TAKEN: From a Prisoner to a star

19 (part 3)

"He loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print."

― Arthur Koestler

FLASH BACK JAY POV:

Sometimes life is shit, I've learned that now. The older I get the easier it is to understand why there are so many fucked up people in this world, I understand that life isn't as easy as it seems. For me that's a big deal because my life didn't start easy, I always knew that there was shit going on but now it's different. At 16 years old I think you realise that everything you become when you're an adult is based upon everything you do now. Your mistakes. How hard you work. What you commit to. What you aspire to be. Everything. What the fuck am I doing? 

I sat outside the house on the wooden steps looking out onto the street in front of me. Don't think the view is anything special, just the homes of the other families who live on the street and the road itself. The sky wasn't anything special either, more grey than blue. Some clouds. 

I fucked up, I really fucked up this time. 

We all make mistakes right? That's what everyone said to me as I grew up, Uncle Curtis would tell me it's not the mistake that counts but how you react to it. Will you learn? Hide? Grow? What will you do? But that's all bull shit because it's all easier said than done. I feel like shit, just like the street and the sky I wasn't anything special. I had never done anything special with my life. I was never going to be anything special to anyone. I knew it. I wasn't good looking. I wasn't particularly smart. I wasn't popular. I wasn't kind. Or caring. Or captivating. I wasn't beautiful on the inside or the outside. I wasn't worth much to anyone  but my family but that wasn't by choice. It was obligation. 

"What you thinkin' 'bout?" Uncle Curtis' voice came from behind me, I didn't bother look back at him but instead I sat facing the road more before I felt his hand on my shoulder. "You can talk to me Shawn, you know that" I turned and looked up at him, he was still in his pyjamas and holding a plate in his free hand as he smiled down at me. He then sat down next to me placing the plate between us and I looked down at it to see  a cupcake with the icing poorly piped on it. The icing was a blend of Orange and red placed on top of the small cake and a small white chocolate star on the top. 

"what's this?" I asked looking down at the cake he had obviously tried to pipe himself and chuckling slightly at his attempt. 

"People generally like cake, I thought you might want one. I put the star on top and everything, I even used blending colours. Your favorite" He pushed the plate toward me gently and gave me a weak smile. He wasn't the best smiler in the world but that just made his genuine smile all the more important to me. I had to admit that Curtis had his good moments, around me he rarely had bad ones but I knew of his bad moments. I knew about the way he was treating a lot of people, I knew about what he did and I did it with him, I knew he did a lot of bad shit but he wasn't an all bad person. Not to me anyway, I'll never know- maybe he really is horrible and I'm just falling for an illusion but if truth be told I'd rather fall for an illusion and love him as the man I look up to, than know the truth and hate him as the man I've been forced to live with, the man who controls me. "Go on, I promise I didn't poison it. I'd never do that to you" He chuckled but these jokes didn't ever make me laugh, he had poisoned someone before, he had shot someone, beat someone, killed many, attacked, robbed, everything. 

"Thanks" I said as I picked up the cupcake a peeled the case off it wanting to hurry and get to it's fluffy core. I did really like cake, before coming to Uncle Curtis' house we didn't have cake very often. We couldn't afford it. My mom would sometimes bake a cake on our birthday if we were lucky but it never had Icing on it. We knew she couldn't buy all the ingredients regularly to bake a cake because we were struggling. She had bills to pay, food to buy, children she needed to look after. Baking wasn't at the top of her list but then when I came here Curtis had made sure that I had everything I wanted and cake was one of those things. Every so often he would also call up one of those cake places and get a custom made cake and send it home to my mom and sisters and Eric, I thought that was nice of him. He didn't need to do that but he did and even on my birthday when I invited no one and just called my mom for the day Curtis and I would watch movies and eat cake.