Excavate

Worthless

When Riley woke up the next day, he felt hollow, like a withered husk of himself. His eyes were sore and swollen and dried tears flaked away when he opened them.

The first thing he noticed upon waking up was the quietness. Living in a house with five other people, which included two pre-teens and a toddler, there was hardly a moment when silence could break through the constant chatter, playful yelling, children's television shows, video game sounds, clarinet rehearsal, and toys singing nursery rhymes.

He could make out a bird tweeting and a lawn mower whirring in the distance. And that was it.

Confusion settled over him like a thick fog. Why was it quiet? Sun shone through the windows, bright and high enough in the sky that no one would be asleep at this time.

Riley unfurled himself from the huddled position he'd cried himself to sleep in the night before. His body creaked in protest and he struggled to lift himself off the floor.

Still blinking the sleep from his eyes, he nearly gasped as the previous night's hell, both physically and emotionally collided with each other, and then into him like a cold, unforgiving wave of unpleasantness. His mother's harsh words sliced through him like a white hot blade.

"I warned you about being violent in my home Riley. Anything else and you are GONE. I don't care what Child Services or the police have to say about it."

Last night, in an attempt at self-preservation, he'd kept those words at a distance, focusing on anything but what it meant that she'd leveled that threat against him. But now, all he could do was dissect them, to pick them apart as they wormed through his brain like a parasite, latching onto thoughts and memories and feeding on them, leaving them patchy, frayed, and yellowed.

It seemed like his mother knew what both Child Protective Services and the authorities would say about it if she were to give him up, leave him, however that would happen... and the only way she would know that is if she'd already tried to take that option.

Riley inhaled sharply at the unexpected clarity that hit him with the same impact as one of his father's kicks to the ribs.

She never wanted you here. She didn't want to take you. She never wanted you at all. If she had any other choice, she wouldn't have come back for you. She didn't come back because she wanted you. But you already knew that. It isn't like she rolled out the red carpet for you.

Riley wallowed in the misery of realizing finally what a forced arrangement this was, living with his mom and her family. It was one thing to live with the mother that abandoned him at five-years old and hoping that things between them would get better the more they got to know each other. It was an entirely different thing to realize just how unwanted he was, just how unwelcome his presence was. To realize that his mother, if given any other option, would have left him to rot, abandoned and utterly alone.

Blinking back the tears that stung the raw, red skin around his eyes, Riley accepted the lesson that had been forcefully taught in the days and weeks after his mom had walked out on him initially. It was something that he'd known all along, really, and he chastised himself for forgetting in the time following his hospitalization. The lesson that had kept him alive when he realized how alone he was, and that just because he had parents, it didn't mean that they would love him or take care of him.

You have to take care of yourself Riley.

Fortified by solemn determination, Riley clenched his jaw and stood up, ignoring the excruciating pain that rang through his entire body. He wouldn't rely on his mom to take care of his needs anymore. It was unfair of him to force her to do that when he could do it himself.