Hunger

Austin: Hunger

It has been a day and a half since I left Rory, and I'm fighting hard to forget her. That's what I need to do, just forget I met her. Stay low like I planned. Hide out. But my mind drifts back to her, like she's a river current in my head, and I can't swim against it. I can't do anything but drown in it.

To distract myself I'm up late reading more of the letter I found sewed inside my stuffed rabbit. Nikki must have written it right after Emmie was born, judging from the things she mentions. That means she knew she was giving me up and this was her only chance to tell me anything without Ray knowing. I bet she thought I would find the letter right away since the rabbit was the only possession that mattered to me, but she's never asked me if I found it. She's never mentioned it at all.

The pages-long letter is almost like a diary. She talks about my dad, how he was very young and messed up. He was on drugs, and he shot himself in the head before he knew I existed. "I know this is probably a lot to take in, Austin. You probably wished for a different story about your father, but there it is. A short life wasted, leaving only one worthwhile thing behind: you."

But I don't wish for a different story about my father. Even when I was little I didn't wish for any father at all. I thought if I had one, he would be like Ray, only he'd look like me which would be even more horrifying. A doppelgänger from hell. I never imagined a super hero dad swooping in to save me. I knew that I would always have to be the one to save me.

Nikki gave birth to me in a bathroom at a gas station. All alone. No family, nothing. She wanted to throw me away, that's what she said. She wanted to throw me in the trash. Then she met Ray through a friend, and he offered her what she needed most: a sense of security. I guess I escaped the garbage truck by a stroke of "luck" but I refuse to accept that I'm alive because of Ray.

"I was a sucker for those pretty bad boys. The fucked up, damaged boys. The ones I thought I could save. They had me whipped without ever having to speak to me. It's like this complex I had. I just kept thinking I could save them, love them back to life," she writes.

It sucks when you start to see things from your enemy's perspective, because your rage doesn't feel so righteous anymore. It sucks even worse when you start to see yourself in them, start to understand them in some way.

I'm sure Nikki didn't wake up one day and think, "Damn, I wanna be a tweaked out whore at the mercy of a vicious sociopath who rents my son to pedos! How do I get started?" But that's what happened. It's hard to imagine the string of horrible choices that led to her fate. Why didn't she stop herself from making any one of those choices? Was she stupid? Was she broken? I mean, what? What the fuck, Nikki? Why? I'll never have those answers, and I really hate her for that. I guess she thinks this is the best she can offer: the cold truth.

Nikki's truth has complicated things. Mostly because it has thrown a wrench into the waters of my silent, placid lake of hate for that woman. It has disturbed me to my core because her life has been so like mine: growing up alone, abused, unwanted, but rejecting help and kindness when it was offered. Choosing the pain.

I like to tell myself I'm not choosing the pain. I'm just trying to make a life for me and Pixie. But if that's true, why can't Rory be in it? Why can't I call up Nancy and Riley and see how they're doing? Why can't I call Nikki and make sure she's alive? What am I so afraid of?

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It's three more weeks before I give in and go visit Rory at The Natural Way. Getting work has been much harder since I broke my rib. A lot of the stuff I could do before is impossible now. I can't carry anything heavy, I can't move fast, I can't climb, and even just walking is painful. I've been doing a lot more panhandling because of it, but it's slow going, and most of what I make has to go to food and gas.