Chapter 10: VICTORIA

I sat in the dingy booth in the rundown diner someplace in New Jersey, listening to the man who claimed to be my father speak. He seemed overly excited, reminiscing about things I’d long forgotten if they ever really happened; meanwhile, I’m just here for information.

He’d tried getting me to go home with him, which I staunchly refused. No doubt home for him is a grimy apartment somewhere in the city. That much I remember from my childhood, messy, broken-down apartments and the smell of onions and burnt food in the hallway.

A vast difference from the life I live now, and I have no plans on going back. I just need to know why she lied. “Where’ve you been?”

“About that…uh, your mom didn’t tell you?”

“She told me you were dead.” No, she hadn’t, not exactly, but that’s the story she’d drilled into my head when we bounced, and it kinda became my reality after a while, until now.

I was too young back then to know much of anything, but hunger is something that sticks with you no matter