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Despite my mother’s suffering.
The pills were to find the courage to leave, weren’t they, Mom?
It’s the only question I’d ask her. If I ever saw my mother face to face again, it was the only thing I wanted to know. Because deep down, I knew that was the reason she started popping them. Why she let them take over her world. Why she let them ease down her throat.
It was so she could ease out of this life and go on to the next.
But why couldn't you take me with you?
My mind played one last reel in my head. One reel that made me feel more alone and more empty than ever before. It was the last time I ever heard from my mother. A card, in the mail. A card my father was reluctant to give me. It was my fourteenth birthday, and it got delivered to the house without a return address. Dad tossed it to me, grumbling something about his ‘good for nothing ex.’ And as I opened it with trembling hands, I found myself repeating the words.
Because I’d damn near memorized that letter.
Clint,
You’re fourteen today, and I can’t believe how much time has passed. I think about you every day, wondering if I made the right decision for you. And I guess I’ll never know. But I want you to have something. It’s coming in the mail for you in a few days. I saved up a lot of money for it, so I hope you like it.
I love you. Never forget that, no matter what.
Mom
&nbs
p; Two days later, a leather jacket arrived in the mail. Much too big for me at the time, but it was there. It arrived while my father was on a business trip. Probably the only reason it had gotten to me in the first place. Hell, my father paid me so little attention once I became a teenager that he didn’t question the jacket at all until almost a year later.
Just before I turned fifteen.
And now, my fucking leather jacket is getting wet.
Sounds meshed in my mind. I felt the headlights in my face again. I saw light beyond my eyelids. The smell of smoke became too much and the cry of Rae’s voice in my ear made me sick to my stomach. I heard those boys laughing. I heard the tires screeching. I heard the crunch of metal as my body jumped. Twitched. Shooting pain up and down my arms and legs before my eyes slowly opened, for the first time since I’d come to.
And I was staring up at that bullshit sky.
My jaw unlocked and I drew in lungfuls of air. My eyes darted around as my body slowly came to life, with my toes wiggling in my boots. I turned my head enough to take in the bank I was lying on. And yes, I was sprawled out on the river’s edge. I centered my head again, with the edge of the bridge in view. Holy shit, I’d tumbled over the edge. Dropped at least twenty fucking feet down to this water.
How the fuck had I not ended up in the river?
Flashes of that came back, too. How I got off my bike. How I started running for the woods. How that damn car literally attempted to pin me to the metal railing.
Holy shit, those assholes had actually tried to kill me.
I need to call the cops.
“Clint!”
“Clinton!”
“Clinton Clarke!”
For some reason, I thought I heard Rae’s voice. Among the foreign voices that somehow knew my name, I could have sworn I heard hers. But that wasn’t possible. If this was the river-bridge combination I thought it was, I was damn near twenty miles away from her place of work. Where this shitshow kicked off.
She wouldn't have come that far down this road to find me.
Right?
I wondered what condition my bike was in. Fucking hell, it was probably totaled. Which Dad wouldn't be happy about. I’d get yet another beating for that shit before his guilt prompted him to buy me a newer one. A nicer one. That was how shit worked with Dad. He’d beat me, then feel guilty, then I’d wake up one morning to a nice-ass gift. And even then, it was only sometimes.
Only sometimes, he felt guilty for beating his son up.
