by H. G. Reed
“Thank you for your help.”
He huffs a quick sigh. “Call my office if you decide to schedule the appointment.”
He hands me his card and I'm gone, looking for the sobbing lady in the hospital. I find her angrily pushing buttons on a vending machine.
“Mom, let's go,” I say in my calmest voice, guiding her away from the buzzing machine by her shoulders. I look away from the flickering fluorescents that highlight the Doritos and the Snickers bars. I can't afford to be triggered by anything right now.
The drive home is silent and awkward, each of us knowing what the other wants to say, but refusing to hear it anyway. Mom stopped sniffling enough to operate the vehicle, something I've never been allowed to do. I'm halfway through my daydream of driving a Mercedes SL-Class Roadster, top down, with a hot blonde’s head in my lap when she finally speaks.
The worst timing.
“I just can't agree to it. What if something happens to you?”
“Something is happening to me. Fifty-eight times last month in case you didn't notice. Mom, I'd be able to drive! I could go back to class without you constantly worrying. And you heard the doctor—I could even have a normal sex life,” I say.
“Rory, please,” she scolds, hiding the smile on her face.
I laugh, even though I know she hates it when I joke about those things. She told me once it reminded her of my dad; my sarcasm. Apparently he was an ass, too.
“Okay, but seriously. Haven't you always wanted me to get better, and not rely on you so much for everything?”
“You're my child, I will always want you to rely on me.”
“Yes, but not like 'he still lives with his mom at forty' kind of rely. This is my shot, and I'm willing to accept the risks.”
“But I'm not!”
“We've been through this. You don't have to accept it. Just support my decision.”
She shakes her head, refusing to say any more. But it doesn't matter. I won't change my mind.
“Mom, I know why you can't say yes to this. I know it would kill you if anything happens to me and you thought yourself responsible, but Dad wasn't your fault.”
“He was. I never forgave myself for what he did to you. And now...how am I supposed to let you go under the knife and risk your life again, when I could have stopped this by kicking him out years ago?”
“I was four. You couldn't have known the fall would cause that much damage.”
“The fall.” She laughs, but it sounds bitter and cold. “You make it sound like it was an accident.”
“The brain bleed was an accident. The fact that you didn't catch it was an accident. Please don't punish me for something that wasn't my fault.”
She pulls the hatchback over on the side of the road, and I know the tears are coming. She does this sometimes when she's feeling especially grief stricken, or angry, or guilty. Any time really. This time, it's definitely grief.
Once the car is in park, she covers her face with both hands. She can't even look at me. I look just like him.
“Mom, promise me you won't stop me from making the appointment, and I promise you I won't die on the table.”
A bark of laughter erupts from her covered face and the tears flow freely. After a while, she lowers her hands and looks at me with trembling lips and her best attempt at a smile.
Points for effort.
“I promise.”
NOW
“YOU DONE IN THERE?” a gruff voice sounds through the door of the interrogation room.
“Pretty much.” I drop the pen onto the legal pad. The pad is still blank, but what can I say?
Detective Azley saunters in, oozing the confidence of a man who gets his way. He clearly thinks I’ve just written the manifesto I had hidden away somewhere.
Yeah, it’s hidden alright. So well hidden, even I can’t access it.
I look at him straight on, the swelling in my eye has gone down just enough for me to get a good look at him, and I quickly surmise he’s a complete asshole. I hand him the legal pad and watch with a smirk as his eyes scan the empty page, grow wide, then bloodshot.
“What the hell do you think this is, boy?” he says, smacking the legal pad down on the table.
“I told you what I know, detective. It’s all right there.”
I cross my arms lazily over my chest, and lean back in the metal chair. I shouldn’t be so arrogant, but I know I’m not wrong.
“The hell it is! We have you at the scene of the crime, son. A girl is missing, there’s blood all over the street, yours included, and you’re the only person who saw it happen.”
“That’s a quick blood test.” We eye each other coolly, waiting for the other to break his bluff, except I’m not bluffing. “I came to you, remember?” I remind him. “I told you where I was.”
“And we followed up on that. Stumbled upon a violent crime scene? Awfully convenient.”
“I’m not trying to hide anything. If I was, why would I come here?”
“Lots of criminals feel guilt eventually.”
I roll my eyes. “Am I under arrest, detective?” Of course, I know I’m not, and so does he. “Then I’ll be leaving now, thank you.”
I stand to go and he doesn’t stop me.
Heart pounding, palms sweating, I try to keep some essence of calm as I stroll out of the precinct. I take two steps out of the building before throwing up on the concrete steps.
“Come on, Rory!” I hit the right side of my head with a fist. “Remember!”
But as soon as I say it, I know it’s useless. It’s not about remembering. My body certainly remembers the horror it witnessed—it’s rebelling even now. My stomach gurgles but this time I make it to the trashcan. Something happened, I know it.
All of Dr. Vanzell’s warnings come back to me with a sickening weight and I retch again.
Just spit it out. You can do this!
I close my eyes and I can almost see it. I can almost see her, and she’s screaming.
I can feel the gun against my head. But what did he say to me?
“Goddammit!” I kick the metal waste bin, but it doesn’t budge. It’s bolted to the police station sidewalk, and I’m pretty sure I’ve broken a toe.
How am I supposed to drive with a broken toe? Wait…where is it? Where’s my car?
“Linda!”
I wipe the vomit from my mouth and limp back into the precinct. I yell for the lady behind the front desk, the one who I met upon first entering the station, and who deemed me crazy enough to meet Detective Asswipe.
“Linda, where’s my car?” I yell again once inside the doors.
Dad gave me the Mercedes as a “back to school present” when I re-enrolled after my surgery. I couldn’t drive it for months afterward, but it sure looked pretty sitting in the driveway. I almost didn’t take it. Almost.
Her head pops up from behind the Plexiglass pane, which presumably protects her from psychos like me.
I must look crazy if she’s staring at me like that.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Halstead, but your vehicle was impounded,” she whispers through the metal grate in a mousy voice, then pushes her glasses back up on her nose.
“Impounded? What the hell for?”
“It’s being considered as evidence, but you can challenge the judge’s order—”
“Jesus Christ, Linda.”
“You can request a hearing. In about two weeks—”
Blah blah blah.
“Yeah, thanks for your help.”
I step outside into the cool air of autumn, resisting the urge to turn around and give Linda a piece of my mind. It’s not her fault. I dial Mom on my phone, pouting as I tell her the news about the car.
“Serves you right, accepting that garbage from you father.” She doesn’t hide her happiness at not having the reminder of my dad sitting in the driveway.
“Yes, it was just an apology gift, I know.” I roll my eyes. “He doesn’t do anything else for me…” I go on, repeating the words Mo
m has said to me a thousand times.
“Wait, where are you?” she screeches on the other side of the line.
“Yeah, about that…”
“Oh my god, Rory,” Mom says as she drives us both home for the night. There’s no way she’s letting me out of her sight after today.
“It’s okay. Linda said I can get it back.”
“I’m not talking about the stupid car!”
“She has a name.” Mom glares at me, not finding the humor in this. It’s all I can focus on right now. There isn’t much else. If I focus on reality, I’ll be sick again. “We’ll be fine, Mom. The detective let me walk out of there, so I’m not under arrest.”
“But he could come back. He could come to our house and decide you are under arrest. Then what?”
“Then I guess I’ll be arrested.”
“Rory!”
Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out.
I take a deep breath, putting on my best version of calm. We’ve been playing this game for a long time. “I didn’t do anything, Mom. I didn’t hurt anyone.”
She looks at me with sad eyes, like she’s sorry for thinking I’d narrowly escaped a well-deserved night in jail.
“Yes, I know, honey.” She rubs the side of my head, just above my ear like when I was four, but draws back when she feels the scar. “Sorry, I know it’s a bit sensitive.”
Even after two years, the nerve endings light up at the slightest shiver. The doctors say it will go away, eventually. They also said I could drive, and I did. For three glorious days, until Linda happened.
My cell phone rings; it’s the precinct.
“Speak of the devil,” I mumble.
“Who is it?” Mom asks like the literal devil is calling.
Maybe he is.
“Hello?” I speak into the phone.
“Mr. Halstead, this is Detective Azley.” Perfect. “Uh, we need you back at the station.”
“Can I get my car back?”
There’s a pause. “Excuse me?”
“My car. You took it, and I want it back. Said it was evidence or some bullshit.”
“Oh sure. Yeah, we’ll figure something out. Look, we really need you back here. It’s urgent.”
“Is there a warrant out or something?”
“Just get your ass here now.”
“Not until you tell me why.” God, I’m ballsy.
“We reviewed the evidence collected at the crime scene. We have reason to believe she’s alive. If you’re telling the truth, we’re going to need your help.”
Click.
THEN
Freshman Year, Winter
“JUST PASS ME THE damn ball!”
I laugh at Alec’s usual whining as I use one arm to block the defender while dribbling with the other. Alec’s chubby frame waits impatiently a few feet away. He’s wide open, but I don’t care.
“Rory, stop being a dick!”
We are about as different as two people can get, but somehow, we’re still friends. I don’t have many, so I take what I can get.
“Keep your shirt on, I’m about to win this game,” I holler over my shoulder, my eyes not leaving the metal hoop.
Alec’s parents got him a new hoop for Christmas, presumably to encourage him to exercise. All it did was draw the Kleinfeld brothers to challenge me and Alec to a two-on-two match. Every day of winter break, they won, but not today. And today is for all the marbles. An envelope of cash sits at the base of the basketball goal and I’m about to win it.
I pivot on my foot and drive forward, laying up the most beautiful basket. Swish.
“And that’s game, losers. I accept cash or check.”
I sport a smug grin as I grab the envelope we’ve been paying into for weeks. The Kleinfelds holler something obscene, as they usually do, before walking back toward home. I go to pat Alec on the back after our hard-earned win, but he just rolls his eyes and sulks away. Typical.
“Come on, we won!”
“Not exactly.”
“Fine. I won. But I’ll still split the winnings with you.”
“How was fall semester?”
My first semester of college wasn’t pretty, but I did it, and in a few days, I’m heading back for Part Two of freshman year.
“It was awesome.” I try to sound upbeat. In truth, I’m terrified.
I never told Alec about the seizure I had the second week of school. It set the semester off on a bad whirlwind of dramatic fallouts in class and absences due to issues with my meds. The day I turned eighteen, I set a date for my surgery with Dr. Vanzell, but the scheduled operation wasn’t until spring. Apparently, I had to read a novel’s worth of warnings before they let me cut my brain in half.
Alec has seen me have more seizures than I can count, but it’s still embarrassing to talk about. I wanted to be different at college, and somehow telling him the truth makes me realize I’m still the same, weird kid whose only interesting summer story was the number of ambulance rides he took.
“But Spring semester waits for no man,” I cheer, counting the crumpled dollar bills. We’re the lucky recipients of seventeen dollars.
Cheap-ass Kleinfelds.
“Tell me about it. I go back day after tomorrow.”
“Do you like it?” I ask him. “Out west, I mean.”
“St. Louis isn’t exactly out west.”
“Farther than I’ve ever been.”
Mom doesn’t allow me to fly. The farthest I’ve traveled is to see a neurologist in Nashville.
“How’s…you know.” He means my brain. If nothing else, it’s always a good conversation piece.
“Good,” I lie. “The new meds seem to be working pretty well. They switched me mid-semester. Just the same old stuff in a new bottle. My surgery can’t come fast enough, though.”
He nods. Alec isn’t a huge talker. I think that’s why I like him.
We sit on the curb in silence as he wipes sweat from his brow. How it got there, I don’t know, unless complaining and calling people names is a workout. He glances over to me, trying to hide something, but I know him too well.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” he says, feigning innocence.
“Like you feel sorry for me.”
“Well I do feel bad, man. Your mom told my mom about what happened last semester.”
“Great.” I squint into the setting sun, not sure why I feel like punching something. “So you know?”
“It’s not a big deal. I mean, we figured something would happen, right? I can’t be your nurse all the time,” he jokes, but he’s right.
“But did it have to happen the second week of school? I hardly had time to introduce myself, and now no one will remember me as anything but that kid who had a seizure.”
“I heard it was more like twenty. And those were just during class hours.”
I check him with my shoulder, but he laughs. At least he doesn’t treat me like a charity case.
“I just hate you have to take a semester off,” he says, voice laden with a pity I haven’t heard in a long time.
“What do you mean?”
“Your mom said you were taking next semester off, just to adjust to the new meds and have some recovery time after your surgery.”
“You’re shitting me, right?”
He waves his hands like a white flag. “But maybe I heard it wrong. I don’t know,” he backpedals, but the truth is out.
I don’t say another word to him as I stand from the curb and speed-walk back to my house. The only reason I don’t run is to save my breath for the soap box speech I’m about to spew.
I burst through the door and see her sitting there all calm and collected while my eyeballs are boiling.
“What the hell, Mom? You withdrew me from school?”
She jumps at my screaming, but I don’t feel an ounce of remorse. She throws down her Southern Living magazine and stands from the sofa.
It’s on, now.
“It’s only te
mporary, just until you get the seizures under control.”
“This is exactly why Dr. Vanzell recommended the surgery! I can’t just live my life in a bubble and wait till I get better. I’m not getting better, Mom, and pulling me out of school isn’t going to help.” I pace like a caged animal.
“It was in your best interest.”
“How about you let me decide that.”
“You’re eighteen! You’re the last person who should be making your decisions.”
She’s insane. If it were up to me, I would have had the surgery on my eighteenth birthday, but the stupid procedures said otherwise. I had to wait six months from the day I signed the forms in case I changed my mind, but I’m not waiting another second to dismantle this parent-child monstrosity that’s happening in the living room.
“You can’t keep treating me like a toddler! How did you even get access to my schedule?”
She doesn’t say anything, but the words FERPA Waiver run through my head. If she has access to my educational record, she can do anything she damn pleases.
“Jesus Christ, Mom!” I run up the stairs, too afraid of what I’ll say if I stay another second.
“You can go back next fall,” she calls after me. “Rory, please trust me! This is for the best.”
“Go to hell.”
I slam my bedroom door and burst into tears like a little girl. I wipe them away as fast as they come out of my eyes. Angry crying sucks.
NOW
MOM MAKES A U-TURN, and in thirty seconds, we’re headed back to the hellhole precinct.
Upon entering, I give a nod to Linda and she smiles back from behind her Plexiglas fort. At least not everyone in here is a raging lunatic. Detective Azley is waiting for me in the lobby.
“Follow me, Mr. Halstead.”
Mom follows behind us, but he turns around to set her straight. I’m twenty years old now. No parents allowed. And then she does something truly shocking.
“Don’t worry, Rory, I’m calling your father.” And before I can gasp, she’s on the phone dialing a number I was sure was long forgotten.
“This way,” the detective instructs and I enter a poorly lit room that looks like it could double as the set for Law and Order. Azley makes his way over to a chair and pulls it out for me to sit. I do so hesitantly, waiting for him to yank it from underneath me like we’re both in the third grade.
