Playing Tyler

by T L Costa

  The phone rings again. This time it’s my cell and it’s in my pocket and sort of hurts when it rings. Ani backs away from me. Gives me a lame smile. Shit. Now I’m gonna look like a moron if I don’t take the call.

  Sighing, I pull the phone out. “Yeah, what is it?”

  My shirt is lying next to Ani on the bed and she looks at my chest and I am so freaking hot right now this better be good.

  It’s Knesha from the Rehab Center. Sounds like she’s talking from underneath the ocean. Can’t make out a freaking word she is saying. Nothing. Just static and dribble and words that come out in a collection of sounds that don’t work when they’re pieced together. Shit. Check for the payment must be late. Knesha always gives me a heads up. “Knesha, I can’t hear you. Call me back when you have better reception, OK?”

  I shut the phone and look at Ani, SlayerGrrl, on my bed… waiting… She smiles as her eyes leave my abs and come back to my eyes… I am so going to…

  The phone rings again. This time the one in the kitchen. I want to rip it right out of the damn wall and send it flying. Ani smiles. “Must be important.”

  The shrill sound of the ring reverberates through the house, like a bird pecking out my brain, and each time it rings feels like a punch to teeth.

  Ani hands me my shirt. “Get it, Ty. I should get going anyway.”

  Shit. Not what I wanted to hear. “But you just got here.” I take my shirt, wanting to rip it to shreds but pulling it down over my shoulders instead and stomp out of the room. The kitchen isn’t far down the hall but the ring sounds different in here, like it floats up into the air of the high ceilings a little more and I want to just calm down because I don’t want to snap at Knesha. She has no idea that she’s calling at a bad time and wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important shit, but is it important? I pick up the phone. “Yeah, Knesha, what’s up?”

  “Tyler.” Her voice is lost, floating away from me and just like that I’m not mad anymore. “I’m callin’ with some bad news.”

  My heart seizes, balls up in a painful clench, waiting, just waiting, for a blow that I know is coming. I can’t say it. Don’t want to say it. My throat closes up, spit going salty and my legs feel weak, sea-weak. Don’t say it. I don’t want to know. But I do. “Brandon?”

  My voice. Can’t believe that I could say it. It was only one word but it sounded so small, so unsteady, so painful that it is hard to believe that she heard me. But I know she did. Now the word hangs in the air between us. One word. Five heartbeats. One little boy who will just curl up and die if she says…

  “He left.”

  Her words hit me like a sledgehammer. Right in the stomach. She doesn’t stop, either.

  “He failed a drugs test this morning and just walked out.” Her words fall together like beads on a string, each one hitting the other as they go, each one hitting hard. So nice, Knesha, always smiles at me when I go to the center. She shouldn’t be calling, even. A doctor usually does, calls all cold and not like Knesha, not sweet, not caring. “We don’t know how he got any drugs in here, but I’m sure he’ll be callin’ you soon, so don’t go worrying. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you, shug, OK? Even if you just need to talk.”

  Numb. Just for one second I can’t feel. Can’t think but to say “thanks” and I hang up the phone. Hang it up and stare at it. Stare at the phone like it has some sort of code that will make any of this make sense. Any of it.

  Three thousand thoughts hammer me all at once and my lungs keep catching and my heart dissolves and bubbles up and fills my whole ribcage with pain and I want to just scream and I can’t. Can’t do anything.

  “Tyler.” Her hands touch my shoulder, softly, like an angel. “You OK? What’s going on?”

  I look into her dark eyes. Beautiful eyes in the delicate face and her sweet cherry lips. So beautiful. Tell her. Tell her that he’s gone and you can’t find him. Tell her that he’s as good as dead. Tell her that he lied again and again and again and you thought that it couldn’t hurt you anymore.

  My legs shake. I kick them into the base of the cabinets, making the dishes next to the sink clink. Can’t she tell? Can’t she see? Could she help?

  “Tyler?” she asks again. She takes a step closer to me.

  Backing away, I take a deep breath. Put my eyes on the tile floor. Words get stuck in my throat. Too many words. Too much pain. Pain moving too fast inside my skull to be able to catch and put into words and get out through my mouth. Too hard. He lied he lied he lied.

  Throat tight, breath short, I say, “I have to go.”

  She doesn’t leave. Why doesn’t she leave? Isn’t she scared? Should be scared. Instead, she takes a step closer and I feel her arms wrapping themselves around me and pulling me to her. Don’t want to go. Can’t. I break away.

  Color leaves her face in a quick rush. Like I hurt her. I did hurt her, I guess. Shit, now I’m an asshole, too. “Do you want to talk about it?” she offers. But her face is hard now, like she already knows the answer.

  I want to, I do. But I can’t. “Later. I have to… can’t… it’s too hard…”

  The hardness to her face softens a little. Her shoulders relax. “OK, well, I’m going to go, then. Call me when you can, alright?”

  I nod. Look at the floor, not at her, at the floor. She comes right up to me. Wipes the tears out of my eyes with the back of her sleeve. Kisses me, slowly. For like one second I feel a little better, then she grabs her bag and walks out of the front door, closing it behind her with a gentle click.

  Running, I hit the garage. Put on the gloves. Beating the punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Hitting. Hitting until my knuckles are sore and my hands ache. Hitting the weights hard with a gazillion sets of everything. Have to keep moving, have to keep hitting that bag and the weights and then the burn comes. The pain, the good pain, the burn that helps to slow down the thoughts until they make sense. The burn that echoes through me until everything comes together, everything fits in my head.

  Once it comes, once things are ordered, I curl into a ball on the weight bench. Curl into a ball and wish myself dead.

  CHAPTER 16

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16

  TYLER

  The pain doesn’t leave. Doesn’t go anywhere. Stays right up inside like it lives here. Like it’s always just been part of me. Like I wouldn’t be me anymore if it left.

  I throw the empty bottle of Mountain Dew on the floor. I look back at the screen. Flying more, flying along more highways, more culverts. Desert stretches out as far as the three screens can show and they take me there, too. Just for a second as I’m flying over the desert, taking out bad guys, keeping the good guys safe, my life has meaning, I’m doing something important. And then I remember that it’s all just a lie. One big fucking lie. I’m not doing anything for anyone. My whole life is a sham. Flying here in a fake pilot’s chair watching over a fake desert and guarding fake troops. What a joke.

  Hitting the volume up on the sound dock, I blast some Minor Threat. They were Dad’s favorite. I close my eyes. Bite back the pain, tuck it back inside and clamp down on my racing heartbeat. Grinding my arms into the chair I try really hard to focus, to lose myself in the endless bleakness of the desert, to be somebody. The call comes for a single target. Hooking up the MTS autotrack, I quickly send over one of the Predators. A moving target. Cool. They’re harder to hit. In a big city, well, big for the sim. It’s a gray truck moving through a crowded street. People. Lots of people. Other cars and mud buildings built in tight around the narrow roads. Can’t hit them. Not now. It’s dark in the sim so I know the Predator overhead is just about impossible for anyone on the ground to see.

  I open my eyes and concentrate. Pretend it’s all real. Pretend that there are real people in those buildings and that the target in the truck is a terrorist who wants to kill them. A terrorist who wants to beat up on women and shoot little boys in public squares for listening to the wrong kind of music. I feel a little better. I force myself to forget
the broken phones on the floor. Forget that I smashed Mom’s houseline after the fifth shelter said that B wasn’t there. Forget that everyone on B’s Facebook list said that they didn’t know where he was and that the Twittersphere was clueless. Forget that he’s probably dead. Alone.

  The swell of bile rises up and I want to choke and spit and smash the phones all over again. But I don’t. I slam my body into the chair. Feel the stiff leather against my back, feel it hurt.

  Follow the truck. Follow the bad guy. Stop him. Help those good people on the ground just trying to get their lives back together. Where the hell is he going, anyway? I keep tracking the truck, waiting for it to take a turn onto one of the wider boulevards where I can probably hit it without a lot of damage to any buildings. Someplace clear of people. There aren’t a lot of paved roads over there, though, so it would suck if I had to wreck one just to kill some loser. Let’s see.

  I pull a satellite image map up in real time on the second screen, keeping the drone tracking every millimeter the loser takes down the road. Driving slowly down the main drag of the town like he’s casing it, which he probably is. Shit. Have to stop him. All the main roads look like they go back to dirt once you leave the city. If I were a terrorist, what would I want to strike? One, a big building in the middle of town, is probably like their town hall or something. Doubt anyone would hit that at night. Wouldn’t be like a terrorist to hit an empty building. OK. Scratch that. Too bad, that parking lot would have been a great place to take him out with minimum damage to infrastructure.

  Keep looking. What’s that? Big, looks like a two-, maybe three-story building and a couple of smaller shacks inside a high wall with a guard tower. Barbed wire. Jail. Has to be either a jail or one of our bases. But it doesn’t really look like the other bases, which usually have more buildings and an airstrip. Bet that’s where he is going.

  I check the truck. Slowing down. Stopping. Shit. That’s a big building, too. I check the map. Shit. Shit! That’s a school. Some other guy gets in the truck. Gets in the bed of the pickup. Along with a big bag. Relax, Ty. It’s the middle of the night, there won’t be any kids in there now. But the thought makes me burn. Those terrorists have to go. Wish I was killing them for real. The truck starts up again.

  Where else could I hit them? The boulevard is the widest street but I don’t want to damage it if I don’t have to, and unless they roll into a parking lot the other streets are just too narrow. Shit. I wait. Hate waiting. Hate it. I grab the sandwich off the end table and bite it. Chew. The truck is rolling through town. Passes the big building in the center, turns onto another narrow-ass little street. But this narrow street leads out of town. Leads towards the building that looks like a jail.

  I lase them. Type in the code for permission to hit. The second they get out of town. Green light blinking. SKY. Permission granted. Awesome. Sixty-eight thousand dollars’ worth of hurt is about to rain down on their asses the second they get away from those houses. Get away from the good people. Get away from the kids. Weapons armed. Less than half a mile before they reach the jail. I wait. Wait until they are far enough away from the center of town.

  I fire. Wait. Three. Two. One.

  The truck disappears in a cloud as the missile hits. Yes! I wish I could hear it. Everything on the screen is so quiet. No noise. I feel good, man. Proud.

  Then I remember. Remember that it’s just a game and that B is missing. Remember that everything in my life is a sham.

  Turning the music up even louder, I shout along with the lyrics and just fly. Fly around and see a fake truck blown to bits on the side of a dirt road. Fly over a fake desert with fake people with a fake sense of purpose.

  CHAPTER 17

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17

  TYLER

  Mom’s watching the news. She’s in the kitchen, reading a paper on her tablet and sitting in front of the news on the TV as she ignores the phone smashed to pieces all over the floor. “Hey, Mom.” I kiss her on the forehead. It’s nice. Boys should kiss their moms.

  She does her usual, and doesn’t look me in the eyes as she says, “Any luck finding your brother?”

  I grab the dustpan from the closet and stare at the ticker on the screen. Dow is up, apparently. That’s good news for somebody, I’m sure. I sweep up the plastic remnants of phone. “No.”

  “We shouldn’t have let him go back into rehab. We should have known that it does no good. A lot of money for nothing.” She takes a sip of her coffee. Eyes on the tablet. Hate tablets. Their gaming platform sucks.

  “We had to give him another chance,” I say.

  “He doesn’t need another chance. He doesn’t use them. Do you know how much rehab costs? Money for nothing, Tyler. For nothing.”

  I’m too tired for this. “Mom, of course I know how much it costs.”

  “It’s money I should have used to help you,” she says, her voice trembling.

  Shit. “Mom, I’m fine, OK?”

  “No. No, I should have seen you sliding, baby. Should have gotten tutors or counseling or something to help you. I know you and Rick think it’s OK but I don’t. I’m your mother, I should have been doing more for you.” Her lips press together. Press so hard they turn white. “We can’t make Brandon get better if he doesn’t want to get better. He’s selfish. And he’s a liar. We shouldn’t trust him, shouldn’t believe him, shouldn’t believe that he cares…”

  I throw the broom into the cabinets, chest tight. “Jesus, Mom, he’s your son!”

  She puts down her coffee, hard, liquid splashing on her shaking hands. “No, not really, not anymore.” Her shoulders tremble and her lips can’t keep steady and she cries. Cries in her power suit. Doesn’t look so strong when she’s crying.

  “Mom.” She does this. I forget. Forget how easy it is to break her. Especially now that B’s gone again. I should have known. I grab her, wrap her up in my arms, let her cry. She’s so delicate, like a kitten. Even when she looks normal, even when she looks tough, she’s not right. Her mascara runs onto my shirt and she wipes her eyes and she sobs. Big, earth-moving sobs from such a small woman. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking, OK? You have me, Mom. You’ll always have me.” I kiss the top of her head and hold her until she steadies. But I still hold her after she stops. Hold her tight so that she knows that I love her. That I’m not Brandon.

  Some guy is talking on the news. Financial stuff is over. Now there’s a breaking story. Hate the morning news. Hate that they act like some nine year-old playing the violin is real news. This sounds like real news, though. At least to me. “Good news in the War on Terror. The Pentagon announced the morning the death of Bashir Hamad, a former ISI officer and a known Al-Qaeda sympathizer. Anonymous Pentagon sources have stated that Bashir Hamad was known to have operational links to insurgent forces in the region. It is also believed that he had ties to some of the individuals who funded the 9/11 attacks. Bashir Hamad and his accomplices were killed overnight en route to a planned attack on the Al-Quaddari prison in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.”

  My heartbeat picks up, one beat at a time, like kernels of popcorn starting to go. They show a picture of some guy in a turban, in-set eyes and long, bushy beard. “Hamad has been wanted by coalition forces for some time. He is believed to be responsible for leading a 2006 attack on Marines in Marjah that led to the death of three US servicemen.”

  I’m happy he’s dead.

  Mom slips out of my arms. Grabs her coffee and walks it over to the sink, shuffling her feet along the floor. She kisses me, quietly, quickly, on the cheek. And waits. Waits for me to say something, to look at her. Anything. But I can’t move. I can’t. Freaking. Move.

  It’s the truck. The image on the news. It’s my truck. Gray truck blown to bits on the side of the road. It’s my truck. My jail. My heart beats so loud that it rings in my ears.

  Rick’s got one hell of a sim if it can simulate a mission that took place, hours, minutes, before.

  Fuck. Or did I just kill Bashir Hamad?

&nb
sp; CHAPTER 18

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18

  TYLER

  The phone. Stupid phone, ringing again. Don’t want to get it. Want to get to Yale. I pedal faster, hoping to burn. Needing to feel the burn. I should get the phone. Don’t stop pedaling. The wind snaps my cheeks. Tip of my nose and ears burning in the cold. Get the phone. Don’t stop pedaling. Fingers and nose and ears will be numb in a second, just keep going. Have to get to Ani. To New Haven. Almost there. Stupid phone.

  I yank the handlebars off to the right and veer off the bicycle path. I grab the phone out of my pocket, heart racing.

  “Yeah,” I say. Breath bouncing off the device and hitting my frozen cheek, making it hot, making it burn then freeze all over again.

  “Mr MacCandless?” A voice, unsteady, nervous.

  Shit, it’s a telemarketer. “Take me off your list, OK?” Balancing the still bike beneath me, I kick at the gravel.

  “No! No, it’s not like that. I’m a friend of your brother’s,” the voice adds quickly, like he’s trying to rush it all in before I hang up, like he didn’t just stop my heart.

  I feel cold. Cold all over, even inside me, and my legs holding the bike don’t feel so steady. I want to sit down, I want to scream, I want to ask a million questions. They rattle around between my ears, hurting. Where is he is he safe did he call you why isn’t this him?

  “Mr MacCandless… um… Tyler? You still there? Don’t leave me hangin’,” the guy says and I let the bike fall to the ground with the sickening clang of metal on stones, metal on pavement, metal slicing through the fog in my head.

  I stomp. Pace. Walk fast. Real fast so I can say, “Yeah. Have you… Where is he?” Six days. B’s been gone for six days. I need to know. Need to find him.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know where he is, but…”

  “If you don’t know where he is then why are you calling?” My head. My freaking head. I push my free hand into my head, grinding into my scalp, pulling at my hair.