The Finale Read Online Free Page B

“Mommy! Mommy! Don’t leave us.”
    â€œShhhh! Mommy is coming back. I’m gonna take care of you until she comes back,” Derek consoled, squeezing his brother’s hand tight.
    Derek took his brother and stood right where his mother had instructed him. They stood at the dumpster until the sun came up, and their legs throbbed. Scar whined and cried the whole time, between nodding from sleep deprivation. Derek refused to sit down or allow Scar to sit down. His mother had told him to stand there, and he would not let her down. Several people passed them and stared, but no one said anything to them. It was the trash truck driver who came to empty the dumpster that finally asked Derek why they were there.
    â€œMy mommy said she is coming back for us,” Derek had said.
    After waiting with Derek and Scar for three hours, the trash man finally called the authorities, and Derek never saw his mother again.
    When Child Protective Services workers and the police showed up, Derek still refused to move. “No! I’m waiting for my mommy! No!” He screamed and kicked to no avail.
    They had to physically remove him from the dumpster, and he and Scar were whisked away to the hospital for a medical clearance and then off to foster care, where they remained for over a year.
    With the mandatory expiration on parental rights, after eighteen months, they were put up for adoption. Every Wednesday, Derek and Scar went to the agency along with about twenty-five other kids for display for prospective parents. Derek would always hold Scar’s hand and secretly tell people that they were not going to be separated, and that if they wanted him, they would have to take Scar too.
    With one look at Scar’s disfigured face, the potential parents always turned away and found other kids to adopt. Derek’s plan had worked for weeks, and each week he and Scar would go back to their foster home.
    After a few weeks, the social workers couldn’t figure out why at least one of the boys couldn’t attract an adoptive family. The workers finally started sitting close to Derek and Scar and listening to what Derek was saying to the people shopping for children. When the workers got wind of what he was doing, the following Wednesday they put him and Scar in separate rooms, and Derek was picked immediately. He was seven, with the cutest dimples and the prettiest smile. Scar, on the other hand, had been overlooked again and again.
    The day Derek’s new family came to pick him up—a father who was a cop and a mother who was a teacher—he refused to leave without his brother. He had fought and cursed and even locked himself inside the bathroom.
    The social worker had lied to Derek to coax him out of the bathroom so his new parents could grab him and get him home. “Your brother will be coming along soon,” she said. “Go ahead. You’ll see him again.”
    Derek reluctantly went. He wouldn’t see his brother for another fifteen years, by which time they had both landed on opposite sides of the law.
    In Derek’s new adoptive home, everything seemed to be perfect. His father fought crime, and his mother taught him everything there was to know in any book imaginable. They were a real family. They ate dinner together and had fun movie nights on Fridays, his father’s day off.
    Derek lived like a kid that had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He wore the finest clothes, had every toy before it even became popular with other kids, and most of all, he had a real family life with both parents.
    But everything wasn’t as peachy as it seemed. Derek’s father worked the midnight shift, and when he left home at ten o’clock after tucking his son in and kissing his wife, things would take a dark turn in the house.
    Derek’s adoptive mother would creep into his bedroom at night and shake him awake, standing over him in a see-through nightgown. Longing for her