carly tuso was the wild child of her high school. her parents could only be called white trash and she knew that's what everyone thought of her. it didn't matter that she was smarter than most of the entire fucking school and that she could actually make something of herself, it only mattered that her dad was a deadbeat and her mother was dead-eyed and there was more alcohol and drugs in their shitty little house than there was food. and carly, instead of doing something to blow everyone's minds, found it easier to just fall into their expectations. she went to parties and sucked cock and fucked boys in bathrooms and strange bedrooms, and she lived her entire life like it was a grudge. it surprised no one when she got pregnant at sixteen, and it surprised no one that she didn't know exactly who the father was.

marley had the kind of childhood they make movies about, except that he never had someone come help him out of the trash that was his life and help him become a better person. his grandparents thought of him as little more than a personal slave, his mother couldn't stand to look at him because he was a constant reminder of every mistake she'd ever had. the misery was only shared when his mother had another child, a boy, when marley was five.

marley more or less raised himself, navigating around the godawful moods the three adults in his home cycled through. he kept himself scarce and silent and learned that the more he cried, the less they hit his brother. outside of home, there were only so many people he could be friends with. mostly it was the other kids on his block, who more or less had exactly the same childhood he had. some had it better, and some had it worse, but it was common to see them behind the elementary school, trying out cigarettes one of them had nicked from a parent, comparing bruises and insults. most of the time, marley's brother came along, because it was sadly safe for him to be with them then at home with their family.

it was also just a matter of time that marley turned to stealing to have money for things for himself and his brother, and it was just a matter of time before he threw himself in with whatever gang was in power that month. at his age, someone was going to use him for something, it was better that he choose what devils he kept company with. it escalated every year, and it didn't help that marley was really good at being really bad. and the way he thought of it, the more he involved himself, the less his brother had to be involved. by high school, he was cold-eyed and steady-handed, and there wasn't much that he hadn't done for a wad of cash. he dropped out of high school by his sophomore year because he honestly felt that there wasn't much more he could learn that would be of any use for him or the life he was destined for.

things kind of exploded a year after he dropped out, in ways that even marley didn't expect. he walked in one day to find his grandfather dead in the kitchen, a syringe sticking out of his arm. there wasn't much fuss as the man was carted out, the police and the emts had seen much worse on their side of the ghetto. marley thought maybe life would get easier with the abusive asshole out of their life, but he hadn't expected both his grandmother and his mother to disappear out of his life either. his grandmother was first, leaving everything behind expect for a suitcase. his mother bounced a few days later, except she actually said goodbye first. a kiss on his cheek, his brother's, a small wad of cash pushed into his hand, and she was out the door with her latest conquest on her arm, never to be seen again.

hardened or not, it took marley a few days of just sitting in the empty house for it to really sink in that he was utterly alone. he'd always felt like that, of course, but he hadn't ever actually been left like this. it was both exhilarating and terrifying. in the end, marley decided that he would take whatever was valuable in the house and disappear. he and his brother would stay at someone's house, no problem, he knew plenty of people that would let him crash on his couch and not care where their share of the rent money came from — mostly because they were doing all the same shit too. instead, social services caught up to them before he could make a move. he wasn't yet seventeen so they couldn't leave him to be alone, but marley was exactly the kind of teenager they didn't want to deal with in the system. thankfully for them, it turned out that his grandmother had an aunt in new york city.

aunt sherry was nothing at all like anyone marley had met in his entire life. a former school teacher, she was in extremely good health and had a mind like a steel trap, with the kind of gaze marley thought drill sergeants would kill to emulate. his brother loved her instantly, but she and marley butted heads on everything under the sun that wasn't his brother's upbringing. in that regard, they were always in accord, wanting the absolute best for the painfully shy and frighteningly intelligent boy.

marley tried his best to stay out of his aunt's way but it never worked. she wanted him to get his act together, get his ged, go on to college. marley wanted to go straight into finding a job, hook up with the people that had connections to his old people back in cleveland. he stayed out all night, sometimes not coming home for days at a time, usually found himself on someone's couch in the morning with some cash shoved into his pockets. it wasn't the best, but it was all he knew, and no matter what aunt sherry wanted he was never going to be a nice outstanding citizen.

it finally came down to his brother pleading for him to stop for marley to finally start settling down. yeah, there wasn't much he could do in life at that point, but he could try to be something for his brother. his brother was going places and marley didn't want to be the black smear in his past he had to hide. it wasn't going to happen in new york city though, where the city life was much too tempting. in the end, aunt sherry arranged for him to move upstate to where her ex-husband lived. marley and his uncle got along much better than he and aunt sherry, and within a few months, marley had a steady job at the pawn shop a friend of his uncle owned.

it didn't mean that marley finally stopped messing around, but he did learn to hide it better. he kept his nose clean during the weekdays but he let loose on the weekends, doing whatever he could for extra cash. and if you ask him what he wants to do in life, he'll shrug.