chapter 1

"good luck, look after popchyk."

Theo cracked his eyes open-sunlight beaming from the windows-causing him to cringe. Theo sat up and grabbed his glasses from the table next to his bed. He stood up and stretched as he walked over to his window still cringing as he closed his blinds and curtains. He then walked over to his closet and got dressed. Hobie was more than likely sitting in the dining room eating drinking coffee, toast sitting on the table across from Hobie for him, Theo assumed. As he walked into the dining room, his assumption was quickly proved to be right. Hobie looked up at Theo as he heard his foot steps and said,

"Good morning, Theo."

"Morning, Hobie."

"How did you sleep? Did you have any of those nightmares?"

Theo thought for a second. Yes, he did. He always did. 

"Nope, haven't had them in a while."

"Hm," Hobie sighed, 

"Well I'm going to go run to the store, anything you need?"

"No I'm good, thank you, Hobie." Theo responded as he picked up the toast that Hobie had made for him as he waited for him to wake up and sat down on a chair. 

By the time Theo was done, Hobie had already left. Theo rinsed his plate and went to go brush his teeth. Theo never really had anything to do anymore without his best friend, Boris. He missed him. A lot. Theo usually just sat on a chair in the living room and read books, or wrote Pippa letters, which he usually scrapped. Theo had thought about sending letters to Boris from time to time, but he didn't know Boris' exact address to send them to. He also was anxious his father would get to the letters before Boris did, and get angry or just throw them away. He never got much sleep at night. When ever he had nightmares in Las Vegas, Boris was almost always beside him, and would comfort him and calm him down. But now, Theo would usually just be unable to fall back asleep for a while, so he'd just sit there crying. Because of his mother, because of Boris, because of everybody he thought he'd ever let down in his past.

Once Hobie got home from grocery shopping, Theo decided to go down stairs and talk about antiques with Hobie-something he did whenever he wasn't reading or watching tv-At around 8 o'clock, Theo decided to go upstairs and take a shower and go to bed.

Theo lied down in his bed, sound asleep. Until-as usual-he woke up panting. Theo had recently started taking sleeping pills. He would take them after he had his nightmares. Theo fell back asleep shortly after, having no clue what he would wake up to the next day.