Free Juicy by Pepper Pace Page A

easily leave her mind.

When she returned, Troy was sitting at the dining room table waiting for her. "Juicy what happened to you that day that made you so mad? You were almost crying. Why?" She let out a sigh and joined him in the kitchen, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite him.

"I was trying to get a business loan. I had done my research. I had a business plan, but...I didn't qualify for a loan."

"Why didn't you qualify?"

"No job. No security." Juicy felt a spark of anger but it quickly dwindled away. "I was tossed out of the bank for arguing with the loan officer." She sucked air through her teeth. "I have a real bad temper. But I'm trying to control that now." She lightly rubbed her temples.

"How are you feeling; you know, your head?"

"I still have this headachy feeling but not exactly full blown. My back aches. I guess I'm okay, though."

"Well Juicy, don't assume that you're okay just because the hospital released you." Her eyes flashed nervously at him. Quickly he added. "I just mean that you should go visit a doctor soon to have them examine you. I know the hospital didn't do a very good job. They only focused on your head so if your back hurts then it needs to be looked at." He turned his head and looked at the floor. "I-I-I would also c-c-call the police to see if they c-c-caught th-th-the guys that a-ta-ta-TACKed you." Troy panted with the effort to speak those last few words.

"Troy," Juicy frowned. "Why do you get tics and start stuttering when you talk about the police?"

He met her eyes. "I ha-ha-ha..." He sighed. "HAD some bad experiences with the police."
    "They hurt you?"
     
    Troy had gotten that distant look in his eyes again. She had come to associate it with him remembering something unpleasant. What she didn’t understand is that it was the absence seizure, and that he wasn’t remembering anything, least of all the worst beaten that he’d ever received in his life, because he was technically unconscious.
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    It was, without a doubt, the worst beaten that Troy had ever received--and it was at the hands of the police. That night the police had busted in the crackhouse, gathered everyone that hadn’t scattered away like roaches, he had been too slow. And if not for Kelly, he could very well have died as a result.
     
    ***
     
    Troy wasn’t even eighteen years old when he’d walked away from his home, his family, and the only security that he had known. He had come from a comfortable, middle class environment. His life, until his departure, was filled with multi player online role playing games; mostly War of Warcraft. A self confessed computer geek, Troy had very few real life friends. School was just a place that he went because he had to go. He wasn’t a good student, but that had less to do with his learning potential and more to do with being diagnosed as bipolar.
     
    His parent’s were much older by the time that he was born. They had already raised a son and daughter to adulthood. So when Troy came along he was not only a surprise, but had issues that they had no idea how to face.
     
    At times he wondered if things would have been better if he would have been an only child. Then their expectations might not have been so high. Maybe then they could have faced his problems with more openness to his desires instead of relying on the doctors to tell them everything that they would come to accept about his condition.
     
    Dad would say, ‘Troy the doctor says that this medicine will not affect your ability to concentrate in school.’ And when his lack of concentration in school became a nuisance he would tell Dad who would just respond with, ‘Well they said it wouldn’t, son. The doctor’s should know.’
     
    ‘ Well they are fucking wrong! ’ He’d want to yell in annoyance. But of course he never did. And his mother was no better, perhaps even worse. She didn’t even pretend to understand what the doctor’s were talking about. She would