Hunger

Austin: Lawless

I did not want to love Pixie. In fact, I convinced myself I hated her when she was born.

I didn't want to love Nancy and Riley either, but it happened anyway.

Love is lawless.

People think you can choose who you love.

You can't.

While living with Nancy and Riley, I still hoarded food, money and anything else that was given to me. Riley found my stash of crackers, cereal, granola bars and soda cans under the bed, and she asked me about it. I told her I got hungry at night, but I didn't even eat that stuff, not really. Nancy and Riley fed me anytime I wanted to eat, but I just needed to know it was there. Not having it made me feel panicky.

I had stashes of secret stuff all over the house, things that I hoarded because they were important to me. It was comforting.

With Mom and Ray, anything that was mine was actually Ray's, and he could take it anytime he wanted to. If he didn't feel like giving me food, I didn't eat. If he didn't feel like buying me new shoes, I wore the ones that were too small for me even if my feet hurt. And if he sensed that I loved something, like a toy, he would use it to hurt me. That was why I didn't have a lot of toys. He'd destroyed most of them. I kept the rabbit because I pretended to hate it, even though it was my only comfort, my only friend, for many years. I pretended it was a stupid little kid's toy and I wouldn't care if it was gone. That's the only reason I still have that rabbit. I learned early on that showing love for anyone or anything just opened a door for more pain. I found out you can hide love pretty easily, but you can't un-feel it.

Nancy and Riley were so kind to me I couldn't help loving them. I felt like they understood me on some level. Even though I was pretty sure they didn't know about my life before them, they seemed to know how to help me anyway.

"It gets better," Riley told me one night after I had a nightmare.

She'd come into my room to wake me up because I was screaming, and she stayed there with me for a couple of hours. I didn't let them touch me, so she just sat next to me on the bed.

"What gets better?" I asked.

"Being afraid all the time," she said.

"What are you afraid of?" I asked.

"Now?" She laughed softy and shook her head. "I guess I'm just afraid of losing everything that took the fear away in the first place. But back then, I was afraid of everything. Everyone. I thought every person just wanted to hurt me. I felt like a mouse, and everyone else was a cat."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I had never met another mouse," she said, and she looked at me with a smile that told me she knew I felt the same way.

"Was Nancy your mouse?" I asked.

"Sure. But not just her. Lots of other people once I let them in. In fact, most people. I realized that even though my world was full of cats, the actual world was the other way around. It took a long time to see that. It's hard when all the people you know are cats. It's hard when people hate you just for being alive or for being who you are. Especially when those people are supposed to love you."

"Yeah," I said.

"Just remember this one thing, Austin. The cats might be bigger, but there are more mice. A lot more."

"I'll try to remember," I said.

By the time Pixie was born a year later, when I was twelve, Nancy and Riley were talking about wanting to adopt me. Nancy had just gotten her counseling degree and she'd found a job in Missouri. They wanted to adopt me and take me there with them. And God I wanted that too.

But fear.

But the solid, immovable block of pitch black fear told me I would lose them the second I loved them too much.

It made me tell them I couldn't. It made me tell them I wanted to stay near my mom and little sister, and they understood since Pixie had just been born and everything, but I know it hurt their feelings. I let them go. Riley said the fear would get better, but it hadn't. It was still bigger than me. It was bigger than love.