No One

“I don’t deserve this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Every bad thing that’s happened to me…no deserves to be this unlucky.”

“Again. what the hell are you talking about?”

“I have no one.”

“You don’t have a family?”

“Every single family that wanted me either died or had to give me up. Like Edna…”

“Who’s Edna? You push her down the stairs or something?”

“I didn’t push her! I didn’t.”

“Wow! I was just guessing. You actually pushed an old lady down the stairs.”

“She was just walking. And then she tripped. I wasn’t even in the room with her. She even backed me up. No one believed me. Edna kept trying to get me back. Why would she do that if I hurt her?”

“I imagine her requests were denied, safety concerns and all.”

“Everyone always blamed me. For everything.”

“Cry me a river.”

“Teachers always wrote me off. I wanted to learn…it was just hard.”

“You dropped out of school, didn’t you.”

“There wasn’t any point in staying. Stuff just ended up in my locker. Like someone was framing me. Small stuff, like a pen, or a calculator. But then it was a phone, a laptop…it would have gotten me arrested for sure if any of it was found on me. I left before it got worse.”

“Ah…it must have been a prank. Happened to me in school too. You should have just stuck it out.”

“That wasn’t an option for me. I had no one in my corner.”

“Maybe you were just a bad kid. You should have just kept your head down.”

“I did. But it didn’t stop things from going wrong. I was rejected from every job I applied for, and college was out. I aged out of foster care.”

“Let me guess…you broke the law?”

“I needed food. Ironically, prison was good for me. I had a place to sleep. A routine. Meals every single day. And finally, since Edna, I could live my life. And I knew someone was messing with me, because I was kicked out of prison!”

“You mean you were released.”

“They call it a compassionate release. Because I got cancer.”

“Why did you want prison so badly? You could have treated this as a second chance.”

“I couldn’t get a job, and I was just dropped out onto the street with no support. I tried everything. And it wasn’t me, because I offered to bus tables for free at a restaurant’s busy hour and I was told to leave the second I got started. I wore clean clothes. I made sure I didn’t smell. Maybe I looked a little sick, but I had cancer. I tried to get an explanation from the restaurant owner, but he didn’t even have the decency to look me in the eye. I just want to know why.”

“Why?”

“Why me? Why was I chosen to be invisible? Why couldn’t I have a single friend. A job? A home?”

“People lose parents every day. There are other homeless, unemployed individuals out there in worse circumstances. Why do you believe someone is out to get you? What makes you so special?”

“These weren’t just unfortunate circumstances. This was deliberate. There had to have been someone lurking around in my life making sure I don’t get close to anyone. I used to think it was just bad luck. I was a kid without parents after all. Life’s unfair. But I knew for sure when I got Brody.”

“Who is that?”

“Brody was my friend. My only friend. Edna was gone. Every possible friend was driven away. I couldn’t even get the police to hound me. No home. No money. Always sick. Always hungry… that didn’t compare to the loneliness. I couldn’t get close to anyone without everything going wrong.”

“And what makes Brody different?”

“You see, every one of my foster families, teachers, any friends I made at school…they were all immediately put off by me. Nothing I could do could change their minds. Edna was the only exception. And I was taken away from her. No…whatever higher power wanted me miserable needed me alone. Can you imagine being completely invisible to everyone? I’d even take a fight, an argument, anything. I used to get sneers, glares, looks of utter disgust…and I would have preferred that to how people just see through me now. But Brody saw me. Brody didn’t leave. I could talk to him, and he would answer back. He protected me at night so I could sleep. Found me food when I was hungry. Just being around him made me less sick. He was always with me. My life was utter shit, but with him at least I had something.”

“Why should I care? It seems you finally found a friend.”

“Because you came barreling down the street one day in your fancy car, and you took Brody away!”

“Oh shit…you mean the dog.”

“You ran him over, and you didn’t even see if he was okay. He laid there bleeding and in pain and you just drove off. No one stopped to even look. So why? Who’s playing this cosmic joke on me? Because that’s the only explanation. I never hurt anyone. Yet you…in your fancy car and your nice house couldn’t even stir up some compassion for a dying animal that you ran over.”

“It was just a dog. I didn’t know he belonged to anyone. At most, I would just need to pay a fine. I have a job. I pay taxes. You…you’re no one. Here, you can take some money…just get off my property before I call the police.”

“What would the police do? Send me to jail so they can just toss me back out? Prison means the government has to pay for my cancer treatments. You’ve taken away the only thing that meant something to me. I have nothing else to lose.”

“Please. I don’t deserve this.”