Rite of Passage

by John Passarella

  “I wish,” Jimmy said. “Mom found my stash Saturday morning. I’ve been tapped out since then.”

  They smoked their remaining cigarettes instead, about a dozen between them, marking time. The crumbling, abandoned school with its deteriorating playground was one more piece of evidence convincing him that life was meaningless. No matter what you tried to accomplish, how much you strived for anything, it all went away, like the Kansas song, “Dust in the Wind.” In a hundred years, who would care that he had failed classes, skipped school, tripped Tyler Shackleford, lived and died? In a world where nothing mattered, you could do whatever you wanted. Unfortunately, he still had to live through the short-term consequences.

  After the initial rush of ditching school during the bomb threat evacuation, Dalton realized he was simply postponing the inevitable verbal beat down. Just because nothing mattered, didn’t mean they couldn’t make his life miserable in the meantime. His escape had not been well thought out. He’d left his books on his desk and his backpack on the chair.

  “Did you really sniff her hair?” Jimmy asked.

  Dalton took a long puff from the cigarette, shrinking it down to a nub, which he flicked across the court after lighting another one. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I was hungry,” Dalton said. “Her hair smelled like dessert.”

  Jimmy laughed until he started coughing. “What?”

  “The shampoo or conditioner or whatever,” Dalton explained. “It smelled like strawberries, honey, almonds. My stomach was growling.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Girls wash their hair with all that scented crap and expect you not to smell it?” Dalton said. “C’mon, man! Chocolate, caramel and green apples.”

  “No way!”

  “Pineapples, too. Coconut and a hint of marshmallow.”

  “You are so full of crap!”

  “Maybe that was her perfume,” Dalton said, grinning. “Like a freaking buffet, man.”

  “You’re sick, dude.”

  “Maybe,” Dalton said. “But now I’m starving. What time is it?”

  “You see me wearing a watch?” Jimmy said. “And I lost my cell phone privileges after the stash grab.”

  At least he’d had a cell phone to forfeit. Dalton had nothing of value—unless you counted thrift store clothes and a hand-me-down stereo.

  He stood up and felt lightheaded, staggering before catching his balance. He crushed his last cigarette butt underfoot and started coughing, his throat dry and burning. Too much nicotine, he thought. After the coughing spasm, his head throbbed. He adjusted his knit hat, pulling it down to his ears, then pressed his palms against his temples while dark spots swam across his eyes.

  To avoid another coughing fit, he spoke softly. “Let’s head back.”

  Thirty minutes later, when he stepped through the front door of his grandparents’ house, he acted as if it had been another normal school day he didn’t want to talk about. He opened and closed the hallway closet door, as if he were stowing the backpack he didn’t have with him.

  “I’m home,” he called.

  “You’re late,” his grandmother said from the dining room.

  “Busy,” he said, avoiding specifics.

  He stepped into the dining room and saw his grandparents finishing their dinner. They seemed to eat earlier every day. Soon they would eat dinner at noon. It was nothing special, some frozen microwave chicken meals. They never cooked anything fancier than mac and cheese or fried eggs. There was no meal or plate set out for him. How many ways could they tell him they never wanted to raise him, that he was a burden foisted upon them, a mistake his mother made and left for them to clean up after she died in childbirth?

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “Throw something in the microwave,” his grandmother responded, as if talking to a simpleton.

  Closing his eyes for a moment, he imagined shoving her curly-gray-haired head into the microwave and cooking it on high until her eyeballs popped out of her head like champagne corks on New Year’s Eve. Or maybe they would boil in the microwave and drip down her cheeks like scalding milk.

  Before he could come up with a smartass comment, his grandfather asked, “Where’s your homework?”

  And so the grilling begins, he thought. “Don’t have any.”

  “How would you know,” his grandmother asked, “since you left your backpack in school?”

  Had they seen him come in empty-handed? “Yeah, forgot it. After this bomb scare we had.”

  “The vice principal called,” his grandfather informed him. “Again. You’re suspended for a week. And they’re considering expulsion.”

  “Like I give a rat’s ass about school.”

  “Get up to your room!” his grandmother shrilled. “You’re grounded.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Now, Dalton,” his grandfather said, rising out of his chair.

  Dalton eyed the butter knife on the table, wondering if it was sharp enough to slice open the old man’s throat. Five seconds and he could drop the old bastard. His fingers trembled and twitched as he stared into the angry man’s face. His grandmother had the portable phone in her hand, ready to call 911. They would love to be rid of him. The thought of giving them what they wanted calmed him enough to turn his back and walk away.

  “How dare you embarrass us,” his grandmother yelled after him. “You are an embarrassment to this family—just like your tramp mother!”

  That was all that mattered to them, how he made them look in the eyes of the neighbors and school administrators. They didn’t care if he was happy or fed or healthy, unless it reflected on their so-called parenting skills.

  He thundered up the stairs, giving each footfall extra weight, hoping something would break and cost them money they didn’t have for repairs. He strode into his bedroom, the smallest room in the house, and slammed the door so hard it rattled on the hinges. The room was a mess, but he didn’t care. There were clothes piled on every surface, plus a tide of candy and fast food trash. He wanted the room to be a canker sore in their house, the more despicable the better. Lately, they only stepped through the doorway to conduct drug searches.

  With his door closed, they wouldn’t check on him. Out of sight, out of mind was how they dealt with him. They had banished him to his tiny corner of the house. Mission accomplished. Now they could enjoy their evening without having to see him again.

  Fine. He grabbed his black hoodie out of the closet, slipped on a pair of dark jeans and black boots and climbed out the window, crept along the porch roof and dropped to the ground next to the driveway. He would meet up with Jimmy Ferrato, assuming his friend could sneak out after whatever punishment his folks gave him, and they’d hitch a ride east, shake down some Summerdale teens for walking around money. He needed an outlet for his frustration and Summerdale kids had very punchable faces.

  Disappointed with the fallout—ha ha!—from his fake bomb threat, Jesse Trumball returned home at four o’clock in a foul mood. Sure, the cops showed up with their bomb-sniffing dogs, and he had cleared the building, but then … boring. Just everyone standing around like they had missed their bus and couldn’t remember how to walk home. Granted, he hadn’t thought out his plan in terms of ultimate entertainment value.

  Running a hand across his shaved pate, he squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, wondering if they might have some aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Ever since the evacuation, he’d had a headache that wouldn’t quit and it was about to get worse.

  Idly, he wondered how difficult it was to build a real bomb, a fancy one with a timer. Not that he actually wanted to kill any of the dumbasses in school, but he would love to see the expressions on their faces when the building went up like Krakatoa. He had heard the internet had bomb-building information anyone could access. If only he had a computer. Of course, he could always visit the library. Maybe the prissy old librarian would have a heart attack when he walked in. That would be good for a few c
huckles. But even if he found bomb-making instructions, he would have to sneak into the school to plant the damn thing in a restroom or somewhere. Maybe in Miss Garrity’s desk drawer. The bitch had driven him crazy like it was her life’s mission. Dropping out of that hellhole was the best day of his life. Now he would like nothing better than to sneak back in for ten minutes to plant his farewell present.

  Someday, maybe.

  He sighed when he saw his old man’s primer-spackled piece of crap sitting in the driveway, dreading the inevitable confrontation. Resignedly, he walked into the kitchen and found his father there, sitting at the table drinking a forty-ounce bottle of beer.

  Alert the media, he thought.

  It was probably his second or third one of the day, if he hadn’t dipped into the hard liquor yet. At least he was still standing. By four o’clock there was a fifty-fifty chance Jesse would find him passed out somewhere in the house; slumped over the bowl or sprawled in the hallway, lying in a drying pool of vomit. Good times.

  Occasionally his father failed to make it home after one of his benders. Whether he shacked up somewhere or passed out in an alley, he never said. He would stumble home, mumbling and cursing, his clothes looking like he dove out of a moving car and rolled down a muddy embankment. Sometimes he would come home bloody. He’d probably been fighting over the dregs in empties with some homeless wino.

  “Where you been?” his father asked, his speech already slurred.

  “Out,” Jesse said, pulling open the refrigerator door as if he expected to see actual food on the shelves. Best-case scenario, he’d find some leftover takeout or a slice of pizza from the last delivery.

  “Looking for a job?”

  “What? I can’t live off disability, like you?” Jesse asked.

  “Got a bad back,” his father said. “Injured on the job.”

  “Tell that story to someone who believes it, Pop.”

  Jesse’s father stood unsteadily. “Don’t get smart with me, boy!”

  “Right,” Jesse said softly as he scanned the barren shelves. A crumpled-up brown paper bag offered the possibility of something edible inside. “I wouldn’t want to confuse the few brain cells you have left.”

  “Turn around and say that to my face.”

  Jesse stood up straight, closed the refrigerator door and counted to ten silently. Then he turned around to face his father. The man was big and beefy, about an inch or two shorter than Jesse’s six-foot-five frame, but he outweighed Jesse by about forty pounds. He was a brawler, a street fighter. When Jesse was younger, and smaller, his father had no hesitation about hitting him when he “stepped out of line.” Hands, belt and suitably blunt and weighted objects were fair game for delivering punishment. Once their heights had equalized, however, his father’s abuse became more selective—he picked his moments to remind Jesse who was in charge. Right now, his old man was gripping a half-filled forty-ounce glass bottle as if he meant to test its battle worth against the side of Jesse’s head. Jesse figured he could take his old man, drunk or sober, but it might get ugly fast, for both of them.

  “Never mind,” Jesse said, walking away.

  “That’s right,” his father said, “walk away, tough guy.”

  “I’m taking your car,” Jesse said, “to grab something to eat.”

  “I need it.”

  “You’re too drunk to drive,” Jesse said, taking the keys off the wall hook. “Sleep it off.”

  “Get off your high horse. You’re lucky I put a roof over your head,” his father said. “More than your mother ever did. Took one look at your sorry ass and walked out. Smartest thing she ever did.”

  Jesse froze. He curled his hands into fists, squeezing so hard his fingernails bit into his flesh. Talk of his mother was a sore spot with him. He couldn’t defend a woman he had never known, but the attacks always felt intensely personal. Throughout Jesse’s life, his father had insisted that Jesse’s mother had abandoned him as a baby, that as soon as she recovered from giving birth to him, she had left without so much as a glance over her shoulder. His father told him that her pregnancy had been like a disease she had to overcome and afterward she couldn’t bear to look at the result. The newborn meant so little to her that she had abandoned her loving husband so she wouldn’t have to spend one more day with their boy.

  For most of Jesse’s miserable childhood, he fantasized that she would return and whisk him away to a better life, an existence without his father around—the only way he would ever be happy. But the years passed without a phone call or a note or any attempt by her to contact him. Finally, as he entered his teen years, he started to believe what his father had said over and over again, that she hated her son and couldn’t bear the sight of him.

  Though he now accepted his father’s pronouncements about his mother, Jesse couldn’t stomach his father using her abandonment to provoke him. Jesse felt himself balancing on a precipice: regain his balance and walk out the door, or fall and… his father would never insult him again.

  “Don’t stand there like a moron! What’s the matter with you?”

  As if sensing Jesse’s murderous indecision—or completely blind to it—his father slapped him across the back of his head, hard enough to sting but not wound.

  Jesse imagined his father clutching the forty-ounce bottle, waiting.

  Fourteen

  “Answer me!”

  Jesse clenched his jaw, refusing to speak. A clock ticked in his head, counting down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until… Was he ready? It would be so easy and he ached to put an end to his father’s abuse. But if he acted now, he would face the consequences unprepared. On the other hand, if he waited until he had saved enough money and had prepared an exit strategy, he might avoid those consequences. He would have disappeared to Mexico or South America somewhere long before anyone found the body.

  Through gritted teeth, Jesse repeated, “Sleep it off!”

  He rushed out of the house, grabbing his hooded jacket off the coat rack without breaking stride, muttering a string of curses under his breath.

  Opening the trunk of his father’s beater, he took out a tire iron and tossed it on the passenger seat before burning rubber out of the driveway. The problem with bottling up his rage at home was that he needed to vent somewhere on something—or someone. Driving the car into a brick wall might provide momentary satisfaction, but he needed the car for his own special brand of income generation. For that, he also needed the cover of night, so he took care of his hunger first, navigating the drive-through lane of the nearest burger franchise. He ordered three of the largest patties, then tossed the sesame rolls out the window, scarfing down the condiment-smeared meat as he drove.

  Bart Larribeau and Keith Kulback were standing outside the Food & Fuel mini mart, eating chips from snack bags as if they never intended to leave. The owner wouldn’t let them loiter unless they bought something, so each minor purchase gained them a half hour without harassment. They would pay the tithe until Jesse showed up to avoid any confrontation with the police. Jesse continually reminded them to stay off police radar as much as possible. Attention was bad in their line of business.

  As soon as he pulled up in a handicapped parking space in front of the mini mart, they pushed off the wall, tossed their snack bags toward the overflowing trashcan and slipped into the car. Bart beat Keith with rock over scissors and rode shotgun, holding Jesse’s tire iron across his lap.

  “Where to?” Bart asked.

  “The Cheshire,” Jesse said. “It’s been a couple weeks.”

  “Sounds good,” Keith said.

  Jesse drove east and parked in an alley near the Cheshire Theater. The marquee read “Fiddler on the Roof” and listed matinee and evening performance times.

  “How long?” Keith asked.

  “Less than an hour,” Jesse said. “It’s close to show time.”

  He leaned back in the driver’s seat and worked his way through two large cardboard containers stuffed with French fries after g
iving the third to Bart to split with Keith. Though they were a couple of years older than him, he outweighed each of them by fifty pounds and had assumed the role of leader.

  The crowd outside the theater thinned as the smokers moved inside to take their seats before the show began.

  Somebody always ran a little late, parked a little farther away, hurried to reach the theater.

  Finally, Jesse spotted a middle-aged man in a dark suit holding his wife’s hand, urging her without much success to walk faster in her shimmery evening gown and high heels. When the couple were within thirty feet of the theater, Jesse grabbed the tire iron and opened his door.

  “Show time,” he said. “Wait here.”

  “You sure?” Keith said.

  “I shouldn’t need backup,” Jesse said, and hurried along an intercept course, pulling up his hood to hide his bald head and obscure his face. He kept the tire iron flat against the back of his leg.

  The woman spotted him first and whispered something to her husband.

  As Jesse closed the gap between them, he said, “Sir, do you have the time?”

  The man stopped, stepping slightly in front of his wife, as he assessed the threat. “Sure, it’s—”

  Jesse couldn’t wait another second. Usually he would simply threaten violence and the money and jewelry gushed forth into his possession. But the rage that had threatened to explode at home, the anger broiling beneath the surface all evening, found its outlet. He swung the tire iron in an overhand arc and broke the man’s wrist.

  He cried out in pain.

  Jesse swung the metal rod low, smashing it against the side of the man’s left knee. He crumpled to the ground, curled up in agony, gasping for air. The woman, her hair layered over her head in a fancy hairdo that must have taken hours to prepare, opened her mouth to scream. He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back, the tire iron poised over her face. “Scream and I smash your teeth in.”

  The woman gulped and a tiny whimper escaped her throat.

  “Cash and jewels,” he said. “Now! Or I take them from your dead bodies.”