Benny felt light-headed from hunger as he carried his backpack stuffed with bottles and cans to his car where it was parked off-campus. It was the third trip he’d made that day. Hopefully it would be enough to buy gas and dinner. He’d had a pretty good day today though. Better than the last few, anyway. Today, he’d had the brilliant idea to check out Michigan State University’s campus. Most of the college students had gone home for winter break, but there were still a few who had stayed. Mostly international students or other ones who couldn’t fly home. The campus library was open and it wasn’t a bad place for him to hang out. It was warm, thankfully, and no one paid him much attention. There were lots of places to get lost.

He grabbed a couple of books and with his backpack on the chair next to him, he looked like a student at first glance. A little young, maybe, but the scraggly goatee that he’d been growing made him pass for a freshman at least.

Benny had gone to the library planning to kill some time in a warm building, but he’d discovered that a lot of students left pop bottles and cans sitting out when they were done. According to the signs he saw posted everywhere, people weren’t supposed to eat or drink in the library stacks, but clearly no one listened. And they weren’t too strict about enforcing it.

Benny had swiped as many drink containers as he could find and even dug in a few trash cans when no one was looking. It hurt his pride, but he even grabbed a half-empty bag of chips and finished them off. They didn’t really do anything but make him more hungry, but what else could he do? He had to eat something. He was getting desperate.

He overheard some students talking about going to work out at the intramural sports complex. One of them complained that he left his student I.D. back in his room but another guy assured him he could swipe him into the building. It occurred to Benny that the sports complex would have a gym and gyms usually had locker rooms with showers. Benny obviously didn’t have an I.D either, so he couldn’t get in by himself, but he figured it was worth trying to sneak in. At a bit of a distance, he followed the guys to IM building and slipped in with their group. One of them apparently noticed, because he gave Benny a weird look, but he didn’t call Benny out on it or alert security.

Benny hid in an alcove while the guys walked into to the locker room. He waited until they left for the weight room, then slipped into the locker room. Thankfully, it was deserted so he didn’t have to worry about anyone giving him weird looks. The hot shower felt heavenly and he stayed under the water until his skin began to prune. He even found a sliver of soap someone had left on the ledge and he used it to scrub his whole body, including his head. His hair felt like straw now, but at least his scalp didn’t itch anymore. Without deodorant, or a place to wash his few pairs of clothes, he was going to smell pretty ripe soon, but at least for now his skin was clean. It was something. If only he could get a toothbrush and toothpaste.

He was tired though. And even if he returned the cans and used the dollar bill he’d found under the vending machine in the IM building, he wasn’t going to have enough to buy more than a few bites of food and put a gallon or two of gas in his car. Barely enough to get him through another day. And today had been a good day compared to the others. He couldn’t spend all day scrounging for returnable cans if he was looking for a job.

But how could he get a job when his clothes stank and his shoes were holey and he didn’t have a high school diploma? It felt like the odds were stacked against him and every day—no matter how hard he tried—he was further away from his goals than when he’d started. It wasn’t fair.

Life shouldn’t be so hard.

***

Later that night, after a meagre dinner of a small burger and some fries off the dollar menu, he drove to the deserted lot where he’d been parking and sleeping. It was the Oldsmobile auto factory that had been closed years before. They always talked about redeveloping it, but no one ever got around to doing it. A year or so ago, he’d seen kids skateboarding in there and once he’d seen a car drive out. The gates were supposed to be padlocked shut, but when he’d investigated it, he’d discovered someone had busted the lock at some point. So he’d opened the gates, drove in, then shut them again.

The first night, Benny had hardly slept, expecting someone to pound on the window and tell him to get out. Or worse, arrest him for trespassing.

But no one had come by that first night. Or any of the nights after. He’d parked around the back, close to the building, so his guess was that if there were security officers who were supposed to patrol, they just drove by and called it good, too lazy to go inside the gated lot and check. Benny wasn’t complaining. It was quiet, safe, and pretty dark. That was the best he could hope for at this point.

Tonight, he put the car in park and shut off the engine. He toed off his wet shoes and crawled between the seats to the back. He settled on his makeshift bed in the rear of his car and pulled a blanket up over him, rubbing his feet together to generate some warmth.

When he’d run away from the foster home, he’d gone straight to his parent’s house. His mom was nowhere to be found but at least his car was still there. He’d been surprised she hadn’t sold it for drugs, but maybe it was more work than she was able to manage now, especially since she didn’t know where his car keys were. Benny had let himself in the house using the spare house key under the rock by the back door. Without him there to clean, the place had looked even more disgusting than usual and it smelled even worse. There didn’t seem to be any heat either and his heart clenched when he thought of Angel. God, how could their mother have done this to her? Given up on raising her daughter. Angel deserved a real family and a good life. Foster care was no substitute.

Benny’d had to remind himself that for now, she was safer there at least.

He’d poked his head into Angel’s room. It had looked half-empty. The worn stuffed rabbit and ragged yellow blanket she loved so much weren’t in her bed. Her favorite book had been gone from the sad little sagging shelf in the corner. And her closet had been nearly empty. At least she’d been able to take some of her belongings with her.

Next, he’d gone into his own room and found it more or less the way he’d left it, minus his ancient laptop and even older TV. The battered laptop was a castoff of Scott’s and he’d picked the TV up from the curb a few years back. They were missing and he assumed his mom had pawned them both. Benny had dug out the spare key for the car and a small amount of money where they were hidden in the back of his desk, then threw a few of his belongings into his backpack. He’d taken them, along with a blanket and pillow out to his car, then went back inside for more. He’d been in the middle of searching for a trash bag to toss some more clothes and toiletries in when the sound of the front door opening made him freeze. He’d heard his mother’s voice, drunkenly slurring as she spoke to the people with her. Two men, it sounded like. And the sounds he’d heard a few minutes later immediately turned his stomach.

Benny couldn’t be entirely sure what she did with the guys she brought back to the house but he could guess. They hit her sometimes too. He’d tried to stop it once, but all the thanks he’d gotten was a black eye from the man and screaming from her, so he didn’t figure there was any point in trying again. She’d never taken care of him or his sister, so why should he worry about taking care of her?

Benny had darted out the back door before she’d had any idea he was there. He’d had no chance to grab the clothes or toiletries he needed. And too late, he’d realized he’d left the spare key to the front door in the house somewhere. He didn’t think there was any chance she’d notice and put it back in the hiding spot. There was a better chance she’d leave a door unlocked but both times he’d returned, there were cars in the driveway and he didn’t want to risk getting caught.

Now, in the dark car, Benny’s eyes burned and he rubbed the heels of his palms against them until lights sparkled behind his eyelids. They reminded him of the lights on the trees at Sullivan’s Fine Gifts and for a moment, he felt the ghost of Scott’s arms around him. He wanted that so bad his entire body hurt. The only peace he’d ever found in his life was with Scott. From the days they spent reading comics in Scott’s treehouse as kids, to Scott’s shy confession that he was gay, and their first kiss, Scott had been his happy place. They’d grown up together. Planned for a future together.

And then Benny had fucked it all up.

Their plan had been to move in together after graduation. Benny would get a job and Scott would go to college. But they’d be together. Have a little apartment together—two bedroom, so Angel would have a room—and spend the rest of their lives together. Raise Angel. Maybe take in another foster kid when they could. Adopt. They were young, sure, but they loved each other. They could do it.

But things had gotten so bad in the Fuller house. Grandma Fuller had died. Benny’s Dad had been gone all the time. Benny’d had no idea what he was up to, but it turned out he was involved in selling Meth. And both of his parents had been using all sorts of drugs. Benny had been the only one in charge of anything in the house. He’d been the one who to get up in the mornings and make sure Angel got off to school. The one who’d washed her clothes and sheets and vacuumed her room so the dust didn’t make her asthma worse.

Benny hadn’t been able to tell Scott about all of the shit happening there. He hadn’t told Scott that he and Angel were going without food when they weren’t at school. Scott hadn’t known about the shouting and the parties when his dad was around. Or about the sex and the drugs that went on after his dad’s arrest. Benny had put a chair under Angel’s door and slept on her bedroom floor at night. He’d guarded the bathroom door when Angel was in there, for fear one of the creeps would do something to her.

All he’d wanted was to take care of his sister.

But it had been hard. He’d bought as much food as he could manage from the grocery store and smuggled it into the house for Angel. He’d gone without it himself; when he had to, just to make sure she got enough to eat. But her asthma had kept getting worse and she’d seemed so thin and small it had scared him sometimes.

Every day, he’d taken a shortcut through the parking lot of a law office. One afternoon, when he’d walked past, he’d seen a wallet sitting on the top of the trash can. There had been no one around and he’d grabbed it before he could think twice. He’d had no idea why it was sitting there or if there was even anything in it, but he’d pocketed it without a second though. He needed it.

His heart had hammered in his chest the whole way home but no one followed him. And when he’d opened the leather wallet with shaking hands, he’d found four hundred and thirty seven dollars in it. A fortune. Enough to get Angel’s inhalers and food for her for a long time. He’d known he’d have to be careful not to spend it too fast, but if he could do that, he could use it to take care of his sister. He’d cried then, so relieved that something good had finally happened to him. Whoever had lost it couldn’t possibly need it as much as he did.

Benny had been tempted to use the credit cards, but he was smart enough to know that was too easy to trace. And he couldn’t risk anything when it came to Angel. He’d tucked the money into his own wallet and kept the guy’s driver’s license. He’d planned to anonymously mail it back to him in a few days.

Benny had felt content that he was in the clear and that maybe his luck was finally turning around. He’d gone to sleep with a lighter heart than he’d had in months. The next morning, he’d thrown out the empty wallet in the neighbor’s bin. It had been trash day, so he knew it would be picked up in a few hours.

But there had been cops waiting in the parking lot on the way to school. They’d stopped him and told him he’d been recorded taking the wallet on the office’s security cameras. They’d had a printed out picture of his face. They’d had the tapes. And when they’d searched him, they’d found the exact amount of money that had gone missing and the ID so he hadn’t bothered to deny it.

It had been a whirlwind after that. They’d taken him to the police station and fingerprinted him. He’d gone to family court and they’d given him a public defender. The guy had been useless. He hadn’t even been able to remember Benny’s name or what the charges were. They’d told Benny it would go easier on him if he pled guilty.

No one had listened when he’d insisted he was just going to use it to take care of Angel. His Dad was in prison and his mom had a record so they’d acted like he was just a bad apple that hadn’t fallen far from the tree. The prosecuting attorney had even suggested that Benny had taken the money to buy drugs. It had been completely infuriating. Benny had never touched drugs in his life or even wanted to. But they’d had their own theories about what kind of kid Benny was and they hadn’t cared about the real story.

Benny had started to believe it. After all, he could justify it all he wanted, but he had taken the wallet without thinking twice. Sure, maybe the guy he’d stolen from could afford to lose five hundred dollars. But what if he couldn’t? What if he’d saved it up for rent? What if he had been using it to pay for something for his family? What if he’d had a sick kid like Angel? Benny had never considered any of that that. He’d just taken the money like he was entitled to it.

Feeling horrible about what he’d done, Benny had pled guilty and gone to juvie. And now that he was out, he realized he had no idea how to survive on his own. It had been bad enough before but at least when he’d lived at home he’d had a roof over his head.

Benny knew there were shelters he could go to. But he was underage. In the system. The minute they realized it, they’d be making calls, trying to get him back to the foster home he’d escaped from. Or another equally horrible one. He just had to make it a little longer. Just a few more weeks until his birthday when no one could force him to go anywhere or do anything he didn’t want to. Maybe then he’d go to a soup kitchen or homeless shelter and accept a little help. But for now it wasn’t safe.

He still had his car, which was something. Things were bad, but he wasn’t quite ready to sell it. While he had a vehicle, he had some shelter and freedom. Something concrete to hang onto. Something that reminded him he hadn’t hit rock-bottom yet. How long that would last, he didn’t know.

Rock-bottom wasn’t far off. And when he hit that, well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Benny knew there were people out there—men—who would pay for him to do things to them. Or for him to allow them to do things to him. He knew that at some point, if it got bad enough, he wouldn’t have any other choice. But that was a level of desperation he hadn’t quite reached. He didn’t want to be like his mother.

And he didn’t want to do anything illegal and end up like his father. Stealing the wallet was bad enough. Benny was trying so hard to do better. Be better. But it seemed like all the odds were stacked against him. And he was starting to doubt that he had any chance of ever succeeding.