Boy it Had Been Eight Months Since

¶ … Boy It had been eight months since Fiona finally pulled the trigger. Not literally, of course. It was the pills, but this time she was successful and Marcus found out when he came home from school one day. She had fallen into a habit of staring at the Internet for hours on end, visiting Facebook and Match.com. The crying still hadn't stopped, and Marcus couldn't help but wonder if his mother did the right thing.

He never even found the note, which she typed and saved in a .doc file that Marcus would not find until his new girlfriend Emmalie was over when Marcus was packing up his things to leave. Emmalie was fourteen. She had already had sex, and she took a liking to Marcus after meeting him in drama class at school. Ellie tried to kick her ass when she found out that Emmalie kissed Marcus in the school auditorium.

Emmalie fought back valiantly, but her only technique was grabbing Emma's hair in her fist and screaming so loudly that Emma finally relented just so she wouldn't have to listen anymore. It also made Emma respect Marcus's new girlfriend, at least a few days after the fight. Marcus would tell everyone that his mother's suicide was an accident. For a while that's what he told himself. After all, there was no note. But even he knew better.

Ellie said he would be better off without Fiona, and invited Marcus to come live with her and her family. When Emmalie found the note, Marcus called his dad in Cambridge and said he wanted to go live with him. That was before he knew what that really meant, to go live with his dad and his girlfriend, and to never see Emma or Emmalie or Will ever again.

Marcus's dad reluctantly accepted his boy back into his Cambridge life, complaining at every step about the mess the boy was making of his life but Marcus was not about to go back to London easily, especially when Will and Rachel, who had been married for three months, considered adopting him instead. "It's not right," Rachel told Will. "It's his father, not some stranger." "Yeah, but have you met his father?" Will responded.

"No, why, what's wrong with him?" "Well nothing is wrong with him, it's just that, well, how much do you think he really cares about Marcus?" Marcus claimed he didn't care at all. He was going to try it out because if his mom and dad both didn't want him, then he might as well just go ahead and be an orphan. And if he was going to be an orphan, he was at least going to feel bad about it.

Will said Marcus wasn't making any sense, and began to worry about Marcus when one day Rachel showed him the pink and blue strip that told him in no uncertain terms that the once-avowed baby-free man would become a father. Two weeks after Marcus went to live with his dad, he ran away.

When he arrived on Will's doorstep, he was carrying his backpack and his books and he said, "Hello, I'm orphaned now." Will let him in but the two of them had a man to man discussion about what it means to turn of age, and how Marcus did not have the choice to live with Will. The police would be looking for him soon if he didn't go home, and Marcus had better phone up his dad.

Marcus said he had worked too hard in London and made too many friends to suddenly leave it all behind and start again, and that his new classmates in Cambridge were no better than the new classmates he had here, and that he missed Emmalie and Ellie and that was when Marcus started to cry. He didn't just cry, Marcus bawled so hard that Rachel and Alistair work up (it was 5 AM when Marcus showed up on their doorstep).

Marcus wondered why his mother turned out to be so selfish, and said that no matter what he could never turn out like her, ever. He was turning fourteen soon, and that meant he was old enough to do whatever he wanted except drive. When he could do that, he said, he was going to leave London altogether.

Will said now Marcus was making no sense because if he wanted to leave London so badly, then why did he just take a bus in the middle of the night to get here? Marcus admitted his friend had a point and promptly passed out on the sofa, with his head in Rachel's lap. He was awoken by the telephone ringing. It was his father, who knew exactly where Marcus could be found and who forgave him and said he could come home any time.

That was when Marcus said, in the clearest voice he ever used, "Dad, what if I don't want to come home? I like it here. I would prefer to stay." "But you can't, Marcus. I'm your father. You can't just live with whomever you please. You will come back here, and you will live here. End of story." It wasn't his father's story, though. This was a story about a boy. So Marcus quickly phoned Ellie and asked for her help.

Ellie came over and the two of them decided that they had two options: to run away together (that was when Ellie held Marcus's hand) or to devise a way to prove that Marcus's dad had abused him so that they wouldn't make him go back. Ellie wrote a letter saying that she witnessed "the most horrific abuse imaginable," she wrote. Licking the envelope, she asked Marcus to find out who to send it to and then they would just wait.

But where? It was Friday; they didn't have school for days so Marcus was safe for the time being. That was when Ellie kissed Marcus. She didn't just kiss him this time, though. She stuck her tongue in his mouth really good, just like she had been practicing with Louise at school. The tongue startled Marcus, but he liked it, and marveled that Ellie actually was a better kisser than she looked. Later on, Marcus would face a big dilemma: if he rejected Ellie he lost his closest ally.

If he went with it, he lost the first girl he ever really liked in school and might never see her again. So Marcus decided to ask Will for help. Will had a soft spot for the sweet.