Welcome Home

by Eric Smith

Mom lifted her hand and looked at her watch. She’s worn that watch forever. Dad got it for her when he first became district attorney. They joked it was a pre-apology gift for the long nights he’d be working.

  I tried to guess what time it was. Two o’clock? Three? Even though it had been only a few hours ago, it felt like ages since Mom had called me. I’d never forget the way her voice sounded—panicked, terrified.

  “Jonah . . . something happened, and I need you to come home,” Mom said, out of breath. “Hurry.”

  But now, as she looked at the watch Dad gave her, she didn’t seem as scared. Just sad. And defeated.

  “Evan and Hannah will be home soon,” she said. “We should get cleaned up.”

  I moved away from her so I could see her face. Tears made streaks in the dirt on her cheeks.

  “I can’t believe I got you involved in this.” She swiped at her tears with shaking hands. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Mom. It’s my fault.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Jonah. Don’t ever say that. You weren’t even here.”

  Mom was strong—opinionated, honest, a disciplinarian with a low “I mean business” voice when she needed it. But I’d never thought of her as physically strong. She was short, forty pounds overweight, in high-waisted mom jeans and baggy sweaters. Her hair was usually up in some sort of bun or ponytail, and no makeup unless she was going out at night. She was just Mom. But when we heaved him into the trunk of her car and then lifted him out and dragged him to the spot we’d picked to bury him, she had some seriously crazy super strength. Determination and protectiveness completely took over her whole being like in one of those stories about a mother lifting a truck to free her trapped child. I’d only seen her like this once before.

  I’d just turned ten, so Evan was nine, and Hannah was eight. Fourth grade, third grade, second grade. Three peas in a pod, Dad called us. Evan once commented that we weren’t like three peas in a pod at all because if Mom’s belly was the pod, I’d never been in the pod to begin with. I didn’t think much about the fact that Mom hadn’t given birth to me, but Evan did. More than I knew.

  We’d gone for haircuts that day, but as soon as the hairdresser started cutting Evan’s hair, she found lice. Then she checked Hannah and me, and then Mom too. We all had it. She sent us to the back room where the “lice lady” would treat our hair with special shampoo and comb out the nits. None of us really cared except it meant we’d have to wait even longer to get home and play video games. But the lice lady put on the TV, so at least there was that.

  After she was done with the three of us, she started working on Mom. Since Mom’s hair was thick and tangly, I knew it would take forever. My brother, sister, and I settled in to watch SpongeBob. But SpongeBob didn’t distract me enough to tune out Mom’s conversation.

  “They’re so sweet and well-behaved,” the lice lady said.

  “Thank you.” I could hear Mom’s proud smile. She loved it when people commented on the behavior of her children, as if it was a mark of her success.

  “The girl and the little boy—they’re twins?”

  Mom got asked that a lot, so I knew her answer by heart.

  “No, but close. He’s fourteen months older. And Jonah, my oldest, is just eleven months older than him.”

  “Really? He seems much older!”

  “He’s tall for his age.”

  “He must look like your husband, then. He’s so big, and with the light hair and blue eyes, so different from you and the little ones with the dark brown.”

  “We adopted Jonah,” Mom said.

  Usually when people pointed out how I looked different than my siblings, or when they asked where I got my blue eyes, Mom would wink at me, then shrug and say, “Who knows?” People had a tendency to say stupid things.

  But maybe she sensed something in the lice lady that made her feel safe. Or maybe she was bored and in the mood to talk. Who knows why on this day she decided to share?

  “Really?” The woman paused her combing and looked at Mom’s reflection. And then she said what most people say. “So after you adopted him, then you got pregnant with your own—what a miracle! That always happens, doesn’t it?”

  Mom’s jaw tightened. She hated it when people talked like that—it always happens that way . . . You could finally have your own.

  “It rarely happens, actually.” I wondered whether Mom would tell the story of our family, the story that started with “No miracles. Just real life.”

  But before Mom could even begin, the woman said something no one had ever said before.

  “Doesn’t it bother you to take care of someone else’s child? When you have two of your own?”

  The silence was thick as the words sunk in. Of course I’d seen Mom angry before. She yelled at us so often to get our shoes on, to bring our dishes to the sink, to stop fighting, we’d almost become immune to it. But this was different—the flash of anger I saw in Mom’s eyes was venomous.

  She cleared her throat while the woman continued to comb through her hair, oblivious to the fact that she’d just conjured the Incredible Hulk.

  Then Mom spoke slowly, annunciating each word.

  “These. Are. My. Three. Children. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Mom stood, pulled the black cape off, letting it drop to the floor, and grabbed her purse. Her hair was wet, half up in a clip.

  “Let’s go, kids,” she said, working to make her voice sound normal, but I heard what was underneath. Mom definitely could’ve lifted a truck right then.

  “Not now, Mom. SpongeBob isn’t over,” Evan whined, his eyes glued to the TV.

  “Now,” she said. I grabbed Evan’s hand and pulled him out of the chair. He hadn’t seen Mom’s eyes. If he had, he would’ve forgotten SpongeBob immediately and obeyed. I pulled at his hand as he kept looking back at the TV, and Hannah trailed after us, muttering about the lollipops we didn’t get.

  After that day, I didn’t hear Mom talk to a stranger about adoption again. Sometimes I told friends if I felt like it. But, surprisingly, kids didn’t say as many stupid things as adults did. They mostly asked questions: How old were you when you were adopted? Hours. Do you ever want to find your real mom? Birth mom, I’d correct. I have some information and pictures. Sometimes I think I’d like to know more, but not enough to do anything about it. Not yet, at least.

  Lately, I’d seen hints of that same look Mom had given the lice lady—whenever Evan brought up Tribal Combat. Mom thought he was on the verge of an unhealthy obsession with the computer game. The few times Evan sat at the dinner table for more than five minutes, he’d complain that he was missing out on a crucial battle and letting his tribe down.

  The other night, Mom, Evan, and I were the only ones home for dinner—with our schedules, it was rare for all five of us to eat at the same time.

  “I’m sure your tribe will do just fine tonight without you,” Mom said, scooping rice onto our plates.

  Evan’s face turned sour and he practically spat out his words.

  “Shut up. You don’t understand.”

  My eyes widened. No one tells Mom to shut up.

  Her shoulders tensed, but her voice stayed steady.

  “What I understand,” she said, “is that it’s a game, and I see you treating it as something more important than that. I would like you to put your energy toward something more productive.”

  Evan pushed his chair back suddenly and loudly, making his fork clatter to the floor.

  “It is important. The tribe, Tim—they’re my friends, my family. At least they care for and appreciate me.”

  Evan stormed upstairs.

  I reached down to pick up his fork, but before I could, Mom grabbed my wrist.

  “Do you know anything about these people he’s online with?”

  “Not really,” I said. “It’s just one
of those multiplayer games where you chat while you’re playing. I mean, Evan’s being a di—a jerk, but everyone does it.”

  “You don’t.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve played. It’s just not really my thing.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I’ve got basketball. This is, like, his team, I guess.”

  Evan and I didn’t have the same lunch period, but when I walked by the windows of the cafeteria on the way to Physics every day, I always saw him sitting alone, headphones on. High school wasn’t treating him well, and it didn’t help that he was known as Dunk’s little brother. He hated that. He hated sports, basketball especially, and I was starting to wonder if he hated me too.

  “That guy Tim he’s always on with,” Mom said, “He sounds mean when I hear them talking.”

  “Well, they’re battling. It can get kind of intense, I guess.”

  “I don’t know,” Mom said. “I feel like there’s something off about him.”

  “I wouldn’t worry, Mom. I’m sure it’s fine.”

  But I knew what she meant. My room shared a wall with Evan’s, so I could hear them sometimes. There was a lot of Tribal Combat yelling and cheering, but there were also some quiet conversations that I knew were just between Evan and Tim once the other tribe members had logged off. And I guess, yeah, something about the guy’s voice, the way he talked, seemed chilling. Like he was capable of beating Evan in a game that Evan didn’t even know he was playing.

  Mom squeezed my wrist and then let go.

  “I am worried.” She swallowed hard, and the look—the truck-lifting look—crossed her face. “Will you talk to him? He listens to you, he looks up to you.”

  Evan, in fact, didn’t listen to me, and he definitely didn’t look up to me. The last few months, he’d been making dumb-jock jabs at me, and saying dickish things about Britney, the girl I was hanging out with—comments about her rack and her ass. Evan and I hadn’t fought that much as kids, but when we did, Mom had always said, “I know the two of you can work it out on your own. Either do it quietly, or do it outside.” Lately we’d been working most things out in the driveway.

  I didn’t think it would help, but I went into Evan’s room after dinner. He was at his desk with his headphones on.

  “What?” He slid the headphones down to encircle his neck.

  “Can you look over my Lit paper? I’ve been staring at it so long I can’t even tell if it makes sense anymore.” Evan did better in school than I did, so I often asked him to read my papers before I turned them in.

  “Did Mom send you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  “I’ll read your paper, but stay out of my business.”

  Just then his computer made a sound like a tiger growling, and a Tribal Combat message popped up on the screen that said timstheshite64. Evan clicked it open and Tim’s face appeared. He wore a Tribal Combat baseball cap low over his eyes.

  “Hey,” Tim said. “You done with your useless high school shit and ready to kick the spunk out of some of those red-tribe assholes?”

  “Yeah, man, let’s do it,” Evan said. Then he turned to me. “Gotta go, bro.”

  Evan had never called me “bro” before. The way he said it made it sound like an insult.

  “Who’s that? The famous Jonah?” Tim asked.

  Evan tilted his laptop so Tim could see me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Heard a lot about you, Jonah. Or should I call you Dunk?” He said my nickname with a condescending smirk. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. You ever decide to quit being a jock mama’s boy and murder some dudes with us, just give us a holler.”

  Evan’s eyes shot me a warning that I read as Don’t even think about it. This is my thing.

  I dropped my Lit paper on his bed. “Thanks for reading this.”

  “Later,” I said to Tim on the screen.

  Evan kicked the door shut after I walked out.

  I sat at my desk, but I could still hear them through the wall.

  “So that’s Mr. Fake First-Born Son, huh?” Tim said. “He waltzes in all high and mighty like he’s the legit crowned prince, doesn’t he?”

  What? What did Evan tell him about me?

  “Nah,” Evan said. “My brother—”

  “He’s not even your real brother, dude. I’m just as much your brother as he is. So your parents scooped up some orphan before you were even born, and he gets the pity vote every time. You never even had a chance, E. He gets everything, and you have to pay the price.”

  Evan was silent. I waited for the words that would defend me, the words Mom and Dad would say—family is everything, and blood has nothing to do with it. But the words never came.

  “You deserve better than that,” Tim continued. “You have mad skills, E. You could be a first-class gamer, pulling in cash, getting the respect you deserve. I know people. We can hook you up. But you can’t do it while you’re still in that house with them. They’re holding you back. And they always will, man, because they don’t get it. They don’t get you and what you’re all about.”

  I closed my laptop so I could focus.

  “I was the black sheep too,” Tim went on. “I fucking hated my family. And it was mutual. Leaving them was the best thing I ever did for myself. I never looked back.”

  “I mean . . . I don’t hate them,” Evan said.

  “Believe me, you hate them. They think he’s better than you, and he’s not even their own kid. They don’t understand you. When you’re ready to leave, you let me know. We’ll show you what real life is, what freedom feels like.”

  I froze, waiting for Evan’s response, but he mumbled something too quietly for me to hear.

  “Yeah, that’s all I’m saying,” Tim said. “Just think about it. We’ll take care of you, man.”

  I spent the rest of the night researching Tim. Mom didn’t let us use our full names online, but luckily Tim didn’t have anyone like Mom protecting his identity. His timstheshite64 profile on Tribal Combat listed his name as Tim Wallace, and even though there were tons of Tim Wallace Facebook profiles, his wasn’t that hard to find. His page was public and his photo was a close-up, with the same light blue eyes I’d just seen on Evan’s laptop. He’d posted a few concert photos, Tribal Combat YouTube videos, and some random memes. He was twenty-three, and some more investigating led me to his ex-girlfriend’s page—Renee Byrne. Her account was private, but some of her older posts were still visible. The last messages on Renee’s page were about Tim:

  tim’s 3-month sobriety party friday cancelled L

  And then, a few weeks later:

  friends: prayers needed for tim. he’s back in lock-up. we’ve lost him to a very dark place.

  That post was from a year and a half ago. I shivered. Great-grandma used to say a shiver meant someone had just walked over your future grave, which never made any sense to me. But right then, as I looked at Renee’s last post, I felt as if I understood for the first time.

  I went back to Tim’s page and clicked on Work and Education. Gianpapa’s Pizzeria in Clifton, where he worked, was twenty minutes away. I’d thought—hoped—that he’d be halfway around the world. But he was practically in our backyard. His eyes, the “dark place,” the things he said to Evan as if he was trying to get him to hate us—hate me. As if he was trying to lure him away from home.

  Mom’s instinct about him was right—there was something off about him. She wanted to know more. And now, so did I.

  The next day, I told Coach I had to leave early for a dentist appointment. Even though he was pissed I’d scheduled something that conflicted with practice, it was my first time, so he let me go.

  As I drove on the highway toward Clifton, my pulse throbbed in my throat. The GPS was off by a block. I circled slowly until I found it—a hole-in-the-wall pizza place in the middle of a strip with a
Subway, a generic wireless store, and two empty storefronts with For Rent signs. I parked in front of Subway and got out, careful to lock the car. It was my car just for a few more weeks until Evan got his license, and then I’d have to share it with him. He was obsessed, already making a schedule for Saturday nights months away. Now I wondered where he was planning to go.

  Gianpapa’s was one of those slice places, though a menu board above the counter showed that it offered more—chicken parm, pastas, salads. No one was at the counter. An older man sat at one of the small tables, scarfing down pizza and Gatorade. He noticed me and nodded.

  “Timmy!” the man shouted, but it sounded like Tim-MAY. “You gotta customer.”

  I heard some rustling and then Tim appeared from behind a tall cart of dishes, wiping his hands on his jeans.

  “Hey,” he said. His voice sounded deeper than it had through Evan’s laptop. A man’s voice.

  I hadn’t planned anything to say to him. I hadn’t planned anything at all. I’d pictured a big place where I could sit in a corner booth and spy on him, and then talk things over with Mom and decide what to do. But not this. Not this one-on-one thing where I had to look him in the eye and speak to him.

  He sauntered to the counter. Colorful, elaborate artwork started at his wrists and disappeared into the short sleeves of his t-shirt. His white-blond hair was cut close, and he had about a week’s worth of beard growth that was a slightly darker blond. He looked at me blankly. If he recognized me, he didn’t show it. There was no reason he’d expect me to show up here anyway.

  “What’ll you have?” he asked.

  “Uh . . .”

  He looked at the oven behind him.

  “Pepperoni’s about to come out. You want that?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll take two slices. Um.” My voice sounded funny. Like someone else’s.

  “Drink?”

  I shook my head no.

  He tapped the screen on the cash register in front of him.

  “Seven seventy-nine.”

  I pulled a ten out of my wallet.

  Now I just wanted to leave. I had no idea what I’d been thinking coming here. I stared at the rusted napkin dispenser while Tim went to the oven to pull out the pizza. He put two slices on a paper plate and dropped the plate on the counter in front of me. He took my ten-dollar bill. He tapped on the screen and just as the register drawer popped open, he abruptly pointed at me.