PROLOGUE
VICTOR
17 years ago
“Like this, Victor?”
I smile a little as Toby presses his pencil harder against the piece of paper, dragging the dull lead toward the bottom line before lifting it to make another mark across the top.
I watch him move next to theT, writing an unevenoon the blue line. “Just like that.”
The eleven-year-old boy smiles wide as he finishes spelling his name, a sense of accomplishment and pride shining in his dark blue eyes as he looks up at me. A look I only recently came to understand.
Before I came to St. Pat’s Home for Wayward Boys, I had no idea what any emotion outside of anger or fear looked like.
I’d seen anger on my mother’s face, heard it in her voice, felt it every time she took my father’s belt to my backside. I saw it in him too; anger—so much rage it was blinding. Whenever he’d use his fists toteach us a lesson—one we never forgot but still had to learn on a daily basis, that’s when he showed us who he really was. Anger is something I’m all too familiar with, and it always followed a level of fear that no one should ever experience; fear that should never be caused by the two people who created you from an act they had complete control over.
And when that fear turned into pure, unfiltered terror,that’swhen the anger I saw every single day from the time I was old enough to understand it became my own.
I became rage incarnate that day and I’ve never looked back since.
“Shoot,” Toby whispers at my side, my gaze shifting from his profile to the lined paper where he erases quickly. “I messed up ther.”
“That’s ok. That's why they make erasers. Try it again.”
My little brother nods as he looks at the line two spaces above where he’s writing, studying his full name spelled out in my best attempt at making it clear enough for him to copy. And as I watch Toby struggle with such a simple task, watch him get frustrated over the difficulty he’s having with the lowercase letter in our last name, anger flares to life inside of me once again.
It shouldn’t be like this.
Toby is eleven, he’selevengoddamn years old, and he shouldn’t have any trouble with reading or writing at this age.
I didn’t.
I had no trouble at all when I was in fifth grade.
But it’s not fair to compare the two of us, not even a little, since what happened to my brother was something he didn’t ask for.
Neither of us asked for any of the treatment we received, and I never understood why it was only everours.
For some reason, one that is still unknown to me, our father never laid one finger on our mother. They’d fight, sure. Have screaming matches at all hours of the day and night that prevented us from sleeping and kept us walking on eggshells when we were awake, but he never so much as tapped our mom on the shoulder let alone beat her the way he did us.
And maybe that’s why.
Maybe our dad didn’t hit our mom because he was too busy beating the shit out of us.
Maybe Ezra Crow never hit his precious Judith because she gave him two sons he could abuse instead. Two sons she beat just as ruthlessly, just as relentlessly, as he did.
But that’s only half of why my brother is still learning to read and write when he should be getting ready to go into the sixth grade.
Our parents didn’t send me to school until I was old enough to understand that I had to keep my mouth shut about what happened at home. I didn’t get to go to school until I knew how to hide the bruises and welts; until I could lie well enough that no one ever asked about the truth. So at the ripe old age of six, I perfected the ability just so I could get out of that hell-hole for a few hours a day.
If I’d have known that leaving would lead to Judith Crow all but bashing my then two-year-old brother’s head in, I never would have done it.
My eyes lift from Toby’s hand to his profile and I can’t help but smile a little wider.
He might have lived enough life for someone three times his age, but there’s such a strong level of innocence—or even ignorance—that my brother has maintained, and part of me envies it while the rest of me admires it. Especially since Toby is so damn cute still, with his head full of chocolate brown curls streaked in blonde throughout the messy mop, his bed head still in full swing. And with his dark brows furrowed, his button nose scrunched in concentration, his cherub cheeks tinted pink with his frustration. Toby’s tongue is between his teeth as he tries his hardest to scrawl his name on the paper in front of him and I can’t help but smile because he really is such a cute kid.
Aside from our eyes and the four year age gap, we look nearly identical.
