Losing Control : His Madness, His Cure Chapter 81

Nate’s voice cuts through the thin walls like a drill...off-key, loud, and so full of life it feels obscene. I bury my face deeper into the pillow, groan low, then drag my arm over my eyes. Every damn note ricochets in my skull. I should kick him out. I’ve been close to it since the moment he walked through my door with that stupid grin. It's been what...Three hours? Four? Too fucking long!

I’ve always preferred living alone. Always. Silence is oxygen, space is the only thing I learned to want and not apologize for. When you spend your childhood crammed into rooms with strangers, with "brothers" you never got to choose, you start to understand how holy solitude is. Personal space becomes sacred.

But right now, I can’t get it. Nate’s laughter, his singing, his goddamn pounding footsteps when he jumps around in the shower, it all drags the past closer than I want it to be. And when I close my eyes, when I try to sink back into sleep, that old memory claws its way up again. One I never asked for. One that refuses to fade like the rest.

I told Xander I couldn’t remember most of the places I grew up, and it wasn’t a lie. They blur together...cheap carpets, peeling paint, hands that were too quick to hit, smiles that were too slow to be trusted. But there’s one house that never dissolves. One that stuck.

I can smell it first. Mildew and burnt toast. The kind of air that made you feel like you’d suffocate if you sat still too long.

It had been about five years since they pulled me out of the orphanage. Five years of being passed around like a bad dollar bill no one wanted to keep. Different towns, different houses, different rules. But it never really changed. The walls were always beige or gray, the air always thick with whatever fake kindness the state thought could patch a kid back together.

I hated every second of it. Hated the parents who smiled too much and the ones who never looked me in the eye. Hated the kids who’d been there long enough to carve their names into the walls, like it meant something permanent. I hated everyone. But I couldn’t even say it out loud....didn’t know how. So I buried it. Sat in the shadows, quiet, silent until days went by without me opening my mouth once.

I watched, instead. People. Things. The way a drip ran down a windowpane, the way a hand twitched when someone lied. Anything that wasn’t me, anything that could distract me from the hollow pit my life was.

I was thirteen when they shipped me off to another house. Not much different from the others. Three other kids lived there already. Two girls, both sixteen, sharp-tongued and restless. They talked back to the foster mom, had jobs, had friends on the outside. They already had one foot out the door.

And then there was the boy. Andrew. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a year younger than me. And sad.

God, he looked sad.....

Not the kind of sad you can shake off with a joke or a distraction. No, this was marrow-deep, carved into him. I recognized it right away. That raw, gnawing loneliness that only another outcast can spot. The same thing I saw staring back at me in mirrors, in window reflections, every damn day.

We didn’t talk at first. Weeks went by. Same room, same school, but we stayed orbiting on opposite sides of that silence. Him lost in his world, me in mine. I thought it would stay that way, until the day I saw him on the ground at school, curled in on himself while a pack of kids went at him.

He didn’t fight back, not once. He just crouched, shoulders tight, taking every blow like he’d been born for it. And then he looked up, just for a second, our eyes met. And I swear....there was nothing in his. Just this void, bottomless and cold.

It pissed me off. Maybe because it looked too much like me. Maybe because seeing it outside myself made it unbearable. I don’t know, but I moved.

I threw myself at those kids like I had a chance, like I knew how to fight. I didn’t. I’d never been in one. First punch I landed was sloppy, second one missed. They knocked me down, kicked me in the ribs, split my lip open. We both got dragged through it, him and me.

And we lost. Bad.

But afterward...blood in my mouth, knuckles aching, lungs on fire, I caught him looking at me different. Not with that emptiness anymore. There was something else, something small, like a match trying to strike in the dark.

We walked home together that day, limping, bloodied and silent. Not much to say with split lips and swollen ribs. The air between us was heavy, but not uncomfortable anymore.

The foster mom was pissed when she saw us. Thought we’d gone looking for a fight, like pain was something we chased for fun. She shouted, waved her hands around, then told us to wash up before we “bled all over her floor.” One of the older girls patched us up. Not gentle, but not cruel either. She didn’t ask questions. None of them did.

The foster mum, she was tolerable. I’d had worse. Didn’t mean she cared, but at least she didn’t go out of her way to break us down. Her boyfriend though… he was something else. Mean in his bones, a drunk who carried spite like a second skin. He had those restless eyes that never looked at you, always through you. Like he was trying to decide if you were worth the effort of his hate. When he smiled, which was rare, it never reached his face. Just his teeth.

Andrew was the one who broke the silence between us. One morning, while I cursed at my books because I hadn't done the stupid homework, he slid his across the table and muttered, “Copy if you want.”

That was it. Simple, but it cracked something open. After that, we talked. First about nothing...school, the shitty food, kids we didn’t like. Then more. He started saving stories for me, the way I did for him.