Chapter Text
“Hey, Mads,” Evan asked his older sister while cheese fries covered his face and his leftover chocolate shake stained his upper lip.
“Yeah, Evan?” She smiles at her brother, sitting in the passenger seat of her blue Jeep, which she got when she was 16. She always tries to give her brother moments like this away from their parents. It’s the only time they can be themselves, and soaking up every moment with her little brother before she leaves for Boston is her top priority.
“If I tell you something, can you promise not to tell Mom and Dad?” Evan sets his milkshake down in the cup holder, wipes his face of a mess their parents wouldn’t normally tolerate, and clasps his hands together, staring at them, trying to keep the fear buried deep in his chest.
Maddie reaches over and places her hand on her little brother’s. She notices his change in tone as he feigns eye contact with her. “You can tell me anything, Evan."
“Maybe I shouldn’t, though. You’re leaving me in a few weeks for Boston, and you can’t take me with you. I don’t know if telling you would help."
Maddie understands the relationship he has with their parents, and she knows it’s not healthy, but the way her little brother is talking worries her. “Please tell me, Evan, if something’s happening that I don’t know about. I need to know you’re going to be okay when I leave."
Evan takes a deep breath but keeps his tone quiet and his head down as he finally opens up about what’s really going on. “Mom and Dad hurt me.” He says it quickly, hoping his sister will overlook the new information.
Her eyes blink rapidly, fighting back tears at what her brother is revealing. “What do you mean they hurt you?"
Still avoiding eye contact, he elaborates, “Do you remember when you came home from your friend's house and I had a black eye and a bloody nose?” She answers, "Yes,” before Evan continues. “I told you I got it because I fell off my skateboard, but it was because of Dad. Every time you leave the house and I’m alone with them, it doesn’t take long before one of them hurts me. Usually Dad, but sometimes they team up. They tell me I’ll never be the son they want, and I’ll never live up to anything. They tell me I should’ve died instead of Daniel.” He finally looks at his sister with tears in his eyes. “Maddie, who’s Daniel?” His sister is the only one who could answer the question without punching him in the face for even bringing up his name.
Maddie has to wipe her own tears before they stain her cheeks, pulls her brother across the third seat, and holds him close. “I should’ve told you a long time ago, but Daniel used to be our brother. He died only a year after you were born. Mom and Dad blamed you for his death, but it wasn’t your fault, Evan. It’ll never be your fault.” She takes a deep breath before looking at her brother and the fading bruise around his eye. She gently swipes her thumb across the bruise—something their parents never did. “I’m going to help you, but if I have to leave, I want you to hide in my room and call me, okay? I’ll help you, but you have to make sure they don’t hurt you again until then. Okay? You promise you’ll be safe.”
He looks at her pinky finger warily, “I can’t promise something I don’t have control over. If they want to hurt me, I can’t stop them, Maddie.” He could try. Surely he could try, but trying would only make their father angrier, and he doesn’t want to find out what will happen to him when he doesn’t just listen to them.
She cups her brother’s cheeks, holding back tears. “You don’t have to stop them, you just have to hide. You’ll stay safe as long as you hide. It’ll only be until next week, okay?” Evan nods, worried about what the next week will bring and what his sister has planned. “I promise I’ll try to stay safe, but what are you going to do?” Maddie doesn’t have an answer. She could try to convince Doug to let him come to Boston with them, but she doubts he’ll agree. She could ask a trusted friend to watch over him, but that wouldn’t get him out of the house. “I’ll figure it out, Evan. I promise.” She holds her brother close, discards the fries, and forgets about the milkshakes. When they get home, she beats herself up, glaring at their parents when they aren’t looking. Maddie realizes she hadn’t noticed until now just how scared her brother was around them. She thought the injuries were from his stunts to get attention, but now she sees they’re meant to alert her about the dangers of being alone with their parents—a fear no child should have.
Evan spends the night in his big sister’s bed, hoping she can get him away from their parents. Evan doesn’t know how it’ll be possible, but he hopes she does it soon. The hits, the talk downs, the constant attacking on all fronts, the fading and fresh bruises, the pain. It’s all too much for Evan to handle alone anymore. He doesn’t want his sister to leave him for Boston, but if she can give him a better life far from his parents, then he’ll be okay with it. For now, he snuggles into his sister’s chest and knows he’ll be safe in his sister's arms, at least for tonight.
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The following week goes as Evan expects it will. He’s safe when he’s at school and when his sister is at home, but her plan can’t work if she doesn’t talk to someone about what’s happening in the house. So, she has to leave him for a few hours. He waves her goodbye from his bedroom window and keeps a listening ear for his parents. They have a system that has been established over the years, so when hour one passes and his mother calls him downstairs, he knows what that means. He has maybe two minutes before his father storms upstairs to his bedroom and drags him downstairs by the hair. Maybe when he leaves his parents' house, he’ll cut his hair short so no one can pull on his hair again, but he doesn’t have time to think about hair before his father is already ascending the stairs. Doing what his sister had asked of him when he was alone, he runs into his sister's bedroom, closes and locks the door, and hides himself in the closet as his father starts banging on the door. “Evan!! Open this door right now!!” Evan just flinches at his father’s words and buries himself further in the closet.
He calls Maddie as his father continues to bang on the door. She picks up on the second ring, “Maddie, Maddie, he’s trying to come in. I’m scared. Where are you?”
Maddie almost drops her phone as she glances over at the nice officer. “You have to hurry, my dad is trying to break into my room. It’s where I told Evan to hide.” Maddie holds onto the grab handle above the car door when the officer picks up speed. “Ok, Evan. We’re on the way, just stay quiet, and if he gets to you before we get there, don’t let him know you're on the phone.”
Evan flinches again when he hears his sister’s bedroom doorframe cracking under the pressure. “He’s going to get in. He’s going to get in, Maddie. I don’t want him to hurt me again.” He pleads for his sister to hurry as tears stream down his face.
She turns to the officer again, “Is there any way you can go faster? He’s breaking through my bedroom door. I can hear him on the other end yelling at Evan.” Just then, their dad’s voice echoes through the phone’s speaker again, “Evan!! I swear to God when I get in there, you're going to wish you never hid from me in the first place!!” You little brat!!”
The officer speaks calmly, “I’m going as fast as I can, Miss. Buckley, but I’ll have to turn off the sirens so as not to alert them when we get closer. Make sure your brother is prepared to fight against his dad if we’re not there in time.”
Maddie shakes her head and goes back to Evan on the phone, “Evan, did you hear that? You might have to fight back until we get there, ok? I know it’s scary, but we’re almost there. I promise.”
Evan nods vehemently, but his sister can’t see him, and he knows they won’t get here in time as his father continues to break the hinges off his sister’s door. “I’ll try, but hurry.” He lets out a yelp when his father breaks through the door. “He’s in the room,” Evan whispers into the phone and tucks it away so his sister and help can hear what’s about to happen.
“Evan? Don’t make me look for you. Just tell me where you’re at and I’ll make sure it won’t hurt. Much.” His father’s heavy footsteps echo across his sister’s hardwood floor as he inches closer to the closet door. “Evan, come out now. I know you’re in there. I don’t like this little game we’re playing. You made me break your sister’s door. We’ll have to come up with an excuse for that one, now won’t we?” His father steps away from the closet and checks under the bed.
Evan keeps his hands over his mouth, trying to keep himself as quiet and small as possible, but just when he thinks his father is leaving, the door to the closet rips open and Evan screams as his father drags him out of the closet. “Dad!! No, please don’t do this. You don’t have to hurt me, please?!” Evan begs his father and throws his hands when his father tries to hit him. “Don’t touch me!!”
“I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, you little brat. No one is coming to save you.” He grabs Evan’s wrists with one hand while the other one slaps his son across the face. “I think it’s time for a more brutal punishment for your actions today. You couldn’t have just come down like your mother asked, now could you?” His father rips off his belt and ties it around Evan’s hands before kicking him in the ribs with his combat boots from work, still on.
Evan moans in pain, but it’s nothing new yet. He’s not sure he wants to find out what’s in store for Evan if his help doesn’t hurry. After a few hits to his ribs and a couple of punches to his face, he rips Evan’s shirt off and pulls him by the hair down the stairs. His back hits every carpeted stair on the way down. He knows he’s getting rug burns with the way his back instantly aches. When they get to the bottom of the staircase, he uses his feet to try to rip himself out of his father’s grip, but his father tightens around his hair, and Evan yelps out in pain. “Get off me!!” He pulls away, despite the pain, but when his father finally lets go. They’re in the kitchen where his mother is waiting impatiently.
“What took you so long?” His mother has her hands on her hips and her foot tapping on the tile floor in the kitchen. She looks too annoyed at the scene in front of her. Her son in the middle of the kitchen floor, trying to sit up with his hands tied by his father’s belt. Her husband, looking ready to kill their son, had his knuckles already bloody before many hits were taken.
“This little bitch was hiding in his sister’s room. I broke the door trying to get him out.” His father stands with his arms crossed against the table. He watches as Evan struggles to get away.
He can’t push up well enough to start running. He gets into a sitting position, but doesn’t go far, and freezes in fear when his mother hands his father a knife used for cutting up Evan’s meat when they have dinner as a normal family(If Evan could even call them that). “No, no, no, no. Please don’t! Please, don’t do this. You can’t explain to Maddie why her brother has knife wounds.” Evan scoots his butt across the floor to get as far away from his parents as possible. “Maddie!!! They’ve got a knife!!! Maddie!!”
His father crosses the distance and kicks Evan’s face in, causing him to spit up blood on the floor. He kneels and grabs Evan’s chin, leaving a bruise in his wake. “Your sister and no one else will be helping you, Evan. You are all on your own. Like you always will be.” His father’s words spit out like venom, and he holds out his free hand for the knife. His wife complies, but before the knife is plunged somewhere in Evan’s body, a voice echoes loudly in the house.
“Philip Buckley, do not lay one more finger on that boy.” The officer, as Evan can see, points a gun at his father. Ready to pull the trigger if he doesn’t listen.
His father does not step away from Evan, but holds the knife up. He keeps a cold, dark look on Evan. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but nothing is going on here.”
The officer repeats his statement, much closer this time. “I said back away from the boy.” He glances at Evan, but Evan is too afraid to pull his eyes away from his father’s death glare. Several seconds of silence and no movement from Evan’s father, and the man repeats again. “I will not ask again, Philip Buckley!” Evan peels his eyes away from his father to see his mother already taken out of the situation. “We already have your wife. Just let go of the knife and back away.” Evan glances back at his father, seeing nothing but pure hatred for his son. He thinks for a second his father is going to back away from him and do as the police officer says, but before he knows it, a searing pain is embedded in his thigh, and he screams out in pain, and the gun goes off at the same time, causing his father to drop onto the tiled floor away from Evan. The officer sends in another officer to deal with the father while he slides to Evan’s side and presses a hand to his bleeding leg.
“Is he dead?” Evan trembles, but doesn’t dare to look at his father.
“No, he’s not. I shot him in the arm, but I’m going to focus on you and let my colleague take care of him. My name is Steven. What’s your name, kid?”
“Evan, it hurts.” Steven smiles and watches Evan look down at the knife still in his thigh. “Aren’t you going to pull it out?”
“If I pull it out, it’ll hurt more. I have to leave it in until the doctors can take it out.” Steven takes off his jacket and uses it to slow the bleeding. “Your sister is outside, and I’ll bring her to you as soon as the paramedics come in and help you out. She can even come with you to the hospital. Have you ever been to the hospital, Evan?” Evan nods slowly, but Steven continues. “Have you ever ridden in an ambulance?” A shake of his head this time. “Well, today is your lucky day. Are you allergic to anything?”
“A medicine the doctors tried to give me when I broke my arm. I don’t know what it is, though. Maddie knows. You can ask her.” Evan watches as two paramedics and a gurney enter the house. “Can they take off the belt, too? It’s hurting my hands.”
Steven must not have seen the belt wrapped around Evan’s wrists and taken them off himself. “Actually, I can take it off and use it to secure your leg, but it’s going to hurt.” Steven prepares Evan for the pain as he wraps the belt around for a tourniquet and pulls, causing Evan to yell out in pain. “I’m sorry, Evan, but that’ll help with the bleeding until we can get you to the hospital. Now, meet my friends Stacy and Will. They’re going to do a better job at helping you than I did.” Steven stands up, patting Will’s back before allowing the paramedics to do their job.
Only a few minutes later, Evan is being wheeled out of his parents' house on a gurney. His leg is held up with his father’s belt and a whole lot of gauze; he has an IV in his arm for the pain, and his wrists are being treated as well. His sister is by his side in minutes, and the first thing Evan says is, “I tried to fight. I did Maddie. I swear.”
She grabs her brother’s hand with tears streaming down her face. “It’s ok, Evan. You did great. I was so scared when I heard the gunshot go off, but then Dad came out with a gunshot wound to the shoulder, and I knew Steven had saved you. I'm right here, Evan. You’re going to be ok.” Maddie holds her brother’s hand tightly as he attempts to keep his eyes open. She watches him fight with sleep and kisses his sweaty head. “You can go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
With his sister’s permission, Evan dozes off to the paramedics working on him, the ambulance moving, and his sister by his side. He’s safe now. No matter the pain caused, he’s safe. His sister saved him.
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Evan wakes up with the smell of the hospital. A scent he’s all too familiar with, the rough childhood he’s endured before now. He feels the pain before he pulls his eyes open, but the calming sensation of a familiar hand wrapping around him like a warm embrace. He peels his eyes open to find Maddie by his bedside. “Maddie?”
She glances up from behind her long eyelashes and looks deep into her brother’s shining blue eyes. “Hey, Evan. Are you ok?”
He looks down at his body, the bruises covering his exposed skin, the bandage wrapped around his right thigh, the trembling in his hands at his father’s implications if the police never showed up. He looks back up at his sister with tears pooling in his eyes. “He was going–he was going to,” Evan’s words jumbled together as tears streamed down his cheeks, and his sister wasted no time carefully climbing into her brother’s hospital bed and holding him close.
She pulled him closer as he cried into her shoulder. “I know, Evan, I know. You’re going to be ok. He can’t hurt you anymore.” She kept him close to her, knowing their time together was coming to an end sooner rather than later. After a few minutes, her brother’s tears dried up. She took a deep breath and prepared herself to break the news to her brother. “Evan, we need to talk.” He pulls away from her slightly, awaiting whatever she has to say. “So, I told you I would help you, but to help you, and because you're still a minor. You have to stay with someone since Mom and Dad’s house isn’t safe for you anymore.”
“What are you saying, Maddie? Am I staying with you then?”
Maddie took another breath and looked to the entrance of her brother’s hospital room, knowing that if she didn’t break the news to him, then somebody else would. “No, you can’t stay with me, and we don’t have any other family for you to go stay with, so–you-you have to go into the foster system.”
Evan pulled away from his sister, “What? No, Maddie, you can’t be serious. There has to be someone I can stay with. One of my friends from school is a foster kid, and he says it’s awful, Maddie. There has to be another way. I don’t want to live with strangers. Please, don’t make me.”
Maddie could no longer keep the tears at bay as her brother begged her to find a different way. “There isn’t another way, Evan. You're only twelve years old. You need someone to watch you, and I can’t do that.” She reaches out for contact with her brother, but he shakes his head, and she stops. “Evan, I know you don’t want to do this, but it’s the safest option for you. I talked to the caseworker. She’s a friend of Steven’s, and she has already found you a foster family to take you in as soon as you're out of the hospital and officially in the system. You won’t have to change schools, and you can still reach me by phone at any time; I’ll answer, I promise.” She wipes at her tears; she doesn’t deserve to cry. This is happening to her brother, not her. This is the only way she can help him because her fiancé refuses to take Evan in. “Evan, I swear this is the best thing for you. Nothing has to change.”
“Everything changes, Maddie!!!” Evan yells at her with tears streaming down his face once again, but the yelling causes pain in his ribs from the quick movements. He grabs his ribs and winces in pain, but continues nonetheless. “They ruined everything. I ruined everything because I thought it would be a good idea to tell you, but sending me off with random strangers is not helping me, Maddie. He could’ve killed me tonight, and maybe it would’ve been better if he just did. Now I have to live with strangers and explain to everyone at school who asks why I will have to be on crutches for some odd weeks because OUR FATHER STABBED ME!! I don’t get to tell them that it’s because of an injury I obtained on a family vacation or another stunt I pulled. No, this,” He gestures wildly to his bandaged thigh, “THIS is because of our shitty parents. Now, not only are you breaking your promise and leaving me behind, but now I have to handle everything completely alone.” Evan bursts into tears, unable to hold back the floodgates any longer, but he tries to wipe them away.
He doesn’t want to cry over the pain their father caused, or of his sister leaving him, or the fact that he’s in a hospital once again. That doesn’t deserve his tears, but it doesn’t stop the pain he feels now that he will be utterly alone, despite how often he’ll call his sister and the new family he’ll be staying with. It won’t matter. It’ll still hurt when he sleeps in a bed that isn’t his own, sits at a dinner table that won’t end in pain, and goes about the rest of his life like everything is fine when it’s not, and it probably won’t ever be.
Maddie had moved off the bed and back on the plastic hospital chair somewhere in the middle of her brother’s outburst. Reasonable outburst about everything he’s being dealt with, but still an outburst. “I wish I could tell you something that would help ease your mind, but I can’t, so I’ll make a new promise to always be there when you call, and if I don’t, you can send me a voicemail, and I’ll call you back. I want you to tell me everything that’s going on. I don’t want to be out of it, and I will try to visit. Doug and I aren’t leaving for Boston until after Mom and Dad’s court hearing, which you don’t have to attend as long as you give your statement to the police and the caseworker about all that’s happened. I’m going, but only cause I’m curious how long of a sentence they’ll get for what they did to you.” She looks back at the door and notices someone standing by it. “I think someone is here to talk to you, and I can stay if you want, but if not, I’m going to go get shitty hospital coffee.” She waves at whoever is outside the door to come in before getting up.
Evan looks between the newcomer and his sister, “You can go get coffee, but please come back. I’m not ready to lose you quite yet.” His sister comes over to kiss the top of his head, as well as his birthmark, just as she always used to do when he was younger.
Evan watches his sister walk out of the room before focusing his attention on the lady in the pantsuit and another lady in scrubs. The lady in the pantsuit speaks up first, “Hi Evan. My name is Brooke. I’m your caseworker, and when you're ready, I’ll walk you through what the next few days are going to look like.” She turns to the lady in scrubs, allowing her to speak next.
She walks forward, closer to Evan’s bed. “Hello, Evan. I’m Doctor Baker, but you can call me Leslie. I just wanted to go over everything.” Evan nods, and she continues, “Your leg was the most concerning of your injuries, as the stab wound had caused significant damage to muscle tissue. It’s all going to heal with time, and I’ll be sending you on your way with some pain medications and crutches. You’ll only need them for a few weeks while the muscle tissue in your body heals properly. I want you to put as little weight as possible on your leg, and the crutches will help support you. We also have you set up for physical therapy starting in a few weeks.” Doctor Baker runs Evan’s vitals before stepping back and letting the caseworker speak again.
She steps up to Evan’s bed. “Everything I’m about to tell you might seem overwhelming, but my job is to make your transition easier for you. I know your sister already informed you of what’s going to happen after you leave the hospital, but I’m here to tell you about your foster family if you would like to know about them before you meet them. I would also like to ask questions about your life for the system. I want to know everything from your favorite subject in school to a rough night with your parents. Please let me know anything you can think of to make it easier for you. All I want to do is help you, Evan.”
When his sister comes back, she finds him talking to the caseworker and snacking on food from the vending machine. Before she steps in, she looks through the window inside the hospital room to find her brother smiling at his caseworker. She knows his smile isn’t real, but it’s nice to see it on his face with everything he’s being faced with at such a young age. He shouldn’t have to deal with it at all, but their parents suck, and he should’ve been away from their harmful touch a long time ago. That will always be Maddie’s fault for not paying attention to her brother’s pain, but she got him help now. Whether he accepts it or not, she knows he’ll be ok, and that’s all she needs to know before walking away. Not right now, not even tomorrow, but she’ll walk away knowing her brother will never be hurt by their parents ever again.
Maddie hopes he’ll find a family that’ll love him the way he should be loved, and he will in time, but now she takes a deep breath and enters the hospital room, giving her brother the love he will only get for a short amount of time before she leaves him behind.
After Evan left the hospital with his caseworker, Brooke, on crutches, he met his foster family, ironically named the Fosters. They were a stark contrast to the Buckley family. Where the Buckley family was angry, hurtful, and downright awful(minus his sister, of course), the Fosters were kind, loving, and overwhelmingly welcoming. The family consisted of Abigail Foster, the mother and loving wife of Matthew Foster. He was a working man, like Evan’s father, and when he came home from a long day's work, he would wear similar combat boots that had hit Evan’s ribs enough times before. He cowered on the stairs while he watched the family run up and hug the father. The kids, two siblings, JJ Foster and Eliza Foster, weren’t cowering away with Evan. They embraced their father, looking excited to see him. It was a confusing concept in the first few weeks of Evan staying with the Fosters. They were a ridiculously nice family, and the parents helped their kids with homework. They had movie nights on weekends and game nights every other week. The kids helped their mother cook in the kitchen, the father didn’t just sit on his ass when he got home or beat up the kids, no, he helped around the house and set up the table.
It was a foreign concept to Evan, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this is what a normal family looks like. No one is talking bad about the other like it’s some joke, no one is throwing hands, the father almost never yells unless he’s watching the football games, the kids fight like normal siblings do, but in the end, they still love each other and make fun of the other for good sport. It took Evan a long time to feel comfortable living with the Fosters. He was scared to sit at the dining table for dinner, he kept a safe distance away from his father, even though he didn’t share the same evil eye as his fathers. JJ went to the same school Evan did, while JJ’s sister was in high school. However, instead of walking home together, as Evan assumed, they were picked up by Abigail. There was one moment before Evan was finally comfortable with Matthew, when he picked up the boys from school, as the sister normally drove home. She didn’t have a jeep like his sister’s, but it still made him think about her all the time. It took several minutes to calm Evan down and explain to him that Matthew had no intention of hurting Evan in any way. He rarely put his hands on him at all, but this was just a case of trying to get him in the car. JJ was the one who coaxed Evan into the car and helped him get his breathing under control, making him a little more comfortable with the presence of JJ’s father.
After that day, things were smoother. Evan still refused physical contact with Matthew, but he wasn’t cowering away anymore. Things were nice in the Fosters’ house. He even made new friends, one of them being his new best friend and the only other kid in the foster system Evan knew about, Carter Manson. He was the only person Evan felt comfortable talking to about the real reason he had crutches for the first few weeks, and for everything foster-related ever since. He felt a strong connection with Carter. He wasn’t sure he understood what it was other than a good friendship, but he enjoyed every second he got to spend with his new friend. JJ was also a good friend. It was just the three of them as friends, but Evan and Carter were closer with their shared trauma. The only thing that could’ve made his stay with the Fosters even better was if his sister had ever picked up the phone. She did up until the trial, where his parents were going to prison for quite a long time for the pain they caused Evan. She stopped only a few weeks after they moved to Boston. Evan was hoping she wouldn’t break this promise, but he still left voicemails, telling Maddie all about the Fosters and his new friend Carter.
Things were looking up for him.