Gregory Fitz is a regular child with a regular routine, or at least that's what it looks like from the surface. Greg wakes up around 6 am for school but ends up falling back asleep until 6:20 am, when he finally wakes up he procrastinates whether he should go to school or not. After he finally decides to go to school he takes a quick shower, and barely makes it on time for the bus, this is his morning routine. His morning routine had more meaning underneath the surface though, he doesn’t sleep for an extra 20 minutes even though it may look like he does, he’s actually mentally preparing himself for another day of what he describes as “hell.” Greg’s father would always come home stressed out, so in order to take out his stress he starts drinking, and occasionally beats Greg, for no reason most of the time. When he procrastinates whether to go to school he’s just thinking on the best way to hide the bruises he had received the night before. From there on out his routine is pretty normal, there’s nothing special about him taking a shower, or nearly missing the bus. Though I would like to point out that he only has a certain amount of clothes for the week, he picks out what to wear based on what day it is and what classes he’ll be having.

When Greg makes it to the bus, he pops in headphones, and listens to depressing music, probably to ease away the pain from the bruises. When the bus gets to the school Greg’s usually the last one to get off the bus, since he seems to find that getting into the line is quite a pain, I would agree. When Greg finally gets into the school after a dreadful journey of getting through the crowd of the school, he just walks straight to his classroom, he doesn’t have any interactions with people in the hallway. Once Greg finally gets into his classroom he go straight to his seat and waits for his friends to come in. After his first period he walks straight to his second period class, and does the same, he waits for his friends to come into his classroom. After his second period class is Greg’s lunch period, instead of going to lunch he goes to his teachers classroom and does work instead, this is because he wants more knowledge, and he just doesn’t have any money for lunch. After that, Greg just sits there and waits for everyone to come in from lunch so that class could start. He goes straight to his fourth period class and from there he just goes straight home.

This is his daily school schedule, it’s very dull and uneventful, his schedule only changes on Friday’s when he goes to his favorite teachers classroom to have lunch, there they just talk about random topics.

Greg comes home exhausted and just collapses onto his bed, usually takes a nap from 2-5 pm. Greg’s mother usually gets home around 6 pm or so. After Greg’s mom is all settled she gets straight to cooking something up for both her and Greg. Greg’s mother is a young beautiful lady. She’s kind to everyone, and truly loves her son, she’d do anything for him, but can’t help him when the father is involved, because he also beats her, she can’t defend herself or her child. Now you might be asking why doesn’t she call the police and file a report, well she can’t exactly do that she’s afraid of taking care of Greg alone, she feels and though as she is now she can’t support herself and child without the help of someone else, that someone else just happened to be Greg’s father. She also feared that it would get her into some problems with immigration, for she came to this country illegally.

After Greg’s mother cooked and they ate everything was just boring, Greg would just be doing homework or playing games on his phone.

Around 10:30 pm is the time Greg’s father came out of work, Greg dread this time. Him and his mother would go pick him up at his job, patiently waiting outside for what seemed like hours in Greg’s mind. When he finally got out of work, he went straight to the car, where his wife and kid would greet him. From the outside view everything seemed normal, they seemed like a normal family, but when they got home and the door closes behind Greg, him being the last one to get into the apartment, everything would change. Greg’s father would start demanding things left and right from both him and his mother. He’d demand a beer every time he finished the one he had, and after just a little past 11 pm, is when things would get bad. Greg’s father would get up and start assaulting his mother, his mother would shout for Greg to go into his room but Greg would always try and help his mother out, even if it meant getting hit. Greg would get hit of course but Greg would just keep going until his body couldn’t handle it anymore, and he’d just collapse. Then he’d wake up in the middle of the night and crawl into bed, feeling dead inside, knowing he couldn’t do a single thing.

This has been Gregory Fitz’s routine for the past 8 months that I’ve been observing him. Oh, who am I you ask, I’m ______. I’m one of Greg’s friends I’ve began to notice some bruises on Greg which lead me to observing him. I went over to Greg’s house once and secretly installed some cameras throughout the apartment and on the apartment, which I know isn’t very legal but it’s better than a friend being killed, am I wrong? Lately Greg’s been more distance then usual, he’s always distant but not this distant. He barely talks now for some reason, could it be that the traumatic experience has finally broken him? I highly doubt it, but it maybe a possibility. I’ll directly ask Greg tomorrow, Friday, see what’s on his mind and how I can help him. Friday came but Greg never came to school for some reason I checked the camera’s footage to see if he had slept in but he hadn’t. He work up the same time he always does, and went out for the bus. But what seemed strange is that he didn’t get on the bus, it seemed like he was talking to the bus driver and in the end didn’t get on. A few minutes of the footage go by and Greg’s walking down the street, towards the woods. I went out to the woods in search of Greg, but he was nowhere to be found. I went up to his apartment door and knocked, only to be answered by his mother. I asked her if he was home but he was not. Where could Greg be? I went back into the woods and searched for Greg, hours passed by and no sign of him at all. Greg’s mother had already called the police and filed a missing child report. Greg was nowhere to be found for the next month. It seemed that he had completely disappeared, that was until a police report came from somewhere in another state. The report said that Greg had been found…..

None of this would have occurred if I had taken action soon, instead of waiting.