Pyromaniac.

4. illegal activities and flushed faces.

(Amphetamine by Smino)

|4.| illegal activities and flushed faces.

Eviction.

Mom wasn't home, again, and Oliver was out picking out some shit for a date he'd had with his fiancé, I didn't know people who were serious about each other still dated or cared about how they looked for that matter, but he'd droned on and on the night before while we were playing video games... or, he was playing them and I was bored in the house by myself.

Since when did he play video games anyways? But that didn't matter, he was gone planning some candlelit dinner by the lake and I'd got the mail. Thumbing through a few envelopes, all I'd seen was bills until my eyes caught a letter that seemed pretty urgent. In bright red lettering, final notice was printed and I found myself carefully opening it.

There wasn't much for me to do and figuring this out before it stressed her out wasn't the worst waste of my time. There were too many problems my mother had to deal with no and I could at least make sure that this problem wasn't too big. Pealing the glue softly, I pulled it open gently making sure not to rip it, she'd be pissed if she saw it ripped.

I'd remembered years prior where my mother had caught Oliver thumbing through our medical bills. She had been so angry that he noticed, his mental issues costing us a bit much and it was pretty expensive with all the extensive research needed. She was ashamed on how many times they had sent out notices and after yelling at him so much that he had left the house and spent time elsewhere. Inked became his hideout whenever he disappointed her from then on and she ended up crying her eyes out when she thought we were all asleep.

I wasn't ready to hear her crying over something like this, as selfish as that sounded.

NOTICE TO TERMINATE THE TENANCY
To: Clara Elizabeth Remmer
and all others occupying the property.

Skimming through it, my eyes caught the reasoning, my heart sinking. It felt like everything was pulled from under me, all the stability, everything and in a blink of an eye, we were worse off than before.

• • •

"Let me get this straight, you need money?"

Parker chuckled, looking down and eyes meeting my shoes before trailing back up to my face, almost as if he were sizing me up. That made me uncomfortable, as did the way he rolled his eyes afterwards and leant back on the bench of a basketball court downtown. "Well, yeah."

"Look around, white boy." I had to admit, at first... I was slightly offended at the nickname. Of course, when I realized that he literally grew up on the side of town that people who looked like me would make fun of... when I realized how me living in the suburbs made it seem like I was mocking him, it brought me down a few rungs on the self-pity ladder.

You could tell Parker wasn't a huge fan of where he lived although he didn't really look like he belonged there. The city didn't care to invest in keeping this side of town clean and the people inside didn't necessarily have the funds to move out and really, hanging out with Emerson's little product of a boyfriend did teach me a lot about how unfair it was that people that looked like Parker were initially placed here and told to figure things out.

But really, I wasn't getting anywhere if I tried to show my remorse for that, Parker didn't know me and I could tell he wouldn't care about me sobbing over the hand he was unfairly dealt. Instead, I kept looking at him and waited as he fished a blunt out his pocket and went to light it. "I ain't the person to ask." My palms itched as I watched him spark a flame and burn the tip, sucking the smoke into his mouth before holding and exhaling.