Where I Belong
By Alison Gaylin, first published in Coast to Coast Noir
An eighteen-year-old boy who has recently run away from home is picked up by a friendly couple, but the man who rescued him soon has a big request.
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Plot Summary
An eighteen-year-old boy named Kurt is begging on a street in New York City. His phone was stolen by a junkie who he had teamed up to beg with for a few weeks. Kurt remembers how his mother kicked him out and he has nowhere to go. He lies on his stomach in the road, when all of a sudden a couple pulls up in a van and tells him to get in. Kurt does not feel like resisting, so he does. The man asks if Kurt would like to stay with them, just outside of Woodstock. Kurt says yes, then falls asleep.
When Kurt wakes up, he hears the couple arguing with each other. When they see that he is awake, they stop. When they are inside, the man whispers to Kurt that his wife recognized Kurt in the car and wanted to throw him out. The man shows Kurt a video on his phone, in which Kurt is beating up his stepfather. This is why Kurt was kicked out of his house. The man asks Kurt why he was so angry, and Kurt reveals that he doesn't know. The only reason Kurt beat up his stepfather was because his stepfather cut off his allowance.
The next morning, the man wakes Kurt up and says he promised his wife that Kurt would be gone in the morning. The man drives Kurt downtown and leaves him at a Cumberland Farms with $100. Kurt goes to buy some food, and he argues with the cashier when she will not sell him beer. As they are arguing, the woman says that she recognizes Kurt, and soon realizes that it is from the news. She picks up the phone to call the police, and Kurt runs away.
Kurt runs until he finds himself in a cemetery, where he sits to rest. A few hours later, the man who saved him pulls up to the cemetery gates. He asks Kurt to kill him, telling Kurt that he has Pancreatic cancer, and if he kills himself his wife will not get insurance. The man tells Kurt that he will get $10,000, and that he will leave Kurt in the woods behind their house. When Kurt hears the man's wife driving away to go to book club, he is supposed to wait inside until he hears the man's car pull up, then shoot him when he walks through the door. The man promises that Kurt will get out before anyone can call the cops, and that he can take the van and drive to Canada. Kurt agrees to the plan.
That night, the plan ensues. Kurt hears the wife leave, then he goes inside and waits for the man. When the door opens, Kurt shoots him. When the man falls to the floor, Kurt realizes that he has hair, while the other man was bald. He turns the lights on, and sees pictures on the walls of the woman with the man who is dying on the ground, her real husband.
A month later, Kurt is in jail. He sees the bald man and the woman on the news. The woman inherited millions from her husband, and the bald man, who is her brother-in-law and does not really have cancer, is there to comfort her. The man just wanted Kurt to kill his brother so that he could be with his brother's wife. Kurt has friends in jail, and he is happy. He is not angry at anyone anymore.
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