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Jimmy is four years old and he is hiding in a kitchen cabinet. Mommy and Daddy are screaming at each other in the living room, the cramped apartment not big enough for them to take their fight anywhere else and their voices drill into the small cupboard. He hugs his knees to his chest and tells himself to stop shaking before he rattles the pans and Daddy hears him. Daddy is scary when he’s mad, and Jimmy learned a long time ago to stay hidden until he calms down, until he calls for him nicely and tells him he’s sorry, that Daddy shouldn’t have raised his voice, that he loves Jimmy.
There’s a sharp crack and a thump, and they aren’t shouting anymore. Jimmy can’t hear anything, actually, not even his own breathing. Daddy stomps into the kitchen (he knows it’s Daddy because Mommy never stomps, she walks quietly and shows him how too) and Jimmy stops breathing altogether. He doesn’t know why, but the quiet after fights are the scariest part of all. He can hear Daddy’s path across the creaky floor, can hear the glasses clink when he grabs one and the heavy scrape of the bottles from above the fridge. He listens to Daddy kick the door to his bedroom shut, and Jimmy still doesn’t move.
He knows he’ll find Mommy curled up in front of the couch, shaking like she’s cold but she’s not, knows she’ll ignore the blanket he’ll cover her with, knows she’ll ignore him entirely until she wakes him up the next morning with a smile and purple staining her cheek and forehead. And she’ll pretend nothing happened last night and he’ll pretend he wasn’t scared and they’ll both pretend it will never happen again.
He presses his face to his kneecaps and wishes he were anywhere else.
Jimmy is six years old and it’s his first day of school. He’s excited and scared all at once, but he mostly doesn’t want to leave Mommy all alone. He says goodbye and pretends not to see her wipe her eyes. He makes a friend, and they promise to be best friends for life. Jimmy loves being at school. He loves playing with his friend, loves coloring on the bright paper Daddy doesn’t like, loves the smile Mommy gives him when he tells her about his day.
Then Daddy hits him. He slaps Jimmy across the face when Jimmy refuses to bring him a beer. Jimmy doesn’t like beer, doesn’t like the way it makes Daddy angry and Mommy cry. Jimmy hides in the back of his closet, the hanging shirts making him feel safe. Hidden. He holds his cheek and feels the strange warmth where Daddy’s palm was. He hides until he hears Daddy go to bed, and when he ventures out into the kitchen, Mommy smiles at him. She wraps ice in a towel and tells him to put it on his face. The ice numbs his cheek, and Mommy sits with him at the kitchen table for a long time.
He doesn’t go to school for two days. The mark on his cheek fades and fades until it is only a memory of a phantom hand.
Jimmy is eight years old and he realizes he hates his dad. Hates the way he yells at Mom, hates the way he spends all their money on alcohol, hates the way he makes Mom work two jobs just so she can pay the bills. Jimmy is eight years old and he’s no longer a little kid. He’s nearly a teenager, and he knows it’s his responsibility to help his mom whenever he can. So he sneaks money out of Dad’s wallet every so often, just enough that they have some bread and peanut butter in the house, just enough that Mom doesn’t have to worry about making him dinner. He hates peanut butter sandwiches now, but they fill his belly and allow him to sleep through the night.
He watches his dad drink his way through paycheck after paycheck, watches his mom paint makeup over bruises with a practiced hand, watches his classmates start to notice how old and stained his clothes are and treat him differently, treat him as less, for it. His best friend refuses to talk to him and calls him a loser. He’s too big to hide in the cupboards now, so he watches the monster that wasn’t under his bed after all. He hides and watches and hates his dad.
Jimmy is ten years old and his dad puts Mom in the hospital. He listens to the doctors gossip, assuming he’s too young and stupid to understand what they’re saying. Or maybe they don’t care. Jimmy knows hospitals are expensive. Jimmy has only been to the doctor once to get stitches for the bottle Dad threw at him. Mom lied with ease, telling the doctor he’d been playing with the bottle and broke it himself, and the doctor smiled at him and warned him to be careful. He could really hurt himself one of these days. The doctor is much less expensive than the hospital, and thinking about how Dad is going to react once Mom comes home, once he is no longer watched by onlookers who only shake their heads and look at Mom with judgmental pity, scares him.
Dad goes home for the night. He goes home every night. He doesn’t care much that it was his fists, his push that sent his wife to the hospital, that cracked her skull and cut her smooth skin. Jimmy watches her, watches her wake up and smile at him. He carefully climbs into her bed when she pats the mattress. She holds him tightly, strokes his hair and promises him she’s going to fix it, she’s going to fix all of it, he doesn’t have to be scared any more.
He clings to her and tries to believe her.
Jimmy is eleven years old and tries to stop his dad from killing his mom. Jimmy jumps on his back, grabbing desperately at the baseball bat already slick with her blood. Dad screams at him, sounding like a wild animal, and throws him off. The floor knocks the wind out of him, and he lies dazed, watching his dad loom over him. He doesn’t recognize the man. Doesn’t recognize the strange light in his eyes, the unhinged snarl on his lips. Dad lifts the bat above his head like it’s an axe, like Jimmy is a plank of wood Dad needs to break apart to burn. Jimmy is eleven years old and he knows that he’s not going to wake up once Dad brings the bat down.
Mom shrieks, tackling Dad away from Jimmy. She yells at him to run, to get out of the house. Jimmy scrambles up and bolts out the door. He doesn’t stop running until he’s out of their building and down in the street, doesn’t stop until he wedges himself in a small crevice in an alley, hidden in the shadows. He’s shaking, and he tells himself to stop.
He waits, watching everyone who comes near his hiding spot, prepared to run. He waits long enough the dark starts to lift, long enough that he’s shivering from cold. He waits until the morning crowd has come and gone, and cautiously makes his way back to the apartment. Dad isn’t there, and Mom is laying in bed. She doesn’t say good morning, doesn’t explain why she never came to find him. She pulls the covers over her head and ignores him.
Jimmy tiptoes out of her room, quietly closing the door, and wishes fiercely for someone to come save him.
Jimmy is twelve years old and his mother makes him help her shoot his father and nothing is the same.
She promised she would fix it, but everything is worse. He sleeps in a stranger’s house, a gunshot echoing in his dreams. He sees his dad’s head explode every night, sees the way he dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. He sees the blood seep into his bedroom carpet and feels his mom shaking him, telling him she had to, that he was going to kill her and didn’t Jimmy see him attack her? She makes him promise to lie, to tell the police that Dad was going to hit her, and promises if he does that, everything will be okay.
Jimmy misses his mom, misses the way she’d sing to him in the morning when Dad was already at work, misses the way she’d run her fingers through his hair. No one has hugged Jimmy since that night, and he crosses his arms tightly.
His favorite days are when Officer Spivey ( “Call me Buck” ) comes by and takes him out for ice cream. He asks Jimmy about his day and listens when Jimmy tells him. He talks to Jimmy like he’s a grown-up, like Jimmy isn’t the kid that everyone else sees, the kid Jimmy isn’t sure he ever was. Buck keeps coming by, week after week, and when he asks what happened that night, Jimmy tells him.
Jim is thirteen years old and watches his mother sentenced to prison. He knows with a bone deep heaviness that pulls at him that it’s his fault. She knows it, too. She looks at him from across the courtroom, and he can hear the accusation in her eyes. She stares at him until she is taken back into custody, forcing him to watch the cuffs and chains lock around her slim wrists.
Buck takes him to the beach, after. As much as Jim tries, he can’t hate the officer. He hates himself for his fat mouth, hates his mother for breaking her promises, hates his father most of all for making them all go through this.
Jim can’t catch his breath, but Buck wraps an arm around his shoulders and tugs Jim to his side. He unclasps his watch and hands it to Jim, telling him softly about a trick that helps keep his breathing even when he's scared. Jim stares at the hands moving on the watch, counting to four again and again and again until he’s slumped against Buck, exhausted from the simple effort of breathing.
Jim listens to the waves and pretends the salt water he can feel slipping down his face is just the ocean’s spray.
Jim is fourteen years old and feels like he’s in prison. The boys home is a squat, ugly building with bars and guards and violence. Jim endures it and wonders if this is his karma, if this is his punishment for betraying his mother. He loses a lot of fights until an older boy teaches him to end them, and then he wins enough that the other boys leave him alone. Nate becomes his lifeline, keeping him engaged in schoolwork and badgers him out of his numbness. Nate grins at him and Jim is reminded of his best friend from long ago. Only this time Nate is wearing the same worn down clothes. They promise each other to be brothers for life, and Jim swears to himself that this is a promise he will keep.
Jim is fifteen years old and blinks awake to a sterile white room under stiff sheets and a muffled pain in his stomach. He doesn’t get time to panic before Buck sits next to him and explains he’s being moved to another foster home, that his foster parents have been arrested. Jim is tired, limbs heavy like weights have been tied to them and are slowly dragging him under. He feels like if Buck lets him go, he’ll sink so far down that he’ll never see the surface again. He can’t tell him, can’t make himself depend on Buck only to lose him too, but Buck squeezes his hand and he knows he won’t drown.
Jim is sixteen years old and he discovers that he loves beer. He drinks his way through an entire pack, careful to hide the evidence even though he knows his current foster family won’t be home for days yet. He loves beer, loves the way the alcohol makes his head spin and makes his shoulders a little lighter. He loves most of all that he can’t think while he’s drunk, can’t hear the gunshot that ruined his whole life, can’t hear how his mother carefully doesn’t answer when he asks if she blames him. He loves how alcohol takes him out of himself, lets him just exist and forget everything that came before this moment, lets him forget everything that comes after except the next beer.
Then he wakes up with one of the worst headaches of his life (which is quite the feat, considering) and he realizes, bent over the toilet and throwing up everything he’s ever eaten, that maybe he doesn’t love beer as much as he thought. He remembers the piles of cans and bottles that littered their apartment, and swears to himself that he won’t ever get that far.
Jim is seventeen years old and gets arrested for stealing a car. He thinks that it’s bullshit, he wasn’t even the one driving, but Nate and the others keep their mouths shut and he does too. He’s sitting on the curb, hands cuffed behind his back, watching the others get driven away in the backs of police cars, when a familiar hand grips his shoulder. Buck doesn’t say anything for a long time, and all of Jim’s defiance and rebellion seeps out of him. He stares at the ground, shame creeping up his neck, and Buck talks to him. He tells Jim that if he keeps going the way he is, keeps pulling these kinds of stunts, he’ll end up in a cell like his mother. Tells Jim he could do something more than this, could do anything he wanted if he actually tried. Tells Jim that he believes in him, that he can see the man Jim could be if he wanted.
Buck talks to the officer and Jim is let off with a warning. Buck drives him back to his current foster house — number five, he's been here for nearly a year, the longest stretch he’s had at any foster home — and tells Jim to be careful. Jim gets out of the car and pauses with his hand on the door. He tells Buck thanks, tells him he’s sorry and he won’t do it again. Tells him he doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know what he’s going to do once he’s done with high school. Buck looks at him for a long time, before mentioning the police academy requires a degree and if Jim got his grades up, he stood a good chance at earning scholarships to pay his way through college.
Jim lays awake that night, thinking about what it would be like to be a police officer. Thinks about Buck and how the man helped him through the worst night of his life, and then continued to check in on him regularly. Thinks about how Buck is the most reliable person in his life. He calls his mom at least once a week, but talking to her always leaves him off balance, like she tugged hard on his hand and left him stumbling after her.
He wonders what it would be like to help someone else through the worst night of their lives.
Jim is eighteen years old when his whole life changes once again. His current (last) foster parents are kind enough to let him stay until he goes to college. They are pleasant people, and he is surprised to find himself a little sad to leave. He packs up his meager belongings and is pulled into two hugs before he jumps into Buck’s truck. The officer took the day off to help Jim move, and Jim is excited to have the time with him.
They arrange his dorm room how he likes it, and Buck pretends not to notice when the reality of his new situation sinks in. He is all alone. His mother is still in prison. There are no foster parents to ask for help, for guidance. No one will ever make decisions for him again. The responsibility of Jim’s freedom lies heavy on his shoulders.
Buck claps a friendly hand to his back and asks if he wants ice cream. They go to their usual place on the beach, and Jim is reminded that there will always be one person there for him.
Jim is nineteen years old and visits his mother in prison for the first time. None of his foster parents were willing to make the drive and step foot in the place, but he’s saved enough money to buy himself a motorcycle. It’s a fixer upper, but Jim finds a part time job at a mechanic shop and he’s always been good with his hands. She cries when she sees him, smiles just like she used to. She tells him he’s gotten so big, tells him she’s proud of him. He tells her he misses her, that he’s sorry. She reminds him that she’s in here because she loves him, because she gave up everything for him, and she’s happy he’s making something of himself.
Jim promises to visit often. She promises to wait for him.
Jim is twenty years old when Nate hits him up for a favor. Jim owes Nate too deeply to say anything but yes, and finds himself skirting the law, walking the thin line between having a future and not, the deciding factor whether or not they get caught. He asks Buck for advice, after, and listens to the older man give him an ultimatum. Jim loves Nate, will never stop owing him, but he puts himself and his future first for once in his life and blocks Nate’s number. It hurts, it tears out his heart, but he wants to be a cop more than anything. He tells Buck his decision, and pretends the man’s approving nod doesn’t fill him with pride.
Jim is twenty-one years old and celebrates his birthday with his friends. He rolls a bottle between his hands, picking at the label with his fingertips. He never thought he’d make it this far, never thought he’d survive long enough to be a fully legal adult, and now that he’s found himself at this milestone, he doesn’t know what he feels. He’s getting to the halfway point, to having lived longer without his mother than with her. The bar is no place for these kinds of thoughts, and his friends pull him into a game of pool. They toast to him and he promises himself that he will never be like his father.
Jim is twenty-two years old and graduates college. He loved college, loved being anonymous in a crowd of people, where they only saw what he wanted them to see. No one knew his background, no one knew his mother made him an accomplice in his father’s murder. In the four years of classes and jobs and relationships, Jim learns to be good with people, learns what to say to get his way, learns how to please them. Jim graduates and leaves behind friends and coworkers who all promise to stay in touch. Jim smiles at them and lies when he agrees.
Jim graduates and turns his sights to the Long Beach Police Academy.
Street is twenty-three years old and his mother isn’t speaking to him. He’s a newly sworn officer of the LBPD and his mother won’t forgive him for it. Her silent treatment breaks his heart, but he loves his job. Loves the opportunity to put all of himself on the line, to push himself to the very edge of his limits and find the will to go further. He feels alive. He quickly makes a name for himself, and he works himself to the brink to be better than he was yesterday.
Street is twenty-four years old and gets shot on an undercover sting gone wrong. He wakes up in the hospital, Buck by his side. He wakes up surprised to be opening his eyes at all. Buck takes him to his house for the long weeks of recovery. Street calls his mother and she answers. She tells him that she’s sorry, that she loves him, that she’s not happy with his job but she understands. She tells him that she did everything for him, that she sacrificed everything so he could live his life and if that means being a cop, so be it. He hangs up feeling both better and worse, like she’d granted absolution but only for a time.
Street is twenty-five years old and is ready for a change. He is the best at what he does and he knows it. Worse, his coworkers know it too. They see his flashy bike and his cocky grin and his youth and write him off as a hot shot, gossiping behind his back that he’s going to get himself killed one day if he doesn’t cut it out. He listens to Buck talk about SWAT, about Buck's team. He hears the almost paternal pride in his voice, and is struck by jealousy so strong he can hardly breathe. He wants a team, craves one so badly he can physically feel it late at night. Street has spent a long time surviving on his own, between growing up and all the undercover ops he’s been sent on, and he wonders what it would be like to have a family forged in steel. To have a team he knew inside and out and who knew him just as well. To have a team he could not only trust with his life, but with himself.
He keeps his head up and pretends his coworkers’ judgements don’t bother him and bides his time, knowing his chance would come. He was going to be ready, and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone tell him otherwise.
Street is twenty-six years old and he gets the call he’s wanted for so long. He is determined to do it right, to prove himself. To be so good that no one doubts his capabilities ever again. He knows he’s only on SWAT because Buck made a mistake and then made Street his penance, but he swears to make Buck proud and honor the trust he’s been given. He has one chance, and nothing is going to get in his way.
Not even himself.