by Simon Curtis
I’m grateful to have a home in the first place, as they’ve made it clear that I’m on my own after graduation. It wasn’t a surprise for me—I’ve been told I was nothing more than adopted since before I even knew what the word meant—but it’s still left me feeling abandoned and alone.
In front of the bathroom mirror, I run my fingers through my hair, notice bags under my eyes, and wonder what the hell I’d been dreaming about. I just can’t remember, but somehow it seems important.
I finish getting ready as quietly as I can, then head into the wood-paneled hallway. Dozens of faces fill old black-and-white photos that line the hall. Faces I’ve never been told much about, other than not-so-subtle reminders that I am not, in fact, related to any of them. I pass the kitchen, with its nearly ancient appliances and its linoleum floor with the looping ivy patterns. I go down the stairs past the kitchen, through the basement, and step into the garage, where the pungent smell of gasoline, oil, and mildew always chokes me a bit. I grab my rusted old bike, step through the side door, take a deep breath of the early mist, and push off.
The little red house sits near the top of a hill, right up against cave-filled woods, but here in the Ozarks there are a lot of hills and a lot of caves. Pacific, Missouri, is probably one of the tiniest towns to have ever been called a town at all. A relic of another America—one that had been built by trains and industry—the town now exists as a flicker on the way to St. Louis if you’re going up I-44. Small, dilapidated houses line the streets, where grandchildren buy one of the dilapidated houses just down the street from their grandparents and renovate it to fill with children of their own. The population here never really grows; about five thousand people always seem to stick around. Maybe a new generation will have a spurt of children and push it up to 5,255 or so, but somehow just the right amount of people decide to leave or die and it always evens out around five thousand.
Chilled air from a cave pours down the hill behind me. I imagine it would be strange to feel that for the first time, the way a cave releases a constant stream of cool air. Like it’s breathing. I feel it against my cheek, where the first rays of the late-springtime sun are now beaming.
At the bottom of the hill, I take a right on First Street and pedal off toward school.
At Walnut, I take a right and start up another big hill. I do this most every morning, except when it rains, and sometimes even when it does. The hill leading up to Blackburn Park is enough to get my blood pumping, and I think of it as the last step in my process of waking up. I have to get up a little earlier to make the detour every morning, but the view at the top is worth it.
Once the hill crests, I take a path that leads to the towering flagpole at the edge of the limestone bluff. There, the town’s giant American flag stirs in the morning air. Towns like these usually display flags this large in used-car lots, but Pacific has hers placed atop her highest hill.
I park my bike next to a picnic table and walk toward the chain-link fence, the only thing separating me from the two-hundred-foot drop down to the road below. I loop my fingers into the rough metal and inhale.
With the breath I take in the endless trees, the never-ending hills, the infinite sky, all of it. Standing up here on the cliff at Blackburn Park, the entire town beneath my feet, is almost what I imagine standing at the edge of the ocean would be like. I’ve never seen it myself, but I’ve seen it in movies and on TV, and from what everyone always says, standing next to the ocean is awe-inspiring. That the sheer scope of it can make humanity itself feel insignificant. I like that feeling, like there’s something greater out there than the sum of my own existence.
Pacific, Missouri, Pacific Ocean . . . almost the same thing.
The sun bathes the entire valley in a golden orangey pink, burning off the morning dew. Like clockwork, the cicadas begin their day-long, droning cacophony—the sound of summer’s impending arrival. The buzz melds with my thoughts, striking a chord as just another layer of my morning, my being.
I drop my backpack to the ground and pull out my plain black leather journal and a pen, then sit atop a picnic table and look out onto my very own Pacific Ocean. I write
Morning comes again
Sometimes some things are simply inevitable
Some things that never will change
But change is itself inevitable
And yet here I sit, yearning for the inevitable change to pass me by
To lose track of time
Forgo my progression
Progress me down
Down the hill, down with all the others
All the others who do not take the time to climb the hill
And breathe in the morning
And contemplate change
The change that is inevitable
Sun, stop rising higher
Don’t remind me, please
Another trip downhill awaits
Another day is here
Another try to test the fates
And somehow persevere
I’ve written poems and thoughts and whatever words came into my head since I was old enough to do so, but this one was especially emo. I laugh and draw a big X through the words, gather my things, and head off to school.
For real this time.
• • •
“How is she?” I ask.
The hallway buzzes, packed with students like a hive. Worker bees filing down the corridor in chaotic order, prepping for the day. The metallic rattle of dozens of combination locks being undone fills the air, and the scent of gas station coffee wafts over me from somewhere nearby.
I pull a world history book out from my locker as I go through another ritual with my best friend, my only friend, Jonathan.
“Fine. Seems to be taking to the new stuff they put her on.” Jonathan’s eyes linger, looking beyond the space of his locker.
“That’s good.”
We only talk about it like this—briefly mentioned, almost like an insignificant remark about homework before class. His mom is the only family he has, and I know how much she means to him. I don’t want to pry. I just want to make sure my friend is okay.
Jonathan Conner is a good head taller than me, with sandy brown hair he keeps at a buzz, eyes to match, and shoulders broad enough to show how much more he’s grown than the other kids already. He volunteers at the fire department, loves hockey and going to Blues games, and is probably one of those most likely to get that house for sale down the street from his mother’s come his twenties. He’s pretty good-looking too, though I’d never actually tell him that. We’ve always been polar opposites, but I think that’s why we became friends in the first place. Spending time with someone who sees the world differently than you can be comforting. It can also be frustrating at times, but I think that’s half the appeal. I know he will always have my back.
“So what’re we doing tonight?” Jonathan asks, just as one of the varsity hockey players crashes into me accidentally. My books and papers fall to the floor and scatter as he and his buddies take their Neanderthal horseplay farther down the hall.
“What the fuck, dude?” Jonathan yells, immediately outraged. He shoots through the crowd, grabs the guy who collided into me by his collar, and slams him into the lockers.
“I know you think you’re better than everyone else, but you’re not.” Jonathan boils with a deep rage as a crowd draws around.
His temper has always been bad, but he’s had a hard time keeping a lid on anything these days, much less when provoked by the school’s token asshole. Well, one of the school’s token assholes.
“Dude, I didn’t even mean—” the guy stammers as Jonathan slams the locker behind him, hard.
“I don’t give a fuck what you meant,” Jonathan sneers, even as he seems to realize what he’s doing. He lets go of the stunned guy as more spectators gather.
I’m quick to follow him as he pushes his way out of the gathering crowd.
“What the hell, Jonathan? What was that?” My words stop him in his
tracks, and he faces me.
“He has no right. Who the fuck does he think he is?”
“Who do you think you are, Jonathan? It was an accident, but you completely lost it.”
His jaw clenches as he looks away.
“Look, I know you’re going through a really hard time right now—”
“Fuck you, Isaak,” Jonathan says as he walks away.
“Sorry, I just . . . I don’t feel well.” I know they’re the worst possible words to say at that moment, but they slip out anyway.
Jonathan turns back around. “Happy birthday, dude.”
And with that he’s gone.
It’s true though: I don’t feel well. I can feel a buzz in the back of my head, like the beginning of a headache. One that’s been building for days.
• • •
My head is throbbing by the time the last bell of the day rings. My head is an island on the verge of being swallowed by an ocean of pain—waves relentlessly crashing ashore, a tide pushing further and further inward. I wince at the light streaming into Mrs. Howard’s class, lagging behind as everyone else is leaving. Maybe it’s just a migraine.
“Are you all right, Isaak?” Mrs. Howard asks once the room has all but cleared.
Even sound has a dull pain to it.
“Yeah. I’ve just got a bad headache,” I say. “I think it’s a migraine.” I collect my things and stand.
Mrs. Howard pulls her purse from her desk and seems to talk into it. “I’m not supposed to give you guys anything, but I’m not about to let you walk home in pain.”
She hands me three pills, and I just look at them in my hand.
“Ibuprofen. Don’t worry. I’m not giving you the hard stuff. I think I might save those for myself today.” Her voice falters a bit, and I notice that her eyes are wet.
“I’m sorry, Isaak. You should probably go.”
Another falter.
“I hope you feel better.”
She can’t stop the tears from flowing down her cheeks now.
“Thank you for the medicine, Mrs. Howard.”
She nods. “You’re welcome.”
I make my way to the door.
“And, Isaak—”
I stop.
“It’s Debbie.”
She tries to give a faint smile through her tears, but it, too, falters.
I pocket the pills and leave Debbie Howard in her classroom, oblivious to the perfect day just outside the windows, the glaring smudge of red lipstick on her front tooth, and the fact that not a single one of her students had more than a passing shred of interest in trigonometry come sixth period.
• • •
It takes a tremendous amount of effort to get up the last part of the hill before reaching the little red house on Sand Street. I park my bike in the garage and make my way up the basement stairs and into the kitchen, which smells of lemon and bleach. My mom—standing over the sink, scrubbing dishes with her back toward me—doesn’t bother to turn as I walk in.
“How was school?” she asks with a cool indifference.
“I’m not feeling too well, actually.”
She turns to look at me, a suspicious glint in her eyes. “What’s wrong? Do you need to take something?”
“No. Mrs. Howard gave me some ibuprofen already.”
“A teacher gave you pills?” She takes her hands from the soapy water, dries them on the towel hanging below the sink, and turns fully toward me. “I don’t like the sound of that. I find that alarming. Terrifying, actually.”
“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” I say. “She was really upset about something and said she didn’t want to see me in pain. It was totally innocent.”
“Handing out pills to students is completely unacceptable. I won’t tolerate some two-bit teacher drugging up my child.”
She only claims ownership of me when it bolsters her aptitude for getting offended. I’ve lost count of how many free meals we’ve received at restaurants after she just happened to find a hair in her food: “How do you expect me to let my child eat at such an unhygienic establishment? I think I may write to the Health Department!” I think the only thing she’s ever enjoyed about having me around is the wide world of indignancies having a child gives access to.
“Really, Mom, it’s okay. I just have a headache. Nothing to worry about.”
She purses her lips in the way she does when something disgusts her. “You know how I feel about that word.”
Mom. She means the word “mom.”
“I’m sorry,” I start, but before I can finish my sentence, it hits me. My knees buckle as one of the waves crashes ashore a little too hard. I fall forward and my forehead smashes against the corner of the counter. My head makes a loud crack on the floor when I hit the ground, and my mother shouts.
She rushes beside me and slips her fingers beneath my head, but her shouts quickly turn from those of a worried mother, guardian, to a scream of sheer terror, and everything goes dark.
Moments later, when I open my eyes, my mother is still screaming. But it isn’t a scream of concern.
I shoot up, confused, bewildered. “Mom, what’s wrong?”
She scrambles back from me, across the kitchen floor. Her eyes are wide and roiling in fear like a feral, cornered animal.
I touch a finger to my forehead and bring my hand down. It’s scarlet red, dripping with blood.
She’s praying now, almost inaudible, frantic mutterings, but I make out, “God save me; he’s a monster.”
“Mom, tell me what’s wrong!”
She screams in terror. “Get away from me!”
“What’re you talking about?” My hands tremble as panic takes hold of me.
She screams again and pulls a rosary from her pocket, holding it up as if to ward off a demon.
“Get out of my house! Get out! Now!”
“Mom!”
“I am not your mother!” Her entire body shakes as she bellows this toward me. Her face trembles in rage and fear and tiny flecks of spittle fly from the corners of her mouth.
I pick myself up off the floor and run to the bathroom, where I slam the door shut, silencing the sound of her gurgled prayers. After a moment’s pause I look in the mirror and see it.
A huge chunk of skin on my forehead, a flap that’s been sliced loose by my fall, is sealing itself before my eyes. The skin reattaches from the edges and works its way to the middle. Where it reseals, it’s as if there never was a gash in the first place. Soon there’s no trace of the giant bloody wound that was gaping across my forehead mere moments ago.
I stagger back against the wall, bracing myself so I don’t fall again.
Footsteps race past the bathroom and down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. The door slams and the lock clicks tight.
Silently, I stare in horror and wonder at a face in the mirror I no longer recognize.
• • •
I stay in my room for what feels like hours, waiting for a sound, anything, from my mother. My black journal is in my hand, but I can’t write. I just stare. There are no words.
The late-afternoon sun is turning orange when I hear my father come in from work. Almost instantly the door to their room clicks open and I hear her feet scurry down the hall past my door.
She is going to tell him.
After a few minutes that feel like days, my father calls for me. My stomach drops. I don’t know what’s coming, but my heart is pounding harder than my head, and my palms have gone clammy with sweat.
Why am I so nervous? I haven’t done anything.
Each step down the green mile to the kitchen makes my heart pound faster. I walk in to find my parents sitting at the table, staring at its surface, refusing to look at me.
After a moment that feels like an eternity, he speaks. “Sit.”
I take the chair across from them and wait.
“Your mother and I—”
A slight clearing of her throat interrupts him. Carl closes his eyes for a moment and takes a breath.<
br />
“Patricia and I don’t know what you are, Isaak, and to be frank, we don’t want to know.”
My stomach falls away completely.
“We’ve cared for you, raised you as our own, did everything right by you, but we don’t know what to do about this.”
Her red, cried-out eyes are like two immovable boulders, firm and affixed to their spot on the table.
“Whatever you are, it’s not right, not natural, and we don’t want it around us.”
Panic, tears, and a million bubbles of fear well up inside me. The blood rushes to my face, and my mouth goes dry. “But . . . I haven’t done anything.” My voice is barely more than a whisper.
“It’s not about what you’ve done. It’s about what you are.”
“But I’m a good kid. I make perfect grades. I’ve never gotten into any trouble. I don’t know what else—”
“You’re an abomination!”
Her eyes now rage toward me. She trembles and shakes. Her bloodshot eyes lend her a startling appearance. This is a woman worn to the very edge.
“I wished for a baby.” A trickle of clear snot drips from her nose. “I wanted nothing more my whole life. I prayed and prayed and prayed so hard that one day I would have a baby of my own to love. To give a better life than the one that I had. And then you came to us. The answer to my prayers.”
Her breath catches.
“God had listened to me. My entire life spent praying and He finally listened to me, and answered.” Her eyes lock with mine. “I see now that those prayers were in vain.”
She takes the damp, crumpled tissue clenched in her hand and finally wipes her nose and upper lip while I sit, bewildered, unable to process thought or emotion.
“You need to leave.”
He can’t look at me when he says it. For a moment he gives yet another look to Patricia, as if hoping she will find some last bit of mercy and change her mind. Her eyes remain firmly affixed on the table again as her answer. He sighs and continues the task he was ordered to execute.
“You’re turning eighteen tomorrow, tonight, and we want you out by then. You’re no longer welcome in this house. You need to leave.”
