One Moment - 7. Chapter 7

One Moment

Chapter 7

At two o’clock Mark walked up to Matt’s desk where he was working on a collage, the whole room scattered with cut up magazines as each boy worked on their self portrayal collages. “It’s time for your visit with Dr. Marshall.” The annoyed look on Matt’s face was unmistakable but he did not argue, something Mark had come to realize that Matt really did very little of considering he was in a place he obviously, from his escape attempts, did not want to be.

“You can just leave that, by the time you get back class will probably be in a study time so you can finish it up then.”

Matt nodded as he piled his supplies neatly on the desk then stood up and followed Mark out of the classroom and into the next room over. As Mark turned and left the office, Matt sat in his usual seat and faced off against Dr. Marshall who, as usual, was smiling at him.

“Do you have your journal?”

Matt’s eyes widened as he’d completely forgotten about the stupid journal thing since that first day he’d received it and had tucked it into his nightstand drawer. He slowly shook his head not offering any more information than that.

“Have you been filling it out?”

Knowing he would have to more than likely prove his answer, he shook his head again. “I forgot all about it sir.”

Dr. Marshall nodded glad the boy had finally spoken even if it was not an answer he’d wanted. “Well you need to start doing it, I’m going to ask again on Friday, and I’ll expect you to have something written in there okay?”

Matt nodded surprised he wasn’t in any trouble, he was sure he would lose points or at least get a real long speech, and was very glad that neither seemed to be happening.

“Well nothing’s going to change as far as rules or levels are concerned after your escape attempt last night. You are already on level one and already on the three foot rule, you will have to write more letters of course, but I’m going to have you do those Saturday morning, I’d rather you keep working on this project with Andy in the evenings.”

Matt sighed really hoping he could get out of that and deciding maybe a little talking at this point may get him out of it. “Why do I have to work with him sir? We don’t like each other.”

Dr. Marshall smiled again very happy Matt was actually talking. “That’s exactly why I want you working together. You guys don’t like each other but there is no real reason behind it, you don’t even know each other. So I want you to get to know each other, give each other a chance before you decide to hate each other.”

“I don’t like him ‘cause he’s a jerk. I know that much.”

“Andy has a big mouth Matt, and he’s got no reservations about using it, he’s not a bad kid though, none of you are. I truly think once you get to know each other you guys will find you like each other.”

Matt rolled his eyes and shook his head pretty sure there was not a chance in hell of that happening.

Dr. Marshall chuckled. “I know you don’t believe that, just like you still don’t believe this is a good place, but in time I’m hoping you’ll see things aren’t quite as bad as you see them now.”

Matt looked from the man to the floor, the place really wasn’t so bad, he was seeing that now. He just couldn’t stay; he couldn’t be here day after day knowing there was someone out there that needed help, his help. Someone he loved more than anyone else in the world, someone he loved so much he’d made the stupid promise not to tell anyone about him in the first place. Someone he loved so much that he could not bear to break that promise, a promise that left it up to him to help. In addition, to help he had to get away, no matter how much he grew to like the place, no place or no one could ever take the place of whom he had to get back to.

“Do you want to tell me who Danny is?”

Matt glanced up at him then quickly looked back at the floor, rather than just shaking his head, he repeated the lie he had told Mark earlier. “I don’t know any Danny.”

“Why did you say that name then?”

Matt shrugged hoping the doctor would drop the subject; it was too painful to talk about Danny. He did not want to talk about him again until he was back with him and knew that he was okay. He hoped beyond hope that would happen but as each day passed his hope diminished a little more.

“Can you tell me something you like about yourself Matt?”

Still staring at the floor Matt shook his head again, he was glad the subject had changed but didn’t care for the new subject very much either and he couldn’t get his mind off Danny.

“What don’t you like about yourself?” Dr. Marshall asked thinking that may be a much easier question for the boy to answer. He was not surprised though when the only response he got was Matt wrapping his arms around his chest looking like he was shielding himself from the question as he shook his head again.

“Maybe that should be something you work out in your journal.” Dr. Marshall offered.

Matt looked up at him and shook his head.

“Why not?”

“’Cause you’re going to read it.” Matt said matter of factly.

“Don’t you think how you feel about yourself is something we should discuss?”

Matt shook his head again.

Dr. Marshall sat back in his chair and rubbed at his chin while Matt looked back down at the floor. “We aren’t going to accomplish anything here Matt if you don’t talk to me.”

“I don’t want to accomplish anything, I’m fine, and I just want to go.”

“If you are fine, how come you couldn’t come up with one thing that you like about yourself? Don’t you find that odd?” The doctor said in his kindest voice, trying desperately to stave off making Matt mad and hoping like hell the boy would actually listen to what he was saying. Not deterred when he only got another headshake, he added, “Don’t you want to make the best of your time here? You are here either way son; why not work it to your advantage?”

Matt’s head shot back up his eyes stormy. “BUT I don’t WANT to be here!” He said pulling his arms from around his chest and clenching his hands tightly into fists, so tired of saying that and so tired of no one listening. “I don’t understand why no one understands this!”

Dr. Marshall did his best to hide his pleasure that Matt was actually getting some feelings out. He could tell the boy was very irritated but admired the way he still seemed to be in control of himself and was not storming around throwing stuff. “No one wants to be here when they first come son, this program isn’t voluntary, at least not for the kids, it’s better than the alternative for most of them but not one of these boys would rather be here than out enjoying their normal lives. However, over time they do come to realize that they need this place. And by the time they leave here they find themselves a little sad that they have to go, at least most of the time.”

Matt closed his eyes and shook his head his fists still tightly clenched.

The doctor continued. “You can’t have been that happy on the streets Matthew, it’s a very hard life.”

Matt’s eyes opened and bore into the man, “I was very happy.” He said through clenched teeth.

“I find that very hard to believe. Do you mean to tell me you enjoyed prostituting?”

Matt sat back heavily in his chair, pressed his head into the back of the chair, and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. He unclenched his fists and gripped onto the arms of the chair tightly trying with all his might not to tell the doctor to jump off a fucking cliff. He took a few deep breaths then lowered his head, his eyes once again boring into the doctor’s. “Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, so that you can be happy.”

Dr. Marshall shook his head. “Not usually to that extreme son.”

Matt gritted his teeth and spoke again. “Sometimes, it is.”

“There are other ways to make money Matt.”

“I know that.” Matt said angrily. “As if I didn’t try that, no one around this town will let someone that looks like me do odd jobs. I tried, I tried everyone!” He took a deep breath knowing his voice was changing from anger to desperation and he did not want to sound desperate, he merely wanted this man to know he had not run to the first man he had seen and offered to blow him for 20 bucks. That just wasn’t the case at all and he did not like people thinking that about him.

“So it worked up to a situation where you were desperate for money? You did this when all other avenues proved unworthy?”

Matt rolled his eyes and shook his head at all of the doctor’s stupid fancy words. “I guess,” he said, too confused to answer definitively.

“So you would have rather sold your body doing sexual favors for people you didn’t know or have them do sexual things to you, rather than go back to your parents’ house? Was it really that bad at home?” Dr. Marshall made a note in his file when Matt’s arms returned across his chest, his hands gripping his shoulders tightly again as though to shield himself from the conversation.

It surprised him a great deal that Matt would rather talk about his prostitution than his life at home, and it did not make a lot of sense. Surely his being at the sexual mercy of paying strangers had to be more traumatic for the boy than whatever he could have lived with at his parents home. Therefore, it made little sense to him that Matt was so unwilling to talk about his life at home when he had opened up so well about his reasoning behind selling himself.

“Why are your parents so mad at you?” He asked trying like hell to get some information out of him.

Matt looked up at him with one eyebrow raised. “Why do you say that?” he asked his interest peeked enough to talk.

“Because they didn’t want to come down here, they act as if they don’t care what happens to you.” He hated to divulge that information, as he knew it must hurt to hear it, but it seemed to be a fact and something Matt would have to face eventually.

“You talked to them?”

“I’ve tried, your father won’t speak to me at all, and your mother just keeps telling me to leave them alone. Your social worker tried also, she got the same results.” He didn’t add the bit about Matt’s father screaming at the social worker for ten minutes that he was damn glad Matt was gone and didn’t give a shit where he was and never wanted to see ‘the little fuck’ again. “That pretty much tells me they are really mad about something. I’m hoping you can explain why.” He noted that Matt did not seem at all hurt or surprised by his parents’ unwillingness to be in his life.

Matt shrugged though what the man had said was no surprise to him. Truth was he did not know why his parents were mad at him, they just always were. No matter what he did or how hard he tried, they had always been mad. He had always thought that maybe he just wasn’t good enough for them, but as he got older, he realized his parents weren’t the type of people that even considered something like that. They certainly had no high standards of their own. If something didn’t come out of a bottle, his mother had no interest in it. His father was harder to figure out, he hadn’t managed it, all he knew was that his father seemed to enjoy being angry and hateful, perhaps he was just a person that was happiest making others miserable.

Matt was sure they were both very glad he was gone. He did not need this man to sit here and tell him that, and was more than a little embarrassed that the man knew it at all.

“Are you indicating you don’t know? Or do you just not want to say?” Dr. Marshall asked eyeing the boy scrupulously.

Matt half shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

Not that he believed the boy Dr. Marshall nodded. “So as far as you know there wasn’t one particular incident that made them upset?”

“No,”

“You don’t think running away was it?”

“No,”

“What made you run away?” Before he even gave him any time to answer, the Doctor could see by the look on the boys face he was not going to answer. His whole body had stiffened and his mouth had firmly closed, his eyes returning their stare to the floor. Though he was upset Matt didn’t want to answer, he was still glad he’d talked this visit, he knew he couldn’t expect a miraculous turn around with this boy and had to take what little he could get when he got it.

He did not want to be an enemy in Matt’s mind, he knew he had to go slow and not come off as a complete ass.

“Well you can go back to class Matt. I guess that’s all for today. Don’t forget though, to fill out that journal. I’ll want to see it come Friday.”

Matt sat forward in his chair and looked back up at the man as he positioned himself to stand up by placing his hands flat out on the arm of the chair. “I really don’t have any time to fill it out sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I get up, get dressed, do those exercises, eat, go to class, go to lunch, go to class, eat supper, do chores then I work with Andy then I go to bed. I don’t know when I’d have time to write in that.”

Dr. Marshall nodded, though he thought if Matt tried hard enough or wanted to he could find time, he again did not want to come across as a hard ass. “Well tonight when you go to bed at eight, you don’t have to go right to sleep, I’ll make sure to tell the room monitor that you can stay up until eight fifteen as long as you are writing in your journal.”

Matt sighed that not being what he was hoping for, for an answer, but he really wasn’t expecting an answer of ‘okay you don’t have to do it’ either. “Okay,” he said before he got up and left the room.

After a grueling hour and a half with Andy in the classroom that night, Matt took his shower and made it back to the bedroom by eight o’clock sharp. He handed his card to the woman behind the desk. He didn’t know her name but thought he remembered her being introduced as Carrie, though he’d met so many new people it was hard to keep them all straight.

He deposited his clothes in his hamper and returned to her desk. She handed him a clean card. “You earned your day today. Now I’m told you are going to stay up for fifteen minutes tonight and write in your journal.”

“Yes ma’am.” He begrudgingly turned around and headed for his bed setting his new card on his nightstand. He turned down the bed then crawled in under the covers. He reached over, opened the drawer in the nightstand, and pulled out the journal and pen.

He looked up only briefly when Andy walked into the room also freshly showered then stared back at his journal, the blank page almost taunting him, as he knew he had to write something down.

“Why do you get to stay up?”

Matt looked up and two beds over where Andy was sitting up in bed looking back at him.

“I have to write in this.” He said quickly before looking back down at the book.

“Why don’t you just write in it during the day like everyone else has to? Why do you got special privileges?”

Matt looked back up at him and shook his head. “I just asked.”

“Well aren’t you special.” Andy said tilting his head from side to side dramatically.

“Andy go to sleep.” Carrie said from the front of the room.

Andy looked over at her. “Why do I have to go to sleep when he gets to stay up?”

“If you want to stay up get out your journal and write.” Carrie offered figuring fair was fair.

Andy huffed then lay down and pulled the blankets up around his shoulders. “I think I’ll go to sleep,” he grumbled as he situated himself more in the bed.

Forgetting himself Matt actually laughed which made him look nervously over at Andy, who was looking back at him from his own bed.

“Shut up!” he said quietly, though what surprised Matt the most was that he actually sounded like he was laughing himself. Not pissed at all.

Matt raised his eyebrows in surprise at Andy’s reaction and looked back at his empty page. He was glad he hadn’t been yelled at or worse but was still very dismayed that he had nothing to write in the stupid journal. After tapping his pen against his lip for another five minutes, he finally had an idea and wrote feverishly for the next five minutes before Carrie told him it was time to go to sleep too.

Gladly he put the journal away and laid down himself, rolling over and facing away from Andy, he pulled up his own covers and drifted off into a sound sleep.

On Thursday night, having all the printouts and research they needed done for their paper, Matt and Andy sat at the dining room table rather than go to the classroom to write out their paper. Printed out web pages and articles scattered the table while they sat across from each other surveying the array of papers.

“We got way too much crap.” Andy said shaking his head.

Matt nodded as he rifled through a stack of papers. He had tried to tell Andy that the night before but was only told he was stupid for his effort. He did not figure however, that now would be a good time to say ‘I told you so.’ Though he figured he would probably just be called stupid, again he brought up another point.

“We have to type this up, why are we bothering to write it out on paper first?”

“’Cause that’s the way you do it.” Andy snapped. “God don’t you know anything?”

“I know it would be easier to just do it once and not write it all out then type it all out.”

Andy glared over at him. “And what about mistakes how are we going to take care of those if it’s all typed up? Huh?”

Matt’s mouth turned up at the corners sure the guy had to be joking, he considered himself pretty stupid but if Andy didn’t know the answer to his question then he had to be even stupider!

Andy sat back looking smug as hell as he crossed his arms across his chest. “Well?”

Matt took a deep breath so he wouldn’t bust out laughing as he formulated a hopefully non-sarcastic answer in his head. “You are talking about typing this up on a computer right?” he asked deciding he’d better make things very clear first.

“Well yeah where else!”

Matt nodded biting his lip to keep from laughing. “Well there’s always the delete button. Works a heck of a lot better than an eraser.”

A glint of recognition showed on Andy’s face before his mouth fell open and shades of red crept into his cheeks. “Oh,” he said quickly looking back down at the table.

Matt continued to hold his breath wanting like hell to laugh but knowing if he were in Andy’s position, he would get really pissed if someone started laughing at him. He did grin a little more though when Andy’s shoulders started to shake and he could hear the muffled sounds of Andy himself laughing.

Andy looked back up at Matt, his eyes full of humor. “Man,” he said shaking his head. “Why on earth aren’t you teasing me?”

Smiling Matt shrugged letting out a small laugh as Andy started laughing without hiding it at all. “I was having a hard time,” he admitted honestly.

Andy looked surprised for a moment then laughed even harder. Matt and Jason, Matt’s guard for the evening, joined him. After a few minutes, he composed himself and started gathering up the papers. “Well let’s go to the darn classroom then!”

Matt and Andy worked on their paper during every study period of class that day and by 2:00pm when Matt was led into Dr. Marshall’s office for his regular session the paper was all done.

Matt handed over his journal first thing; very pleased he had filled three whole pages and hoping that would be enough to satisfy Dr. Marshall. He sat quietly while the man read what he had written. Even though he had not written anything that mattered much he still was riddled with nerves as he waited for the doctor to finish reading what he had written.

Dr. Marshall finished reading about five minutes later and handed him back the journal. “Well that’s a good start.”

Matt took the journal and looked at him sideways. “That’s it?” he asked out of pure amazement.

Dr. Marshall grinned. “What did you expect?”

Shrugging Matt held the man’s eye contact. “I dunno you just made such a big deal out of it; I figured we’d be here the whole hour discussing it.”

Dr. Marshall raised his eyebrows, “You’d actually discuss it with me?”

Matt half shrugged and half-nodded thinking discussing what he’d written in the journal was a hell of a lot better than what the man usually liked to discuss.

Sitting back in his chair Dr. Marshall nodded wanting so badly for the boy to at least talk he thought he would go with it. “So did it take you long to discover that Mark was very nice?” He felt somewhat silly asking that, but based on what was written in the journal there wasn’t a heck of a lot else to delve in on.

Matt shrugged.

“You said you were going to talk.” The doctor reminded him.

“Uh,” Matt said slowly thinking of a verbal answer. “No it didn’t.”

Dr. Marshall couldn’t help himself and let out a little chuckle, which he quickly apologized for. “I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just you’re idea of talking isn’t quite what I’d hoped.” He was shocked to see an actual grin come onto Matt’s face.

“I’m sorry.”

Dr. Marshall smiled back at him. “Well we can take it slow; it’s not easy for everyone to talk. Especially as much as I like people to talk.” He smiled again as Matt’s grin got even bigger, elated Matt seemed to be in such a good mood that day.

“So was there one thing that he did that made you realize he was nice? Or a culmination of things?”

“A culma what?”

“A lot of little things that let you see he was nice.”

Matt nodded. “I don’t know, some little things, then one big thing.”

“Would you like to tell me what the big thing was?”

Thinking about it for a minute and figuring it wouldn’t divulge too much information, Matt nodded. “It was the morning after I spent the first night in that room. You know the one with only a mattress?” He looked up long enough to see the doctor nod then continued. “I thought he’d be mad at me. And that morning at breakfast he was kinda quiet, so I asked him.”

“You didn’t want him to be mad at you?” The doctor interrupted.

Matt shook his head and continued before the doctor could delve into that further. “He said he wasn’t mad, that he was worried I was mad at him.”

“Were you mad at him?”

Shrugging Matt shook his head. “No, but I don’t know why.”

“You think you should have been mad at him?”

Matt looked up at him and nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I can’t figure out why I wasn’t.”

“Why should you have been mad?”

“’Cause he was the one that stopped me from leaving,” he answered simply.

“Well don’t you think maybe you weren’t mad at him, because maybe deep down you don’t really want to leave?” Dr. Marshall held his breath and Matt sat back heavily in his chair and stared off at the wall. He was afraid he had said too much but rather than jump right in and cover his tracks he stayed quiet for a moment hoping Matt would say something else.

As Matt stared at the wall, he thought about the Doctor’s question. If it were eight months earlier, he would be thanking his lucky stars every day that he’d landed himself in a place like this. He couldn’t disagree with the fact that it was a good place. All he had to stand on was that he did not want to be there, that he could not be there.

Even if he could go back eight months and choose the path he had gone on or choose to come to this place he would choose the path he had taken. Nothing in his life had ever been so great and as much as he wanted to be back there, he truly doubted things would ever be that way again. He had failed himself and he had failed Danny. Perhaps he just wasn’t worthy enough to find such happiness. Perhaps if there was a God this was his way of reminding him his place in the world.