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"And the car phobia, that was from being trapped in the car with your unconscious father and brother, in pain, needing help."
"Yeah," I agreed. "I know on a rational level that it is an irrational fear to have, but as many times as I've tried to get over it, I can't."
"Fuck, I don't blame you," Huck said, shaking his head. "I'm not seeing why your family treats you like shit over the accident though."
"Right," I agreed, sighing. "That would be because I told the police that my father was a coke-head. I mean, I didn't know those words at the time, but I explained about the bad neighborhood, about the white powder, about the snorting. They put the pieces together. And my family... his family... they lost their minds."
"Because you were airing their dirty laundry?"
"Yeah," I said, nodding, remembering the events following the incident with a lot more clarity than just about anything else in my life.
My grandparents at my bedside berating me, telling me to tell the police I was mistaken, that I'd lied.
But I told them I couldn't lie, that it was wrong to lie to the police, sobbing as I tried to stand up to them and their angry faces.
"You stupid, ungrateful bitch," my grandfather snapped, storming out of the room.
"He had a stroke later that night," I said, the pizza tasting a little bitter on my tongue.
"And they blamed you for that too."
"The doctors said stress can cause a stroke. They thought it was my fault he was so stressed."
"That's bullshit to put that on a little kid."
"Yeah, well, I was an easy scapegoat. Since I wasn't one of their own."
"What happened then?"
"I'm not entirely sure. They convinced Jones to say I was lying. It wasn't hard work. He was a little kid. He barely understood what was happening anyway. And then, I imagine, they hired a fixer to make it all go away. And it did. Go away. The cops even came in and told me that I was wrong about the coke, that it was my head injury making me remember things that didn't happen."
"Jesus."
"People with bottomless pockets can make a lot of things happen. For better or worse. And I got to leave that hospital with my grandfather's stroke on my shoulders, and everyone around me calling me a liar, an ingrate."
"What about your mom?"
"Honestly, I think she was so overwhelmed during that time that something in her kind of broke too. She was never the same after. Taking care of me, of Jones, of my father who couldn't take care of himself anymore. And, God, was he mean back then. Meaner than now by a million."
"Probably because he was fucking detoxing from the coke."
"Yeah, that was probably a part of it for sure."
"How did you get through that shit? Hurt, having seizures, no one believed you, everyone blamed you, having no one on your side?"
"My father's nurse," I said, feeling a warmth spread across my chest at the one bright spot in that whole disaster of a situation. "He was practically living there at the time, doing the heavy lifting that my mom couldn't do. And I think he, you know, took pity on me. Everyone else was getting so much care and attention, and I was relegated to my room like a prisoner even though I had been through something traumatic too. He knocked on my door one day and I opened it to find him standing there with a big stack of books."
I hadn't been much of a reader in those days, doing it for school but hating every minute of it, never able to stay focused on the story.
But when he'd handed me those ten books, it was like he'd given me an escape from a world that I didn't want to be in anymore.
"What? Like Harry Potter or something?" Huck asked.
"No, he gave me this big adult fantasy series. The Wheel of Life series."
"Your tattoo," Huck said, snapping me out of my memories. "On your shoulder," he said when I stared at him for a moment.
"Oh, yeah. Jones dragged me to the tattoo shop with him on his eighteenth birthday. I didn't want to be a spoilsport, so I got the wheel."
"Because the books got you through a hard time."
"The books, yeah, then the video game," I told him, watching as understanding moved across his face.
"The same game you play now? The one you film yourself playing?"
"Yeah," I said, reaching for another slice, finding now that it was all out, I felt oddly lighter, emptier. "It's not a super popular game anymore. Back when it first came out, it was. But then people moved on to the more exciting games. But there is a really niche crowd of die-hard fans of the game or the books or both. They are how I manage to still make a living."
