Before I Ran || Perrentes

Chapter 7: Pope, Dawson, Merrick

Tony woke slowly the next morning, and he was extremely confused for a moment. It took him a while to remember he wasn't in his room at home - he was in Phoenix, Arizona, and the smell of bacon cooking was wafting in under the door.

Sunlight crept in through the window and glowed gently behind the drawn curtains. The room was silent, and it was warm, and Tony exhaled ever so slowly, letting the world stop around him, savouring the last dregs of his dream, which was already starting to fall away, the details vanishing as quickly as they had been formed. He turned over and lay on his back with the blankets pulled up to his chin, and he let himself think for a while, the soft smell of the candle still lingering, although it was no longer burning.

Phoenix, Arizona. Not even a week ago he was still working in the coffee shop. In not too long at all, he would be living in Veil Hill, disappeared to the rest of the world, wiped off the map. Forever. And oddly, that wasn't bothering him. What was there for him to care about back in California, after all? It wasn't like he was breaking the hearts of a devoted family, or leaving a whole host of friends wondering his whereabouts...

His brain briefly ticked to his internet friends. He'd need to find a way to contact them soon. He didn't want to cut them off completely. He'd just need to say goodbye to them first. After all, they weren't exactly his family but they were the closest things to friends he'd had since fourth grade. There was Nina, the Singaporean girl. She was seventeen, loved cats and was a member of the Singapore Red Cross, and very proud of it too. Then there was Kayleigh - Irish. Eighteen. She had ambition to become a concert pianist. After that, there was Hunter. He was Australian and the youngest of the group at sixteen, seventeen in a few months, and he wanted to be a doctor. They'd all been brought together over one common love; Supernatural. As that ticked over in his head, he noted that he should catch up on the latest episode soon. As a group, they'd all agreed to start watching a new series, Stranger Things, together. But perhaps Tony wasn't going to be privy to that group enjoyment.

The next thing he thought about was fourth grade, the last time he had a friend that didn't exist only on a computer screen. He was fairly certain he had a best friend in fourth grade, but he couldn't quite pin his name. Was it Austin? Albert? Alan?...Adam. That was it. His name was Adam. A curly haired boy with glasses and a permanent giggle. He was Tony's best friend. They would go to the park together after school, or they would go to Adam's house. The boy never saw the inside of Tony's house - his parents didn't like to have uninvited guests. From a young age, Tony learned to be streetwise, since he spent a lot of time taking detours to avoid going home. Even at the age of nine or ten, he knew the drill well enough. Go home. Do his homework alone, in his room, so he wasn't bothering anyone. Come down for dinner. Eat dinner at the table in silence - children, of course, were to be seen and not heard. Go upstairs. Do something up there - anything - that didn't involve his parents. On the days that his parents came home late (which were few and far between), Tony would sneak down to the living room and watch cartoons on the TV. That was a luxury. The rest of his time, he was surfing the internet, and he would either be searching for online films and TV series or endlessly researching things that interested him. And when he wasn't doing that, he was reading.

And then he never got to fifth grade. The routine every day was the same; minus the school. Desperate for contact, he remembered sneaking out of the house after his parents left for work and going to the library on his own, picking out new books, having conversations with the librarians. And of course, the moment he stopped going to school, he stopped seeing Adam, so his one friend in the world fell away quicker than Tony could blink. By the time he was fifteen he'd educated himself on a day to day basis, thirsty for knowledge, trying to find out new things all the time with the goal of one day going to college, breaking free of his old life and building his own. At sixteen, he was expected to cook his own meals, and so even the little contact he had with his parents at dinner was snatched from him. They hardly spoke or even looked at Tony, and he realised now that he must have been a disappointment to them. They wanted him to be aggressive. They wanted him to have attitude. They wanted him to fight back, to be stubborn. Tony couldn't do that. He was always just so desperate for some love, some affection, some family that he endlessly obeyed his parents and tried to be an all round good kid. How long, he'd often thought, would he have to be submissive and helpful towards them before they finally accepted him as their son, and not some disappointment that happened to be dropped on their doorstep one day? He'd never thought it was much - but he just couldn't be the son they wanted. He couldn't be anything they wanted. He couldn't even be straight for them.