Five runaway teens, one epic love story.
Beautiful Survivors
Beautiful Survivors © C.M. Stunich 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
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Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
this book is dedicated to the strength of the human spirit.
we are all beautiful; we are all survivors.
our power for good can be limitless.
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The only way out of Hell is through the window above the kitchen sink. It's something the guys and I have known for years but rarely use because of the risks involved. The group home we live in is scary most days, worse if you get caught doing something you're not supposed to—like pushing the screen out and hopping into the mess of crooked gravestones that make up the backyard.
Yeah. Not only do we live in a shitty group home on the wrong side of the tracks, but the shambling old house backs up to a cemetery. Once, when I was thirteen, I found a human finger bone when I was playing in the dirt.
“I've got you,” Gunner says, putting his hands on my hips and helping me down from the window. My body slides along his, sending these fucked-up tingles through me that I try my best to ignore. Gunner Colvin is like an older brother to me. Dating him would be weird, right?
But I can't deny that his eyes are as clear and bright as green sea glass and his mouth, when he smiles, makes my chest feel tight.
“I've been mastering that jump for years,” I tell him, throwing up a haughty air to pretend that his lingering hands on my hips don't affect me at all. “I could've done it by myself.”
Gunner smiles and puts a finger against my lips, leaning in to whisper in my ear.
“Shh, you don't want to wake the Buzzard,” he says, his eyes lifting up to the dusty rose pink curtains on the second floor. That is the Buzzard's aka Tawna Freeman's room. Technically, she's only the home's night manager, but the house manager is never here so she's basically in charge of everything.
And the nickname Buzzard doesn't even begin to describe the awfulness of her personality.
I push Gunner away and stretch my arms above my head, surveying the yard and all its creeping shadows. The headstones are all old and chipped, weathered and mostly illegible. Most of them are crooked, sticking out of the overgrown lawn in a haphazard pattern that reminds me of dirty yellowing teeth in a rictus grin.
Shivering, I glance back and find Maddox hitting the ground in a crouch, a shaft of moonlight highlighting the strong lines of his face, that square jaw and the bit of stubble on it that says he's becoming a man. But at seventeen years old, he's stuck here just like the rest of us. Nash follows last, his red and white Converse stark against the muddy dirt under the window as he drops down and turns back to the house, pushing the glass closed and hooking the framed screen back in place.
“Let's get the hell out of here,” he whispers, taking my hand and pulling me through the shattered beams of silver that cross the yard like the bars of jail cell. It's just moonlight obviously, but the metaphor makes me cringe. This place is just that—a jailhouse. Only, it's worse because none of us committed any crimes, did any wrongdoings that we need to be punished for. No, instead we're punished just because. Just because we were born to the wrong people. Because no one wants to adopt teenagers. Because we have no family to take us in.
That's our crime: being unloved.
“We should run away,” I say as we pause in the meadow beyond the trees that border Hell's backyard. Hell—the Monterey Bay Home for Troubled Foster Youth is too much of a mouthful to say in casual conversation—is about half an hour from the beach on foot. Whenever we get a chance, we sneak out to see the ocean. With the Buzzard's keen eye for trouble and her sadistic interest in torture, that's not often. “Run away and get a place on the beach, somewhere that has a balcony and at least four bathrooms.”
Nash groans and drops his head back, his blue eyes focused on the stars above us as he imagines what it'd be like to have more than five allotted minutes in the restroom each morning.
“I'd be able to jack off without Clea Mooney walking in on me 'accidentally',” he says, dropping his head and flashing a shit-eating grin at me as he makes quotes around the word with his fingers. We all know Clea has a serious fucking crush on Nash; it makes me crazy. She writes him literal love letters and slips them under his door. When any of us find them before he does, we burn them with the lighter hidden under Gunner's bed and toss them into the bathroom sink until they're nothing but ash.
It's not that Maddox, Gunner, or I don't want Nash to get a girlfriend, but Clea is an unstable bitch and none of us likes her. Nash doesn't even seem to like her much either. As far as I know they've only made out once, but Clea went around telling everyone in Hell that they'd fucked which is totally bullshit because Nash wouldn't give up his virginity without telling me. That much I'm sure of.
“Can you imagine taking a twenty minute shower, letting the water run cold?” I ask as Maddox digs up the pack of cigarettes we all share and passes them out. I know I probably shouldn't smoke, but it's not like I get more than two a week at most, and life has few pleasures. I take them where I can get them.
“I'd take a bath,” Maddox says as he lights me up first and then moves onto Nash. Gunner doesn't smoke at all, but he doesn't lecture us either which is nice.
I study his black t-shirt, the name badge from his part-time job still pinned to the fabric. When he turned seventeen, Gunner got permission from the house manager to start working at a local health food store as a stock boy. I think he secretly hates his job, but being anyplace other than Hell is a blessing so he goes and he never complains.
“We should start walking,” he says as he stares up at the moon with those old soul eyes of his. For a seventeen year old, he's got a lot in there, more than any person rightfully should. Sometimes when I look at him, I think he's a good twenty or thirty years older.
“I'm gonna take off all my clothes and jump in the water tonight,” Nash says, grinning as he smokes, his long dark hair falling into his face. It's buzzed short in the back, but his bangs are like, past chin level at this point. He says it's his emo cut, but Nash is anything but emo so I can't figure out why he'd want to look like he is.
“You don't even want to swim,” I tell him as I hold my cigarette in one hand and punch Nash playfully in the shoulder with the other. “You just like the idea of having an audience for your dick.”
“I just want you to know what a real man looks like down there, so when you finally start dating—”
“I date,” I say as I flick cigarette ash at him and he laughs, grabbing me around the shoulders with his right arm and pressing a kiss to my temple. The feel of his hot mouth against my skin doesn't seem the same as it used to when we were kids. It's … more than just nice. Now, when Nash touches me, hugs me, pulls me into his lap, my entire body flushes with heat. God, if he had any idea how I felt, he'd probably never kiss me again. “I went to that dance last year with that one guy.”
“Do you hear this girl?” Nash asks, pointing at me with his cigarette. “That one guy that one time. Have
you even been kissed yet?”
“You kiss me all the time,” I say at the exact moment Nash leans over and does just that, pressing his mouth to mine as I bat him away and pretend like I'm going to burn his precious thrift store found vintage jean jacket with my cigarette.
“I mean a real kiss with tongue and hands on your tits and all that.”
“Come on, Nash, leave her alone,” Gunner says which makes me smile.
We walk in silence for a while, finishing our smokes and flicking them into the bushes. I really wish I had a beer right now, but unless someone better connected than us throws a high school bash and invites everyone, we're pretty much screwed on that front.
The grassy hill we're tromping across curves up sharply and then flattens out, giving us a good view of the city and the boardwalk. It's still open, the ferris wheel's lights flashing and coloring the sand of the beach pink and blue and yellow. Last year, in the off-season, we went down there when the place was closed and broke into the funhouse. Now that was an awesome fifteenth birthday party. During my sixteenth, I was in foster care, living with some woman and her daughters near the university. She took my state issued clothing vouchers and used them to buy her bio kids new dresses and purses while I walked around with holes in my tennis shoes.
The only reason I have nice shoes now is because Gunner bought them for me with money from the store. I keep telling him he needs to start saving for his own place for when he turns eighteen, but he keeps insisting we need things: a new backpack for Nash, a winter jacket for Maddox, a PE uniform for me so I don't have to wear the BO drenched loaners.
Last Saturday, I yelled at Gunner and told him he wasn't our dad and he punched a hole in the living room wall. The Buzzard made him pay for supplies to patch it up and then forced him to spend the entire night and all of the next day painting the room, its moldings, and both archway casings.
“We could run away, couldn't we?” Maddox asks randomly, bringing our earlier conversation back up as we make our way down the hill. “Look at us now. We're out; we're free. Why the fuck should we go back to that place?”
“If Gunner's not in the system when he dings eighteen, he won't get any money, Mad.” I've said this a million times before—especially to myself—but God, I want to leave. I want to leave so bad that sometimes at night, I find my pillow wet before I realize I'm crying. Nash always used to get up and sneak into my room, climb into bed with me and hold me tight. He stopped doing that a few months ago, and I can't figure out why. It makes me so fucking sad though.
“Sure,” Maddox says, ruffling up his short wavy red-brown hair. I know, like, everybody says this but … he looks like a young James Dean to me. I've had a crush on him since I was six, but I'm too afraid of ruining our family to say anything. Because these guys and me, this is it for all of us. We don't have parents or siblings or aunts and uncles, not even distant family friends. The four of us have been in and out of foster care and group homes since we were kids. We've also been in and out of each other's lives as we've gotten shuffled, traded, and discarded by the system and the people in it.
But we never lost touch.
We hit the sidewalk and pass by the Santa Cruz Riverwalk, over the small walking bridge that spans the San Lorenzo River and then straight down Riverside Avenue toward the beach. There are people out, but there aren't any crowds. That's the strange part about living in a place like Santa Cruz, California. During warm summer weekends, this place is thick and buzzing with humanity, swollen to capacity with techie tourists from San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. But during the week, the off-season, or bad weather, it's like a small town.
“Do you guys want to see if Clea is working the Boardwalk tonight?” Nash asks absently, reaching up to adjust his black beanie and the hood of his dark blue sweatshirt that's sticking out the back of his jacket. “If she's at the hotdog stand again, I can probably get her to give us some free dogs.”
“I don't like you whoring yourself out for stupid greasy sausages,” I say as I adjust my white baseball cap and Nash snatches it off my head. “Hey!” I try to get it back from him, but he puts it on top of Gunner's head and there's no way I can reach all the fucking way up there. The man is like seven feet tall.
Gunner smiles at me as I fidget subconsciously with the short white-blonde strands of my hair. It used to be so long that for years, the guys called me Rapunzel as a joke. Three months ago, when I was still in that foster home with the voucher thief, I got in a fight with one of her daughters. Later that night, when I was sleeping, the girl cut it all off. I woke up in a sea of feathery strands and then did the same to her.
That's what got me sent back to Hell—retaliation.
“The hair looks good on you, Mer,” Gunner says, giving me one of his signature smiles, the ones that are so packed with emotion that I feel dizzy when he throws them my way. But he doesn't give the hat back. He reaches back and adjusts it, trying to fit it around that thick skull of his.
With a sigh, I stuff my hands into the front pocket of my blue hoodie and let the ocean breeze ruffle my newly short hair. God, I miss that liquid tumble of silk down my back, the way Maddox used to twist it around his hand and lift it to his face, smell my shampoo. Gunner sneaks this organic herbal shit from the health food store for me. It used to be my one indulgence in life, my hair. I miss it.
“I fucking needed this,” Maddox says, pausing at the bottom of the cement steps that lead down to the sand. He kicks his shoes off—these old, scuffed brown boots that he's had for years—and buries his toes in the sand.
Nash doesn't even check to see if there's anyone around—fortunately there's not—before he strips his jacket, sweater and shirt off.
“You're really going in nude?” I ask with a sigh and he flashes a dark smile at me.
“You used to, too, you know,” he says, even though it's been years. As soon as I started getting breasts, I stopped getting naked in the ocean. I mean, not that I have all that much to show for it anyway. I topped out at a B cup. “I just want to feel salt on my skin,” he tells me seriously when I cross my arms over my chest and don't respond.
Nash sits down in the sand, tears his shoes and socks off and then stands back up to shimmy out of his jeans. I watch until he gets down to his boxers and glance away.
“Jesus, Nash,” Gunner says with a sigh and I look up to see him sprinting starkers across the beach. He looks so free in that moment, like a bird or a butterfly or something. Why should I sit here caged because my girl body's turned into a woman's?
“Screw this,” I say, tearing my hoodie over my head and refusing to look back at Gunner and Maddox standing near the bottom of the steps. I know what Gunner will look like if I meet his eyes; I can't decide what Maddox's expression will be.
My shirt comes off next, then my shoes, socks, jeans, bra.
I decide to leave my panties on—I'm not that brave—and take off after Nash.
As soon as he sees me, he shrieks and grins as I dive into the water next to him. It's cold as hell, but it feels amazing when I glide through it, parting the navy darkness with my hands, bursting into the cool evening air with a sharp gasp.
I swipe strands of blonde from my forehead as Nash swims closer and studiously keeps his attention on my face.
“So you haven't quite lost that wild streak of yours?”
“Please,” I tell him, feeling warm tingles across my skin when he gets close, too close. I can feel the warmth of his skin through the water and it does all sorts of strange things to my insides. Nash's blue eyes are gentle, half-lidded when he looks at me. “You think I'd let you have all the fun?”
Nash reaches out and snaps the elastic waistband of my panties.
“Guess not?” he says, splashing water at me and taking back off into the inky blackness of the sea. The lights from the boardwalk color the water in brilliant shades of red and yellow and orange, making me smile.
I glance over my shoulder and find both Gunner and Maddox watching us, an
d toss them a wave. They both wave back, but it's too dark to see the expressions on their faces.
I turn back to the water, take a deep breath, and dive in.
Later, safely entrenched back in Hell, I sit in the common area on a couch with the guys, stuffed together like sardines. It's a habit from way back in the day, when we were little kids and the only love in the world we had was from each other. Our bodies might've changed, but our hearts and souls are the same. Our yearning need to be held and touched and cuddled.
“Hey Nash,” Clea says, popping in the front door dressed in her uniform. Mrs. Buzzard is there within seconds, blinking past eyes clouded with sleep and frowning.
“It's past curfew,” she tells us, pointing at a faded sign on the wall, one we've seen a thousand times in the last few years. Basically it gets pointed out to us every night. “Get your asses upstairs. Clea, you're late. Want to tell me where you've been?”
“The bus skipped right past me,” she says, but the Buzzard's already writing up an infraction slip. Three of those and we lose after school activity privileges, four and our curfew's moved up by an hour, five and we get banished to the single bedroom that's adjoined to the Buzzard's.
Gunner shuts off the TV with the duct taped remote while the rest of us stay as quiet as possible and try to keep Tawna a good six feet away from us so she won't smell the beach on our clothing. If we get caught sneaking out, there's a good chance either she or the house manager will send us to Purgatory. That's our nickname for the juvenile correction center that holds all the delinquent brats, kids who scare the ever living hell out of me.
We start up the stairs, but I notice Nash holds back to talk to Clea.
I refuse to be jealous and head up to the room I share with three other girls. There are two bunk beds, made of faded oak, burnished and scratched, covered in stickers and Sharpie. There's a desk in the middle, but nobody uses it. It just causes fights.
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