red dust {gun/aiden}

Sometimes if I'm real quiet I can make it out of the house before my father wakes up in the morning. It's not easy because it's not like he drinks or anything. He isn't a heavy sleeper. My dad has always been proud of the fact that he doesn't abuse any sort of substance. He says that it sets him apart from the rest of the folk in our area. Not by much though. Once you end up in the slums it's hard to get out of them, according to most folk in our district. I wouldn't know. I was born and raised in them. I'll probably end up dying in them too.

My dad lies, says he wants better for me. I'm still trying to work out if he's joking about that or not because sometimes he doesn't even let me go to school, he wants me to spend the day running the gun shop. It's so he can sit staring at my mom's picture in misery. Apparently he really loved her. I never believe him when he says that but it's hard not to when he clutches her photo to his chest and calls out her name like it will do any good. It won't. I used to spend long nights calling for my mom but she never appeared.

She burned to death along with our first house.

She tried to take me with her. I guess she didn't want to leave me with dad. It was her way of escaping. All I've got to remember her by is the burn scars running all over my body, down my arms and legs, my torso, even wrapping up my neck to the side of my face. Sometimes they itch real bad but they don't hurt anymore. Dad says it makes me look like a thug. Those scars and my eyes that I got from my mom. He hits me because of her eyes. No matter how small I'm trying to be, they always make me look I'm ready for a fight.

Violence sort of scares me.

It's why I sneak out so early in the mornings.

I tug my backpack on and walk around the house in socked feet, clutching my shoes in one shaking hand. It's hard because dad did something funny to my leg the other night when he kicked it out from under me and it hurts a bit to walk. So my gait is all funny and I guess that's why I accidentally walk into the hall table, sending a bowl full of rocks that was my mother's to the floor with a loud crash. Good thing the bowl was metal, it would have broken otherwise.

It woke my dad up.

I tried to leave faster so that I could make it out before he got mad but I didn't move fast enough. Walking into the hall table had hurt and there were tears in my eyes as I stumbled around it.

I should have just made my dad breakfast this morning and distracted him with that instead of letting him catch me trying to sneak off to school. He got mad about it and socked me hard in the eye. His punch sent me right to the ground and I felt it in my jaw too, could almost feel the bruise that would be blooming across my upper cheek bone forming. Warmth creeps down my face. I guess he split the skin too.

He sent me crawling around on my knees to pick up every single rock. I did it as quick as I could. My dad never told me why the rocks were so special. I know that they were mom's but I don't remember her much. What I do remember of her is insanity and bruised skin. When I got all the rocks in the bowl he tipped the bowl over my head and the rocks bounced off of my head and hit the floor again. As I picked them up again, he spoke, voice angry, "There's more rocks in your head than in that bowl, Gun, you dumb son of a bitch."

I didn't argue with him. It never goes well.

Instead I just picked the rocks up as fast as I could, mumbled something about having to be early for a project and hightailed it out of there. My father lumbers and looms, he doesn't run. I got away easy. He's hurt me far worse for far less.

I keep running, landing on my left leg painfully each time but sort of too scared to stop running, just in case my dad learned to run overnight. A few neighbors watch me sometimes from behind their blinds and I've seen a few of them every now and then, watching as my dad screams at me in the front yard. They don't ever step in or say a word to me. No one does at school either. I show up to class with split lips and bruised ribs and they look at me as some thug kid from the slums who's been fighting again.

They look at me and see my father, a man who wasn't any better as a boy.

I'm a right-off.

If they'd look closer, they'd see soft knuckles and a boy who flinches at his own shadow when it seems too close.

I don't slow down until I reach the school gates, fear keeping mylegs pumping despite the pain. I stand bent over and panting for a few moments, fingers probing carefully at the puffy feeling skin around my right eye. My fingers graze the cut and come away bloody. I let out an annoyed sigh and hitch my backpack up higher, fingers wrapping around the straps like they're a safety line.

I take in a deep breath, wincing slightly at the pain in my side that hasn't really gone away for a good week and make my way into the school, ducking my head and shrinking my shoulders into myself so no one will notice me. No one does anyway. My dad is right, people don't give a shit about a rock-headed idiot like me. That's fine with me. I just like being away from my dad for six hours a day. School is a good excuse. I keep my head down and hand my homework in on time so no one bothers me.

I always used to sort of hope that one day a kind teacher would take me aside and ask me where the bruises come from but to my horror, they already seemed to know as soon as they saw me. A weird sort of pity sometimes hides behind their cold gaze but never anything more than that. In fact, teachers avoid me like I've got the plague. They look somewhere over my head when they have to speak to me and they never call on me for questions, as if I'm some hopeless case.

Kids ignore me too, always leaving me a desk in the back corner of the classroom beside the window, sometimes moving away from me in fear as if I'll hurt them or something. I'm tall and because of my face and scars I am intimidating.

One time my dad told me to try hitting him back and the thought of that made me so anxious I threw up on his shoes.

I'm nearly at the bathroom I always hide in for the thirty minutes before school starts when someone grabs my arm. I flinch, despite myself and try to tug my arm away, panic gripping me lightly as I find that the boy's grasp isn't so easily lost. Instead, he tugs on my arm and with my leg in such a bad way I stumble towards him. "Who did that to your face?" he asks me, not in a nasty way, "No wait, let me guess, I should see the other guy right?"

He stares at me, expecting an answer I think.

I stare back at him, a deer in a flashlight beam, uncertain and confused. I don't have much actual interaction with people unless it's a customer in the shop. I've never tried reaching out to anyone. My father tells me that no one would want to speak to a little bitch like me and I've never been certain that he isn't right.

I guess I should give him a witty response at this point. That's what happens in books. You test the waters with a joke and then you joke together and then ta da, you're friends. I lick my lips. I open my mouth and then I shut it.

I can't tell him my dad hits me because school isn't the slums. If you're a kid and you're in the slums then you expect to be beat by your parents. Kids that aren't from the slums usually have a happier outlook on that kind of stuff. I consider telling him that I walked into a door but I'm pretty sure that's a cliche.

Then I realize that I've been standing here silent for a pretty long time while this kid has been blinking at me, waiting for a response and I start to sweat, panic clouding my mind. I don't know what to say. I start to shake instead, I'm turning into a pathetic little puddle just because he's got me by the wrist and my mind's gone blank. I'm not so good with being put on the spot.

"UHH," I finally say, more like shout. My voice echoes through the nearly empty hall and I cringe slightly at my own idiocy. He probably thinks I'm slow. Maybe I am slow. My cheeks flush with embarrassment and I tug my wrist back towards myself again, stalling for time.

My mind races, trying to come up with a plausible story for the blood staining my cheek and the fresh bruise but I come up with nothing and my breathing quickens as he stares at me, waiting for a response but I can only stand here like a fucking idio-

"IwassneakingoutofthehouseandmylegwashurtingsoIwalkedintoatableandIspilledabowlofrocksonthegroundandtheyaremymother'srocksandsotheyarereallyspecialandIwokemydadupandsohegotmadaboutspillingtherocksandbecauseIwokehimupeventhoughIwastryingtosneakoutcarefullybutIfuckedupandhegotmadandItriedtopicktherocksallupquicklybuthewasreallymadandIshouldhavejustmadehimbreakfastinsteadoftryingtosneakoutbutIdidn'twanthimtomakemestayhomefromschoolandruntheshoptodaysoIwastryingtosneakoutandhegotrealmadandsonowmyfaceislikethis."

I stand there, wrist still caught by him, sucking in huge gulps of air and my eyes are already brimming with tears. That wasn't witty, I don't even think it was understandable.

This is probably why people don't talk to me.