Memory: Kit
He is down for an exeat, although he doesn't know what the hell that means. That's a lot of the time, a lot of dumb shit in Latin they say like it's a private club and he's too dumb to get in. He doesn't want to get in, their goddamn club is cold, it's wet, it's full of people who talk like they can't get the words out of their mouths and play dumb games he never learned. Hockey. He's stood out in the rain and the mizzle - they call it that, like that's a word - plenty of times getting soaked to the skin without a sorry hell of knowing what's going on.
But he ain't there now.
is looking at a photograph in a silver frame and thinking about how much he could get for it, if he took it. Ain't like they don't have bunches of them all over the place. Avaricious and speculative - which are both words he knows, even if they think he's dumb as rocks - he looks at it. Reaches on over to it.
Ignores the fact that he knows who is in the frame. He's seen her, dozens of times. Her face is all around. It ain't the face he can't remember, the one bothering him late nights.
"What are you doing?" Disapproving. Sharp. Sour, like she's got a lemon on her tongue, way back there tickling her tonsils. Her mouth looks like a cat's ass pursed up like that and he can hear the crisp tick of the tee, the clipped as, even the way the last word ties off like the g is gutting her voice.
"Nothing." Nonchalant. Nonchalant bothers them a lot. It ain't disrespectful, least it isn't out in the open. He knows a lot about disrespect and keeping your sass bottled in until only God knows it's in there. He ain't sure about God anymore. God left him, or maybe he pissed on him before he left, there's not a whole lot of respect left for someone he figured would stick around after all the sundays in church. You could get smacked for insubordination, or you could get nothing at all, which was worse. That meant you didn't matter one bit.
He don't matter one bit here. Not as he is. He's the photograph, just one more bit in a box they're so stuck on remembering. She ain't asked what he's thinking. He's thinking that silver could buy a bus ticket. Maybe it wouldn't get him a plane ticket, but it could get him out of somewhere this damn cold.
"Are you looking at her? Would you like a picture of her, for your room?" Her voice threatens to get a little less frigid. It's about the only thing they've got in common and he steels right up, locks all that cold, that bitter, that anger in. He ain't softening, not on that.
"Nope." Kit says. Clear. Simple. She ain't the face he's forgetting, softening like a sliver of soap in the bathtub and sliding away the more he tries to grip it. Her voice pinches up again, No, not nope. What are they teaching you?"
They're trying. They're trying to fold up the syllables of his speech. When he speaks. He don't see much point in speaking. There's never been much point, he learned that before, at home. Here, they listen to make fun and to see if he'll color up or do something to show they've got him. They don't.
He shivers. It's cold here. They don't turn on the heat, except for special occasions. He thinks it's real mean, it ain't like they don't have the money for it. They could sell a dozen silver frames and turn on the heat, but they say wear itchy sweaters instead. He's got one on now. She notices. She looks at him like he's an oddity, a fake dollar bill or something. "You should put another jumper on," she says finally.
"No thank you, ma'am." He throws that in. It sounds polite, when he says it, but he's done it just to be cussed. It's about as obvious a wall between her and him, about as American as it can get. And he waits for her to leave before he goes back to glowering at that frame. If he could buy a bus ticket, he'd get gone tomorrow.