xStitch These Wounds
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- It had been three weeks since the social worker had dumped Jesse Rylan Quinn on the doorstep of the Kensington Boarding house. In a way, Jesse was glad it had been here, even though he would have rather gone off on his own. This technically wasn’t foster home. He wouldn’t have been able to deal with that. Jesse was sick of families. He didn’t fit in with families, not even with his own. His mother didn’t get along with anyone, but his siblings? They had all been so close before Jesse punked out. No, ******** up. That was the better wording. He’d been selfish to put his siblings first. His Aunt had tried to convince him that he had done a ‘swell’ job as it were, but that a young kid couldn’t be expected to raise five kids in that kind of house. She had been trying to make him feel better, sure, but it just made things worse.
Out of all of the six Quinn children, Jesse had been the only ‘planned’ child. He had been the one his mom had really loved, in the beginning. The one she had wanted. He had been the product of their mother’s short lived first and only marriage. He’d been the only one who had had a somewhat healthy upbringing, at least for the beginning of his childhood, which he could hardly remember. It wasn’t until Jason was four that things went bad, but those four years of normalcy had given him some sort of hold on the Lucille Quinn that none of the other kids had. He could calm her down. He could convince her to give him money for groceries and other important things. But as years went on, and more kids came, is seemed that that hold was slipping. Lucille didn’t care about Jesse, just like she didn’t care about Toby or Ronnie or Scottie or the twins, Jasmine and Elizabeth. But when their Aunt had come along and taken the kids, Jesse had stayed behind.
Laying bed, Jesse wondered if his aunt and his siblings knew he was here. Would they come to see him? Should he call? He knew the social worker had been trying to get in touch with his aunt Lorraine, but that didn’t mean anything. The last time he had gone to see her and his siblings, they’d been completely disgusted with who he was. He’d over heard his uncle telling Aunt Lori that he was going to end up just like his mom at that point, that there was no fixing him. Lori would have tried. He knew that. But everyone was doing so well. He didn’t need to go and ******** everything up. So he had left again. Gone back to his mom’s , hoping that little dwindling hold would be enough to keep his mother from doing something that would kill her. In his mind, he was the only one who could have helped her, and he had failed, because now he was here.
After everything, it really wasn’t hard to understand why Jesse was the way he was. Accepting it was a different matter. His sarcastic arrogance was enough to drive people crazy. His attitude showed that he always felt as if he had something to prove, and in some ways, he felt he did. He had a lot of guilt riding on his conscience, mainly for letting his siblings down, and that guilt tended to pilot his attitudes towards everybody. Jesse finally pulled himself up out of his bed. He hadn’t been sleeping for a long time but the idea of getting up wasn’t all that appealing. The only thing driving him up was his growling stomach. A growing boy’s got to eat, and all.
The raven haired boy stretched his arms above his head and let out a groan before glancing over in the direction of his roommate’s bed. Empty. Jesse hadn’t expected otherwise. He had been told earlier that he, as well as everyone else in the house would be getting a roommate, but they wouldn’t be arrive until this morning, though some had showed up last night. Jesse wasn’t happy about the idea of sharing a room with some other ********. He’d gotten used to having the place all to himself. He hadn’t bothered voicing complaints, however, because he knew it would get him nowhere. Miss Kensington may not have been a foster mother, but she was very firm with the rules of her house. You accepted what you were told and if you didn’t like it, you could leave: Unless of course you had been dumped here by social workers. Then you couldn’t complain and you couldn’t leave.
Having dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and his favorite red plaid button up, Jesse headed downstairs. He took the stairs two at a time before heading into the kitchen. The chores for breakfast were usually assigned, but Jesse didn’t feel like waiting for whoever it was to get their s**t together to toss some eggs in a pan. Instead, he rifled through the cabinets and found himself a decent sized bowl. Next he headed for the pantry, pulling out a large box of frosted flakes and filling the bowl almost completely to the brim. He had to save room for the milk, of course, which he added moments later. Some extra sugar was the final topping for it all.
Taking his bowl and Frosted Flaked box over to the table, the messy-haired boy sat down and started working on the obnoxiously large bowl of cereal. His eyes scanned the back of the box, giving his something to look at while he ate. The stupid little puzzles on the back had always entertained him as a kid and now they served as triggers for happier memories.
