Nothing to Lose

by Alex Flinn

  I got home midday, when I’d be least likely to see Walker. He’d be at work or, if not, out on his sailboat. I didn’t make a sound going to my room to pack. I knew how to be quiet. The surf would have drowned me out anyway. I packed a duffel with only what I needed, some clothes and sneakers, a few photos. I added a slightly deflated football to the top, then took it out. I’d have no room for extras now.

  When I finished packing, I went to Mom’s room.

  As usual, she was stitching.

  She rushed to me. “I was so worried, Michael. Walker said your bed wasn’t slept in Thursday. Then yesterday and the day before.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “But you’re back.”

  The ocean was so loud. “I’m leaving again.”

  “Walker will be home soon for dinner. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day to go out.”

  “I mean I’m leaving.” I looked behind me at the green duffel I’d left in the doorway. She saw it too. “I’m leaving for good.”

  The fabric she was embroidering fell from her hands.

  “Oh, no, Michael. No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But what will I do?” She came closer. I noticed her walk, that she favored one leg.

  “Same as you do with me here. Nothing. You wouldn’t let me help.” I thought of Nurse Mastin saying, I can’t afford to care anymore.

  “But I’ve done this all for you.”

  “Don’t lay that on me!” I screamed. “I can’t believe you’d say that.”

  “How can you leave me with… I mean, Michael, it’s been bad. At the office. His partners cut him out. It happened Thursday. The day he…”

  I remembered that time at Walker’s office, those two guys on the elevator. They’d been talking about Walker. The old man, they’d called him. But I didn’t feel sorry for him. He was responsible for what he did, same as I was responsible for what I did.

  I started to say there’d always be something to blame for Walker’s rages, but I stopped. I was here to say good-bye.

  Still, I had to try one last time.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  She shook her head like I knew she would. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

  “You won’t.”

  “It would be kicking him when he’s down, leaving now.”

  “He’s the one who kicks, not you.” Then I stopped talking. It was no use. The wind was whistling across the beach. I stared at my mother. The balcony door slammed shut.

  We both looked out, silent.

  “I’m going now.” I picked up the duffel and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  I started to leave the room. I couldn’t do anything for her, I reminded myself. But you could be here. My eyes stung with the cold salt air that hung in the room.

  I didn’t look back.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said.

  I turned, sending my duffel into the wall.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t told him yet. I was going to Thursday, but then… I don’t know what will happen when he finds out.”

  I still didn’t look at her. I looked out the closed balcony door. I felt cold and sick.

  “So you can’t leave,” she said. Did her voice hold a note of triumph? “You wouldn’t leave us—your little brother or sister—alone here, would you?”

  “How long have you known?”

  “I wasn’t sure until Thursday. I did my grocery shopping, and bought a test. But I thought so before then. I’ve known for weeks, really.”

  I thought of her, clutching her stomach Thursday night at Mercy. Outside, the dark waves churned.

  “I need you, Michael. I know you’re a good kid, a responsible kid.”

  What about your responsibility to me? But it was no use, no use trying to get her to go with me either. There was nothing left but a decision. Stay. Or go.

  Below, I heard the garage door open.

  “There’s Walker, Michael. I have to start dinner.”

  She looked at me, a question in her eyes.

  I carried the duffel bag back to my bedroom.

  THIS YEAR

  “I should have left that night,” I tell Karpe now. “If I had, none of this would have happened.”

  “You thought you could protect her.”

  “Some protection. If I left, maybe she wouldn’t be in jail.”

  “Maybe she’d be dead.”

  I think about that a minute. It makes me feel better, but it doesn’t make me feel good.

  “I never heard about a baby,” Karpe says after a moment. “I mean, on the news or anything. Did she—”

  “No,” I say. “No, you wouldn’t have heard about it.”

  He waits for me to continue, but I don’t. Finally, he says, “So, what happened?”

  “The next morning, when I was supposed to be in school, I went back to talk to Kirstie. To tell her goodbye instead.”

  LAST YEAR

  The fair was over, leaving. Parts of rides lay on the ground like dinosaur skeletons. I knew if I came back the next day, there’d be nothing but candy wrappers and melted ice cream, and the whole thing would be like the memory of a dream.

  Cricket waved to me from what was left of the double Ferris wheel. “You made it. Kirstie was worried about you.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Around. Probably where the midway was.”

  I walked toward the midway. All the game booths were closed, shuttered, some hooked to trucks that would pull them to the next town. The place looked barren without all the people. I didn’t see Kirstie anywhere. I reached her joint. It was shuttered, the wheels on.

  I started to walk away, then caught a gleam of gold underneath the trailer. I walked closer and stooped to look.

  I picked up a string of golden beads. The theme of that year’s fair was Mardi Gras. The beads were a giveaway. I held them up, feeling their weight. Then I pressed them to my lips before reaching for my pocket.

  “You’re not coming with us, are you?”

  I looked up. It was Kirstie.

  “No, I …” It wasn’t how I’d wanted to tell her. “You have to understand. It’s not that I don’t want to go with you. I do, but—”

  “She needs you,” she said dully.

  “Yeah.” I walked closer, loving her and unable to believe I’d never see her again.

  “I understand.” The wind blew. She wrapped her arms around herself. It was morning, cool, and she was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans. Standing against the shuttered game joint, she looked like a pioneer woman standing by her covered wagon, ready to go wherever life would take her. I wanted to go too, but I couldn’t. “Your family needs you. I don’t.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “It’s exactly that,” she said. “I understand. I even envy you. I remember what it was like, having people need me.”

  “I need you. I just can’t give in to that right now, I know there’s nothing I can do, but she’s my mother. My family. And I can’t … not know what happens to her, even if it’s bad. I can’t deal with not knowing. I’m not strong like you are. I’m sorry.”

  “Never apologize. Remember that.”

  I moved close to her. “I’m sorry for me.”

  “You’ll be fine too.”

  The clanking continued in the background. This should have been the day I began working, the first day I learned to dismantle the Tilt-a-Whirl. And tomorrow I should have been on my way to a new town, someplace I’d never seen before.

  I could still go, I realized. I was free to go, same as before. I could tell Kirstie I changed my mind and just go with her.

  Instead, I kissed her one last time.

  “See you next year?” I said. “Same place?”

  “Maybe so.” She didn’t look at me. Another gust of wind, and she held herself harder. I took off my gray Key Biscayne High Dolphins sweatshirt and handed it to her.

  “Stay warm,” I said.

  She hesitated a second, then took it, holding i
t, pressing the fleece to her face, her nose, before finally putting it on. “Thank you.” She looked at the stand beside her, where they were packing up a giant ice cream cone. “I really have to go help now.”

  I nodded, and she walked away.

  That was the last time I saw Kirstie. When I met up with the carnival a week later, she was gone.

  THIS YEAR

  “Parker House.” The voice that answers the phone is abrupt and has a southern accent. Angela’s making phone calls, and Karpe’s vegging in front of the WB’s Tuesday night lineup. But I’m thinking of Kirstie. I’m planning on doing something big. I can’t do it without talking to Kirstie first.

  “Can I speak to Kirstie Anderson?”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Friend of hers. I … what kind of place is Parker House, anyway?”

  “Drug rehab. I need your name.”

  Drug rehab? I remember the story she told me about her past. “Michael. Tell her it’s Michael Daye. Is she…?”

  “Michael?”

  The voice softens, and I recognize it.

  “Kirst?” My face and throat turn inside each other until I can barely talk. “Kirstie?”

  “Didn’t think I’d ever hear your voice again.”

  “I’ve been looking for you since—”

  “You were right, Michael. You can’t run, not really. I couldn’t anymore either. I just didn’t have the heart for it, you know?”

  I hold the phone harder.

  “After you left, I left too. I went home to find Erica. My sister.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “Yeah, right here in Lennox. She was having some problems, same type I had at that age. But now it’s getting better. We’re here. Michael, I’m so glad I went home. I don’t know what would have happened to her if I hadn’t. My father … well, he wasn’t helping her any.”

  “And you’re…?”

  “I’m fine. Great, really. Got a job here, answering phones and keeping track of stuff. I got my GED. I’m thinking of maybe junior college in a year or so. And they let me live here, to be with her. I promised I’d never leave again. That was our deal.”

  Junior college. It sounds so normal. Not like the Kirstie I knew, Kirstie in a green T-shirt with carnival lights in her hair.

  “I missed you,” I say, my mind still not totally wrapping around the idea that the voice on the other end of the phone is hers, is all the way in Louisiana. I feel like I could go back to the fairgrounds right now and find her. “Every day, I missed you.”

  “I know. But it was the right thing to do. You taught me that.”

  “Taught you what?” I say, surprised.

  “After you left, I started thinking about what you said about family. I thought family was just something you grew through and got over. But it’s not. I wanted to live without responsibility, but when you do that, you live without having anyone to care about you, too. It’s like you’re not a real person anymore, and I wanted to be real. Now I know I’m not responsible for everything that happens. I wasn’t responsible for what happened to my mother or how my dad was—just what I did. That’s all, but that’s enough.”

  “I loved you, Kirstie. I still… I mean, it’s been a year and I never forgot, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice becomes a whisper. “Yeah, me too. But I need to go now. Someone’s here.”

  “Can I call again?”

  “Yes, I’d like that. Or come see me. I have to go.”

  She hangs up. In the other room Angela’s still on her cell phone, and every inch of me aches to bail, to go outside, to get on a bus and head for Louisiana. Instead, I go back to Karpe’s room.

  “Julian?” Angela’s voice comes over the house intercom system. “Is Michael up there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I say.

  “I spoke to them.” She hesitates. “We need to talk.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  I start toward the door, then turn back. “Angela knows, right? About what you told me?”

  “Yeah, my dad told her. I think he thought I’d be freaked out when he got married.”

  “Did the guy… I mean, did he do anything to you?”

  Karpe shakes his head. “Same as your guy. Just the stuff he did to my mom. That, and the stuff I did to myself.” He reaches for the remote. “You better go down now.”

  I nod and leave. I’m halfway down the stairs when I hear the television: Possible plea bargain in murder case.

  I break into a run.

  LAST YEAR

  I didn’t go to school Tuesday after I left the carnival. Wednesday either. I knew I’d have to go back sometime. Skipping more would only make things worse. But I couldn’t get out of bed. I woke alone, mornings, and thought of Kirstie, waking alone someplace else, someplace I’d never even seen.

  Then I’d roll over and go back to sleep.

  I was a shadow around the house those days too. I didn’t come down to meals with Mom and Walker. I didn’t talk to Mom, who’d given up even on embroidery and spent her days staring out at the ocean. Me, I mostly locked myself in my room, listening to CDs, and went to bed at seven every night.

  Wednesday she came into my room. She gave a little sniff at the door (I’d given up showering, too), then sat on the edge of my bed.

  “You need to go to school, Michael.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the law, for one thing. And Walker will get mad.”

  “It’s always about that, isn’t it?”

  “And I want you to have a future.”

  Well, I don’t. But instead, I said, “Did you tell him yet?”

  “Tell him what?” But then, she smiled. “I did. He was really happy.”

  “Really?” It wasn’t like Walker to be happy, especially if things were going badly at work.

  “He says it will be like a new start—this baby, his new firm. He’s starting a new practice with lower overhead.”

  “I don’t care about his practice or his overhead.”

  She ignored me. “He wants us all to be a family. If you could just try. Go to school.”

  I wanted her off my bed. “How’s your stomach? Still hurt where he hit you?”

  “Michael…”

  “I’ll go tomorrow. Get off my bed.”

  “Have dinner with us.”

  I glanced at my watch. Six forty-five. That’s what this was about—putting on a show for Walker at dinner But I knew I should, knew I’d have to eventually.

  “I’ll do that tomorrow too. I promise. I don’t feel good today.”

  She nodded and stood. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

  She left, going downstairs to finish preparing dinner. I stripped to my boxers, turned out the light, and lay in bed, listening to the ocean. It was so rough, I could hear it through the closed window. I thought of Kirstie again, wherever she was.

  I went to sleep that night knowing what Kirstie had meant when she’d talked about having nothing left to lose. Everything I’d wanted for sixteen years was gone—football, my friends. My whole future. And now the life I’d wanted to trade it for was gone too. I thought there was nothing left to lose.

  I was wrong. Big-time wrong.

  THIS YEAR

  “Plea bargain?” I say to Angela when I walk into her study.

  She nods. “Fifteen years.”

  Fifteen years. In jail. My stomach feels like that day Walker punched me. I can’t breathe.

  Angela’s still talking. “It took me a while to get in touch with her lawyer.”

  “Shit. She did it for me, because I was there … to keep me from saying anything, to keep me from—”

  “You can’t know that, Michael.”

  “I do know it. She was trying to protect me.” I think of the years she wouldn’t let me play ball. And I hear Kirstie’s voice on the phone, Kirstie’s voice saying, You can’t run. Not really.

  I look at Angela. She’s obviously thinking my mother didn’t protect me enough. But she doesn’t k
now it all.

  She says, “I know it’s hard. But it’s not a bad deal, Michael. She won’t serve the whole fifteen years, probably.”

  “But what about battered-spouse syndrome? What about her defense? Shit, she doesn’t belong in jail. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “She killed him, Michael. Fifteen years isn’t that bad. And this way, you don’t have to testify, don’t have to subject yourself to—”

  You can’t run. . . .

  “You don’t understand, Angela. She didn’t kill him. I did.”

  LAST YEAR

  That night, I dreamed I was dismantling rides at the fair. I was using a hydraulic drill. Beside me, someone was hammering. Every once in a while I heard the pounding, even over the shriek of my drill. But mostly it was the screaming, the screaming, filling my head until it was about to explode in a wall of flame.

  I woke, sweating, shaking, not knowing where I was. Everything was blackness, and the hammering, the shrieking, just kept going on and on.

  The screams came from below me, downstairs. It wasn’t like before. It was much more, filling the air, like death. Then I was jumping from bed, stumbling toward the stairs, slipping on cold marble. I don’t even remember running down, just landing.

  Downstairs, lights blazed yellow. The runner on the hallway table was ripped. Objects that had been on top of it lay broken, on the floor.

  I didn’t stop. The cold heat moved me.

  Another scream. Then it all stopped.

  I was in the doorway of Walker’s study. I heard my breath rasping in my ears. Walker was yelling, but I couldn’t make out the words. Only my own breath, louder now.

  And I saw them. He had her up against the fireplace, punching her in the stomach like he did. With each blow, her head slammed the coral fireplace. He was going to kill her. He’d kill her. God, it was never going to end unless I ended it or Walker did.

  Then my eyes went to her stomach.

  What was he doing to the baby?