Orphan

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What the hell did I think was going to happen? I heard a dog bark as I trudged towards my house. Blood ran down the pavement. My blood. Eyes peered out of houses and stared into the gash on my forehead. I could barley see. Tomorrow was going to be a bad day.
I hated walking around the poor part of town in the dark. Eyes. Eyes were everywhere, and always staring at me. Even animals hated me. I shoved the rusted steel plate that served as the door to my house. My house, no one else's. I heard a little rustle and saw Claws come out to greet me. Claws is the most respected cat in the country. His ears are chewed up, he's got gashes in his grey fur all over him, and I don't think his left eye works, but he's never lost a fight. The only person he doesn't feel he has authority to is me. And I love him. At least he understands me. I'd never abandon him the way my parents abandoned me. The way they just disappeared and left me for dead. But somehow with a combination of the soup kitchen around the corner and the free salad lunch at school I survive. That doesn't mean I'm not picked on though. If you're mad you punch me, if you're sad you compare yourself to me. So what did I think was going to happen? I'm the freak of the school god dammit.
Tonight was the grade 12 Valentine's day dance. Every year I'm the one who sits on the sidelines watching. I'm the one who's always alone. But I always come, and this year I noticed someone else was alone.
Karina, the popular girl, was sitting without a date on the sidelines. I don't know what came over me, but for the first time at a dance, I got brave. And I asked her.
Adults always tell me to follow my dreams, but it's rather hard to do that when when you try, you get stabbed in the forehead with a butter knife. That's what I get for rolling my dreams. I was just an idiot. By tomorrow the whole school will know and I'll be that laughing stalk of everyone. What will the teachers do? Laugh with everyone else.


Claws, as usual, wakes me up. He's like an alarm clock, and he always wakes me up a six. I change to my other pair of closes and head off on the 2 hour walk to school. I would ride the bus, but then eventually someone would find out that I had no parents, and I'd be abducted into an orphanage. That's the one life I'll NEVER have.
At school, as I suspected, I get little fake paper knives thrown at me all day. It's just another way to tease me. It's a hard hard hard day. My head throbs the whole while from the messy blood Wound that I carefully concealed under my hair.
Wrestling. The sport that brings me the most humiliation. At 67 pounds, I don't fit into anyone's weight class so I have to wrestle the gym teacher's 6 year old. He always beats me. There's a hand made book in the library by our gym teacher with dramatic stories about every single one of my loses. I don't think life can get worse than wrestling season.
By the end of the day I've got enough paper knives to make a fire tonight. It'll only last a few minutes, but in my little metal shack it'll be the only warmth I have. Plus it'll make Claws happy.


Friday night. The weekend. Most people love the weekend, but for me it's just as hard as school. See, Friday night, and all of the weekend I work as a table cleaner at a starbucks. Makes me enough money to pay the monthly $20 school lunch fee. I hate my job, but it's the only way to make money so I do it.
"erg"! I wince as I get a small cut from shoving the metal plate aside to get into my house. It's midnight and I'm so tired that I just drop to the ground without changing into my night clothes. "Next month I'm going to skip lunch and buy a blanket" I mutter to myself. I say that every month, but I'm worried about getting any skinnier than I already am. For me, dying wouldn't really matter. Life doesn't matter too much for me as it's so bad. But I live for claws. I live to keep him happy. It's very cold tonight.
Bright light wakes me up. 5:30 am. I swear as I realize I'm going to be late! I work 6am-12 pm Saturday's and Sundays at 20¢ an hour at the starbucks. It barely buys me lunch, but I put up with it. I scrape myself again as I sprint out the door. "Maybe I should buy a real alarmclock instead of my stupid salad lunch at school." Naw, I think as my stomach gives a hungry growl. I haven't eaten for 18 hours and won't eat for another 19.


What a way to get humiliated. As I sat on the gravel floor of my shack that I call a house Claws seemed almost sympathetic as I told him about my day. We watched a documentary called 'It's great to be me'. It was all about loving the life you have and so on. Cheesy stuff like that. The whole film was like a slap in the face. But that slap became a ***** slap when after it the teacher said this. "So think, it's great to be yourself. I mean think, you could be him." I was rather confuse until I realized he was talking about me. But before I could duck out of the room everyone understood the joke and started laughing at me.
"I don't understand why everyone has to be like this to me. Why do I keep living? Why claws? Why?" He looked up at me with those beautiful round blue eyes as if saying, "Me, genius." "Hmph. Very funny." I muttered as I rolled over to go to sleep. Claws made a startled yowl and jumped away as I landed on his tail. Before I could see of he was alright I drifted off to sleep.


I couldn't open my eyes. I was choking. Claws was yowling. I screamed. The pain was unbearable as I grabbed a sharp metal rod and sliced my left eye. My vision was red with blood, but it was open. Then I realized why I was choking. Smoke was everywhere. Smoke and fire. A saw some kids from school screech off in there beat-up truck. They had thrown a burning two by four into my home and anything flammable was ablaze. Claws's yowling abruptly stopped as a piece of rusted metal fence tipped over and fell on him, slicing him in half. "NO!!!" I screamed, but there was nothing I could do. My cat was dead, and I was actively dying. I collapsed. I had failed. When Claws needed me most I had failed him. He was dead ad there was nothing left for me to keep the will to live. I was accepting his fate. But that didn't mean it was any less painful to watch chunks of fur and blood to evaporate and burn up in the colossal inferno of my home. Why? Why did it have to end this way? Why? I stared to cry.


Heat was everywhere. Unbearable heat. For the first time in my life, I wished I had my parents. I wanted them, badly. But all of a sudden waves of freshness, almost like cold air or water, spread over my face.
I woke up with a jolt. Claws was licking my face, telling me it was time for school. It was all a dream!!! "Claws!" I cried out and hugged him. Of course Claws did not enjoy the life being squeezed out of him. It probably hurt his dignity. But I didn't care. He was alive! There was no fire! No eye-wound! Everything was going to be alright! I was purely overjoyed. So overjoyed that I rolled over and lay there laughing and blessing myself for being alive. My situation may not be the best one, but I AM alive, and I have Claws, so everything will be alright.
But my situation would be a lot better if I was on time to school. My stomach gave a sick lurch as I heard the clock ring out. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!! Eight rings. My mind was whizzing as I calculated what that meant. "Class starts in five minutes, and it takes me two hours to walk there, one and a half to run..." I was thinking out loud now. That means I'll miss my first class and be late to my second I realized with horror. This was going to be a bad day. By the time I remembered to change my clothes I was halfway down the block. That was wasting ten more minutes! "Dammit." I muttered to myself.


"What do you think you're doing!?!?!?" "I don't know sir." I mumbled in response to my teacher. "You missed your last class and you're late to mine! You're holding up the class right as we speak. What do you have to say for yourself? And don't give me any of that 'sir ******** because it doesn't help!" "I'm sorry." I said, very quietly. "Say it to the class, late-boy." He shot back. "I'm sorry for disrupting you guys." "And don't forget it jerkface!" someone yelled back.
This was the first time all year I'd been late, but when I do anything wrong, EVERYBODY jumps on me. It wasn't even really my fault. Well, I guess I can't really go around blaming Mr. Sandman either.
Now that I'm walking home and I think about it, my day wasn't really much worse than my normal day. That didn't stop me from sleeping with Claws that night though.

Saturday. I got to work 30 minutes early. I had a good sleep and was rather cheerful when I got into the StarBucks. There was a sign on the wall that read
'Employee of the year'. I snorted with laughter when I saw it. Employee of the year. I was the only one here who had worked for a full year. It was such a failure that it somehow made me even more joyful than I already was that morning! "Hello Oliver." I friendly voice said as I started to warm up the steamer. I whirled around and a saw a man standing at the counter, with a to-go cup in his hand. "Congrats man." He said cheerfully and clapped me on the back. I stumbled backwards and crashed into the bean grinder. Who was this creep? "How do you know my name?!?" I yelled to him. I was trying to be intimidating, but my voice came out frail and frightened. "Woa, chill out dude, I saw it on the employee of the year notice!" Then it sunk in. I WAS the only person to have been here a full year. I had won! "You have the same wild curled blond hair as in the photograph so I assumed it was you!" He said, as he took out a laptop and sat down. "And by the way, can I get a tall decaf?" I just stood there looking blankly at the sign. $50 dollar reward. $50!!! That was enough cash for a blanket AND a new set of clothes! I was in the best mood I'd ever had in years. "Yo, did you ugh... hear me, bro?" The customer asked over the theme song of his computer login. "Yeah yeah!" I said gayly as I stared to hum. I don't know what it was that I was humming, but it was happy, and I was happy so it was good enough!