Fourteen

GIDEON

“I THOUGHT I was going to die,” I continue. “He wants to kill me. when he sees that I’m awake, though, he stumbles back and begins to cry. He was begging… apologizing… and if he cared about me before, right at that moment it was just pure terror in there. He thinks I’m a spawn of the devil, but he knew I was a good kid. He knew I saved his son that day. And yet, he thought if he didn’t kill me first I’m going to kill his family.”

She gulps. “You left?”

“I ran away before morning,” I say. “I was scared… but they… he… was going to commit murder because he was more scared. It wasn’t the first time people got scared of me and I manage to avoid something like that situation before. But he’s… they’re especially kind than others before. I feel it was all my fault.

“Since then, I couldn’t sleep in a house with others in there for a long while. I slept in abandoned houses, managed to slip my way here and there. Until I was collected back into the system again after a few months of livin