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He crumpled the notice in one fist, tossing it on the floor as he shoved his few meager possessions – the few he wanted to keep anyway – into a duffel bag.

With his dad in jail he’d been given a break on his debts only because he’d filed for a Special Circumstances Exception. He’d been taking care of his sick mother, and dying didn’t come cheap in the J. At the end she hadn’t even had the energy to beg drugs off of him, call him a worthless son for letting her waste away the way she did. He tried to remember the woman who stood up to their father for him and his brother, tried to close his eyes and focus on earlier days and hot pies and wooden toys she’d snuck in from the market before their father could see. He tried to remember that this wasn’t her, that this too was an extension of their father.

And if she was a burden on him now it was fair, more than fair for what he’d cost her growing up.

But she died. It had been just the two of him here and she’d died and he’d had no one to help. He made the funeral arrangements, had her buried in a plot with her family. He hadn’t bothered to let her husband know but he’d found out somehow anyway. Johnny’d woken up to five separate messages to delete. He wondered how much they’d cost him then reminded himself that he didn’t give a shit.
He’d used what little money he had left, the hang nails of his college savings, to settle her affairs. He wanted to make sure she rested easy. But he wouldn’t have ever been able to make a dent in his fathers, even if he wanted to.

Fuck him.

Today the note he knew was coming was finally delivered – he had ten days to settle the debt or he would be brought in to be held accountable for his father’s debts. There had been additional accruals that only appeared after his fathers’ arrest, and by law now that Johnny was legally an adult those responsibilities fell on him.

D’av took off to pursue his freedom, leaving Johnny to bear the brunt of that. To clean up the mess. To fix it.

But he couldn’t fix this. Ten days was enough to get off-world. He could trade for passage on a cargo ship to the middle of nowhere, someplace no one would bother to hunt him down. Maybe somewhere in the Quad. He honestly wasn’t picky – just so long as it wasn’t here.

He turned back to look at his home, taking in the smell of dust and wood and liquor and hate one last time.

He left.