High School Freak

by Aaron Grunn

voice.

  The two men looked at Tom, got up and ran off.

  "Where was I?" Tom said.

  "Why don't we just call the police? Get into witness protection or something like that."

  "If only," Tom said with a shake of his head. "That's not the way the world works, John. These men. They're powerful. No police force is going to help us."

  "Us?"

  "I'm his brother, so they're after me too."

  John nodded his head. It made these men sound all-powerful, now that he knew that they were after Tom too. But it also made him feel a little better knowing that Tom was in this with them.

  "Mom never forgave my dad. Did she?"

  "Can you blame her?"

  "You'll tell me more?"

  "Anything you want to hear, I'll tell you."

  John nodded. "I'd better go inside."

  "You're a good kid, John. But from here on out, you're going to have to be more than good."

  John stepped inside the house. In the kitchen he could see his mother standing, her face in her hands.

  "Mom. I'm sorry," John said. He stepped closer. Her eyes were red, and her face was sucked of life. He would even go so far as to call her ugly. He felt a sharp pain inside. "Mom?"

  She half-turned away from him. He'd never seen her cry before. Even when they moved out of a town in the middle of the night, trying to keep as quiet as possible, she always maintained a stoic face. And now, knowing what she'd been through and that a few words broke her down, he felt horrid.

  He reached for her and touched her waist. "I'm sorry mom. I'll try to be better," he said and leaned in to hug her. His heart grew heavy.

  She seemed stiff at first, but then she finally hugged him back. "It's okay John," she said in a slight voice. "It's going to be all right."

  John did everything to keep his eyes dry. "I love you mom, and I wouldn't want you to ever cry because of me."

  She shifted away from him, holding his head in her hands. "You're the best son anyone could ever ask for," she said then kissed him.

  John wasn't sure why she said that, or how that could possibly be true after he made her cry.

  "If you have any questions about your father, John, ask me."

  They made their way into the living room where Tom was sitting with another bottle of wine. "Nothing cements a detente like some liquid courage."

  "Tom, will you ever learn?"

  Tom laughed. "No. Life's too short to really learn anything, so why try?"

  John gave him a wry look and said: "Thousands of years of civilization says you're wrong."

  "Oh, the bookworm strikes again!" Tom said with a yelp.

  "Leave him alone," John's mother said.

  "Mom, I can handle him."

  His mom smiled at that comment and patted his head. "I'm sure you can," she said and kissed his forehead.

  "Awww," Tom said, taking a swig from the bottle.

  John's mom kicked Tom in the shin. "Use a glass like a normal gentleman, you."

  Tom rolled his eyes and pulled out three glasses from the kitchen.

  "Only two," she said with a rigid voice.

  "As you please," Tom said and placed one of the glasses on the floor.

  John's mother took her glass after Tom poured and took a sip. She handed it to John and smiled. "Take a sip, but remember what I said."

  "I'm fine mom," John said, raising his hand. He wanted to act like a grownup and drink, but he wanted more to hear stories about his dad and remember them. "I have a question."

  "Shoot," Tom said, taking a gulp from the wine bottle.

  "You're on the run, right?"

  "Yup."

  "So why the car? I mean they're trying to find you, why not a common car that will fit into the background. A classic car that no one usually sees, doesn't seem smart."

  "This one is always thinking," Tom said in a nagging tone and shook his finger at John. "You're right John. Why? Why live life as anything but a mole, a ghost slinking from shadow to shadow?"

  Outside, the sound of scurrying and voices yelling, though obviously trying to be hushed, sounded up. Tom cocked his head for a few seconds. It drifted into nothingness, and Tom continued: "Well the thing is these men who are after us aren't exactly the best. We don't have the world's finest after us. We just have a lot of them after us, and a lot of them who are consistent. You get it?"

  John wasn't sure if Tom was being too cocky, or if there was wisdom in his words.

  "But he who is consistent is the one that wins this race. They will catch up with me sooner or later. So why should I give up a few pleasures in life for them?"

  "I'm not sure," John said. "If you're right then why would you even try to run? This is a way to decrease the chances of you dying," John said.

  His uncle didn't reply; he finished his glass of wine and smiled at John as he filled up another glass.

  John hated that about adults. Whenever he managed to stump them, they would get sullen or ignore his questions like they were below them.

  "Well? It doesn't make sense to me," John reiterated. He could feel Tom and his mother exchange a look.

  "Some things don't make sense," his mother said.

  John shook his head. He would make sense, always. He would face this world with his special abilities, and he would make sense of the whole damn mess, and if they didn't want to make sense with him, he would teach them. All it took was a little patience.

  "Can either of you explain who these men are?"

  "Hard to say," Tom said and took a sip. "They're an extension of a conglomerate of companies, from what I hear."

  "Then why can't we call the FBI or someone? People can't just do what they want outside the law," John said. He was getting frustrated with how his uncle and his mother seemed so resigned to this greater force. After all, he'd just taken a class about the role of law in America. It'd been Franklin who cemented the country's faith in law when he defended those British soldiers in a court of law. He took a deep breath and told himself that he would just have to teach them.

  "They work with them, John. Look, I know you want to think that things are fair, and that there is a way to work with the system, but there isn't. There is no way you're going to get help from anyone. That's why we run."

  John felt the air in the room get thicker and heavier. There was some more scuffling outside. It sounded like those two hooded young men where fighting again.

  "Damn junkies," Tom said. "It always this bad here?"

  "At least there's only a couple tonight," John's mother said. "Usually there's a whole horde, and they make a din the entire night."

  The scuffling faded away, and John thought of more questions, though he was becoming less certain about whether to ask them. There didn't seem to be any straight answers.

  "How did you meet dad?"

  His mother shifted a leg under her ass, and brought the other one to her chest and hugged it. "How did we meet?" She smiled.

  "Keep it under PG-13," Tom said with a grin.

  "Hit him for me," she said to John.

  "Sorry," John said, then reached over and punched Tom on the arm.

  "Going to have to teach you to hit," Tom said.

  John tried to ignore him.

  "Well, I was working in New York when we met."

  "City?"

  "That's the one. I was a student at NYU, and he was, well, a guy I saw very often just walking around not doing much." She paused to take a sip and look at Tom with a thought on her head. "I don't remember seeing any of you at first."

  "No. I always kept a low profile."

  "Your dad was something else. Stood out, even in a city as large and crowded as New York City."

  John tried to keep as quiet as possible. He attempted to picture his mother a little older than himself, and he couldn't quite do it. Her face changed as she spoke about his father. Her voice bordered on fragile. It was obvious how much even talking about him flustered her, as if a ghost was in the room as she spoke, filtering throu
gh her heart and sapping a piece of her life away.

  "He was a large man, but it wasn't only that, he... he carried himself in a stately manner. I always pictured him as a sort of diplomat, or statesman. A senator even. Wouldn't you say?"

  Tom nodded his head, his eyes were drooping, not from boredom; he seemed to be thinking about the man John's mother was describing. "He was. My bigger brother. Always the calm collected one," he said.

  John looked at him. There was a hint of sadness in his voice, was it mixed with jealousy? If the adults John looked up to were so full of doubt, what could he ever aspire to?

  "We met in a cafe. He surprised me when he looked at me over a cup of coffee and asked about the book I was reading."

  "What book?" John asked.

  "Lolita," she said with a smile.

  John nodded. He would buy that book. This was the path to certainty.

  "He then asked me out on a date to Central Park."

  "There and then?"

  "Yes, your father wasn't one to mince words." Her face flickered with pride and happiness.

  Silence filled the room. John took in the two adults. It felt good to have them tell him something about his father. He could feel a hollow part of his brain filling up. He wanted to ask his mother about how his father came to leave her, how things became what they were. But from her look of the fragility, he decided not to.

  He glanced over at his uncle who was pouring himself another glass of wine.

  "Where were you from?" John asked Tom.

  "Us? Born and raised in Montana."

  "When did you head out to New York?"

  "When your dad got a warrant for his arrest put out in Montana," he said with a smile.

  "I've never heard about this," John's mother said, jumping out of her dream-like state. "He always told me that he was sick of the country."

  "That may have been. But he was sick of it because of the arrest