Returned

Prologue: 10 years Ago

It was the summer before senior year and Angel had just gotten the news she’d been dreading for the last two weeks. Two pink lines showed up on the test and she knew that her life was over. Not because was pregnant, not even because of who the father could be. The reason that her life was over was that her step-monster and father would never allow her to keep the baby, they’d never allow her to see the people in her life who cared for her, and they’d never allow anything good to happen in her life ever again. Angel had to choose as she stared down at the test. Hiding the pregnancy until it was too late to do anything, at which point she worried her parents would probably just beat her until she lost it. Her other choice was that she could tell the potential fathers about the pregnancy and hope that they could come up with a plan together. If either of those choices failed, she could just run. Maybe she should run anyway.

Angel was seventeen years old, but she felt so much older. She wasn’t worried about the baby growing inside of her, she knew there was no way she was getting rid of it. She didn’t have anything against abortion, far from it, but she knew her baby was made with love. She was in love with the baby’s father, whichever of the men it was. Their situation wasn’t normal, not in their town, not even in the world. It wasn’t unheard of, though usually it was part of the books she read. The biggest issue was the world saw them as children, broken children. They were the troublemakers, that’s what their group of five misfits was called when they were together. A soft sigh crossed her lips as she tried to think of what she should, what she should say. A noise caught her attention, the sound of the front door slamming shut, and she knew trouble had found her.

“Angel! I know you’re here you b***h! You put in your code! What did I tell you would happen the next time you skipped school!”

She heard his voice getting closer as he made his way up to her room and the panic took over. She tossed the test in the trash.

“Where are you?”

His voice was loud from the hallway, and she leaned over her toilet and made a retching sound as if she was violently ill. The way her stomach was churning wasn’t far from the truth. She waited a few moments before standing and flushing the toilet. She opened the bedroom door and saw her father standing there, arms crossed over his chest.

Fuck! He’s so angry, I don’t know if I’m going to make it through this, but I’ll do my best to protect you little one. Her hand started to move down to her stomach but she caught herself before that happened.

“They sent me home, I’m sick, I was about to head to the urgent care but wanted to stop here first and drop off my school stuff. I was going to call you or” The words caught in her throat at the thought of calling her step-monster anything other than her name but she knew it’d be hell if she did anything else, “mom, but I didn’t want to bother you guys until I knew what was wrong with me.”

He started to nod and then his eyes flashed with anger as she watched him look down next to the toilet into the trash can. The test was right there. She slammed the bathroom door, with her inside of the room and locked it. Her father pounded on the door screaming and swearing as he tried to get her to open it up. She didn’t have her phone on her, she couldn’t call the boys, she couldn’t do anything.

“You either open this door right now or I will force it open! In fact I will just take both your doors”

The shout from her father made her jump and then she heard his footsteps leaving the area. She knew she didn’t have much time, but thankfully she had a new lock she’d installed on the inside of her door and she hoped that would give her some extra time to escape. She had just secured the lock on the door when she heard her father return.

“You little w***e, I always knew that you’d be a w***e just like you’re slut mother! I bet it was that Jacobson asshole, or one of those little twins you’re so very fond of. Whichever one it was you’re never going to see them again. You think their parents will want their boys with a w***e like you?”

She listened to him as she tossed her things in the bag, The door knob rattled but still she threw things in the bag. She had a plan, they’d had made so many escape plans in the last few years that she had jokingly numbered them all. This was number 530, get the f**k out of dodge. She zipped up the bag and tossed it into the tree as she looked at the door that was starting to splinter She was climbing down the ‘emergency rope’ that one of the boys had insisted she keep hidden in case the escape plans became real. She was grateful for them now. The last thing she saw when she looked back at the house was her dad standing at her window, mouth agape as she ran into the woods. She knew he would try and follow her but he didn’t know the woods like she did, and he’d never find their club house.

Thirty minutes later Angel sat in the clubhouse with a pen and paper trying to write out a letter the the boys, no men, that she loved. She knew that she couldn’t tell any of them where she was going but she wanted them to know she was going to be okay. She knew her dad would never believe that she hadn’t told the boys where she was going, so not telling them was the safest she could keep them. She read over the letter, before sitting it down on the table for the boys to find.

“My Dearest M, R, L, and X:

You guys have always been there for me, but I can’t do this anymore. I feel like if I don’t leave then my dad or the step monster are going to actually kill me. I’m pregnant, I’m not keeping it so don’t worry, none of you will get messages for child support, I don’t expect anything from you guys, I just know that he’s going to try and use this to hurt all of us. I’m sorry because I know you guys are all going to be pissed off and hurt but I can’t do it, I can’t put another human through what he’s put me through. You guys don’t know the worst of it, I thought I was going to die for real and you wouldn’t know, and that’s what hurt the most. He found the test, he saw it. I used the rope, thank you L for knowing I’d need it someday. I won’t tell you where I'm going, because he can’t know. But know that my heart will belong to the four of you forever. Please take care of each other. The only reason I can leave is because you guys will still have each other.

With all my love,

-A-”

Two hours later, once school ended, four teenage boys walked through the door of their familiar clubhouse. They always met up there after school and the fact that Angel hadn’t been in last period had them worried. The note was left on a table that they all used to bring meals to, family dinners they’d call them. As they passed the note around, each boy's face showed a different emotion. They all handled it differently. Markus, Markie, Jacobson walked outside, punching a tree until his fists bled. Patrick, Ricky, Yearly ran through the woods to Angel’s house, throwing stones through the windows of her father’s car as well as all the windows of the house, save for Angel’s room and bathroom, which he knew the location of by heart. The twins, Alex, Lex, and Xander, X, Tanner took off into the night. They disappeared for two weeks, returning randomly as if nothing had happened. Both of them were sporting what would turn out to be the first of many tattoos they would end up getting. Each of the twins got a single angel wing on their forearms, the left for Lex, and right for X.

As for Angel herself, she was a ghost to the town, no one heard from her, not even her parents. No one ine small town knew why she’d disappeared, though some had theories but mostly they kept their mouths shut. The boys never showed anyone the letter she left, and never really spoke her name unless it was in a drunken or stoned rage.