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☀ you're born to a single mother. your father was jailed a few months before you were born. you never quite learn
why, but you make plenty of assumptions throughout your life. your mother loses custody of you and that, too, remains a shrouded mystery. seventeen years later, the hows and whys don't bother you as much.
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☀ you have hazy memories of living with your grandparents. when they can no longer care for you due to their age, foster care spirits you away. the system
sucks. you're bounced between temporary homes, never quite able to stay long enough to get comfortable.
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☀ at thirteen, you fall through the cracks. the adults in your life have failed you and, in all your teenage confidence, you believe you can strike out on your own. life is not rose-colored pokemon journeys — it's sleeping out in the cold, shifting through restaurant dumpsters, throwing a shoe at the rookidee that snatches your hard-earned food out of your hands. the little opportunist aligns with you.
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☀ at first, you feel bad about stealing. rookidee roosts near food trucks and
takes indiscriminately. usually it's food, but sometimes the birdbrain comes back with money. someone you briefly room with at a pokemon center teaches you how to pick pockets. you fail, a lot. you have to run away,
a lot.
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☀ you bump into someone.
"sorry," you say, eyes big. they grumble about
kids these days as they walk away. you suck in a breath and hastily procure the wallet you'd been concealing during the brief exchange. you take the cash and dump the wallet on the ground. you run, again.
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☀ at fourteen, you're becoming street smart — or rapidly losing what little trust you have in other people. you feel like everyone has an ulterior motive, even the pokemon center employee who invites you to spend the holiday with her and her family.
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☀ she
insists. you go. you excuse yourself to the bathroom and,
silly you, end up taking the wrong turn at the end of the hall and find yourself in her bedroom. the bracelet in the drawer of her vanity looks nice in the inside pocket of your ratty jacket. you go to the bathroom, then return to the smiling faces waiting for you in the dining room.
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☀ at fifteen, you're approached by someone outside the pokemon center. your guard goes up, as it
always does, as they attempt a walk-and-talk pitch. you're too conscious of your pockets as they stay in-step with you. a room and board offer for a transient teen with the promise of higher education. it sounds sweet,
too sweet, so you decline. your corvisquire senses your discomfort and flies in their face, giving you the chance to turn a corner and disappear beyond a group of people queuing outside a shop. you check your pockets.
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☀ at sixteen, something follows you home. you stop under the dingy glow of a streetlight and watch with muted horror as your shadow walks a few steps forward before it realizes its mistake. it steps back, realigns itself. not many things scare you these days, but
this does. whenever you're alone, your shadow takes on a life of its own.
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☀ you're at a food truck when it happens. you see your shadow moving in the corner of your eye, then the gengar that manifests itself behind the food truck owner. it reaches a ghostly hand into the owner's pocket and holds up a phone for you to see. it's hard to get through your order when the
something that's been following you around for a month is picking up random objects behind someone in a bid to impress you with its stealing skills.
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☀ when you see gengar next, at the park, it comes bearing gifts — a tip jar and a spatula. not exactly the haul one would hope for, but you'll take it.
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☀ what an odd group, the three of you.