"Okay, I agree."
"So you see where the trap comes in, Juicy? By the time the average American creates a home that makes them comfortable, they're in debt. My social security check doesn't give me enough to live up to the standards expected of me by society!"
She could see Troy getting passionate about the discussion. She listened without judging. He started counting off on his fingers. "Television isn't good enough, then you need cable or satellite. Telephone is not enough because then you need three-way, call waiting, call forwarding!"
"I hear you. But, Troy, it's your own choice how far you want to get into the...trappings of society."
"How many people do you know, Juicy, that say ‘I can't make my credit card payment, my cable is cut off, a bill collector is calling about my late furniture payment?’ Can I make the decision of how far I will go, or will my desires dictate my needs?" He grimaced. “It’s like those stupid diet drink commercials where they say drink a shake at breakfast and another at lunch then have a sensible dinner. But if you could have a sensible dinner you wouldn’t be fat in the first place, right?!” She was following him but just barely.
Juicy leaned forward. "You're telling me that you'd rather sleep in that boarded up building with the rat droppings and roach carcasses then in your own place? You'd rather be at the mercy of the elements, of criminals, of...disease?"
Troy opened his mouth. "I...I don’t think that I could stand to be trapped. I don’t think I can stand being around too much stuff. I'm okay when I'm crashing in a building, or doorway, or on a cot in a shelter because I can just walk away and leave it all behind. And when it's raining or cold I can stay with friends--I've even used money for a motel for me and a few friends." Troy leaned forward slightly. "Many of my friends on the street aren't broke. They recycle or panhandle or like me, they get social security checks. A lot of street people aren't exactly homeless because they don't know how to get the necessary help. They're on the street because they don't want the help."
"That's how it is with you? You want the streets?"
"Well...I have three grand in the bank. I'm not out there because I have no other choices." And he didn’t even mention the money that he had in Trust. If she knew, she’d call him crazy for sure.
Three grand in the bank?! "God, you are crazy," She said. She had tried to think differently, she really had.
Troy didn't seem angry. "Well...people might say the same about you. You went crazy on me in that alley. Actually, the second time you were there I heard you talking to yourself—I even heard you yelling to yourself. I'm crazy?" He absently waved away her comments. "Maybe. But you are, too."
Juicy made a face and stood up. Troy popped up in front of her. He took hold of her good hand, the one without the cast.
"Don't, Juicy. We can talk without getting mad at each other. I like you...and I just want you to understand me." When she didn't answer he slowly released her hand and took a step away from her. "I guess it doesn't matter." Troy rubbed his hair, ruffling the damp ringlets. Then he shrugged. "There are two worlds. I live in the invisible one and you live in the real one." He raised both palms up in defeat. "Those two worlds don't mix."
Juicy thought before speaking. "I agree with you that there are two worlds, maybe even more. I don't know exactly where I fit in. I'm not really a part of either. Maybe I'm crazy. I guess I am. But I'm trying. I'm trying hard not to judge you. You saved my life-"
"Now you want to save mine?"
She nodded slowly.
Troy secured the fold in his towel then pulled her into his arm. "I don't need to be saved, Juicy, because I'm okay with me."
She closed her eyes and relaxed against Troy's warm body. He squeezed her firmly and carefully nuzzled the side of her head with his chin.
"I can take care of myself..." He paused. "...and if you need me to, I can take care of you, too."
"What does that mean?" She lifted her head quickly to look at him.
He stared at her for a long time before answering. "What do you want it to mean, Juicy?"
"I don't want it to mean anything, Troy." She backed away from him. "I just want to make sure you don't need anything. That's all." She grabbed some change and headed out the door to put his clothes into the dryer.
She thought to herself as she headed down the stairs. Take care of me? The idea wouldn’t easily leave her mind.
When she returned, Troy was sitting at the dining room table waiting for her. "Juicy what happened to you that day that made you so mad? You were almost crying. Why?" She let out a sigh and joined him in the kitchen, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite him.
"I was trying to get a business loan. I had done my research. I had a business plan, but...I didn't qualify for a loan."
"Why didn't you qualify?"
"No job. No security." Juicy felt a spark of anger but it quickly dwindled away. "I was tossed out of the bank for arguing with the loan officer." She sucked air through her teeth. "I have a real bad temper. But I'm trying to control that now." She lightly rubbed her temples.
"How are you feeling; you know, your head?"
"I still have this headachy feeling but not exactly full blown. My back aches. I guess I'm okay, though."
"Well Juicy, don't assume that you're okay just because the hospital released you." Her eyes flashed nervously at him. Quickly he added. "I just mean that you should go visit a doctor soon to have them examine you. I know the hospital didn't do a very good job. They only focused on your head so if your back hurts then it needs to be looked at." He turned his head and looked at the floor. "I-I-I would also c-c-call the police to see if they c-c-caught th-th-the guys that a-ta-ta-TACKed you." Troy panted with the effort to speak those last few words.
"Troy," Juicy frowned. "Why do you get tics and start stuttering when you talk about the police?"
He met her eyes. "I ha-ha-ha..." He sighed. "HAD some bad experiences with the police."
"They hurt you?"
Troy had gotten that distant look in his eyes again. She had come to associate it with him remembering something unpleasant. What she didn’t understand is that it was the absence seizure, and that he wasn’t remembering anything, least of all the worst beaten that he’d ever received in his life, because he was technically unconscious.
CHAPTER 5
It was, without a doubt, the worst beaten that Troy had ever received--and it was at the hands of the police. That night the police had busted in the crackhouse, gathered everyone that hadn’t scattered away like roaches, he had been too slow. And if not for Kelly, he could very well have died as a result.
***
Troy wasn’t even eighteen years old when he’d walked away from his home, his family, and the only security that he had known. He had come from a comfortable, middle class environment. His life, until his departure, was filled with multi player online role playing games; mostly War of Warcraft. A self confessed computer geek, Troy had very few real life friends. School was just a place that he went because he had to go. He wasn’t a good student, but that had less to do with his learning potential and more to do with being diagnosed as bipolar.
His parent’s were much older by the time that he was born. They had already raised a son and daughter to adulthood. So when Troy came along he was not only a surprise, but had issues that they had no idea how to face.
At times he wondered if things would have been better if he would have been an only child. Then their expectations might not have been so high. Maybe then they could have faced his problems with more openness to his desires instead of relying on the doctors to tell them everything that they would come to accept about his condition.
Dad would say, ‘Troy the doctor says that this medicine will not affect your ability to concentrate in school.’ And when his lack of concentration in school became a nuisance he would tell Dad who would just respond with, ‘Well they said it wouldn’t, son. The doctor’s should know.’
‘
Well they are fucking wrong!
’ He’d want to yell in annoyance. But of course he never did. And his mother was no better, perhaps even worse. She didn’t even pretend to understand what the doctor’s were talking about. She would just agree with whatever Dad said. If Dad said that the sky is the ocean then she would probably say, ‘Wow when did that happen?’
Troy had no choice but to get away. But where does a seventeen year old computer geek run away to? He would not go to his sister Lorie’s house because Lorie had two small babies and a husband that looked at him as if he had a contagious disease. Bob, his brother, was always buddy buddy with him. They didn’t have a tight relationship since he was twenty-two years older, but he did put forth an effort.
So that’s where Troy headed. Bob was single and maybe he’d let him crash there and help him to get a job. Of course his brother would probably not allow him to blow off his entire senior year. So Troy was okay with the idea of completing his senior year at his brother’s place. Bob was so much younger than Dad, maybe he could understand what he had tried so hard to tell his parents. The drugs were changing him; making him into an un-person.
They had started him on Ritalin when he was a kid. Then he had stopped running around the house and bounding up and down in class. His parents were older and thought that giving him medicine to calm him would allow them the opportunity to take a break from a boy like him; who one minute was running in circles and then the next was staring blankly into space. Years later when the blank stares, tics and stuttering had become a cause for comment from their friends and from his teachers, they sent him to doctors who diagnosed him as bipolar.
It was the beginning of the mood stabilizers and anti-depressants. He didn’t think that he was manic depressive or depressed at all. He thought his moods were fairly stabled. He had seizures and tremors. He wasn’t sure how that equated to being bipolar.
His parents spent a great deal of money sending him to psychologists that would say that his thoughts were disconnected and not cohesive. He would argue that it had a lot to do with the fact that he was on a heavy course of lithium, prozac as well as anti-convulsive medications! Troy didn’t blame the medicine; some people probably needed to take all of that stuff, but not him! He felt like everyone just wanted him to shut up and to go with the program.
Only thing is that he never would.
Troy showed up at Bob’s doorstep two days after running away. Bob immediately grabbed him in a bear hug and then he hurried to the phone to call their parent’s despite Troy’s protests.
‘Yeah, he’s right here, standing in my living room.’
Troy had been very pissed. He had asked Bob not to call them until he’d had a chance to talk to him about how he was feeling and to get shit off his chest. Bob had just acted as if he hadn’t said a word.
He thrust the phone at Troy. ‘Dad wants to talk to you.’ He had written his parents a long and tedious letter detailing the reasons for his departure. Now it was almost like everything had been for nothing.
‘Troy! Why did you runaway?!’
Oh my god…it was for nothing!
‘We’re on our way, you stay right there! Did you take your medicine?’
Oh my god…
Bob paced back and forth lecturing him about how irresponsible he was being, and how Mom and Dad weren’t young and antics like this was bad for them and if he could stop having so many problems…
He said nothing.
When his parent’s arrived Bob gave him a pat on the shoulder as if they had shared a long brotherly moment and he got quietly into his parent’s station wagon and was driven back home. Medicine was dispensed, an appointment to the therapist made and then his parents returned to their routine.
When Troy disappeared the next night, he didn’t bother with a note, phone calls; nothing. He would not contact anyone in his family until his eighteenth birthday some eight months later; and then only for the purpose of having his social security checks forwarded to him.
From that moment on, he would live on the streets with very little. In the beginning it was very frightening. But he learned fast. No one could say that Troy was not a fast learner.
He learned that there were flyers of him posted all over, stating that without his medicine he became confused—a blatant lie, since it was the medication that left him confused. Therefore he could no longer continue being a runaway on the mean streets of Hartford Connecticut, where people drove past him and said, ‘Hey Troy, your Mom and Dad are looking for you.’ So he took a bus somewhere else.
He was a very innocent and naïve kid when he landed in Columbus Ohio. It was the Midwest, so he figured there probably would be no gangs. And Ohio was far away, but not so far that if he wanted to go back home to pick up his Sega Genesis, he would have no problem doing so. He had two hundred seventeen dollars and a backpack on him when he stepped off the bus. He went next door to the nearby grill and spent seven dollars of that on dinner. He walked around for a while, but since it was already dark he returned to the bus terminal and slept in one of the hard plastic chairs. The second day was a repeat of the first, but when he tried to return to the terminal, security recognized him and made him leave.
He was fine with that. He was anxious to begin his adventure. Then he discovered that Columbus Ohio was not a place that one would describe as adventurous. After living in Connecticut he saw Ohio as very boring and devoid of life. There were shops, and cars and houses, but where were the people that milled around at all hours like they had back where he was from?
That night he slept on the side of a darkened building in the dead grass because he was too afraid to remove the boards from the windows and doors unless he got into trouble for trespassing. He searched for work the next day but, no phone number meant no call back and well…that’s that. That night he slept on a park bench, terrified that someone would rob him, or the cops would tell him to move on, but that didn’t happen.