Page 54 of I Am Salvation

“I know next to nothing about you, Dragon. Doesn’t matter to me.” I reach out to him with both hands. “You’re not the dark soul you think you are. You’re not sin.”

“Oh, I am.” He turns his back on me. “My own parents decided I was. They sent me away when I was barely nine years old, Diana. Did you know that?”

I resist the urge to let my mouth fall open.

Did he really just open up to me about something?

Clearly he’s been estranged from his parents. I just assumed it happened once he turned eighteen.

He looks over his shoulder at me. “I see that surprises you,” he says. “My own parents saw the evil in me. They abandoned me. Made me a ward of the state. And at age nine, I was too old to get adopted by someone else.”

My heart breaks. “So you grew up in the system?”

“I did. But do you want to know why my parents threw me out?”

“Yes. Tell me, Dragon.”

He closes his eyes, runs his hands over his long hair. “They thought I harmed my little sister. My sweet little five-year-old sister, who was an angel. Seriously. She looked like those pictures of cherubs in the Bible. They thought I hurt her.”

Did you? The question is on the tip of my tongue, but already I know the answer.

Dragon did not harm his sister.

There’s a story here, but I don’t think he’s ready to tell it.

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“But you’re not quite sure, are you, Diana?” He shakes his head. “You’re not quite sure what I’m capable of. ‘Maybe he did hurt his sister,’ you’re thinking. ‘Maybe he truly is evil. Maybe he truly is sin.’”

I shake my head. “I don’t believe you would hurt anyone.”

He forces out a humorless laugh. “Let me tell you something, Diana. I did not harm my little sister. I loved her. But I’ve done some terrible things to others.”

I don’t know anyone who’s grown up in the system, but I do know people—my own father and brothers—who’ve been to hell and back. Who were at the mercy of people bigger and stronger than they were. The system is rife with that kind of stuff.

Dragon…

I can’t even think about it. It’s hard enough imagining my father and brothers in those situations.

But Dragon…

At least my father and my brothers had parents who loved them.

Dragon was abandoned.

Abandoned by that old woman in the trailer.

What happened to his sister? Is this the big secret that only Jesse knows?

“I believe that you didn’t hurt your sister,” I say.

“Do you really?”

I place a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Dragon. Of course I believe you. You were eight years old. What could a child possibly do to his little sister?”

He scoffs then. “You’d be surprised.”

“What do you—” I shut my mouth abruptly.

---