him face the Hendersons without me there to help protect him.
He's mine now, in a way that has nothing to do with blood or law. My responsibility. My family.
I'll burn the whole fucking world down before I let anyone take him away from me.
Chapter 5: Ivan
It starts on a night when the rain is coming down so hard we can hear it hammering against the tin roof of the barn. Jay and I are up in the loft with our backs pressed against the scratchy hay bales, waiting for Henderson to drink himself unconscious down in the farmhouse so we can sneak back inside.
We've been out here for almost two hours already, hiding in the dark and the smell of old hay. We had to skip dinner. Now my stomach is growling loudly. But that's nothing new anymore. Hunger is just part of life now, as familiar and constant as the ache in my legs from running laps every single day at school.
