When Dad returned to the kitchen, I asked again, “What’s the matter with Mom?” I refused to let the issue drop.
Dad frowned and sighed. “She fell this morning and dislocated her elbow. I took her to the ER.”
“So they realigned it and everything?” I asked.
“We’ll talk about this later. Right now I need to get her tray ready.” He sounded concerned, maybe more so than a simple dislocated elbow should warrant.
I scooted the eggs around in the skillet. They looked ready to me, but Mom was a stickler when it came to eggs. “No runny yokes, and particularly, no runny whites,” were her standing orders. I splashed some bubbling melted butter on top of the yokes and looked out the kitchen window to see if I could see my little brother in the yard. I couldn’t. “Josh,” I called over my shoulder, “are you in the house?”
No answer.
“Josh!” I called louder.
Dad stuck his head out of the bedroom and said, “Would you please be quiet? Your mother is trying to rest.”
I nodded and mouthed, “Where’s Josh?”
“He’s spending the night with the Brunsons.” Dad slipped back into their bedroom and closed the door.
Chapter Five
Tuesday morning was a copy of Monday at school. I wanted to yell, hit something, or light someone up. How ridiculous that these people’s lives are so empty that they let the outcome of a game turn their—and my—world upside down.
I arrived at school at the last minute and kept to myself. Law and I have third-period English together, but I slipped into class just as the bell rang and bolted the second class ended. I didn’t want to talk to Law, or anyone else for that matter.
I spent lunch in the library again, and at basketball practice, Law went out of his way to avoid me. He dressed out without saying a word, and during practice, he spoke to me only when we collided during the one-on-one post-up drill, and I knocked him to the floor. “Dang, dude, take it easy.”
I was putting a level of intensity into the physical aspect of practice usually reserved for an actual game. I grunted an apology and helped him to his feet.
He said, “Thanks,” and nothing more. You would have thought I was Judas Iscariot himself. Did I mention I hate my life?
I didn’t wait for Law after practice. I’d seen him talking with four or five of the other teammates when I left the gym. Speaking to no one in particular as I walked out, I muttered, “So much for brotherhood and loyalty.”
»»•««
I was starving when I got home. Mom kept plenty of peanut butter and strawberry jelly in the pantry, and I had a stash of Dr Peppers hidden under some shop towels on a shelf out in the garage. A PB&J sandwich at home would beat facing another afternoon like Monday at Benny’s.
“Josh.” I yelled as I swung the front door open.
No answer.
He wasn’t in the yard or the john. I looked around the house for a note. Dad always told us, “If you are going somewhere, either tell someone or leave a note, no exceptions.”
I found no Josh and no note. Maybe Dad had let him stay over at the Brunsons’ again. That would explain Josh, but Mom never left without leaving a note, ever. My worry level jacked up to red alert.
I tried calling the Brunsons’, but their phone was busy. Haven’t they ever heard of Call Waiting? I tried Dad’s office but got no answer there, either. I made a sandwich and poured a glass of soda, but with my stomach doing backflips, I couldn’t eat more than a bite or two.
Dad finally called the house, a little after five. He said he and Mom had been at the doctor’s office in Houston all afternoon and were waiting at the hospital lab for some test results. Waiting on lab results? Didn’t results take days or weeks? An avalanche of anxiety and terror hit me. “Is the cancer back?” I asked, pleading to God that it wasn’t.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Todd. Her hip is hurting her, and she has some nausea. We thought it best to have Dr. Tippet see her.” Knowing they had driven all the way to Houston to see Mom’s oncologist was not a good sign.
“You’re seeing Dr. Tippet? That means you think its cancer, doesn’t it?”
“Calm down, Todd. There’s nothing to get excited about.” Dad never seemed excited. He cared about things. He just never got worked up over them. I honestly believe if he saw a dozen Chinese tanks rolling down Main Street and the sky filled with parachutes, he’d say, “Oh look, we must be getting invaded by the Chinese army. I wonder why I didn’t see anything in the paper about it.”
The few bites of peanut butter and jelly sandwich I had managed to eat lay in my stomach like a ten-pound brick. Again, I wanted to hit something, or someone. I opted for kicking the ottoman in front of Dad’s chair. It didn’t help.
Dad said, “We’ll give you a call when we leave Houston.”
I looked at my watch. It was a quarter past six. With the two-and-a-half hour drive back to Branard, they wouldn’t be home until sometime after nine. I asked, “How’s Mom holding up?”
“She’s pretty well wrung out, but she can sleep all the way back home.” I could hear the tiredness in Dad’s voice.
“Why on earth would you want to put yourselves through that long drive back? Mom’s sick, and you are obviously wiped out. Why not get a room there and come home in the morning?”
“Well…”
“Dad, you know I’m right.”
“I don’t want you two staying by yourself.” Dad treated me like a little kid sometimes, but for the moment, I didn’t want to add to his stress by arguing.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll bunk over with Law. Josh can come with.” I didn’t like lying to my dad, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to explain. He and Mom sure didn’t need to be worrying about Josh being out late on top of everything else.
Dad asked, “What’s Law’s number? I know you have it memorized.”
I gave him the number and hoped he wouldn’t try to reach me there. Lying was a big offense in the Nelson household, one of the worst.
“Don’t you and Law stay up all night talking, Todd. Do you hear?”
“I hear.”
I called around and found Josh at his friend Kevin Brunson’s house. Mr. Brunson agreed to let Josh stay over. I was relieved. I stuck Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in the DVD—the 1986 version with Matthew Broderick, not the new one with that pop singer turned actor they made last year.
I always crack up at the part in the movie where Mr. Rooney, the school principal, breaks into Bueller’s house and gets beat up by the sister. In the new version, they make Mr. Rooney too much of a weenie. In fact, everything about the remake blows.
Around eight, my cell phone rang. I saw it was Ashley. I might as well get this over with. “Hello.”
“Where have you been?” She was all but yelling. “I’ve been calling and texting you since Friday.” Her tone mellowed to a near-whine.
“We had a long practice Friday, and then Saturday morning we had a two-hour bus trip to Austin. We played the game, and lost, I might add, then another two hours back home.”
“And what about Sunday? Or Monday? Or today?” Her voice grew louder and pitched higher. She paused half a second and started in again. “Do you even care what you put me through?”
“Yes, I do, and I’m sorry.” But I’m caring less with every screeching rant.
“And you think I’m sorry is going to wipe the slate clean? And another thing, you…”
I hit the End Call button. Had Mom and Dad not been out of town, I would have turned the phone off. I figured Ashley was revving up the drama so when she dumped me, she could act as though it were my fault.
She called back and I rejected the call. I guess I could have been the bigger person and made it easy for her, but I wasn’t about to let her play the victim. If she wanted to break up, all she had to do was say so. We had some good times. She wasn’t willing to leave it at that, so why should I? I was in no mood for her games. My life was enough of a soap opera without Ash
making a Spielberg spectacular out of it.
She must have hit redial a nanosecond later. This time I answered. “Hello.”
“How dare you hang up on me. You are the most…”
I hit End Call again.
I waited a few seconds to see if she would redial. She didn’t. I sent her a text message: Ash, if you want to break up, consider it done. Todd.
I was in a dark mood—no, it was a mood ten shades darker than dark, a black hole kind of black, something my Grandma Collins used to call “the Mississippi blackwater funk.” My mom’s mother was a card. You never knew what she was going to say or when she was going to say it.
I played video games and watched TV. CCMI’s girls’ volleyball team crushed Highland State in three straight sets. Those girls have game.
The house phone rang at ten ’til ten and startled me. It was Dad.
Busted.
“I thought you were going to spend the night with Law.”
“I haven’t talked to him. He won’t answer my calls,” I lied again. “I think he’s gone over to the dark side. I guess he’s siding with the other guys on the team.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” Dad wasn’t buying what I was trying to sell.
“I wasn’t sure until today. I was hoping he’d come around.”
“No, I mean, why did you tell me you were going to Law’s when you knew full well you weren’t?” He sighed and added, “And what about Josh? Did you lie about that too?”
“He’s at the Brunsons’.” Finally.
“I’m far too tired to talk about this right now, but I can tell you, I am disappointed in you, Todd. Very disappointed.” Dad using the term “very” meant big trouble. He wasn’t one to throw around extreme modifiers lightly.
I thought it best not to respond.
“You can go ahead and stay there alone, but there will be consequences for your actions, of that, you can be sure.” His voice was a little shaky.
He gave me the number for their room at the Pilgrim’s Inn in Houston and said they would be home by noon tomorrow.
Funny, but being caught in a lie didn’t embarrass me as it usually did. Not that I was in the habit of lying. I found myself becoming angry instead. It seemed these new flashes of anger were coming more often since Saturday night.
I hung up the phone and buttoned down the house for the night. As I went to the kitchen for a canned lemonade, I heard a car door slam out at the street in front of the house, and then voices.
I picked up the cloth-covered brick we used as a doorstop to hold the front door open on those evenings nice enough to turn off the AC or heat. I switched on the front-porch light and peeked out one of the long skinny windows on either side of the door. I saw the blur of a figure rush across the yard and disappear somewhere off toward the corner of the house.
With my doorstop at the ready, I ran to the side living-room window and parted the drapes. A shadow flashed across the living room wall as the intruder passed between the window and the streetlight at the corner. I made a dash for the back door, slapping at the kitchen light switch as I passed by, plunging the house into darkness.
I instinctively zigged right around the kitchen island and stopped at the back door. I pushed aside the blinds covering the glass window built into the top half of the door. I peered out just as the trespasser entered our garage and turned on the light. Now that’s bold.
I could make out the silhouette of a smallish person pulling out a box behind the pottery kiln under the workbench. Mom’s kiln was a remnant from her arts-and-craft phase two years ago.
Turn this way, you thieving scumbag. Look this way so I can see your face, you coward.
My heart was beating a hundred miles an hour, and as though in obedience to my command, the figure turned full face toward me, the garage’s ceiling light giving me a clear view. What the…? It was my little brother, Josh. The same Josh who was supposed to be all snuggled in over at the Brunsons’.
I hurried back to the front door to see if I could see the Brunsons’ Hyundai SUV but didn’t see a vehicle of any kind. Very odd, because I was sure the noise I’d heard earlier was the slamming of a car door.
I went to the side window and saw Josh sneaking along the edge of the hedges between our house and the one next door. When he reached the ash tree near the end of the driveway, he stopped and crouched. I didn’t see anyone parked on the street, either in front of our house or the ones next door. Again, odd.
Ten seconds later, a late-model, low-slung sports car came from up the street. It stopped at the curb at the end of our driveway, and the driver leaned over and opened the passenger-side door, and Josh dove in. To my amazement, the driver was none other than Kevin Brunson, Josh’s friend and classmate. I gave my head a hard shake, trying to clear the confusion. What was a twelve-year-old punk kid doing driving around in an Audi R8, a car costing more than three times what Kevin’s dad made in a year?
Chapter Six
I searched the garage to see what my creep of a brother was doing there and found a large cardboard box stuffed behind Mom’s old ceramic stuff. Inside were two pairs of Oakley sunglasses, a Starbucks gift card, an iPad Mini, two radar detectors, a roll of Sacagawea dollar coins, and a 4-terabyte Foltec external storage drive. I stared at them in disbelief. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out my little angel of a brother was involved with the kids who were breaking into cars…and worse, considering the expensive sports car I had seen. I pulled the box from behind the kiln, slid it under the workbench, and covered it with an old camping tent.
I thought about jumping into my truck and following the two little cretins, or waiting at Kevin’s house to bust them when they came in. I even considered calling the cops, but in the end, I did neither.
Back inside, I flopped onto the couch. Way to go, Josh. Great timing, you little worm. What was I going to do? Dad had about all he could handle with Mom’s situation, and Mom sure didn’t need more grief. Knowing about the little creep’s larceny added yet another burden to my personal pile of woes.
I couldn’t catch a break. The football game fiasco, the town’s reactions, Law, Ashley, Mom, and now Josh. A guy can only handle so much.
Sleep evaded me, and two hours of playing Lethal Galaxy III and Distinguished Honor on the BotBox weren’t enough to divert my mind from all my troubles. I tried Commander Pathor’s Mission to Tulley VI, my newest game, but I got stuck in Dragmu’s Doom Cave. I died six times trying to find my way through the underwater maze before giving up. I’d try again when I didn’t have so much on my mind.
I thumbed through Josh’s collection of games trying to find something easier. One particular game’s description caught my eye: Urban Scavengers, by ViaDome.
Urban Scavengers, the latest release by Ninja Kangaroo Softworks. This isn’t just a game but an experience that lets you live the life you were always afraid to try. Start as nothing more than a street punk trying to make a life on the wicked boroughs of Urbania. Use your skills to survive by avoiding the cops, rival street gangs, and the local do-gooders known as “The Urban Angels.” Use your skills, speed, and anything you can boost to threaten, challenge, and fight your way to the top. This isn’t just your lifestyle you’re fighting for. It’s now your life.
Josh and Kevin were trying to reproduce the thrill of the video game in real life. Again I thought about going to the Brunsons’ and grabbing the little twerp when he and his friend got home. I wanted to kick both their butts. What were they thinking? They weren’t.
Morning would roll around soon enough. My decision on what to do about Josh could wait until then. I tossed the game onto Josh’s bed and went back into the living room to sack out on the couch. I fell asleep sometime after two-thirty.
I dreamed I was hurled into the middle of a raging river in a small rubber raft, the current pulling me headlong toward a huge waterfall. I had no oars or motor. The more I tried to paddle to shore using only my hands, the closer to the falls I drifted. I h
eard a banging noise above the roar of the falls. It grew louder and louder. It took a few moments for my mind to clear enough for me to recognize someone was banging at the front door. It had to be Law. Only he would ignore the bell and attack the door like that. This time, I had remembered to lock the door.
I looked at my watch. It was five ’til ten. I opened the door but didn’t step aside to let him in.
“What’s up, Cujo?” He was all smiles. “You got a girl stashed in there you don’t want me to meet?” He stood on tiptoe to peek over my shoulder. Laughing, he asked, “Have you got my Great-Aunt Volkishka in there and don’t want me to know?”
I met Law’s Great-Aunt Volkishka once. She was a massive woman with huge jowls and calves the size of Buicks. Attractive, she wasn’t. Under different circumstances, it would have been funny.
“What do you want?” I asked, trying to sound mad, but Law took it as a rib.
“I want to see this girl you’re hiding.” He yelled, “Aunt Kisha? You in there?”
I placed both my hands on his chest to hold him away. He said, “I know why she’s here. You can’t resist her lovely thick black mustache and unibrow.”
He tried to squeeze by between the doorjamb and me. I refused to budge. “You’ve got a girl in there and are afraid once she gets a gander at all this”—he made a palms-up motion from his face to his thighs—“she won’t be interested in your scrawny butt.” As hard as I tried to resist, I couldn’t help but smile.
“You’ve been dodging me, Law. Have you gone over to the dark side too?” I asked.
He looked genuinely shocked. “What are you talking about? You’re the one who’s doing the avoiding.”
This isn’t making any sense.
Half the Distance Page 4
