The first sound Jayden ever heard wasn't a lullaby.
It was a door slamming, a bottle breaking, and his mother screaming someone's name she didn't even love anymore.
The apartment on 6th Street was small and always smelled like smoke — not just cigarettes, but something stronger, sharper. The walls were stained yellow, the floor sticky in places, and the air heavy with arguments that never really ended. He came into that world crying, but no one rushed to comfort him. The nurse did her job, handed him to a mother who barely looked up, and went home to her own life.
His mom, Crystal, was twenty-one and already tired of everything. His father, Darnell, showed up two days late, holding a cheap teddy bear that still had the store tag on it. They named the baby Jayden, because it sounded nice on TV.
For a while, he thought life was just noise.
When you're little, you don't know what "normal" is — you just know what is. The yelling, the strangers coming and going, the smell of burnt foil and something sweet-sour in the air — that was home. Some nights his mom would hold him tight and cry into his hair, whispering, "You're all I got, baby." Other nights, she'd lock herself in the bathroom, and he'd sit outside the door with his little sister, waiting for the water to stop running and the silence to start.
By the time Jayden was six, he had learned how to heat up a can of soup without burning himself. He knew how to hide when things got loud. He knew how to grab his sister, Layla, and slip under the bed when the police lights flashed red and blue through the blinds.
One night, they came harder than usual.
Boots thundered on the stairs. Someone shouted, "Open up! Police!" Jayden was in the corner, trying to wake his mom, but she was gone — not dead, but gone in that empty way that made her eyes roll back.
A hand yanked him out from under the table. "It's okay, kid," a voice said. But it didn't sound okay. He kicked and screamed for Layla, but another officer was already carrying her out the door. That's when he saw the teddy bear — the same one his dad had given him — lying facedown in a puddle of something sticky and red. He didn't know if it was blood or juice.
That night, Jayden and Layla rode in the back of a police car for the first time. No handcuffs. Not yet.
They were taken to a woman named Miss Carol, who smelled like flowers and wore glasses that always slid down her nose. "You can call me Auntie Carol if you want," she said. Jayden didn't want to. He didn't call anyone anything anymore. He just held his sister and watched her fall asleep on a couch that didn't smell like smoke.
The next morning, a man in a tie came with papers. "We're working on placement," he said. Jayden didn't know what that meant, but he saw Miss Carol's face change — the way grown-ups do when they don't want to say the truth out loud.
They were separated a week later.
Jayden didn't cry. He didn't say goodbye.
He just watched the van drive away with Layla inside and promised himself he'd find her again someday. That promise sat in his chest like a stone, heavy and cold, and it never left.
The next home was different.
A group house — more kids, more noise, more rules. You ate when they told you, slept when they told you, talked when they said you could. Jayden learned quick: if you fight, you get sent somewhere worse. But sometimes fighting felt like the only way to remind people you were still there.
One night, lying on a thin mattress in a dark room that smelled like bleach, Jayden whispered to himself, They took everything, but they ain't taking me.
It became his mantra.
Every hit, every move, every loss — that sentence grew teeth.
He didn't know it yet, but the boy the system took in that night wasn't coming back out the same.