The boy was tired. Properly tired, the kind that seeped into his bones and made his thoughts feel heavy and sluggish, like treacle left out in the cold. Two hours of physical labour under the unforgiving midday sun would do that to anyone, of course—but he had no one to blame but himself.
He had a debt to pay.
It wasn't much to look at from the outside, this so-called "debt," and yet it hung about him like an iron chain, pulling at his shoulders, dragging his pride through the mud. How exactly a fourteen-year-old boy managed to get himself into debt was the sort of question that invited too many raised eyebrows and knowing sighs from adults who thought they understood things.
If asked, the boy would have pouted, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and mumbled something entirely unconvincing about misunderstandings. It was a decent performance—he'd practised it often enough—but deep down he knew it for what it was.
Utter rubbish.
The sulking, cocky teenager that he was had walked straight into this mess with his eyes wide open. Tricked. That was what he told himself. He'd been tricked into it. And by a little girl, no less—a little girl who also happened to be his foster sister.
Yes, foster. Again.
He was proud to admit that this was his sixth home in as many years, though his therapists didn't seem to find it as impressive. "Not an accomplishment," they'd said, voices carefully level, as though trying not to frighten a spooked horse.
He disagreed entirely.
In his book, exposing leeches who pocketed government cheques while feeding kids expired beans and cold promises was nothing short of a public service. He'd made it his life's mission—at least until he turned eighteen and aged out of the whole miserable system.
But pride had its price, and he was paying it now.
Because the girl—small, sharp-eyed, frighteningly perceptive for her ten years—hadn't taken kindly to the idea of her parents bringing in yet another stray to "foster."
Not when she already had three brothers.
Not when they'd told her, in that infuriatingly parental tone, to be nice and welcome her new brother.
Not when, as far as she was concerned, he was just another temporary shadow drifting through her home.
Who was he, really, to come and go as he pleased in her house?
The boy sighed, wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve, smearing a streak of grime across sunburnt skin. The memory of that day remained uncomfortably sharp, like a splinter under the skin.
---
Flashback
Clothes.
Clothes, and more clothes, and the odd threadbare jumper that looked like it had belonged to three other boys before him. Black plastic bags swallowed it all—the extent of his worldly possessions, stuffed hastily into bin liners that rustled accusingly every time he shifted them.
These were all he had to his name.
He didn't even have anything sentimental, no worn photograph of unknown parents, no silver locket, no scrap of blanket that smelled faintly of home.
He supposed that made him unoriginal, even by orphan standards.
With a grunt, he hoisted the bulging bag over his shoulder, grabbing his battered backpack with the other hand. Habit had dulled the sting somewhat—he was used to this, now. The leaving.
This made the fifth time he'd packed up and shipped out. Becoming something of a professional at it, really. If there was a championship in being uprooted, he'd have been holding the trophy by now.
He glanced around the cramped room one last time. Two bunks, peeling paint, a cracked windowpane that rattled in the wind—seven months' worth of familiarity, gone in a breath.
The door creaked.
He turned and found a lanky boy standing there, his wiry frame filling the doorway like a barricade. Eli.
"Hey," he said, voice careful, casual, trying for normal.
Eli wasn't buying it.
"Idiot," Eli spat, his voice trembling with more than anger. "I told you. I told you! Why don't you think for once? Is it really so hard to— Merlin's bloody socks, you couldn't just talk about it, could you?" His voice rose with every word, the fury unraveling into something rawer, something hurt.
The boy didn't answer. He couldn't.
"You had to run!" Eli's voice cracked on the word. "You think you're clever, yeah? Playing lone wolf while the rest of us—" He broke off, swallowing hard, eyes shining with tears he refused to shed.
The boy shifted uncomfortably, guilt clawing at his chest.
He knew exactly what Eli was talking about. He'd been the one to bolt, the one who couldn't stand another day under the suffocating roof, the one whose vanishing acts kept drawing the inspectors like moths to a flame.
And this time… this time, he'd finally pushed too far.
The group home had been deemed "unstable." Unsafe. Harmful to "the children's mental health." Words from some polished report written by someone who'd never spent a night in a drafty bunk bed with second-hand nightmares for company.
So now they were scattering the lot of them. Again.
"Think about others, you prat!" Eli's voice cracked. "Think about the girl, yeah? You think she—"
The boy raised both hands, palms out, cutting him off gently.
"I know," he said, voice small, brittle. "I… I messed up, Eli. I'm sorry. I'll… I'll make it up to you. I promise."
Eli's jaw worked, as though he had more to say, but the boy ducked past him before the words could land, letting the weight of his bag drag him down the hall toward the waiting car.
He couldn't face him. Not now.
Not after this.
---
The ride was silent, save for the hum of the engine and the occasional rattle of loose change in the caseworker's cup holder.
Well. Silent until the lecture began.
"This is the third time you've run, the Boy," the caseworker said, his voice fraying at the edges like an old rug.
"It wasn't that bad," the Boy muttered from the backseat, forehead pressed against the cool glass. "I came back, didn't I? Early this time."
"Early?" The man's voice climbed an octave. "Early? You bolted in the middle of breakfast, boy! Do you know how many people I had on the phone looking for you? They had to call the police!"
the Boy shrugged, forcing a grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Bit of exercise never hurt anyone."
The man's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
"Just—don't," he muttered finally. "Don't run. Not again. Please."
the Boy stayed quiet after that, letting the scenery blur past, the guilt pressing harder with each passing mile.
---
By the time they pulled up outside the new foster home—a quaint brick house with geraniums in the window boxes and a swing set in the yard—the sun had begun to sink, painting the sky in streaks of bruised violet.
"For the next two weeks," the caseworker said, dragging the Boy's black bags from the boot, "you're with the Marshalls. Lovely family, proper nice people. Please, kiddo. Just… no trouble this time, yeah?"
the Boy pasted on his most angelic smile, the one that made teachers both suspicious and exhausted in equal measure.
"Me?" he said, widening his green eyes in mock innocence. "I wouldn't dream of causing trouble, Mister."
The caseworker snorted, clearly unconvinced.
===
The meeting with the Marshalls had been… tame.
Suspiciously tame, in fact.
The Boy wasn't sure what he'd been expecting—tight smiles, maybe, the polite-but-distant air of people who opened their doors for charity rather than actual children—but instead he'd found warmth. Not overbearing, suffocating warmth, but something natural, well-practised.
Almost as if they'd done this before.
"Good to have you, kiddo," Mr Marshall had said, clapping him lightly on the shoulder, not too firm, not too soft, like a man who'd perfected the art of greeting nervous kids without frightening them off. Mrs Marshall had smiled, ushered him inside, and told him there were biscuits in the tin if he was hungry.
They were… fine.
The brothers, too—three of them, lanky, loud, and completely unbothered by the newcomer in their midst—had taken to him almost instantly. Within an hour, they were comparing PlayStation scores and arguing about who cheated at FIFA. The Boy thought he might actually get along with them.
But the girl…
The girl was something else entirely.
Nina Marshall was ten, tiny, and terrifying. She spent the first two days glaring at him like he'd personally burned down her treehouse and insulted her teddy bear collection in the process. Every time their eyes met across the dinner table, she'd squint, narrow, assessing.
The Boy had thought she'd come around eventually. Most did. He was, after all, objectively charming—or at least, that was the story he liked to tell himself when he stared into cracked mirrors late at night.
Apparently, Nina Marshall had not read that memo.
---
By day four, he'd decided he'd had enough.
If there was one thing The Boy did not tolerate, it was silent judgment from someone who still pronounced "spaghetti" like it had an extra syllable.
So he tried the obvious solutions.
Chocolate? Rejected.
Sharing his leftover TV time tokens? Rebuffed.
Offering up a whole 50p from his own pocket money? … She'd taken it, sure, but the glare had remained.
Clearly, drastic measures were needed.
---
"Alright," The Boy said one Saturday morning, sidling up to her while she coloured at the kitchen table. "I'm gonna ask you this once, and you'd better answer me straight, got it?"
Nina looked up, unimpressed.
"What exactly is your problem with me?"
Her small hands paused mid-crayon-stroke. For a long moment she just blinked at him, head tilted, like he'd just asked her to solve particle physics. Then she sniffed, set her crayon down, and folded her arms with all the gravitas of someone thrice her age.
"Hmph," she said finally, lips pursed.
That was it.
"Hmph."
The Boy gaped.
"Hmph? That's your answer?"
She gave him a look—that look, the one adults used when you confidently declared that the sun revolved around the Earth. He could practically hear the unspoken wow, you poor idiot radiating off her.
"I… hmph right back at you," he muttered.
---
By lunch, he was fuming. He'd tried being nice. He'd tried diplomacy. He'd even tried sharing his last KitKat. Nothing worked.
Clearly, this was no ordinary little sister scenario. This was warfare.
"You know," he began casually that evening, flopping onto the sofa beside her as she watched cartoons, "you just don't like me. But that's weird, 'cause all girls like me." He let the words hang there, confident, smug, like bait dangling over a piranha tank.
Nina turned slowly, expression flat.
"Even my other foster sisters liked me," he added helpfully, twisting the knife. "Maybe… maybe you're not really a girl."
It was a terrible insult, straight from the hallowed halls of playground diplomacy, but oh, the effect was immediate.
Her nostrils flared.
"I am too a girl!" she shrieked, leaping to her feet.
"Could've fooled me," The Boy said, stretching lazily. "You're probably gonna grow up like your brothers, you know. Smelly. Spotty. Beardy."
"I will not!" Her face was turning a spectacular shade of crimson now.
"Oh, you definitely will," he continued serenely. "And then all the other girls will laugh and call you names—"
"I'M NOT A BOY!" she roared. "You're the smelly boy! You're the one who's gonna grow a beard!"
The Boy pressed a hand to his chest, feigning deep offence. "Low blow, Nina. Real low."
She sniffled, on the verge of tears, but then something in her gaze sharpened like a knife.
"I bet you can't even ask a girl on a date," she said, vicious triumph glittering in her eyes. "I bet no girl even looks at you!"
The Boy straightened slowly, narrowing his eyes.
"…Right," he said carefully. "You started this."
---
The quarrel that followed was legendary, whispered of in hushed tones in the hallways of the Marshall household for days to come.
By the end of it, a bet had been struck.
---
The Terms
The Boy had to ask a girl out. Successfully.
Nina got to choose the girl.
If he succeeded, she'd have to call him "Big Brother" for an entire day and be nice to him.
If he failed, he'd owe her thirty whole dollars' worth of toy store coupons.
She was dead set on those Barbies. He tried not to imagine accidentally buying a haunted one. Totally not doll-phobic. Nope.
---
The next afternoon, they went "date hunting."
Nina called it that. The Boy called it public humiliation.
He tried pointing out girls he already knew, the ones from school who'd smile and play along as a favour. Every single one got dismissed with a wave of Nina's tiny, tyrannical hand.
Too short.
Too "obviously into ponies."
Too "ugly energy." (Her words, not his.)
The Boy was one rejection away from throwing himself into traffic when she suddenly jabbed a finger toward the other side of the street.
"Her!" she whispered fiercely. "She's the one."
The Boy followed her gaze.
Oh.
Tall. Blonde. Green-eyed. Maybe fifteen, sixteen. Older, sophisticated. Way out of his league.
"Oh no," he muttered. "No, no, no. She's older than me. She'll think I'm some tragic Year Nine kid trying to punch above his weight. Not happening."
"She used to babysit me," Nina said sweetly. "I know her. Her name's May."
He blinked. "That doesn't make this better."
"You said"—she pitched her voice higher, mocking him cruelly—"'All girls like me.'"
"I don't sound like that."
"You exactly sound like that."
---
Ten minutes later, The Boy was standing in front of May and her friend April, praying to every deity he didn't believe in.
"Uh—hi!" he said, voice cracking spectacularly. "Excuse me!"
May turned, confusion melting into recognition when she spotted Nina.
"Oh, hi! Nina! How've you been?"
They chatted animatedly, completely ignoring him. The Boy stood there, awkward as a lamppost, wishing for divine intervention.
Finally, desperate, he tried his trump card.
He leaned slightly, turned up his best roguish grin, and dropped the line.
"How you doin'?"
April choked back a laugh. May covered her mouth.
Oh no.
---
May introduced herself, politely, and then casually mentioned that April was her girlfriend.
The Boy's heart cracked, theatrically, into seventeen pieces.
Betrayal. Treachery. Heartbreak. Someone cue the sad violin music.
April patted his shoulder as they walked away. "Don't worry, sweetheart. You'll be fine."
He wanted the pavement to swallow him whole.
---
"Unsuccessful," Nina declared smugly as they headed back.
The Boy shot her a look. "You planned that."
She smiled, all angelic innocence. "I don't know what you mean."
"You're evil."
"Thank you."
---
Despite everything—the humiliation, the looming debt, the aching reminder of how temporary all of this was—The Boy found himself smiling as they walked home hand-in-hand.
For once, the guilt was quiet.
For once, he felt like maybe someone might actually miss him when he left.
He didn't let that shadow the moment.
He was, for now, exactly what every child should be.
Happy.