Pietro is four when his mother dies; complications during childbirth. Neither his mother or infant sibling survive. He doesn’t understand his father’s grief, too green around the ears and little body too full of awe and hope to understand grief. His father doesn’t know how to explain death except, momma’s not coming home Pietro.

It isn’t until the other children start shying away and he hears the whispers from adults that he understands.

Poor little Pietro, with his madman father and dead mother.

His father isn’t a madman, but maybe he’s mad with grief.



They move seven times in the span of the year that follows the death. Little Pietro thinks he understands grief a little better with each move.

Grief is crying in the bedroom with your face pressed into a pillow so your son doesn’t hear you mourn his mother. Grief is locking yourself up with your inventions and forgetting to eat; it’s tinkering with toys until you’ve tinkered so much they crumble in your hands.

Grief is uprooting your son every time the rumors start and you hear, poor little Pietro and his madman father.

Pietro doesn’t care that the other parents say or the way the children look at him with pity. His baba is not a madman and he doesn’t need a mother to be happy. He has his baba and he has himself, he doesn’t need anything else.



He meets Ellis after the seventh move, he’s just turned six and is going to school for the first time. The other children, who’ve grown up together, look at him curiously and he can’t help the way his little body tenses and his tiny hands make tiny fists. He can hear the whispers before they begin and tries not to look too angry for a six-year-old when the teacher says, this is Pietro, he just moved here with his father.

There’s a hush among the other children and Pietro feels his cheeks flush red, this is when the rumors starts.

But no one says anything and he’s ushered to a seat.

At recess he gets into a fight with another student, who asks about his mom and won’t shut up. Ellis is the one who breaks up the fight, tears a strip of his shirt off and wraps it around Pietro’s bloody knuckles.

The other kid has a split lip, black eye, and goes running to the teacher. His dad’s called in to the school and Pietro sits on the bench outside the office with his palms pressed against the wood and his legs swinging back and forth. When his dad finally comes out he looks more weary than Pietro’s ever seen him.

It makes something in his belly twist, shame creeping through him. They’re going to have to move again -

“Let’s go home Pietro,” his father says, scooping him up and holding him close. He clings to his baba, presses his face into his shirt so that when he cries, none of the other kids can see.

It’s okay, he thinks with a sniffle, I’ve got baba, he’s enough.

They don’t have to move, but Pietro isn’t allowed to go back for the rest of the week, until the other boy’s face heals and he’s forced to apologize. He’s not sorry, but he says it anyway.

Ellis comes to visit that Friday with a folder full of things from class. “Don’t want you to get in more trouble,” the redhead says, shoving the folder at him.

For the first time since his mama died, Pietro grins at another child and thinks, maybe it doesn’t need to be just me and baba.



Pietro keeps getting into fights and Ellis keeps breaking them up. He’s ten now and Ellis, eleven. He’s got into more fights than any elementary schooler ever should but he can’t help himself when someone says, your dad’s just a crazy old man locked up in his garage.

He knows the rumors, he knows what the other parents say.

Baba’s not stable, flits from job to job but he loves Pietro and Pietro can’t stand when anyone says something bad.

“Pie, please,” Ellis begs, with a hand wrapped around Pietro’s arm, pulling him back. “He’s a bully.”

If it weren’t for Ellis, Pietro would have launched himself at the other kid, punched at him until a teacher came over and ripped him off, but instead he balls his tiny fists and stomps away.

Baba loves Ellis, lets him spend time in the garage with him while he’s tinkering. Ellis always watches with wide eyes while Pietro gets elbow deep in his own tinkering.

He could get used to this, tinkering with baba while Ellis watches.

But then his baba dies and it feels like the world tilts out from under him.



The funeral is on a Wednesday.

It’s a very small service with Pietro in a little, second-hand suit, standing with Ellis and his family. There’s a pastor from the church baba liked to attend when he felt he needed salvation and a few of the church members Pietro doesn’t recognize. His elementary school teacher comes, a woman in her mid-twenties with a heart too big for such a low income area like theirs.

She looks too nice, Pietro thinks when she steps through the door and takes a seat in a pew by the back.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring until Ellis squeezes his hand and he’s forced to focus on the words spilling from the preacher’s mouth. It’s all white noise in the end.

He doesn’t cry during the service; not when he’s standing beside the casket and adults are expressing their fake sympathies at him. He knows what they’re thinking and it makes his belly twist uncomfortably, tiny hands making tiny fists. Poor little Pietro, lost his mother and his madman father.

He doesn’t cry when the church empties out and it’s just him, Ellis, and the teacher in the back.

“They’re gonna take me away,” Pietro says, breaking the stale air of silence that’s settled in the building.

“No,” Ellis says firmly, larger hands reaching for one of Pietro’s fists. It takes some effort, but Ellis coaxs his hand uncurled and rubs his thumbs over the red nail dents in his palm. “We’ll figure it out Pie,” his best friend promises.

He wants to believe, but he can’t.

(How sad, a child who has nothing to believe in.)

It’s the sound of heels clicking against concrete that make him look up, expression far too stony for someone so young. “Ms. Doolie,” he mumbles quietly, gray eyes shiny with tears that won’t fall.

“I do social work ontop of teaching,” she says but Pietro doesn’t understand, just looks up at her confused. “I’m going to help you figure something out.”

He ends up in five different foster homes before the Crowley’s are allowed to take him. It’s not Ms. Doolie’s fault, but he blames her anyway,



He gets kicked out of every school he goes to while he bounces from foster home to foster home. The social workers blame his behavior on grief and he wants to punch their smug faces every time. It’s not grief, he thinks, but anger.

At fifteen Kavinsky, because he refuses to let anyone call him Pietro these days, thinks he knows what grief is.

It’s waking up every morning in a an unfamiliar place, surrounded by people who don’t give a s**t about you. It’s an aching hole that can’t ever be filled because too many pieces are broken, buried six feet under. It’s knowing that the people who loved you are dead and the god you’re supposed to believe in believes that you’re better off an orphan.

It’s hearing the whispers, that’s Pietro Kavinsky, his dad was a madman and his mom’s been dead his whole life and having to ball your firsts and keep your head down because one more strike and you’re kicked out. It’s going in and out of juvie because no one knows how to sooth your anger except the best friend they won’t let you see.

It’s knowing that your best friend is desperate for his family to take you in so he can help but being unable to because the system is corrupt and you’re not sure you’re allowed to have anything good anymore.

It’s understanding that grief is this overwhelming thing that will consume you if you can’t find an outlet but no one can help you direct it.

It’s split lips and bloody knuckles; fists to the chin and knees to the gut because fighting is the only way you know how to express all this hurt and rage and anger and sadness you’ve got pent up inside you.

Kavnisky is pretty knows what grief is, but he’s not sure anyone else does.



By the time he gets sent to Hllworth, the Crowleys are finally allowed to take custody of him, with Ellis forging the documents as best he could so that his mom is considered a foster parent. Kavinksy’s grateful, he supposes, because it means his best friend is back in his life.

But it doesn’t help the hollowness he carries inside of him. It doesn’t stop him from getting into fights and snarling, <******** you to anyone that tells him he’s not capable.

Hilworth is better than juvie though, which he never thought possible, because the food is decent and he gets privileges sometimes. It’s how he gets a job at a mechanic’s shop, with all of his tinkering time paying off into something real, something that can help him afford to live if he can make it to graduation.

Hilworth doesn’t make him any friends, not that he really cares though. He’s got Ellis and since his baba’s dead and gone, well he doesn’t need anyone else.

He wished for more once and all that got him was a dead father, so Kavinsky doesn’t wish for anything anymore.

Kavinsky is fifteen when he thinks, maybe, his luck is turning around.




The letter comes about a month before his eighteenth birthday and he can’t even be upset because -

Well, he knew it was coming. He was constantly breaking curfew, ditching classes so he could sneak in some extra hours at the mechanic’s shop. He knew it was a stupid idea, but he could tell Ellis was struggling with money. Especially since he was renting a two bedroom he couldn’t really afford in anticipation for the day Kavinsky graduated.

It’s his fault for ******** up bad enough that he had to go to summer school.

Kavinsky doesn’t even have to open the letter to know what it says, but he does it anyway while he’s standing in Ellis’ kitchen with his thumb slipping into the crease. Gray eyes skim the letter and his jaw sets tightly as his fingers crinkle the edges.

We regret to inform you -

He doesn’t need to read it fully to understand. He’s getting kicked out due to academia and attendance and - <******** how is he going to tell Ellie.

They just got over their last fight about school, but there’s no way Kavnisky can avoid telling him. Not if he wants to avoid being homeless until he can convince the garage to let him work there full time or find another job. He just doesn’t -

He doesn’t want to disappoint Ellis, the only person who continued to believe in him after his baba died.

Poor little Pietro with his madman father.

Problem child Kavinsky’s gotten into another fight again.

If you don’t shape up, you’ll end up back in juvie Kavinsky.

Come on Pie, it’s one semester and then you can graduate and come live with me.

Momma’s not coming home Pietro. (Jokes on you, baba’s not coming home either kid.)

Just another ********, that Kavinsky kid.
He can’t focus on anything but those stupid whispers he’s heard all his life and he’s flinging the letter across the kitchen before storming out of the apartment because if he doesn’t get out and find something to put his fist through, he’s going to punch a hole in the wall.

I’m such an idiot, Kavinsky thinks frustrated with himself, such a ******** screw-up.