How Evan Broke His Head and Other Secrets

by Garth Stein

  “Truth or dare, Charlie?” Penny asked, her reedy voice slicing through the dampness.“Truth or dare?”

  Charlie hesitated.

  “Truth or dare?” she demanded, this time taking an intimidating half-step toward Charlie.

  “Dare, ” Charlie answered, unconvinced.

  “Dare, ” Keith, the enforcer, echoed.

  “Dare, then, ” Penny said. She glanced around at her minions, the other kids from the neighborhood who were silently thankful that they were not at the receiving end of the dare. “I dare you to run in front of the next car that comes down the hill.”

  Charlie glanced toward the road.

  “Run in front of it at the last minute, ” Penny continued, “so it has to slam on its brakes.”

  Like a car slams on its own brakes, Evan thought. The driver slams on the brakes, not the car.

  Charlie was confused by this last instruction.

  “What if it doesn’t stop?” he asked.

  “That’s the dare, ” Penny answered.

  Charlie’s lower lip began to quiver. He started to cry.

  “Baby, baby, baby, ” Keith taunted.“Baby, baby, baby.”

  “Take the dare, ”Penny threatened.“Or you know what happens.”

  Everyone knows what happens. Keith holds your arms behind your back. Penny kicks you as hard as she can in the shins. She’s wearing her tap shoes. Her kicks draw blood, leave scars. Evan has scars. He doesn’t care, though. Evan can take it, the pain, the humiliation. But Charlie. Charlie is a baby. Keith is right. Baby, baby, baby.

  “Do you give up?” Penny asked.

  Give up? Pull out your eyes.

  “Hold him, ” she said to Keith and Keith’s friend, the kid who plays in the ice hockey league, the big kid without a name. They each took an arm. Charlie cried openly, he didn’t try to hide it, he didn’t try to be brave. He just cried. Cry baby, cry baby, cry.

  “I’ll do it, ” Evan said, stepping in front of Penny. His feelings of protectiveness over his little brother barely overcame his feeling of contempt for Charlie’s whining. Play the game. Part of the game is getting kicked in the shins. You knew the rules going in. There are no surprises here. So suck it up.

  “What?”

  “I’ll take the dare, ” Evan repeated. “Charlie’s too little. He can’t do it. I’ll do it for him.”

  Penny glared at him, foiled again. She would much rather have extracted physical punishment from a babbling Charlie than have her dare fulfilled by a defiant Evan.

  “So it slams on its brakes, ” she warned.

  “I’ll do it and then we’re both going home, ” Evan said.

  It was almost dark already; someone had stolen an hour of light from them. He could smell something sweet and meaty in the wet air, something like soup or stew with buttered noodles.

  Penny signaled to her henchmen; Charlie was released. Evan climbed the bank to the road and waited for the next car.

  The rest happened in flashes—or, rather, only flashes of what happened were imprinted on Evan’s memory. He remembers only slivers: a car coming quickly down the hill; his foot slipping on the wet grass as he launched himself into the road; a chalky taste in his mouth, a taste of gunpowder, of tooth enamel; a woman turning him over and looking into his eyes and then standing back in such shock it made him cry.

  “Am I going to be okay?” he asked her.

  “What have you done?” the woman asked in response. “What have you done?”

  Then there was nothing. Time devoid of color and light, but with warmth and dryness. There was nothing to see, but there were people around him. Hushed voices, but loud in their hush: angry, hushed voices.

  “. . . so stupid!”

  “Carl.”

  “He did it to himself. He did it to himself.”

  “No, Carl, no.”

  “It’s so stupid. So stupid. He’s thrown his damn life away.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  “He won’t be fine! I’m a doctor! I know when someone will be fine, and he . . . won’t . . . be . . . fine!”

  “Carl. Please. It was an accident.”

  “It was not an accident.”

  “Carl—”

  “It was not an accident, Louise.” It was his father. His father and mother in a room with him. The bed felt warm; the sheets smelled of soap and were coarse under his fingers; he could wiggle his toes, so he wasn’t paralyzed, and for that he was thankful; but for all intents and purposes, he was asleep to the world, held just under the radar of consciousness by one of many miracle drugs used by doctors, quite possibly his first taste of a Valium drip.

  “It was not an accident, ”his father said again.“There are no accidents.”

  EVAN ENTERS THE room and finds Dean lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. He is reminded of himself, as he has spent long hours in exactly the same pose, thinking about things, or sometimes not thinking at all, just existing. It’s a good bed to exist on.

  “Mica’s gone, ” he says. “I guess we should talk.”

  “You lied about my mother.”

  “I didn’t lie—”

  “You lied! You’re a liar!”

  Dean heaves himself out of the bed and thunders past Evan, out into the living room. He goes into the kitchen and throws open the cabinets until he finds Evan’s stash of plastic shopping bags. He takes one back into the living room and fills it with his clothes, the few things that Evan has bought for him.

  “Where are you going?” Evan asks.

  Dean shrugs as he roughly stuffs his feet into his shoes.

  “Okay, so you don’t want to stay here, I can understand that. So, where? If you wait until tomorrow I can take you back to your grandparents.”

  “I’m not going back there.”

  “If you don’t want to stay here and you don’t want to go back there, then where will you stay?”

  “Who cares? The YMCA.”

  “Very funny.”

  “I’m not joking.”

  Dean moves toward the door. Evan heads him off.

  “I can’t let you walk out of here.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Dean, I can’t let you go. We have to sit down and talk about this. I mean, I don’t know what your mother told you—”

  “Shut up about my mother!” Dean shouts.“Shut up about her!”

  He shoves at Evan, catching him in the sternum, knocking him back a foot. He grabs the doorknob, opens the door. Evan pushes the door closed and grabs Dean’s shoulders. Dean twists out of the way and takes a swing at Evan. His fist misses Evan’s face by several inches, but, on the follow-through, his elbow smacks into Evan’s jaw.

  “Shit!” Evan winces in pain. He feels his jaw, checks his bite.

  Dean opens the door again; this time Evan kicks it shut hard. It booms into the frame. The wall shakes. It’s a powerful enough gesture to temporarily stop Dean’s thrashing.

  “You hit me, ” Evan says.

  “Yeah? Well, deal with it. You got to take my whole life off, so now you have to deal with it.”

  Dean gives up on the door. He heads for the phone.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The cops. I’m being held against my will.”

  “You’re fourteen. You don’t have a will.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “No, fuck you, you rude little shit.”

  “Yeah, I’m a rude little shit. So deal with it. You never had to do anything for my whole life. You got to be in bands and sleep as late as you wanted while my mom worked all the time and I spent my life in daycare and we sometimes didn’t even have a car, and I never had my own Play Station so I always had to go to someone else’s house to play video games and for Christmas we did things like make each other paintings or get shoes instead of a bike because we didn’t have any money, and you sat around the whole time in your rich house making albums that nobody ever heard, so fuck you. I hate you.”

  Evan rubs his face. He needs to find
a way out.

  “I’ll take you back tomorrow, ” he says.

  “I’m not going back there!” Dean shouts. “I hate them! I’m never going back there!”

  “You have to do something, Dean! You have to go somewhere. You can’t just go live on the streets. Now, you can come visit here whenever you want, but I’m not set up to have you stay with me forever. You’re going to have to go live with your grandparents.”

  Dean stares at Evan. He looks like he’s about to break, his face is fragile, his eyes red, he can’t take much more of this; Evan wants to hold him.

  “I’ll kill myself, ” Dean says softly.

  “Dean—”

  “I’ll kill myself if you send me back there.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “My mother said I never had to see him again.”

  Oh, shit. It’s Frank. How stupid can Evan be? Frank’s why Dean doesn’t want to go back.

  “Does he hit you, Dean?”

  “She said I never had to see him again.”

  “Does he abuse you?”

  “She said—”

  “When did she say this, Dean?”

  Dean looks at him blankly.

  “Did you see him before she died?”

  No answer.

  “How long before she died did she say you didn’t have to see him? When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Five years ago.”

  Evan closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. For crying out loud. Five years. The kid really is an orphan.

  “What did he do to you?” Evan asks.

  Dean doesn’t answer.

  “Tell me. Just tell me what’s going on, Dean, and I can figure something out.”

  Still, Dean doesn’t talk. Evan sees, though, that Dean isn’t going anywhere. He’s sitting limply on the couch. He won’t try to escape. Evan goes into the kitchen and gets him a glass of water. Dean takes the glass, but doesn’t look at Evan.

  “He hit me, ” Dean says, after a moment. He holds the glass in his lap, but he doesn’t drink from it.

  “Where?”

  “My face.”

  “Bad?”

  He nods. His eyes are filling with tears, his mouth is trembling, he sniffles.

  “Fuck!” Evan shouts, wheeling around and stomping across the apartment. “I’m not sending you back there, Dean. No way. You’ll have to stay here for a while. I’m not sending you back. I’ll figure something out. I don’t know what, but I’ll figure something out.”

  Dean takes a sip of water.

  “You’re not going to run away tonight, are you?” Evan asks.

  Dean shakes his head.

  “You won’t try to kill yourself?”

  Another shake. Another sip.

  “I’m sorry I lied about your mother, ” Evan says.

  Dean looks up at him, still trying desperately not to cry.

  “You didn’t lie.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, Evan calls Ellen with an ultimatum.

  “I know everything, ” Evan says.

  “Everything?” she asks.

  “Everything. I know you haven’t seen Dean in five years.”

  “Oh, that’s not true.”

  What? Oh, crap. What’s true and who’s lying?

  “When was the last time you saw him?” he asks.

  “I used to see him every week, almost, Evan. Why are you asking about this?”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “I’d go meet Tracy and Dean in Richland, usually. We’d meet for lunch.”

  “Oh, I see, ” Evan says. “You would go. But when was the last time Frank saw Dean?”

  “Oh, well . . .”

  “Five years.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I know everything, Mrs. Smith. I know Frank hit Dean in the face and that Tracy said he would never have to deal with Frank again. I know it all. And you expect me to bring him back to you? You should be ashamed.”

  A long pause.

  “What do you intend to do?” she asks.

  “I won’t bring him back as long as Frank is there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dean doesn’t have a problem with you. I’m sure he’d be willing to live with you, but not if Frank’s around. So get rid of him.”

  “But . . . how?”

  “Divorce him. Send him away. Get a restraining order, an order of protection, make sure he can’t come within five hundred yards of your house. Get him out.”

  “Well, I can think about it—”

  “What’s there to think about?”

  “Well, I don’t really know how, but . . .”

  “It’s not that hard. Do it for Dean. He needs you.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “Do it for Dean.”

  “I will, yes. I’ll have to call a lawyer.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll have to call you back. This is all so confusing. The summer’s almost over, school will be starting.”

  “Lawyers do it all the time.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  Evan hangs up and looks toward Dean who’s eating cereal at the kitchen table.

  “I’m only staying with you because Frank’s dangerous, ” Dean says, “not because I want to. I don’t have any other choice.”

  “I know, ” Evan says.

  FREMONT GUITAR, THE biggest guitar shop in Seattle, is dead on Mondays, even in the summer when kids are out of school. That’s because kids are never out of school anymore. Not like they were when Evan grew up. Back then, there were no day camps, no organized events. Kids had summer off; they spent it however they wanted, hanging out in guitar stores, whatever. Now, kids have everything programmed and planned, the result of either neurotic parents or a deadly bloom of psychopaths and rapists, waiting behind every tree to abduct our children and destroy them. Either way, it effectively kills the youth-driven guitar market on weekday mornings.

  So, Evan and Dean hang around the store all morning doing basically nothing. Evan makes an attempt at getting Dean interested in a guitar or drum set, but Dean yawns whenever music is mentioned. It’s tedious and difficult when there are more salespeople than customers in a store on a consistent basis.

  Evan is buoyed a little bit, however, by the idea that he is no longer a father-for-a-few-days; he’s a father-for-a-while. He likes Dean, and, though he doesn’t have room for him and can’t very well adopt him, he’d like to have him around a while longer. And he likes that he exacted a promise from Ellen that she would ditch Frank. That makes him feel good; he’s done something that is good for someone. So, overall, aside from the incredible boredom of his job, Evan feels pretty good.

  Dean seems to be doing well, too, aside from the boredom. He’s joking with the other guys, doing the hang-out thing, flicking guitar picks across the showroom, stuff like that.

  At lunch, Evan runs Dean over to the shopping mall where there’s a video game store. It’s a genius move on Evan’s part. He plunks down his credit card, and it only costs two hundred dollars to outfit Dean with the latest Game Boy and a handful of game cartridges. The reward is practically instant: Dean, pooling his booty greedily in his hands, a grin smeared on his face as they order burritos at the Taco Time stand, a “Thanks, Evan, this is cool, ” which is about as much as Evan could ever expect, and then a quick lunch without distraction—Dean reading an instruction manual and Evan checking out the hot girls in the short shorts who keep walking by, wondering how old they are, knowing they couldn’t come close to Mica if she were there, knowing, also, that she is far away, down in Jamaica where they got lots of pretty women who will steal your money and then break your heart.

  “I was thinking, ” Dean says, gulping down a burrito supreme like a snake, one big bite, so that Evan imagines he can see the lump move through his son’s body as it digests. “Maybe for Christmas I could get a Play Station 2. I can’t really get a job until I’m sixteen, but I can mow lawns or something so I can earn enough
to get games. But the system is the expensive thing. If I could get that as a present . . .”

  “We might be able to arrange that.”

  “Not that I don’t like the Game Boy. It’s really cool—”

  “The Game Boy is more of a portable, ” Evan says.“It’s for hanging out while I’m working and stuff, until I can figure out how to get you in a camp or something for the rest of the summer. You know. It’s a go-toy. But it’s nowhere near the quality of a Play Station 2. You need a system for home.”

  “Yeah.” Dean grins hard.“Yeah, you’re right. This is my go-toy. When I get home, I need a home-toy. Yeah.” He sucks down another burrito.

  And the mystery of fatherhood is revealed to Evan. Forego all heart-to-hearts. Buy presents.

  They head back to the shop and Evan sells three packages of round-wound bass strings to a cat who’s too strung out to pluck them. Dean sits on a fifteen-hundred-dollar amp and plays Crash Bandicoot. And for the first time, Evan notices himself staring at the clock over the door. He’s never paid it much mind because he’s never had things to do. He works in a guitar store. He grabs some food, goes out with his buddies, listens to music late, and always wakes up glad that he’s not hungover like his friends. But now, with Dean, Evan is waiting for the seven o’clock shift change so he can do something else, though he has no idea what he will do.

  “Where’s he going to school next year?”

  Evan looks over. His co-worker, Randi, a die-hard punk in her mid-twenties, is standing next to him. Her face is a scrap metal scavenger’s dream. She’s a vegan. She doesn’t shave her arm pits. Evan finds her hot, but not as hot as Mica.

  “Not sure, ” Evan answers.

  “Not sure?” She recoils.“He’s registered, right?”

  “No.”

  “You’re screwed, then. Have you seen the enrollment? Way over. Totally understaffed. There are no teachers. There are no text books.”

  She has a son. He’s ten. That would make her fifteen or so when she had him, which beats Evan’s record handily. Where did he read that the youngest mother on record was eleven?

  “What should I do?”

  “Explain it to them. Beg for mercy. If he doesn’t have a slot now, he might be bussed across the world. He could spend an hour-and-a-half commuting. What reference area are you in?”