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Because as sure as the sun would rise in the morning, I knew he wouldn’t harm a hair on my head.
“Joey,stop!” Kneeling down on the ground beside a bleeding Mike, I caught ahold of Joey’s face between my hands and forced him to look at me. “I told you to stop!”
Wild and unrecognizable black eyes stared back at me.
Great, not only had he lost himself in what I could describe as a violent bout of PTS, but he was strung out, too.
“Stop,” I commanded, keeping a firm hold on his face, as I kept his gaze. “You’re not there, you’re at school. With me.”
It took a long time for him to process my face, but once he did, I watched as the tension dissipated from his body in a sudden rush, and he slumped forward.
With his bloodied hands hanging limply at his sides, he let his head fall to my shoulder. “They hurt her,” he slurred. “They hurt my sister.”
“Who hurt Shannon, Joe? Was it Mike’s sister? Was it Ciara?”
I felt him nod against my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, wrapping an arm around his back, while I cradled his head to my shoulder with the other. “It’s okay.”
The commotion around us was all too familiar, and I knew what was coming before it even happened.
“Joseph Lynch,” Mr. Nyhan bellowed, pushing through the crowds. “My office. Now! The Gards are on the way.”
KNOCKING ON HEAVEN’S DOOR
DECEMBER 17TH 2004
JOEY
Laying on my back,I stared up at my bedroom ceiling and ignored the screaming going on downstairs. I didn’t have anything left in me to go down there and be thrown on the front line like I always was.
Instead of her screams, I concentrated on the sound of Bob Dylan’sKnockin’ on Heaven’s Dooras it drifted from my stereo.
I was so fucking dead inside that if you cut me open, my insides would spew black.
That’s how dark I felt, how truly rotten I felt on the inside.
How far I’d fallen.
Turning my head to one side, I stared at the tinfoil, lighter, and broken pen on my mattress, as my mind drifted in and out of focus, in and out consciousness.
“Another suspension.Do you want to ruin your life?”
“Joey, help me, please!”
“You’reoff the hurling team. Don’t even think about stepping foot on a pitch until your suspension is lifted.”
Bang.Bang. Bang.
“Where’syour precious son now, whore?”
“You are such a disappointment…”
“What did you take?”
“Why areyou the way you are?”
“Oh, Jesus, Teddy, that’s heroin!”
