When he was ten, he bought cigarettes from the small grocery store in his tiny town. He used the coins that he’d collected from selling life’s discarded remnants. A pop bottle here and a beer bottle there…two cents a bottle. Fourteen bottles bought a pack. With so many of his family crowded around, they would assume it was for one off his older brothers or sisters.
When he was twelve, he began to drink quite a bit. It was easy to sneak out a few beers… or some whisky from the pile. After a full night of drinking they never missed it…if they even remembered they had it to begin with,
When he was 16, he disappeared. They were so tired of each other by then that they never realized he had been misplaced. No one cried for him. He could only imagine that one day they looked up and said, “I wonder where Jerry is?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s around somewhere,” came a reply from the person that had replaced him .
And their life kept moving along.