This Broken Road

by A. M. Henry

  This Broken Road

  A. M. Henry

  — Elk & Owl Books—

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by A. M. Henry

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be emailed to the following address:

  owl@elkandowl.com

  The text was set in 12 point Garamond.

  ISBN: 9781072356677

  www.elkandowl.com

  To all who suffer under the weight of addiction:

  you are warriors.

  Never stop fighting.

  Acknowledgments

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for the permission to reprint from the following copyrighted works:

  “Horse Head” by Sixteen Horsepower © 1996 A & M Records. Reprinted with permission of David Eugene Edwards.

  “All the TV’s in Town” by The Handsome Family © 2001 Carrot Top Records. Reprinted with permission of Rennie Sparks.

  “My Russia” by Wovenhand © 2002 Sounds Familyre. Reprinted with permission of David Eugene Edwards.

  “Blood on the Bluegrass” by Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers © 2003 Bloodshot Records. Reprinted with permission of J. D. Wilkes.

  “Light Above the World” by Palodine © 2015 Palodine. Reprinted with permission of Katrina Whitney.

  “Valley of the Mystics” by Holy Grove © 2018 Ripple Music. Reprinted with permission of Andrea Vidal.

  Part I

  You are not needed here

  To help me feel low down

  I’m doin’ it fine all on my own.

  -16 Horsepower

  1.

  I’ve backed myself into a pretty tight corner, but I think, somewhere in my subconscious, I did all of this on purpose. So I can do something other than wander from class to class in total silence.

  “You’re such a sissy!” I shout with as much venom as I can muster.

  In the heat of the moment, words fail me. There are so many things I want to call him, but once I open my mouth I can’t think of anything.

  Ryan Reagan does his best to ignore me, but he’s not the type of guy who can just let insults go, especially insults that question his manhood. I had followed him out of school and waited until he officially stepped off of school property before I started in on him.

  “Hey, Ryan,” I had called, and he stopped and turned, face blank. “You’re a real piece of shit, you know that?” I usually don’t swear, but the jocks in this school don’t understand anything unless you swear at them.

  I watched the emotions play out on his face—the blank expression turned to the half-smile of the village idiot. Clearly, he didn’t think I meant it, so I kept going.

  “You’re a coward,” I spat.

  The smile fell sideways off his chiseled face.

  “What’d you call me?” Ryan said. He tried to keep his voice even, tried to appear calm, but hostility is just part of his aura.

  “You heard me,” I growled. “A COWARD.” A small crowd had gathered behind me by then. Perfect. “The worst kind of coward,” I continued. “I mean, what kind of big brave man needs five of his huge friends to beat up one guy?”

  A calm confidence replaced the look on Ryan’s face. Now he knew what this is about.

  “Whatever.” He turned his back on me.

  That was when I screamed that he was a sissy.

  Ryan throws an arrogant smile over his shoulder, displaying perfect teeth. He shrugs as though it doesn’t matter, as though Derek—battered and bleeding and forced to stay in the hospital overnight and humiliated and getting fitted for dental implants to replace two of his permanent teeth—was just some punk who got beat up and deserved it.

  I feel white-hot anger boiling up somewhere just below my rib cage. I start walking towards Ryan.

  “Like you ever would have gone near him on your own,” I say. “No—you needed four other football players to back you up before you even touched him. I bet you don’t even have the balls to fight me without backup.”

  He laughs at that.

  “You’re gonna try and challenge me to a fight now? What are we, back in second grade?”

  I shrug off his laughter and try to sound nonchalant, try to pretend I don’t know that half the school stands behind me, watching.

  “I figured you’d be too scared,” I say. “You might lose. No; you will lose, and how would that look? Ryan Reagan, beat to a pulp by a five-foot girl because he didn’t have half the football team to save his ass.” My heart beats a million miles a minute and I can’t believe I managed to say all that without stuttering or stumbling over my words. “Pig,” I add as an afterthought.

  I have never hated anyone as much as I hate him right now.

  He laughs again. “Girl?” he jeers. “You’re not a girl, Angela. You’re a whore, and a junkie.”

  He’s annoyed now. I’ll have to aim lower to really get him mad.

  “Junkie, maybe. But whore?” I say. “If I was a whore, I would have screwed you sophomore year when you were practically begging for it. But I don’t screw cowards.”

  He lets out that macho-man guffaw again, but it’s lost some of its previous luster.

  “Come on, Ryan,” I step forward. “I bet you can’t even land one punch. Your aim’s always been awful.”

  A few people behind me snigger and whisper and Ryan’s face turns red. I struggle to hold my ground. Don’t start the fight; let him throw the first punch. I try to channel all the rage I feel into one giant, blood-red ball of fury.

  “Funny, if you think about it,” I say. “You and all those other guys ganging up on him, all jumping on top of him like that. Makes you wonder who the real fags are.”

  Something inside Ryan Reagan’s brain snaps. Only two or three feet remain between us at this point, and he takes a couple steps towards me, shoulders hunched forward like he means business.

  “What’d you call me?”

  He still won’t hit me. I didn’t want to start the fight, but now I think, screw it. I do something I have wanted to do since second grade: I punch Ryan Reagan in the face.

  It’s not a very good punch; my knuckles catch his ear and his temple. He stumbles backward a step, and then he comes at me.

  The blow hits me in the stomach, and I can tell by the way he tries to wrap his other arm around my back that he thinks I’ll go down immediately and the fight will be over, and that pisses me off. Winded or not, I’m not going down. I have a lack of height on my side and aim a fist straight up, hitting him squarely in the chin, which sends his bottom jaw crashing into the top one so hard he actually cries out. He grabs his mouth and tries to back off, but I kick him in the ankle, throwing him off balance, and he topples over.

  My luck runs out then. Ryan’s either really pissed or he realizes that I won’t go down easily. He gets up, one hand still on his mouth, and comes at me, but I stand my ground, ready to fight him.

  The rest of the fight is less dramatic, and the whole thing probably lasts like ten seconds. We punch and kick and miss a lot and scuffle in a sort of frantic, disorganized schoolyard fight until I take a step in the wrong direction.

  We had managed to stay on the sidewalk throughout the whole showdown, but then I take that one step and my left foot slips off the
curb. It throws me off balance, I fall sideways, and all my weight lands on my left leg. My left leg, with the bad knee and the bad hip. I go down fast, because my leg twists at the wrong angle, and I roll into the street, trying not to cry out from the pain—a burning, screaming pain that erupts from under my left kneecap and shoots up to my hip in waves. The kind of pain where I don’t know whether to cry or vomit. The fight doesn’t matter anymore; I just want to curl up into a ball until the pain stops.

  Somewhere several light years away, I hear Ryan’s confident laugh as he brushes himself off. He says something, but I can’t pull anything out of the sound—no words or meaning. I take deep breaths and try to get up, feeling the cold sweat on my forehead.

  I forget all about Ryan and Derek and how pissed I was two minutes ago. My parents will slit my throat if I’ve messed up my knee again. Surgery, months of physical therapy, village scandal. If I just re-injured myself, they will definitely kill me. Deep breaths. I’ll be fine.

  And then I register the sirens.

  “You are so dead,” Ryan mumbles in my direction, holding his jaw as though it might fall off. He has blood on the corners of his mouth.

  I put all my weight on my right leg and try to stand, but I can’t quite manage it. I slump back down and sit on the curb, first trying to pull my left knee up to my chest and then stretching the leg out in front of me. Nothing makes the pain go away, and my hip is on fire. I check my watch—only ten minutes have passed since school let out.

  A police car, lights flashing but sirens now turned off, pulls up near the curb. Most of the onlookers have dispersed, not wanting to get involved. Only a few guys remain, football players hovering around Ryan.

  I sigh and concentrate on the ground as Officer Conroy steps out of his car, and I only see his black boots when he walks over and stops in front of me.

  “Someone called in a fight,” he says, trying to sound gruff and authoritative. He’s just barely out of the academy and looks younger, face still sprinkled with bad acne, so the tough-cop thing doesn’t really work.

  I presume he takes in the scene in front of him—Harrowmill’s football captain bruised and bleeding, standing in a huddle with his friends, and me, the village outcast sitting on the curb and hyperventilating.

  “Is there a problem, Mr. Reagan?” Officer Conroy asks. “Miss Lillegard?”

  I look Ryan straight in the eye; he looks pissed.

  “No, sir,” he says, jaw clenched. His voice sounds funny, like he’s trying not to move his mouth too much.

  “Miss Lillegard?”

  I look up into my own reflection in his Aviator glasses. I see a cut across my left eyebrow and blood on my mouth. I give Conroy my fakest smile.

  “No problem, officer,” I say. “I tripped. Bad leg, you know.” I pat my thigh. “Ryan here tried to help me up. Might be best if I just sit for a while.”

  The corner of Officer Conroy’s mouth turns down. “How ‘bout I give you a ride home, Miss Lillegard?”

  I really hate being called that.

  “I’ll walk, thanks.”

  “I’d really rather give you a ride,” says Conroy, a definite edge to his voice now. “Make sure you get home safe.”

  He won’t leave without me. I don’t have the energy to argue. I sigh and try to stand up again, gritting my teeth through the pain. I hobble towards the police cruiser and Officer Conroy has to grab me by the arm after two steps to stop me from falling and I want to kick him in the groin. When we reach the car, he opens the passenger door for me.

  The passenger door. He doesn’t make me sit in the back, behind the cage. I find this odd.

  “You boys go on home,” Conroy calls to Ryan and the others before he gets into the car. “Stay out of trouble.”

  I’d laugh at what a phony he is if my leg didn’t hurt so much.

  2.

  Conroy turns his car around and then turns left onto Main Street and drives slowly through town. At three in the afternoon, there aren’t that many people around. Harrowmill consists of a short block of old brick and stone buildings squashed together on both sides of the street. On one side: the shabby Victorian house converted into a law office, a bank, a convenience store, a gas station, and Mario’s Pizza. On the other side: Vinnie’s BBQ, two pubs, the tattoo parlour, the True Value store, and the Polish bakery.

  I watch a woman struggling to get a baby carriage through the True Value doors. A few boys dressed like they think they’re hip hop stars hang out in the convenience store parking lot smoking. Where you loiter after school shows exactly where you stand on the social ladder, at least during freshman and sophomore year of high school. These guys haven’t figured out yet that no one thinks they’re cool. The real cool kids hang out at the Quick Chek in the next town. I never hung out with them. We rebels preferred Harrowmill’s wide selection of abandoned buildings.

  We pass the bakery and Conroy turns onto High Street. After we pass a few old houses, the village gives way to rolling green fields dotted with the odd tree or farmhouse. Then Conroy turns left onto New Gwyndermere Drive, the only street in the whole town with mini-McMansions trying to look like the actual McMansions in New Jersey that the residents of Harrowmill could never afford.

  I prefer the run down farmhouses, but my parents have no taste.

  I say nothing during the five-minute ride to my house, and want to scream when Conroy pulls into the driveway.

  The Cadillac sits outside the garage—my father is home.

  Conroy no doubt gets some kind of sick pleasure out of this. He knows my father, so he knows exactly how my father will react to me brought home by the police. Again.

  I try to get out of the car, but I just can’t do it. Each movement sends a fresh wave of white-hot pain through my knee and my hip. Officer Conroy appears at my side and helps me hobble to the front door. We make slow progress since I have to lean almost all of my weight into him. My father opens the door before we reach it. I hate Conroy for this.

  “Angela?” says my father, his face full of concern for whoever else might be involved, hurt because of his stupid, worthless daughter. “What happened, Artie?”

  “Seems like there might have been some kind of fight out in the schoolyard,” Officer Conroy replies.

  “It’s nothing,” I say, trying to sound calm. “There was no fight. I just fell.”

  Dad wears his unblinking, stony-eyed, forehead-creased frown, eyebrows pointed straight down. The I-Don’t-Believe-You-And-You’re-Totally-Gonna-Get-It-Later look.

  “Her and the Reagan boy looked a little roughed up,” Conroy ignores me.

  “Is that so,” Dad grumbles. “Well, thanks for bringing her home.”

  We reach the door and Dad steps aside, not looking at me anymore. He points inside, towards the stairs. I shove Officer Conroy away and hold onto the door jamb, keeping as much weight off the left leg as possible.

  “You’re a good man, Artie,” I hear Dad slap Conroy on the shoulder.

  Time slows down. I’m shaking and sweating and I feel really glad I haven’t eaten all day because at least when I puke (and I’m totally going to puke) it’ll be nothing but bile. There’s nothing to hold onto between the front door and the staircase. It’s only like three feet, but from here it looks like three miles.

  “Just glad to help, Mr. Lillegard,” says Officer Conroy, colossal kiss-ass.

  “Say hi to the old man for me, huh?”

  “Will do, sir.”

  The people in this town are such clichés. It doesn’t help my nausea.

  I have taken my third step when the front door closes. I pick up the pace and hobble as fast as I can to the stairs. I refuse to collapse, refuse to look weak in front of my father. When the banister finally comes within reach, I grab it so hard my knuckles crack against the wood, echoing through the hallway.

  “Fighting, Angela?”

  I try very hard not to jump when he raises his voice, but fail. Instead, I do my best to ignore him and climb the stairs without st
umbling. My pride will kill me.

  “And now you’ve gone and messed up your leg again.” He manages to pour so much rage and hate into his voice without actually shouting that it turns my blood to ice. “Well, I don’t care what the hell you did to it this time. You’re not going back to the doctor, and you sure as hell aren’t going back to that physical therapist. You think we’re made of money?”

  Tears threaten to burn their way through my eyelids, more from the pain than the lecture. My breath catches in my chest and for the first time I feel the spot over my eye where Ryan hit me, and the cut inside my mouth where I must have bit my cheek.

  “Don’t you walk away from me when I’m speaking to you!” My father almost shouts.

  I turn around and stare at him from the fourth stair.

  “You’re still out of control, Angela,” he says. “You can’t keep putting the family through this. You…” He stops, shakes his head, and looks at the floor. “We just want you to put your life back together.” He sighs. “Just… Just go to your room.”

  *

  It takes me several minutes to get to my bedroom. The bed looks too far away, so I collapse onto the floor and kick the door closed with my good leg, and then stare at the ceiling until all the aches and pains start to fade. I forgot all the breathing exercises they taught me at pain management.

  The front door opens and closes twice, and muffled voices float upstairs—Casey and a friend, I think. I left all my stuff at school, so I can’t do my homework.

  The clock on my nightstand projects the time onto the ceiling. The blue numbers read 4:48 when Casey comes upstairs and taps on my door.

  “Angela?” she squeaks.

  I grunt in response and she opens the door, slowly peeking inside. She looks worried, but then again, Casey has these big, expressive blue eyes that always look either scared or surprised.