Lost Boy

by Shelley Hrdlitschka

  “These people are friggin’ rich,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  I open up the enormous fridge and scan the contents. “There’s more food in here than in my old house in Unity, and there we had twenty-five-plus people under one roof.”

  Jimmy doesn’t answer, but I know he’s watching me.

  “Do you think they’d mind if I helped myself to a glass of milk?” I ask.

  “Stick to water, Jon,” he says. “From the sink.”

  I ignore him. “They’ll never notice that one glass of milk is missing,” I say as I reach for the jug. “They’ve got two of these.”

  “Thou shalt not steal,” Jimmy says. “How fast you’ve forgotten your boyhood lessons.” He begins to pack up the lunch containers.

  I pretend not to hear him as I chug back a glass of milk. I’d forgotten how good it tastes. I refill the glass and start opening cupboard doors, amazed at the kinds of food they store. No home canning here. There are expensive-looking pasta sauces, an array of oils and vinegars, and all kinds of fancy-looking chocolate. They don’t just have peanut butter—they have almond and cashew butter too, and more shapes of pasta than I’ve ever seen. There are cookies, protein powder and a variety of crispy snacking food.

  “Quit snooping,” Jimmy says. There’s an edge to his voice now.

  “It’s not hurting anyone.” I open another closet. “Holy shit!” The shelves are lined with wine racks full of bottles, and not just wine bottles. “Looks like a friggin’ liquor store.”

  “How would you know? You’re underage. You’ve never even been in one.”

  “It’s how I imagine one would look.” I pull out a bottle of Irish whiskey and study the label. “Aged eight years, whatever that means. The butt hut would be impressed.”

  Jimmy doesn’t say anything, but he’s still staring at me.

  “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer,” I say.

  Something crosses Jimmy’s face.

  “What?” I say.

  He just shakes his head. “We’d better get back to work.”

  “No. Tell me what you were thinking.” I’m still gripping the bottle of whiskey, wondering how I can sneak it out of here.

  “I’m thinking that maybe I won’t be such a good social worker after all. The failures are too hard to accept.”

  I stare at him, his message slowly sinking in. “You’re calling me a failure?”

  “All I know is you’re not the same guy who left Abigail’s two and a half months ago. That guy knew his place.”

  “And what place is that?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. You’d better put the booze and milk back before someone shows up.”

  “Don’t go acting all superior, Jimmy,” I tell him, seething. “You’re an apostate like the rest of us, damned for all eternity. Following God’s commandments isn’t going to help any of us now. We’re all going to burn in hell anyway.”

  Jimmy’s eyes grow wide. “Who the hell have you been listening to?”

  “People who get me a lot better than you ever did. Selig and I didn’t stand a chance here, and you damn well knew it. You should have left us alone.”

  Jimmy gets up from the table and steps over to me. He reaches for the bottle, but I hold it behind me. “Don’t you dare put the blame on me,” he says, his voice raised. I’ve never seen him lose his cool before. “You had as good a chance as anyone, but you’re a quitter. You had us to support you. The school would have supported you. Craig supported you. There were all kinds of people who would have helped you get through, but you blew us all off.”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do you think it was easy for me?” He’s practically screaming now, his voice matched by the angry music blaring in the background. “It was friggin’ hard! And Matthew is barely hanging on, but he’s a fighter. He knows what he wants, and he’s going to get it.” Jimmy tries again to grab the bottle from my hand, but I step back. “You let self-pity derail you, Jon. All that moping about for Celeste. What were you thinking? She’s from Unity! She was never going to leave. You were an idiot to get tangled up with her in the first place. Now she’s just another ignorant sister wife.”

  He shakes his head and starts strapping on his tool belt. Something in me snaps.

  “Don’t you dare talk about Celeste like that!” I swing the bottle at him, but he ducks back, and it connects with the corner of a cupboard and breaks. The bottle smashes into shards of glass as it hits the tile floor. The room fills with the pungent fumes of whiskey.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Jimmy says.

  “Done what?” Alex asks, stepping into the kitchen. Neither of us heard him come into the house. I watch his face as he takes in the mess, the glass rubble, the puddle of booze on the counter, dripping to the floor, the milk jug, the broken neck of the bottle still in my hand. “What the…?” he says.

  He stares at me and then at Jimmy. I can feel how hard I’m breathing, but the anger is draining away, and now shame courses through me. Jimmy steps over to the table and shuts off the music.

  “I’ll clean it up right away. And I’ll replace the bottle,” I say, becoming the obedient boy I’d once been in Unity.

  “You sure as hell will,” Alex says, his face a deep red. “And then you can both start looking for new jobs.”

  Jimmy’s eyes widen. I expect him to defend himself, but he says nothing. He just looks to me. I know I should explain, take the entire blame, tell Alex that Jimmy was not at fault. The obedient boy in me wants to do that, but I can’t forget his words about Celeste. Just another ignorant sister wife. The anger flickers again. Jimmy’s quitting work anyway to go back to school. He doesn’t need this job. And without him to pick me up, I have no way to get to work anyway.

  “You can take your friggin’ job and shove it.”

  Twelve

  I pull the blanket tighter around me and stare numbly at the TV. We have no heat, and ice is beginning to crust around the windowpanes—on the inside. Charlie got busted just after Christmas on drug-trafficking charges. He’s in a pretrial detention center, awaiting his day in court. Brent gets occasional work at the local mill, and when he gets paid, he brings home some food and a case or two of beer. But without Charlie’s income and with the constant threat of eviction, our little family is drifting apart.

  Selig really did leave for the big city, just headed off to the highway one day and stuck out his thumb. A couple of the boys found relatives who gave them work at family operations provided they stay away from Springdale and all its evil temptations. They’re also forbidden to visit their family homes, so they’ve shacked up in a crumbling cabin close to Unity. Those relatives have made it clear that they have no work for me. It seems there are different degrees of apostate, and I’m the worst kind—the kind that tries to corrupt their pure girls.

  I shut off the TV and look around the apartment. It’s February, but the Christmas tree still huddles in the corner, the baubles mostly knocked off and broken during an episode of roughhousing. Dirty dishes and takeout trash are scattered on every surface. I pick my way over empty beer cans and discarded clothing. I find a thin jacket in the closet and pull on somebody’s left-behind rubber boots, then stomp down the stairs and out onto the frozen sidewalk. The icy wind instantly freezes my nose hairs. I pull up the jacket hood and tuck my hands under my armpits. Head down, I slip and slide all the way to the café where Belle works.

  The chimes over the door tinkle when I enter the shop. A blast of warm air hits me. Belle rushes over. “You can’t come in,” she whispers, looking over her shoulder.

  “I have nowhere else to go.”

  “Bert says you can’t just sit in here anymore unless you buy something.”

  “Then why don’t you buy me a hot chocolate?” I lean in to kiss her, but she pushes me away. “Go home, Jon,” she says.

  “I just need to warm up for a bit.”

  “Go, Jon.” She gives me another shove. “You’re going to g
et me fired.”

  “Will you come by tonight?” I ask.

  She doesn’t meet my eyes but shakes her head.

  “How about I come to your place then?”

  She shakes her head again.

  I don’t ask why.

  After walking around outside a little longer I go to the library and head straight to the computers to see if Craig has sent any more email messages. He hasn’t. I don’t know why I bother checking. For months he kept writing, urging me to go back to school. I never replied. But it was still nice to know that someone was thinking about me.

  I grab my favorite book—Make Your Own Inuksuk—and sit in the lounge area, looking at the pictures. It’s comfy in the overstuffed chairs. The light from the window pours in. As I turn the pages, I remember the beach in Unity and building inuksuit with Celeste. The library is warm, and my eyelids get heavy.

  A toe lightly kicks my leg, waking me with a start. I sit up, expecting to see a librarian asking me to leave, but it’s Wolf. “Fancy meeting you in the library,” he says, grinning.

  I sit up and stretch, trying to come fully awake. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “Pro-D day.”

  “What day?” I ask, forgetting that I wasn’t going to ask questions anymore when I didn’t understand something.

  “Day off for kids, not teachers.”

  “And you’re spending your day in the library?”

  He shrugs. “Not a bad place if you like books.”

  I yawn. He drops into the armchair across from me but doesn’t open his book.

  “What’ve you been up to?” he asks, looking me over.

  I comb my fingers through my long hair. When was the last time I washed it? I try to see myself through his eyes. It’s not a pretty picture. My chin’s raw with zits, and the borrowed clothes I’m wearing don’t fit well nor are they clean. “I was working,” I tell him. “Building houses, but there’s not much construction in the winter.” It’s not exactly a lie. “How are the girls?”

  “The same. Doing a lot of partying, from what I hear.”

  “Partying?” Maybe they’d invite me along. There’ve been too many nights when I’ve had to fall asleep without anything to numb the ugly voices in my head.

  “You don’t want to party with them,” Wolf says, likely reading my expression. “Jailbait.”

  Jailbait? I don’t ask. Now that I’m fully awake, I remember to keep my ignorance to myself.

  “So how do you get by?” Wolf asks.

  I shrug a shoulder. “Not that well right now. You have any cash I can borrow?” Begging is getting easier. “I’ll pay you back next time I get some work.”

  Wolf shakes his head.

  “How about food?”

  His eyebrows arch, but he reaches into his pack and tosses me a granola bar.

  I rip the wrapper off and eat it in two quick bites. When I look up, he’s staring at me. “Maybe my shit’s not so bad after all,” he says. He shoves his book into his pack and leaves the lounge.

  I shiver in my too-thin coat. At exactly three o’clock the school doors burst open, and a swarm of kids pours straight down the stairs and across the school grounds toward after-school activities, jobs or homes. It’s too cold for them to linger on the school grounds or hang out at the park as they did in the fall.

  It’s the third day in a row that I’ve waited outside the school, hoping to see Crystal coming through the doors. I’ve chosen a different door to wait at each day, hiding under my hood, hoping not to be recognized. After fifteen minutes I’m about to return to the warmth of the library, but then I see her. As I’d hoped, she’s alone as she comes through the door and crosses the playing field. She pulls up her hood as the cold air hits her and walks quickly in my direction.

  “Hi, Crystal,” I say.

  She stops and stares, but I can see from her blank expression that she doesn’t immediately recognize me. I push back my hood. “It’s me, Jon.”

  “Oh!” Her eyes widen as she takes in my appearance. “I didn’t recognize you.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” she says, still staring at me. “What happened to you, anyway?”

  I’m not sure if she’s commenting on my appearance or if she really doesn’t know why I’m no longer at school. I take a guess. “I quit school. It wasn’t working out for me.”

  “I knew that much. Wolf told us.”

  I guessed wrong. “I was working,” I tell her. “Making great money, but there’s been a lull during the winter months.”

  She nods, still staring wide-eyed. “So what are you doing here?”

  “I just came by looking for you. Thought you might like to hang out sometime.”

  She takes a step back. “I don’t know, Jon.”

  I give her the biggest smile I can muster and step toward her. “Hey, we had fun. Remember chilling during all those lunch hours? And those jokes we played on Wolf?”

  She glances around, probably looking for help in case I step any closer to her.

  “I bet you like to toke a little,” I say. “And do shots. My roomies are legal. I could get you anything you want.”

  She takes a wide step around me. “Sorry, Jon,” she says. “I gotta go.”

  She scurries away, taking one last look at me over her shoulder. As I trudge back toward the warm library, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a store window. I stop and stare, shocked. What an idiot. I knew I was a bit scruffy and a little unclean, but the guy in the reflection looks like a homeless, filthy beggar much, much older than I am. Did I really think she’d still flirt with me and get me some pot? What a loser I’ve become.

  I peer into the fridge, hoping that some food has miraculously materialized since the last time I looked. It hasn’t.

  “It’s your turn to stock it,” Bruce says from his place on the floor in front of the TV. His voice is muffled by the blanket draped over his head, shrouding his face. “I’m tired of being the sole provider around here.”

  It’s been just the two of us for weeks now. I think about all the food in the kitchen of that last house I worked at—shelves and shelves of it. It would take months for a family to eat it all. A lot of it would likely spoil. I spread ketchup on half of the remaining crust from a loaf of stale bread, mustard on the other half, and join Bruce on the floor.

  When I’m sure everyone but Taviana will be at school or work, I knock on Abigail’s front door. It opens just a crack. Tav peers out. It opens wider.

  “Jon?” she asks, as if not recognizing me.

  “Who else?” I give her my cheeriest smile. I am such a phony.

  “What do you want?”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in? It’s cold out here.”

  She hesitates, and for a moment I think she’s actually going to turn me away. I watch an internal struggle tug at her face before she pushes the door all the way open. I follow her into the living room.

  Nothing has changed. Photos of Abigail’s kids cover the walls, and the old couch still faces the TV. Everything is in its place. The carpet looks freshly vacuumed. Was it only eight months ago I first stepped into the room?

  Taviana sits in Abigail’s armchair, and I settle onto the couch. I run my hand across the cushion. This couch would be much more comfortable than the one I’m currently sleeping on.

  “Why are you here?” Taviana asks.

  “I just came by to say hi,” I tell her.

  “It’s only taken you five months,” she says. “Somehow I don’t buy it.”

  “Seriously, I’ve missed you. And the others.” It’s not until I hear my own words that I realize how true they are. A wave of longing washes over me.

  “Craig was home at Christmas. He came by to ask where you were.”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  She shakes her head. “It doesn’t look like things have worked out so well for you,” she says, giving me the once-over. “Jimmy said you looked like crap. He was right.”

 
; It hurts, but I don’t respond. What is there to say?

  “So what are you doing now?”

  “Not much. I’ll get work in the spring.”

  Taviana raises an eyebrow. “Not with Alex you won’t.”

  “There are other builders.”

  “It’s a small town, Jon. Word gets around. Alex isn’t about to give you a glowing reference.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s my problem. Why are you acting so ticked at me?”

  “Jimmy told me what happened.”

  I’ve tried to smoke away my shame from that day. Drink it away. “He called Celeste an ignorant sister wife,” I mumble, knowing it’s really no excuse. I pick at a scab on my chin.

  “Who did?”

  “Jimmy.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t tell Alex what really happened?”

  “He could see for himself what really happened.”

  She cocks her head. “And what was that?”

  “Jimmy already told you.”

  “I want to hear your version.”

  “I helped myself to some milk and broke a bottle of booze.”

  “When Jimmy called Celeste an ignorant sister wife,” she confirms.

  I just nod, and my shame grows with the silence that fills the room.

  “It’s not too late to call Alex and tell him that.”

  I can’t answer her. It does seem like a simple fix. But basically, I haven’t got the balls to call Alex.

  “Alex didn’t end up firing Jimmy.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. Once he cooled down he realized it wasn’t Jimmy’s fault.”

  That makes me feel a little better.

  “But you still need to apologize to them both.”

  Right. Like that’s going to happen. “Did you guys can any of my vegetables?” I ask, anxious to change the subject.

  “Is that why you came here? You want some canned vegetables?”

  “I grew them.”

  “In Abigail’s yard.”

  “I built the garden and bought the soil and seeds.”

  She just stares at me. “I thought for sure you’d come over to apologize to Jimmy,” she says.