George is an eighteen-year-old white boy who lives in the slums of Los Angeles, California, USA. Slums and wealthy Silicon Valley are just a step away, but it's full of alcohol, drug abuse, prostitution, and even murder.
The rich get rich, and the poor get poor, which is vividly reflected here.
But George was not tainted by the depraved people of the slums, working in a small restaurant, working nine hours a day and earning ten dollars. George asked his boss David for a raise more than once, and David would drunkenly scold him each time: "George, don't want to fuck!" People who want to come have it! ”
George understood that what David had said was true, and that when he walked on the front foot, someone would replace him on the back foot. Perhaps David gave the latter less than he did. Therefore, in order to live, George could only endure David's humiliation and insults.
Who let him not be born into a good family?
George had never seen his father since he was a child, and he had heard from his mother that his father had gone to the South to pan for gold after he was born. But it has never returned, and its life and death are unknown.
George hated his mother for not being able to give him a good life, and his mother hated his father for cheating on her, so his mother ran to a fast-moving car when George was fifteen years old.
George's mother was killed by a car on the spot, the California police could not find the information about the vehicle, and his mother's death did not make George a penny. He had no mother and lived in poverty.
But George was not illiterate like all slum children, and at the age of ten, an old man named Ailes taught him to read for free, and three years later, George was able to read Faulkner and Hemingway's books, so that george had the adventures that followed George.
On this day, George picked up a newspaper from the ground, the date of the newspaper was ten years ago, and I don't know who threw the old garbage. Most of the content in the newspapers was lace news of the time, and George was strange and boring to read. But a search notice attracted him.
The message reads:
Jack, son of Matthew, a businessman in Bangor, Maine, aged eight, went missing on March 15, wearing a blue denim jacket and black striped slacks... Big eyes, yellow hair... If you are in the know, please call XXX, there will be a heavy thank you!
What caught George's attention the most was the words "Banor merchant Matthew."
George knew that Matthew was a rising rich man in the United States in recent years, and he was often seen in the newspapers and on television.
"I don't know if Matthew in this old newspaper is the same Matthew that was on TV lately?" George thought.
George suddenly had a bold idea, but it was ridiculous, but he decided to gamble.
He thought that the impact of this incident on him was to kill him or a poor egg in the slums. He had already become like this anyway, what else was he afraid of?
"What if it succeeds?" George thought with a smile.
So George found a public telephone booth and called on the newspaper.
He thought it had been more than a decade, and the telephone number in the newspaper must not have existed. Unexpectedly, someone actually connected, so that he was so nervous that he did not know what to say.
But the other person said (the woman's voice): "You're Jack, right?" ”
George was stunned, but he was responsive after all, and immediately laughed and said, "Yes, I am Jack." ”
"So where are you?" Tell me the address and I'll have someone pick you up. The woman said, without a trace of emotion in her words.
George told the woman his address and hung up the phone. He was like a dream, unable to believe what was happening.
But he soon thought that he was joking with the other party, and the other party was naturally "joking" with him.
George smiled boredly, thinking it would be more realistic to go to David to brush the dishes and wash the dishes.
He forgot about it before he went to bed at night. As soon as he opened his eyes in the morning, he heard someone called "Jack." He was stunned at first, and when he saw the two men in black suits standing next to him, he suddenly thought of the phone call made yesterday, could it all be true?
"Young Master Jack, we're here to pick you up and take you home."
Jack, the orphan, followed two men in suits to a Mercedes-Benz S600 and headed straight for the airport. When he boarded delta's Boeing 777 and flew thirty thousand feet, he did not understand whether all this was true.
Five hours later, the plane landed at Bangor International Airport in Maine. After George and his party got off the plane, they got into a black Cadillac sedan that greeted him. Thirty minutes later, Cadillac stopped in front of a villa on the outskirts of Bangor City. George saw that there was no other house around the house, and he was lonely. The house itself was not luxurious, which made it hard for him to think that this was the mansion of the great merchant Matthew.
But at this point, he didn't have time to think about it too much, so he walked in with the two men in suits.
The decoration inside the house reveals a sense of luxury, huge chandeliers, oak furniture, soft Persian carpets... These were things that George had never been exposed to in his life.
When George entered the room, the two men in suits retreated, greeted by a slightly chubby woman in her forties.
The woman straightened her arms and threw herself at George with tears in her eyes. He thought this woman must be "Jack's" mother.
Sure enough, the woman shouted, "Jack, my bitter child..."
She hugged George, and George hugged her. George smelled an onion on the woman. He thought she must have fried onions for lunch.
After the hug, George felt that he should say something, at least he should say something nonsense on the road, in order to win the trust of the woman.
But the woman waved her hand to stop George from speaking. She just let George sit next to her, and she looked at him with interest.
For half an hour, the woman's face never left George, and she felt as if she were watching Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
Finally the woman smiled and said, "No change, nothing has changed!" ”
George listened inexplicably, but he still echoed the woman's laughter. After laughing, George said the nonsense he had made up. It is nothing more than that when he was a child, he was abducted by human traffickers, beaten and abused, and even lost his memory. This year, I suddenly remembered what had happened before, so I called home to contact, Yunyun.
The woman listened, and the tears that had just stopped flowed out again, and she began to say the words "Jack, my bitter child."
Just like that, about two hours later, at six o'clock in the afternoon, the winter sky in Bangor City had darkened, and no second person had come in. George boldly asked the woman:
"Why doesn't Daddy come back?"
The woman burst into tears and smiled and said, "Your father is not coming back today, he will be back tomorrow morning." ”
After saying that, she shouted "go to dinner", and a young woman in an apron walked out. She had a black tray on her hands, and on the tray was a large porcelain bowl, and inside the large porcelain bowl was a lump of bright red.
"Eat." The woman put the bowl in front of George.
Where dare George eat! He hardly dared to look. And he said to the young woman:
"Sister, please give me a sandwich, or a vegetable salad."
The woman looked at George and suddenly opened her mouth wide, "What do you call her?" ”
George was puzzled, "Sister? Isn't that right? ”
The woman said, "She's your mom." ”
George was so surprised that he almost threw up his lungs, this woman looked a few years older than him, how did she become his mother?
"Jack, I'm Aunt Snow the Nanny, she's your mother Annie, you may forget, but don't forget it later." The woman said.
The young woman in the apron named "Annie" cried silently, "Jack, this is your favorite thing to eat before, why don't you like to eat it now?" ......”
George thought, what Anne meant, if he didn't eat this lump of red and bright things, he must not be "Jack".
George was so distraught that he buried his head and finished eating the contents of the bowl. The contents of the bowl were supposed to be some sort of "animal" meat, but with a sweet smell. George thought, that red thing must be cream. Rich people are really strange, eating meat with cream.
After George finished eating, Anne smiled, and she took George's hand and said:
"You haven't changed at all!"
In addition to increasing George's confidence in cheating, this sentence also gave him a sense of complacency - "I should go to Hollywood to develop and see how good my acting skills are!" ”
It was completely dark.
George was given a third room on the east side of the second floor by Aunt Snow, across from the bathroom on the second floor. Before going to bed, Anne said to George at the door:
"Baby, get a good night's sleep."
George also laughed and said:
"Mom, good night!"
Anne closed the door, and soon there was silence all around, so quiet that even the sound of hair falling on the ground could be heard.
George had never slept in this environment, and when he couldn't adapt for a while, he actually lost sleep. Lying on his big soft bed, thinking about what had happened during the day, he felt proud at first: his fate had changed, he no longer had to worry about the next meal, he no longer had to see the nasty David.
But he soon discovered that something was wrong, that he had come, and how could such an important "thing" not be seen by the rich businessman Matthew? In addition, he did not see the extravagance of his dreams. He just saw two crying and crying weird women.
He always felt that something was wrong, but for a moment he couldn't say what was wrong.
But in the end he still felt that he was right, he came from the west coast of the United States to the east coast of the United States, and he would never come in vain. He felt that he was about to become a "rich man" (at least a "rich second generation").
He forced himself to sleep.
It was about twelve o'clock in the morning, and George wanted to go to the bathroom, so he reached for the lamp at the head of the bed, but he turned it back and forth three or four times, and the light bulb did not come on. When he was sleeping, the front desk light was on, and he turned it off himself, so why wasn't it lit up at this time?
He had to go to the bathroom in the dark.
He went to the bathroom, and the light was not on. At this point George understood that the power was blackout. But he felt very surprised, such a rich family, will not be able to pay the electricity bill? George was used to being in the slums in the dark, and he didn't feel much inconvenience.
When he returned to the room, with a suspicious stomach and about to go to sleep, he suddenly felt that there was something hard under the pillow, reached in, and felt a red hard leather book.
In fact, it is not right to say that it is a "hard leather book", it should be said to be a "photo album", because each page of the paper is glued with a black-and-white or color photo, and the bottom of the photo is densely packed with text.
There was no electricity in the room, and the lamp could not be turned on, but George still saw the following words through the scattered moonlight:
John, thirteen, from Shire Shire, Texas, lives for a month and five days.
Tom, fourteen years old, from Phoenix, Arizona, lived for twenty-eight days.
Andy, fifteen years old,......
……
George's scalp began to tingle, he didn't know what it was, but he seemed to understand what it was. He felt that the pictures of these handsome boys in suits were "posthumous photos."
He quickly turned to the "eighteen-year-old" page, which had no photographs.
George suddenly understood that these people in the photo should be like him, going to the door to find relatives. But what happened to these people is not recorded in this book.
George's heart was numb, he felt that this place could not stay for long, and he left as soon as dawn came.
But it was too late.
At dawn, aunt Xue pushed the door and walked in, her hands holding a stack of neat clothes.
"Jack, this is the new suit your mother bought for you, you put it on, and your mother is waiting for you downstairs to take pictures."
Aunt Snow waited for George to answer, then turned and went downstairs.
George looked at the neatly placed suit at the head of the bed, and a nameless shudder suddenly appeared. At this moment, a man's thick voice came from the courtyard:
"Jack—my dear son, Daddy is back..."