What Lies Beneath

Chapter Five: Wyatt

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be abandoned by those who are supposed to care about you the most? Sadly, one little boy never had to. When Wyatt was six years old his mother left him in a park and never came back.

He spent a week sleeping in the tube slide and during the day he would play in the park with the rest of the little kids. It wasn't until he collapsed of hunger while playing with another young boy that somebody realized that he was all alone.

He was promptly taken to the hospital where he was cared for until they released him into the care of a young nurse.

He was well fed and had a room of his own in the small apartment that the nurse was renting. She never asked him to call her mom, but that didn't stop him from doing so when he turned eight. He loved the woman who had taken him in and cared for him until the day that she died.

You see, the kind young nurse had been all on her own after recently having lost her only family too. When she came across Wyatt in the hospital, she knew that she had to take him in. It only took a couple of days to clear it with the state and the hospital. She even traded out her one-bedroom apartment for a two bedroom.

When Wyatt was ten, the nurse found out that she had a fatal blood condition. It only took a year, after her diagnosis, for her to pass away peacefully in her sleep.

Once again Wyatt was alone.

With the nurse gone and no one left to take care of him, he was put into a boy's home. He mainly kept to himself over the years. Many of the boys came and went. Some were adopted, and some were shipped off to juvie. Needless to say, poor Wyatt did not fit into either of these categories.

Wyatt's quiet and caring nature often brought bullies in by the truckload. Most afternoons he would sit outside on a bench and talk to the animals. He would often pretend that he could hear them talk back to him. He would ask them for advice or tell them about the beatings that he had taken during the day. These conversations were not very helpful in the making friends department.

On the day that he received his letter inviting him to the house, he had just taken the biggest beating yet. He had been walking back to the group home from school when a couple of the other boys who lived at the home surrounded him and began to punch and kick him. Even though he was strong himself, he didn't fight back. Instead he laid on the ground curled up in a ball to protect himself. Wyatt didn't believe that violence met with more violence solved anything.

When the boys got bored, Wyatt picked his bruised and bloodied body off the pavement and limped back to the home.

Luckily it was his turn to check the mail that day so when the letter arrived, he folded and tucked it into his back pocket. He rushed to give the mail to the man in charge of the group home and then he went out back to his favorite spot to open the letter.

As soon as he sat down his furry little friends showed up and surrounded him. In his mind they asked if he was alright. He had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror that was conveniently placed in the entry. His right eye was swollen and turning purple. He had a split lip and cuts all over his body. He looked terrible, but he was excited about the mysterious letter.

In all his years at the group home he had never once received a letter. He was quick to reassure his animal friends that he was indeed alright. He may have been in a lot of pain and possibly had a broken rib or two, but he was overjoyed and excited to read his letter.

Wyatt practically ripped through the thick envelope to read the parchment held within. He tried to be very delicate when unfolding the paper. He wanted to make sure that he didn't rip it in all the excitement. His eyes moved ferociously across the page as he read the words.

He was invited to go to another boy's home located just outside of Connecticut. If he decided to go, they were expecting him at the end of the week. It wasn't the kind of letter he was expecting, though he didn't really know what it was that he had expected. The letter listed an address and had a train ticket inside. Unsure of what it was that he just read, he reread the letter until his eyes began to burn.

It seemed strange to him that he would be invited to go to another group home, especially since he was seventeen and only had a year left. Though, he couldn't deny the fact that he felt happy that someone wanted him, even if it was only for a year.

The decision to go was easier than he had originally thought it would be. All he had to do was breath to remember the pain that living at his current group home had caused him to know that he wanted to leave. The only problem was the people in charge. He didn't want to tell them that he was leaving because what if they tried to stop him? He didn't know how transfers worked, but what he did know was that he had a ticket for a train leaving at six o'clock and he wasn't going to miss it.