Three Days Ago

The crumpled slip of paper in Cassian's palm was soaked through with sweat, turning soft and limp in the freezing cold of Room 104. He lay staring up at the gray stone ceiling; the straw mattress beneath him was so hard that every bone in his spine throbbed with each breath he took. The haunting hymn coming from the chapel bell tower still rumbled softly through the night fog, seeping through the cracked door and tearing at his nerves.

In the dead silence where five boys lay breathing softly to hold in the urge to pee, the coldness of this space washed away any sense of the present. It dragged Cassian's mind violently backward three days ago—to the groaning wooden house under the pouring rain in Ottley, Iowa, where the true nightmare had begun.

That night, torrential rain hammered down on the tin roof of the modest home. Cassian was tossing and turning in bed when the sound of shattering dishes down in the kitchen ripped through the quiet. Next came Edward's fierce roar, shaking the very floorboards:

"What did you text him? Tell me! You're still obsessing over that bastard, aren't you?"

Cassian bolted out of his room, his bare feet hitting the freezing hardwood floor. At the top of the stairs, he froze. Under the flickering fluorescent light of the kitchen, shards of ceramic were scattered across the floor. Edward was gripping his mother's phone tightly, its screen still glowing blue with the text message sent to Daniel.

“I can’t take this anymore. Tomorrow afternoon when he works the night shift, come pick me up.”

His mother backed up against the corner of the refrigerator, her hands raised in defense, her face drained of all color:

"You've got it wrong... Edward, put the phone down! Don't make things complicated—"

"I've got it wrong?" Edward bellowed, the veins in his neck bulging like thick cables, spitting in her face. "He sent you money, and I turned a blind eye! You threw my paycheck at him, and I kept my mouth shut! Now you're packing up your shit to run off with him? Huh? What the hell am I to you in this house?"

"That's not true... you've had too much to drink!" His mother's voice cracked, her eyes darting toward the photo of Daniel—her long-time lover—that she had secretly hidden at the bottom of the kitchen drawer, which Edward had now dragged out, ripped in half, and left lying on the floor.

Cassian rushed down the stairs, his eyes narrowed in rage:

"Get your hands off my mother! Are you crazy?"

The moment he reached the edge of the table to throw himself between them, Edward delivered a violent shove. An arm as rough as a log struck Cassian square in the chest, hurling him into the opposite wall. Thump. The back of his head slammed hard against the door trim, making his vision blur as white spots danced before his eyes.

By the time he shook off the haze, his mother was lying motionless at the foot of the stairs. Her hair was sprawled out across the cold terrazzo floor, a thin trickle of blood beginning to seep from her temple.

Edward stopped dead in his tracks. The whiskey bottle in his hand dropped to the floor, breaking in two as the liquor spilled everywhere. His aggression vanished in an instant, replaced by utter panic. He dropped to his knees, his trembling hands reaching out to grab her shoulders, shaking her violently:

"Marianne? Marianne! What... what's wrong with you? Stop pretending!"

She didn't answer. Flustered, Edward turned to grab the wall phone, pounding wildly on the keypad to dial 911. The moment someone picked up on the other end, his tone shifted instantly—desperate, painful, and trembling like an innocent husband who had just witnessed his wife's accident:

"Hello! Help! Hurry... my wife slipped and fell down the stairs! She... she passed out, she's not breathing! Hurry, please!"

Cassian clutched his throbbing head, leaning his back against the wall, staring fixedly at Edward's hands gripping the receiver. Under the flickering fluorescent light, his rough knuckles were still smudged with his mother's warm, fresh blood.

The ICU waiting room at Mercy Hospital reeked of bleach mixed with the thick stench of death. His mother lay inside the glass isolation room, surrounded by a tangle of wires and the steady, terrifically rhythmic beep-beep of the ventilator.

A young nurse named Dana stepped out, gently placing a cold compress on Cassian's forehead. Her eyes lingered for a long moment on the dark purple bruise stretching from his neck down to his shoulder, before stealing a glance at Edward, who sat slouched in the plastic padded chairs across the room, muttering constantly under his breath.

"How are you feeling?" Dana kept her voice low, her eyes filled with sympathy. "Is your head still spinning?"

"I'm fine," Cassian rasped out, his eyes glued to the glass room. "My mom... when will she wake up?"

Dana sighed, her lips moving as if she were about to say something about the blunt force trauma injuries on his mother's body that looked nothing like falling down the stairs. She glanced nervously at Edward, then whispered:

"The doctors are still monitoring her. You have to hang in there..."

Right at that moment, a heavy hand rested on her shoulder from behind, cutting her off.

"Alright nurse, let us handle things," Deputy Roy Burnell spoke up.

Burnell walked into the waiting room with a casual air, as if he were taking a stroll. He pulled Edward to his feet and led him to a quiet corner of the hallway near the water cooler. Cassian watched closely through the frosted glass of the doorway. He saw Burnell pull out a small notebook, listen to Edward whisper a few words with a pitying look on his face, and then the officer casually drew a long line across the page with his pen.

The incident was officially closed under a brief label: Domestic Home Accident.

Before turning to leave, Roy Burnell gave Edward two light pats on the back, then extended his hand. The two men exchanged a quick, firm handshake—a silent understanding that a deal had been finalized under the protection of the wealthy and powerful in this trashy town.

Two days later, the house in Ottley was steeped in the smell of cheap whiskey and thick tobacco smoke. Edward sat at the dining table, his bloodshot eyes staring intently at Cassian as the boy tried to pack a few old clothes into his canvas backpack.

"What are you looking at me with that debt-collector face for?" Edward slurped out in a slurred voice, slamming his whiskey bottle onto the table with a loud crack. "You think I wanted this to happen? I've supported your mother for how many years, only for her to plan on running off with that trashy lover of hers! And take a look at your own face... look at your nose, your eyes... are you even sure you're my own flesh and blood to be getting mad at me?"

Cassian tightened his grip on his backpack straps, not bothering to look up:

"Shut your mouth."

"What did you say?" Edward lunged forward, his eyes wild. "Is that how you talk to your father?"

Right then, a rapid knocking sounded at the door. Hank Dobbs—Edward's coworker on the hog-scraping line at the local slaughterhouse—walked in. He pushed the door open, bringing in a gust of damp air and a flyer made of thick ash-gray paper.

"Hey Edward, I found this for you," Hank put the flyer on the table, pointing a finger yellowed by tobacco tar at the embossed lettering: Blackthorne Academy. "There's an opportunity for this brat. A private boarding school up north. Covers full tuition and living expenses. They even have a special medical grant fund for students' families. I asked thoroughly—they'll pay off all your wife's hospital bills."

Edward blinked, his drunkenness half-fading:

"For real? There's a school with a deal that good?"

"Hell yeah! The only condition," Hank lowered his voice, leaning close to Edward's ear, "the student can have no other guardians besides their biological parents, and absolutely no contact with close relatives while enrolled. Strict discipline."

"No!" Cassian stood up abruptly, shoving the paper onto the floor. "Mom is lying in the ICU! I'm not going anywhere! I'm staying here to get a job and pay off the hospital bills!"

"What the hell kind of job are you gonna get to make money?" Edward cursed and stood up. Slap. His thunderous slap sent Cassian tumbling onto the floor, his head striking the edge of a chair.

Edward didn't even bother looking at him; he grabbed a pen from the shelf and scribbled a jagged signature onto the commitment form Hank handed him without a second thought.

"You're going," Edward growled through gritted teeth, throwing the pen onto the table. "You're going so the school pays your mom's hospital bills. I don't have another dime to raise a useless, bastard child like you. Get the hell out!"

The night bus left Iowa in a heavy downpour.

Cassian sat glued to the window, his forehead pressed against the freezing glass, watching the dim yellow lights of Mercy Hospital recede into the distance before vanishing behind vast cornfields. He clenched his fists so hard his nails dug deep into his flesh, swearing to himself that no matter what it took, he would find a way to call Dana every day to check on his mom.

Inside the pocket of his faded jeans, the only thing he brought along wasn't warm clothes or money, but that small slip of paper with the direct line to the ICU and Nurse Dana's name—his sole lifeline connecting him to the outside world.

The dull ache of the old bruises on his back snapped Cassian back to reality.

Room 104 was still immersed in the murky darkness of the September night. The piece of paper with the ICU number in his hand had grown wrinkled and soft from sweat. Cassian turned his head toward the window with iron bars. In the pale gray light filtering in from the lantern outside in the yard, Leo was still lying against the stone wall, his deep black eyes quietly pinned on him without blinking.

He squeezed the slip of paper tight in his fist. Back in Ottley, Edward had sold him off with a signature to rid himself of a burden. At Blackthorne, they bought him with a contract funding his mother's medical bills. No matter where he was, he had never been given a choice. But in this unlocked room, amid the haunting hymn swelling up from beneath the earth, Cassian knew that if he wanted to survive and make it back to his mother, he could no longer afford to be a follower.