Next, I take ten bucks and put it in my “bank.” It’s a gray metal box I picked up at Salvy a few years ago. I even found a lock and key, like, a year later. I keep it underneath the tallest pine tree along the back wall of the cemetery. After the third time digging up the box I realized what a moronic idea it was to bury it. So now it’s just hidden really good.
No one ever goes into this cemetery. At least not in the four years I’ve been hiding out there. That’s when I started skipping school a lot and wandering around the streets. That’s also when I discovered that the police officers know who should be in school and who shouldn’t. They’re smart. So I had to find a place to hide. A place with no people. No live people, anyway.
I’ve checked out the headstones, and they’re old—some of ’em you can’t even read anymore. Most of the stones are from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. The only person I’ve ever seen is the old guy who cuts the grass in between the headstones. He comes every single Friday, rain or shine, summer or winter, at exactly 9:15 in the morning. He scared the crap out of me the first time I saw him. I don’t think he saw me, though. If he did, he never let on. I’d been sitting against one of the bigger headstones, reading the third Harry Potter book, when he walked right by me, two rows over.
Immediately I’d ducked down and stayed down. He had passed by me three more times—twice on the mower and once as he left the cemetery.
It didn’t take me long to figure out his schedule, so I make sure I’m either not there when he is or I’m on the move so he doesn’t see me. It works for me, and it means I’m not in school with the rest of the dumbasses.
I hide my bike behind the huge holly bush and climb through the break in the fence. It’s 7:30 p.m. on a Friday, so I know the old guy’s already been here. I’ll be alone. I just want to breathe. In and out. A few times. And a few more times. I hold my hands out in front of me to measure how steady I am, how clear my head is.
I slide down the tree trunk and watch the day turn gray and dark, like me. I look toward my bike and smile.
It took me eleven weeks of saving my dough to buy my Haro Original Freestyler on Craigslist. I actually found some forty-year-old dude who bought it without his wife knowing, and she was pissed. He bought it because it reminded him of the bike he had in the 1970s. He told me his wife said he was going through a midlife crisis and she thought it wasn’t fair for him to spend their hard-earned money on something so useless. I didn’t care about him, his wife, or his stupid crisis. I just wanted his Original Freestyler.
He paid 545 bucks for it brand-new, but just wanted his wife to stop bitching at him, so he sold it to me for 350 bucks.
Can you say, “score”?
Every other bike I’ve ever had came from Salvy. And I’ve had some semigood ones over the years. But no bike can come close to my Haro. It’s nicer than my mother’s crappy car.
It’s got chrome, and Tuff Wheels, and it’s retro-gear heaven on this crap Earth. I keep it triple-locked with crazy-tough chains back behind my apartment. I don’t know what it is with us poor people, but we love to steal from one another. I don’t get it. And we’ll steal anything that’s not locked, stapled, strapped down, alarmed, or guarded. It doesn’t seem to matter who owns it, just that the other person wants it. I don’t know if all crap neighborhoods have to deal with stealing, but I know my crap neighborhood does.
So I triple-lock my Haro.
But not here. I don’t lock it here. Who’s gonna steal it? The old guy on the lawn mower? Don’t think so.
I watch the sun disappear completely, and I sit in the dark. I’m not afraid here. It’s too peaceful and quiet. I think in the dark. And I think. And Operation Freedom takes solid shape in my head.
Like, a-piece-of-frozen-dog-shit solid.
Victor
I ROUND THE CORNER OF OUR BLOCK. JAZZER’S taking her sweet old time with this walk. She usually has a lot more zing in her step. “Come on, girl. There’s Mom; she’s home from work.” She sits down on the neighbor’s grass. “Jazz, come on.”
She lies down.
“All right,” I say. “Come on, I’ll carry you.” I walk the rest of the way home cupping Jazzer in my hand, holding her against my chest. She falls asleep.
I lay her in her bed and walk into the kitchen to find my mother.
“Hey,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve seen her since the “dinner of disappointment.”
“I was almost killed yesterday. This . . . this . . . animal of a boy nearly attacked me at the Salvation Army. He used disgusting, foul language. I barely got out with my life.”
I used to get sucked into my mother’s madness when I was younger. She suffers from what I’ve named “overdramatosis.” I used to worry and cry with her, and fear for her safety. In a weird way it made me feel protective of her. Not anymore. My father still falls for it, though. He falls hard and blows his warm breath onto her burning fire of craziness, and then they both burn bright and hot for a while.
“Wow,” I say. “That sucks.” I wish I could tell her about my day. About Bull and the punch and the humiliation. But I can’t. And I don’t.
She stops her pacing and flies up to my face. “I will not hear that type of language in my own home. You will not use that word, do you understand?”
I look down at her and say, “Fine.”
I want her to walk away first, so I can go up to my room. She says she has to lie down; recalling her near-death experience has taken a toll on her. She shouts to me from the balcony, “Why is there laundry going, Victor? Was Consuelo here today? She is only contracted for four days. She wasn’t supposed to come today. We need someone who speaks English clearly. I can’t keep explaining things to her.”
I close my eyes and let her finish before I shout back from the kitchen, “I’m doing laundry, Mom. Consuelo wasn’t here today. And she speaks English fine.”
“Don’t shout to me.” I hear what I think is a foot stomp, and I roll my eyes. She continues, “Come in this foyer so I can see you when you speak to me.”
I do as she says.
“Now, why are you doing laundry?” she asks in her perfectly toned robot voice.
I tell her that I spilled something on my white golf shirt at lunch. I intentionally leave out that it was chocolate milk. She thinks chocolate milk is a poor person’s dessert and will rot your teeth. In sixth grade I started drinking it with my school lunch, as an act of pure rebellion.
“Well, why didn’t you leave it for the maid? That is her job, Victor.”
I want to get in her face and tell her that she’s an evil, robotic witch. I wish I had the guts to.
I just exhale and I tell her I don’t know.
Bull
MY MOM ISN’T HOME WHEN I GET BACK FROM THE cemetery, but my pop is. Except he’s unconscious. He’s passed out across the kitchen table. Beating the crap out of me yesterday must’ve tired him out. Poor guy.
I open the refrigerator and laugh to myself. I don’t know why I ever bother looking in the fridge, but I still do it, like five times a day. I don’t know what I expect to find. Food? Yeah, right. Only thing that’s ever in there is beer. I shut the fridge and open the cabinet next to it. On the rare occasion we have some type of food, that’s where it would be.
A few years ago my mom snuck off to some community-run parenting class. Now, before you get the idea that she went so she could learn how to be a better mom, let me set you straight. She went because they gave away free food each day, just for going to the class. And for the whole week that cabinet had food in it. Boxes of crackers, cookies, cereal, and noodles; cans of soup; and jars of sauce. Real food. I clearly remember standing in front of it and crying like a girl. Neither of them saw me boo-hooing, trust me; they were passed out by that time.
Tonight’s food selection is the two ends of a loaf of bread in a crumpled plastic bag. That’s it. No butter. I’m so hungry I almost wish we had mouse-turd butter. I eat the first bread-end in one bite. Swallow. Then the second.
Dinner is served.
If you think my mom got anything out of those parenting classes, you’re fucking delusional. She went hungover every day and told me she fell asleep two of the days. She said the teacher got pissed at her and asked her to leave on the last day. My mom said she yelled at her in front of the whole class of parents and said she wasn’t going nowhere without her free food. She earned it. The teacher handed her a brown grocery bag, then got a huge Latino dude to escort her out of the building.
Mom was so proud of herself.
I take another look at my pop, spread out across our kitchen table, which is barely big enough for two people to sit at, and I am filled with anger. A rage boils in my gut, and it’s so violent and painful that I gag.
I hate him. I used to love him; at least I think I did. But that was before I could wipe my own ass, before I knew any better. I stare down at him and let it sink in. I really hate him. I hate everything about him. And this is new for me, this clear thinking.
I hate his white, slicked-back hair; his yellow teeth; his blue eyes that used to be really blue but have turned an ugly shade of blue-gray; his beer gut; his stained white T-shirts and tan work pants.
And his hands. I really hate his hands. Those hands are weapons.
It’s at this exact moment that I know, 100 fucking percent, that my life will be so much better when he is dead.
Operation Freedom is a go.
Victor
I’M IN BED WHEN I DECIDE I’D RATHER BE DEAD than alive. It isn’t that I hate the being alive part, it’s that I hate my entire life and I know that not living would be a lot easier. I’m probably not making any sense. This is all new thinking for me. And I can thank my lovely mother for putting the thought in my head in the first place.
In her overly dramatic way, she retold the Salvation Army horror story at dinner.
“Tomas, please don’t ask me to ever drop anything off at that wretched place ever again. That boy wanted to . . . oh, I don’t know what evil was running through his small brain. But just promise me, Tomas. It was like he wanted me dead. Like having me dead would be easier than getting my tax receipt. The animal.”
I let my father breathe his “Oh, Darlings” all over her fire of crazy while the words “having me dead would be easier” held a party in my head. Those six words danced and jumped and high-fived each other. They blew noisemakers and tossed colorful confetti and then danced around some more.
Having me dead would be easier!
I let the whole idea take me over as I lie in bed, Jazzer asleep on my chest.
I rationalize these new thoughts. I certainly wouldn’t be leaving a group of friends behind, a girlfriend, or anyone. So I’m not being selfish. My parents never wanted me in the first place, so they’ll have me out of their hair just in time for their European trip. I tell myself I’m actually doing them a favor. Because I am. I only have one grandparent, and she hasn’t seen me in years. We gave up the painful phone conversations years ago, when my mom would make me call her and thank her for her birthday gift. I never knew what to say and neither did she. My mom has been calling her “forgetful” lately, so she probably wouldn’t even realize I’m gone. My thoughts are making so much sense. My thinking is crystal clear.
Jazzer wakes up and slowly positions her little body right under my left ear. She curls up into a ball and makes this tiny little yawn/squeak sound. It’s the sound she makes when she is perfectly happy. I think it’s the best sound in the world. And then it hits me.
Jazzer would fall apart without me. She really does love me. Then I fall apart.
I don’t know where the category-five waterworks are coming from, but they are here, and I’m officially sobbing like a baby. What makes my stomach clench is the thought that my teacup poodle, who technically isn’t even my dog, is the only thing, human or otherwise, that would stop me from committing suicide.
Bull
LAST NIGHT I FELL ASLEEP CREATING VARIOUS SCENES in my mind, all ending with Pop dead. It sounds sick, I know. But I slept like a rock.
Knowing there’s no food in the kitchen cabinet, I brush my teeth and am out the door pretty fast. Once I get my third bike lock undone, I’m on my way to school. Then it hits me: It’s Saturday. Idiot.
Instead of listening to Pop bitch about his headache, I decide to chill at the cemetery for a while before I have to go to work at ten. After I crawl through the rusty and bent part of the black wrought-iron fence, something catches my eye. I know every single inch of this graveyard, every headstone and bush, so a brown lunch bag sitting in the exact spot I normally sit in—well, that jumps out at me real quick. It wasn’t here last night.
I squat down next to the fence and let my eyes roam the whole place. The old guy’s truck isn’t there. Of course it isn’t. It’s Saturday, not Friday. Idiot. I don’t see anyone or anything.
I’m alone, so I squat-crawl the ten feet over to my spot at the base of the tree and open the bag. I rummage through. It looks like someone’s lunch, all packed up nice by their mommy. No sandwich, but there’s a plastic bottle of fruit drink, a bag of chips, a granola bar, and an apple.
I look around again. Whoever put the bag here did it not too long ago, because the drink’s still cold and covered with beads of sweat.
I’m still alone.
I dump the contents of the bag onto my lap and lift the bag to my face, just to be sure I haven’t missed any food. Stuck to the bottom of the bag is a Post-it note. I reach in and peel it off so I can read it.
Enjoy!
That’s all it says. One word. And enjoy I do. At one point I have to remind myself to breathe, which helps me slow down and actually taste the food. God, the apple is good. I think about it. I haven’t had a piece of fresh fruit since third grade, when Alison Smith’s mother brought in a humongous bowl of fruit salad for her birthday. That was the last time. Unbelievable.
I look around again, half expecting someone to pop up and get pissed because I ate their bag of food. But no one comes. I check my box of money and count it. $376.54.
I laugh, keeping the fifty-four cents in there. That fifty-four cents has been in there for, like, four years. I decided a long time ago that I like the sound it makes when I move the box around. So it stays.
I lie back on the freshly mown grass with a full stomach and make the biggest plan of my life. I’m going to shoot my pop, and then I’ll go away. Far away.
Suddenly, the $376.54 has a new purpose.
Victor
TODAY IS SUNDAY. CHURCH DAY. PHONY FAMILY Breakfast Day. I hate this day.
“I will not walk into church late, Victor. You know the whole church watches us walk in,” my mother says through my closed bedroom door.
I so want to say, Wouldn’t your life be easier without me, Mother? But I zip up my pleated khakis and breeze by her in the hall.
“No ‘good morning’ for your mother?” she says after me. I am on the second from the top step when she says, “Victor! Stop right there!”
I stop and stay facing forward. An intentional act on my part to tick her off.
“You turn around right now and face me when I’m speaking to you.”
I roll my eyes before I turn around.
Her voice is steely. “Now say ‘good morning’ to your mother before you move one more muscle.”
“Good morning, Mother,” I say. I bound down the rest of the staircase quickly, so I can get far away from her.
I hear her tell my dad that she is happy I’m not going to Europe with them because I disgust her. Not my crankiness or ignoring her. Me. I disgust her.
One thing is definite: She disgusts me.
The car ride to church is silent. For me, anyway. My parents chirp back and forth at each other like happy little robots.
“You look lovely today, Aubrey,” my father says.
“Thank you, darling. So you like my dress?”
“I do, I do.”
Blah, blah, blah.
I always laugh to myself on the
way to church. It’s not that I think church itself is funny; I think church is stupid. I laugh inside at the fact that my parents go to church every single solitary Sunday, faithfully. Same church, same time, same pew. They probably say the same prayers in their robot heads.
My mother: Dear God, please let me impress every human being in this church.
My father: Dear God, please let my wife impress every human being in this church.
Here’s the funny part: The same two people who go to church each week treat their only son like a cold sore. Actually, cold sores probably get more attention, even though that attention is directed at making them go away. They still are looked at and have creams rubbed on them and maybe even get prayers directed at them. They are seen. People notice cold sores. I bet if I end up getting a perfect 2400 when I retake my SATs, my parents would find some way to screw up my victory. Nothing I do is good enough for them. Not one thing.
But they go to church every Sunday and phony-baloney it with the whole congregation. Shaking hands and patting backs; complimenting jewelry or new hairstyles; making golf dates, lunch dates, dinner plans.
Talking to people.
Noticing people.
Seeing people.
Why don’t they ever see me?
I stop laughing to myself. I’m silent both inside and out now.
Bull
SCHOOL ENDS IN ONE WEEK. I MAKE THE DECISION to not skip. I want to make it to junior year, and I’ve missed a shitload of classes this year. So sue me.
School is where I keep my postcard of the beach. It’s taped to the back of my locker. I don’t need any wiseasses thinking I’m either missing some stupid girl I met at the beach or whatever. I just want to keep it private. Like if King Nerd Victoria saw it, his enlarged freak brain would cook up some story, I know it. I don’t want any cooked-up stories going around about me. Even though I don’t think I’ve ever seen Victor Konig talk to a single person in this school, I’m not taking any chances. Besides, I’d pound him to a pulp if he ever said a single word about it or me.
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