Xander nodded thoughtfully. "S'good way to put it." He chewed on the end of his Twizzler for a bit. Then he used it to point out toward a trailer park just visible below them. It was one of the run-down type that lived up to the trailer park trash stereotype. "We lived there for a couple of months. See that one with the blue roof? Lived in that one when we were seven with this guy called, I kid you not, Dink." He pointed to a different trailer. "That one with the grey roof and the red sides? Lived in that one when we were twelve with a guy called Mack. He drove trucks, and there was a hole in the floor and a pair of handcuffs in the closet locked to the wall. No idea why. We'd play with them, but now I just... ew." He shifted, gesturing out toward another section. "You see that old house there behind the church steeple? The one with part of the roof missing? We squatted there when we were eight after a guy called Jo-Jo kicked us out after bringing home his new girl. And there, a couple houses down? That's where we went to after leaving Mack. Then over there, on the opposite side of town, we were in this weird little triplex, the attic level with a guy... I can't remember his name. The place was always sweltering hot, even in winter, in it only had two windows." He paused, resting his arm on his knee.
"When you talk about everywhere you lived, you have to pull out a national map. When I gotta list all the places I need, it's a city map. I don't mean to make this into a 'who had it worse' one-up show, I just wanna say that... I get you. I get where you're coming from. Exactly? Hell no, and I can't without living in your shoes, but I understand the idea. And I know what it means to be afraid to go somewhere new no matter how much you're promised it's better." He sighed. "You think I'm with everyone else, that I want your mum to fail and prove us all right to not trust her. I don't trust her, and I do hold great suspicion that she won't succeed, but that's because I'm a cynical bas***d who is still learning not to distrust literally everyone and think they mean the worst. When I think about your mum and you together..." He glanced at Milo. "I want nothing more than to be proven wrong. I have never wanted to be proven wrong more in my entire life. I mean that." He looked out over the city again. "You're like Alec. You hope no matter what. No matter how dark the situation. No matter how hopeless. Me? I lost that hope a long time ago. I stopped trying to see the good side. The bright side. I started resenting my mum and everything she did. She was trying to get us a better life, but she was refusing to try it in a different way. There was always another guy. Another situation. A new opportunity the new guy offered. And it never panned out, not once in 15 years, but she kept trying it. Until we had enough and ran off to live on the streets rather than be with the latest guy. Dax. She loved us, and she tried to put us first, but she couldn't shake out of her chosen solution no matter how many times it proved to go wrong."
"The thing is, you and your mum are doing the same thing as my mum, you're doing the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. She gets clean. She moves somewhere new. She promises you a better life. She means it, she really does, but then things happen and she slips again. Now is no different than then. Yeah, she had rehab, but it's easy to stay clean in rehab. It's hard when you leave and then go somewhere where you've got no support system. She's a grown woman, she can make her own choices, but she shouldn't be dragging you with her. You're her son. She's supposed to do whatever she can to put you first. That means that after the first couple of times of not being able to stay clean, she should have given you a better life by letting you stay with your grands or someone else until she did get her life together. She was being selfish and proud and it did nothing but harm you and her both. I don't doubt she loves you, not for one second, but you should have come first. She loved you, but she f****ed up and you're paying for it.
"Your grands, they love you, too, but they're f***ing it up, too, just in a different way by forcing what they think is right on you. They got a lot of the right ideas liek getting you summer school and stuff like that, but they won't even give you your own room, and they're not listening to what you have to say. How's that fair? It's no more fair than you having to know what and how to Narcan someone, or whatever. None of this is fair. None of it."
Xander glanced at him. "So. What are you going to do about it?" It wasn't a challenge. It was a quiet, almost gentle question.