Lonely Hearts

Chapter three: Lincoln

Here's something no one knows about the care home: there's always some hierarchy. Though I have never been able to understand it. All I knew was that I didn't seem to fit anywhere.

There were old schoolers who had been in the system for years and knew all the tricks. All the secrets. The ones who were either really helpful or really obnoxious.

There were the hardball kids. Mostly teenagers but some tweens as well. The ones who had thick files and no manners and bad habits.

Then there were the newbies. All the kids who came in and cried for their parents or got frightened by the older kids or drawn into their world of drugs and fights and alcohol.

Me? I was in all of them at once and none of them at all. I could out-drink some of the hardballs one day and cry for my mum with the newbies the next. No one could place me. And that was how I liked it.

Everyone knew not to mess with me though. I could be charming when I wanted to be but if you pissed me off, you'd better run. That's what Marvin said.

I was unknowable. That's what my file said. Lincoln: unknowable. Inconsistent. Doesn't show a simple pattern of behaviour. 

I wondered what a simple pattern of behaviour looked like. Weren't teenagers typically unpredictable?

I pulled out my sister's letter with a smile, reading it over and over again. It was two years old but I still kept it in the box where I kept all her letters. I liked to read it and hear her voice in my head whilst I did so.

I held the paper to my nose, breathing in the faint but sweet scent of vanilla perfume. Was it still her favourite? Did Max wear it too? Did they style each others hair and do each others make-up and tell secrets like any normal pair of sisters? Did they ever think of me?

"What've you got there, Lincoln?" A voice made me turn around and clench my hands into fists.

"What do you want, Darren?" I asked.

He laughed.

"I just wanted to see how my favourite enemy is doing." He said, white teeth flashing like a shark's.

Darren was the one of the oldest kids in the home, and definitely one of the scariest. He'd been in custody for any number of things, drinking, fighting, drugs. No one is quite sure how he got out of prison but somehow he always ends up back in the care home, with warnings and trackers that got discarded at the nearest possible opportunity.

He was also super cute. At least, according to the girls anyway. There was usually a gaggle nearby drooling over him, though he never seemed interested in any of them. Celebrities rarely associated with their fans.

He reached to snatch the paper out of my hands and I danced away from him, folding the page up carefully and using sleight-of-hand to make it disappear.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." I said, softly.

"Oh yeah?" He challenged.

"Oh yes." I said. "You're not as tough as you think."

"How would you know anything about it, Mama's boy?"

He set his shoulders and I did the same, aware that children were nudging each other and watching us. He's about to do it again. The whispers spread through the room and I flexed my fingers, watching as he eyed me challengingly.

"So what are you going to do about it?" He asked, gently.

I smiled, studying his body language as he raised a hand to strike. I blocked his fist and kicked his ankles. A hand shooting out to strike his stomach so he collapsed onto the floor in pain as Charlie and Fred pulled me away from him.