“What I didn’t know was, will this kid show up.” He wound the lanyard again. Unwound it. “I’ll be honest, I see boys like you all the time, pissing away what God gave them. They’ve come from the trash of the trash. We all know it. The bad homes, the incarcerated parents. These boys just go looking for more trouble because it’s what they know.” I stopped breathing again. No parent of mine was incarcerated. The trashier homes I’d lived in weren’t really mine. But he’d said what he said. Not needing any answer.
