Unsettling

I'm talking via IM with my nephew right now. Not my-nephew-the-freak, but his older brother. For the sake of distinction, the older is G and the younger is C.

G seems like a good kid. He's got some issues, of course, but he grew up with an SCA sense of ethics and some martial arts training at a critical time. He's got a steadiness to him that C doesn't. G told me just now that he plans to go into the Army when he graduates. I know he was doing the high school ROTC program before his mother died and he got moved across the country to live with his grandfather.

I think this is an excellent thing for him. He's one of those people who I think thrives on discipline, but might get into trouble with a lack of it.

This made me wonder what's going to happen to C when his big brother goes off to join the Army. Mind you, it's a couple years from now, but C will only be in ninth grade or so.

Then I wondered what C will do after he graduates, six years from now.

Then I realized that I don't see him graduating.

Then I realized . . . I'm not sure I see him living that long. He bounced in and out of homeless shelters with his mom and had to deal with her string of deadbeat boyfriends. He's bisexual, and he's not exactly discrete about it. He has a history of drinking and drugs at the ripe old age of thirteen. He's been arrested. I think he's been in psych care once or twice. ADHD. History of cutting on self. Short of landing himself in treatment foster care, I don't think anything has a snowball's chance in hell of turning him around.

Somebody tell me what there is in the world for C? Before he graduates or after.