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I had no clue how she’d held it together in York’s office with this level of crazy brewing inside her, how fifteen minutes ago she’d said with at least a partly straight face that mothershadto accept their kids. I hadn’t believed it, hell, York and Coach T probably hadn’t believed it, but somehow they’d convinced themselves she was safe and sane enough to send me out of the building with and Jesus Christ. Except here I still was, knowing that wasn’t true, knowing there was a good chance I was in real fucking danger and not doing a thing about it, so which one of us was really the most fucked up.
For some reason, probably because I was deeply fucking stupid, I let myself get pushed back into this life, went down the dark hall with the shitty paneling and the flickering bulbs, back to my bedroom with the fist-sized holes in the door, every step hurting so bad that by the time I got there I could barely believe I was alive.
I felt nauseous and feverish, and I hurt everywhere. Sharp shooting pains and dull aches and a throbbing behind my eyes that seemed like a legit 911 call, like maybe a brain aneurysm.
For a long time, longer than I wanted to think about, I just stood there in the doorway of my room, looking around at what didn’t surprise me at all. The whole place torn open like it had been raided, the dresser, the closet, everything I owned tossed and broken and shredded, the mattress leaning against the wall, slit end to end, and mushy, muddy, decaying piles of plaster on the floor and the dresser, holes in the ceiling outlined with rusty water damage rings where it really had happened, it really had finally given up and caved in.
Part of me— the crazy fucked up kid part that liked watching things smash and burn— was mad I’d missed it, wanted to know what it had looked like and sounded like when it all fell down. And some sad, sensitive part was hurt that this room I hated, but was the only one I’d ever had, was slaughtered— even if I’d seen it like this before.
Mostly, I was just numb. And dizzy. And I wanted to go home. But that was such a far away concept I didn’t know how to make it happen. So I breathed through a panic attack as quietly and privately as I could, bouncing back and forth between all my senses being dialed up too high and everything dimming down to almost nothing. And then I finally managed to switch myself over from panic to autopilot and started cleaning up the mess.
I probably would never be able to explain what I was doing or why. Cleaning up a mess I didn’t make. Taking blame I didn’t deserve. It was just so familiar. Safe, almost. Keep your head down, shut up and wait for shit to go quiet. It was a frequency I tuned into and then couldn’t tune out of.
I should have checked my phone, I should have called Caleb. But I was so embarrassed that I was here in the first place, that I was on the ground getting my clothes dirty, scratching up my hands, scooping sludge into a trash can when I didn’t have to be, when I could have walked out the door…
Something had a hold on me, I couldn’t shake off, something telling me Ideservedto be here. I was stuck between realities and none of this felt real. Believing this was all some fucked up dream, that somehow the bubble would pop and I’d disappear, that was easier than making myself do anything that made sense.
When I heard the noises from the living room, the laughing and the stumbling, and the voices one-upping each other, it was so familiar it was white noise, background, maybe my imagination. Until it wasn’t.
* * *
“This bitch again?Oh, hell no, you fucking kidding me?”
The hair stood up on the back of my neck, tingling all the way up my head. On my hands and knees wasn’t where I wanted to be when someone came at me, and I stood up fast, but not fast enough. I didn’t have my balance yet when Mike came at me, shoving me hard, and I hit the corner of the dresser, a scrape and a bruise registering somewhere before I plowed into the wall and heard plaster crumble on the inside.
He looked the same but not. Still slick, but like he was crumbling on the inside too. His eyes were too wide, his goatee he loved so much wasn’t so tight. I knew what high on your supply looked like, how you could wear it all arrogant with a suit and get by. And I knew what digging yourself too deep looked like too. When you went past arrogant into paranoia and worse, and he’d hit worse real fast.
“The fuck are you doing here you little slut? Think you can walk back intomyhouse whenever you want? Fuck guys inmyliving room, makemelook like an asshole? Not so easy out there, is it, freak? Begging to come home now? Go on, beg me, you fucking bitch. On your knees, why don’t you, where you like it.” He laughed, turning back to look at my mom, and I wasn’t sure when she’d gotten there, it was all just so unfocused. But she was laughing too, and I shouldn’t have looked her way because then Mike was putting his hands on my chest, getting the jump, shoving me harder against the wall, and I felt it give, one more solid shove and it would cave in like the ceiling.
I didn’t think I’d hit my head, but everything seemed to be going dark. I was the only one in my right mind here, and the way their voices got more and more high pitched, the way their eyes got darker and beadier and emptier with every blink, I could tell where this was heading, and it was nowhere good. This was some let’s-see-how-much-torture-the-kid-can-take shit. Mean people on mean drugs. The kind that make you do things you don’t come back from.
The plot was long, long gone. Made absolutely no difference what I said, they wouldn’t remember it in thirty seconds. I’d made a big fucking mistake, and that woke me up a little, made me realize I’d walked into the eye of the storm— not some build up or low spot or something I needed to bargain with, but legit fucking danger— and I needed to get the fuck out right now.
“This is his fault,” my mom started screaming, like we weren’t inches away. “This is his mess, he’s gonna clean this up, he’s gonna pay for all this.” She gestured wide with her arms and her new bottle just barely missed hitting Mike in the head, some twisted fucking slapstick, but he didn’t notice. He was too focused on me, his eyes and his face twitching.
When his hand shot up around my neck it was quick, not squeezing, just pressing hard, wanting to crush, not choke, making me gag. I lurched forward, opening my mouth to claw my breath back down, and I realized what was going to happen the second his eyes lit up, and he reached down and grabbed a big handful of sludgy plaster shit off the dresser. He shoved it at my face almost as fast as I ducked out of the way, drugs not slowing him down at all, and me a prime athlete barely missing a mouthful of wet ceiling garbage.
I shoved him and he lost his balance just enough to step back once, for me to push past in between them and bolt for the door, but I was too fucking slow, got tangled up in the sheets wadded up on the floor, and fell face first into the carpet when he hit me from behind, in the leg and then the back and I went sprawling, rug burn across my stomach, dazed and a little blurry. My mom was screaming— not horrified screaming, but sports screaming, and you know she was for the away-team all damn day.
No way was I making it out the door, so I flipped over to fight, and the second I did, the asshole was shoving the plaster shit in my mouth, screamingEat this, bitch, you hungry now, dead set on forcing it down while I gagged and choked and clawed at him and somehow smelled blood and tasted wine, but maybe the two things were twisted together because neither of them seemed possible unless I was dying, which maybe I was.
And then suddenly he was just gone. Off me and quiet in a heap halfway across the room and there were different hands on me, soft, quiet ones, touching my hair, slipping under my arms, pulling me up to sitting, and I knew those giant hands. They weremyhands, belonged to me the way all of him belonged to me, the way I belonged to him, and I might have said that if I could have said anything, but I couldn’t. I felt like I might never be able to talk again, just cough and spit and gag, and I leaned over, drooling toward the carpet while it blurred in front of my face, and then forcing myself to snap back in, lift my head up.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” My mom was staring up at Caleb, screaming, and I couldn’t tell if she had any clue who he was, if it dawned on her he was here for me, or if she really thought he’d broken in. “Get out of here, I’m calling the fucking cops.”
No one paid any attention to her and for a second, she shut up. Or at least I stopped hearing her. I leaned over again, spit on the ground over and over, trying to get the taste of mud and paper and grit and filth off my tongue and somehow still wine, but it wouldn’t go away, might never go away and my eyes kept watering every time I coughed, and I didn’t understand how he was here or what was happening and I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was sit down and cry, but not here, anywhere but here. It was so loud and I was so scared, but I had no idea how I was ever going to get up.
“Come on baby, it’s okay,” Caleb said softly in my ear, and then he just did all the work for me, all the heavy lifting, getting me up onto my feet. “I’m here. Time to go.”
I almost laughed out loud, like we were at a party or something, like we were just going to say our polite goodbyes and duck out.
“This is assault,” Mike said, slurring, getting back up like a fucking zombie you couldn’t kill, jerking around, looking sick and slow. “You’re going to fucking jail, bro.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Caleb told him, not worried in the slightest, and that voice… I’d never heard that voice before, but if I ever heard it coming in my direction, I’d back up and fast.
And that’s exactly what Mike did, and watching it was fucking beautiful, the way he stumbled and glared at the floor like it had tripped him. Still, he wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t shut up. “You broke into my house and attacked me, bro. I got a witness.”
“Yeah. Who do you think makes a more credible witness, her or me?” Caleb asked him, totally unafraid and unbothered, ten feet tall and flaunting every inch, stupid or not. “Go ahead. Call the cops. See what happens when they walk in here and I tell them whatIwitnessed. I fucking dare you.Bro.”
