This Broken Road

by A. M. Henry

  “Hey, Mr. L.,” Derek says.

  “Derek...” Dad looks lost.

  “How are things?” Derek asks.

  “Oh... Okay. And you?”

  “I’m very well, thank you.”

  I try to cover a laugh because Dad clearly just wants to escape back upstairs with his toast. Derek pours some of Mom’s almond milk into his coffee and then heads towards the living room. Dad takes the opportunity to flee.

  I hear the basement door opening and feet thudding down the stairs. Derek knows Mom’s policy on bringing Things That Stain into the living room. I go down after him and by the time I settle onto the old sectional, he has the Nintendo hooked up to the old TV. Dad’s Super Nintendo, from when he was in high school, still works perfectly. Derek starts up a game of Super Mario.

  Derek spent a lot of time down here, on this couch and before that, the beige canvas monstrosity covered in huge misshapen flowers all done in that early 1990’s color palette of pastel teal, coral, pink, and yellow. We watched random movies on the VCR and played video games on the Nintendo or the Sega Saturn, usually snuggled together under a blanket because the basement is always freezing.

  I miss that. I don’t remember when we stopped.

  “So you’ve been hanging out with Ryan?” Derek asks.

  He catches me off guard. How does he even know that?

  “Casey told me,” Derek adds. “We have a free period together.”

  “Harmon’s making us do a history project together.”

  “Oh, man, Harmon...” Derek gives a dramatic shake of his head and starts laughing.

  “Hilarious.”

  I watch the television while Derek squashes angry mushrooms and then catches a leaf so he can turn into a raccoon and fly. I always hated playing video games; I could never get the hang of them. Plus I get bored after like ten seconds.

  “You look good,” Derek says after a while.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’m serious.” He frowns at me. “You look like... like you’re alive again.”

  I lean my head on Derek’s shoulder and part of me wishes we could go back to grade school when life seemed so much simpler.

  “I think I feel alive,” I say.

  We sit in silence for a while, Derek flying through each level of Super Mario like he has them memorized (which at this point he probably does), me content to just watch.

  “He’s not a bad guy, you know,” Derek says. “I mean yeah, he’s a total asshole, but he’s not as horrible as everyone thinks.”

  I look up at Derek, one eyebrow raised in a disbelieving glare.

  “Don’t do that!” he exclaims. “You look just like your father.”

  I give him what I think is a pretty good shove, but I may as well have hurled myself against a block of cement for all the impact it has. Derek barely moves a millimeter.

  “I mean it, though,” Derek says. “Ryan’s a bully and a total douche most of the time. Yeah he’ll mock you to death, but if you’re in a jam and you need help like right now, he’s the sort of guy who would drop everything to help you. He’ll bitch and moan and make fun of you the whole ride to your mechanic, but he’ll drive you there and he’ll never tell you that you owe him one.”

  I can’t stop the Dad-frown. “You do remember middle school, right?”

  “I try really hard not to.”

  “Remember when Ryan read Stephanie’s diary to the whole class? And then he and his friends turned that love poem she wrote you into a song? And followed you around school singing it for like a week?”

  “I’m actively attempting to erase that file.”

  “Or the time he told everyone that every weekend you put on dresses and makeup and a wig and pretended to be Whitney Houston?”

  “In fairness, that one was pretty creative for a twelve-year-old.”

  “Ugh, whatever,” I say, giving up.

  Derek drains his mug of coffee and sets the mug down on the old coffee table. “Want to go get a coffee?”

  “You know there’s more upstairs.”

  “But I want to go out and get a coffee,” Derek says.

  “Fine, but only if it’s Quick Chek.”

  21.

  On Monday morning after homeroom, Ryan waits at my locker. My suspicion must show on my face, because he laughs as I approach and says, “Don’t worry, I won’t read your diary out loud to anyone.”

  “Did I leave something in your car?”

  “Just some grease stains, and a hypodermic needle that fell under the seat.”

  “Funny.”

  He moves aside so I can open my locker. “I thought I’d… I dunno, walk with you to class. I have English across the hall from you.”

  I frown, stuffing books into my bag. “You’ll be a social pariah, you know. Being seen with me.”

  He frowns right back. “Like I give a shit.”

  I close my locker and head down the hall towards the stairs. He falls into step next to me.

  “What’d you do on Sunday?” he asks.

  “Watched TV,” I reply. “And ate ice cream.”

  “Sounds like a good time.”

  “It was. There was an SVU marathon.”

  “There’s always an SVU marathon.”

  “I know. It’s great.”

  “You and my mom should hang out.”

  “Only if she bakes cookies.”

  “I’ll tell her that before the next marathon.”

  We reach the B wing on the second floor. I noticed a number of stares from my former classmates on the way, but did my best to ignore them. When we reach the door to Mr. Sweeney’s classroom, I suddenly feel awkward. I never had a boy walk me to class before. I don’t think I even like this boy.

  Ryan saves me from any potential awkwardness.

  “See you in history,” he says, and walks away without a backwards glance.

  I can’t concentrate in English. Or in Chemistry or Algebra. What the hell is happening here? I wonder if this is some elaborate joke Ryan has set up, something he and his friends can laugh about later. And then I realize I haven’t seen him with his friends in a while—not since the thing with Derek.

  In history, Ryan sits in his usual seat on the other side of the room. We still haven’t decided on what to do as far the “art project.” Mr. Harmon drones on about the events leading up to World War I, and I retain none of it.

  “I feel like Chinese food,” Ryan says when he meets me outside Mr. Harmon’s classroom.

  “Not sure they have that on the menu today.”

  “That’s why we’re going to Golden Dynasty.”

  “I’m still a junior. I can’t leave for lunch.”

  Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Now who’s the sissy?”

  I scowl. He laughs and heads down the hall, towards the front doors. I weigh my options: another lunch spent sitting alone in the art room, or free Chinese food and a potential detention.

  Golden Dynasty makes the best pork fried rice in the known world.

  “Why don’t you hang out with your friends anymore?”

  We sit at a table by the window. The steam from the kitchen turns the outside world into a blur of formless color.

  “Something changed,” Ryan answers. “After that game. I don’t know if I ever even liked any of them.”

  I can understand that. Since the first grade, we’ve gone to school with the same sixty kids. We don’t really have a lot of room for changing cliques.

  Ryan gets us back to Harrowmill in time for seventh period, my stomach beginning its complaints about the Chinese food.

  *

  Ryan waits by my locker after eighth period.

  “Ride home?” he says.

  “Sure.”

  He takes the most backwards route possible to my house, turning a five minute drive into a twenty minute one.

  “Why are you hanging out with me?” I ask.

  As seems to be his usual M.O., he doesn’t answer right away. “It’s not your turn.”

&
nbsp; “So ask me something first.”

  “I’ll give you a freebie.” More silence while we drive down Windamere Road, a street too narrow for two cars to pass side by side. “You’re honest.”

  I wait for him to elaborate. He doesn’t.

  “Honest?” I ask.

  “You called me a bully,” he says. “You’re right. And no ever stood up to me. Not once. But you’re not afraid to. Shit, you actually challenged me to a fight. Hurled insults at me in front of half the school. Called me out on being an asshole.”

  “And that makes me honest?”

  “You’re not afraid of anything.”

  “And you are?”

  He slams on the brakes and pulls over, halfway onto the yellowing grass of a dead corn field, and shuts off the engine.

  “I’m afraid of everything.” He looks angry, but not the hostile Ryan Reagan I thought I knew. This is someone else. “I don’t think I even knew that until you started that fight over Derek.” He runs his hands through his dark hair, making it stick up in odd places. “I’m afraid of what happens after high school. Afraid of failing all my classes. Afraid of my parents thinking I’m a failure. I’m still afraid of what everyone else thinks, though not as much as I used to be. I’m afraid of what you think.”

  No one has ever laid all of their insecurities out in front of me like this. I don’t know what to say.

  Ryan turns and looks at me. “How are you so not afraid?”

  I hadn’t even realized that I’m not really afraid of anything. I worry sometimes—about having to do another year of high school, about slipping one step in the wrong direction and my parents punishing me for it—but now that I consider it, I don’t really feel scared about those things. The truth of why looms in front of me, and makes me wish I was still afraid.

  “I have nothing left to lose,” I tell him.

  Ryan reaches over, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me.

  I let him. And I kiss him back.

  22.

  I feel like fireworks erupt in one half of my brain while the other half burns down in a blazing inferno. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to think. My room—my bare white cell—feels like a prison.

  The echo of the house phone comes up the stairs. It rings three times before Dad’s heavy footsteps stomp into the kitchen. Silence, then Dad’s thudding steps reach the bottom of the stairs.

  “Angela, phone!”

  I drag myself off the floor and head downstairs. Dad’s waits at the bottom, one eyebrow raised.

  “It’s a boy,” he says.

  I react too fast, and he almost smiles at the look of surprise on my face. He hands me the phone and walks away.

  I lift the phone to my ear in slow motion. “Hello?”

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan says.

  “Why are you sorry?”

  A floorboard squeaks and I see Dad’s shadow hovering in the living room doorway.

  “Don’t be sorry,” I say. “You were being honest.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re a bigger asshole than I am.”

  “Duh.”

  “You want to do something later?”

  “You mean like set fire to abandoned cars, score some dope, and get wasted?”

  From the doorway, Dad coughs.

  “I was thinking more junk food,” says Ryan.

  “Let me check with the wardens. I’ll call you back.” I hang up without saying goodbye.

  Dad emerges from the shadows. “I didn’t know you were friendly with the Reagan boy. Weren’t you two fighting in school a few weeks ago?”

  “We made up. And we have that history project we’ve been working on together. Can I go out with him later?” Mom and Dad know I’ve gone to Ryan’s house twice for schoolwork, but they don’t know about the driving and junk food.

  Dad frowns.

  As far as parents in this town are concerned, Ryan serves as mascot for This Is How Your Child Should Be—athlete, good looking, decent grades, friends with everyone. Our parents never believed that he liked to torment the rest of his classmates. I can only imagine the struggle going on in Dad’s mind. Either his Problem Child has suddenly turned out alright, or one of Harrowmill High’s Golden Children is not as perfect as everyone thinks if he deigns to hang out with the village outcast.

  Dad sighs, looks at the floor, and heads for the kitchen. I go back up the stairs to my room and hear him rummaging around in a drawer. Before I get to the top of the stairs, he comes stomping back.

  “It’s a school night,” he says. “I want you home by eight.”

  I turn around. He has my old cell phone and its charger in his hand.

  *

  “I’m going on a picnic, and I’m bringing amnesia, bubonic plague, chlamydia, Dengue fever, Ebola, and…” I wrack my brain for a medical condition that starts with F. I always sucked at this game. “…and flatulence.”

  “Really? You come up with Dengue fever and now flatulence is the best you can do? That’s not even a medical condition.”

  “It is if it interferes with your daily life. Imagine how much school would suck if you couldn’t stop farting. Your turn.”

  “I’m going on a picnic, and I’m bringing amnesia, bubonic plague, chlamydia, Dengue fever, Ebola, flatulence, and gall stones.”

  We sit in the empty parking lot of the Warwick drive-in. The car reeks of whatever they put in Gyro meat, and I’m pretty sure the smell is never going to come out of my hair or clothes. Ryan made no mention of the ride home from school, nor has he gotten closer to me than the distance between his seat and mine. My emotions feel all jumbled up, like someone ran them through the five hundred dollar blender Mom bought during her juice diet phase.

  We go through hemorrhoids, irritable bowel syndrome, jaundice, kidney stones, leprosy, the Marburg virus, and necrophilia before we’re laughing too hard to speak.

  Orange County, New York doesn’t have many options as far as things to do when you have no money and are too young to drink. We get back to my house by seven o’clock.

  “Do you want to come in?” I feel like that will be less awkward than saying goodbye in the car. I still don’t know where we stand. Or where I want us to stand.

  Ryan gets out of the car by way of answer. “I always wanted to see inside your house.”

  “That’s not creepy at all.”

  He laughs. “Jonesey’s sister said your house is like the mother ship of minimalism.”

  “This is true.”

  Mom’s decorating skills include all white walls without photos or art, hardwood floors polished to perfection, white or beige furniture, stainless steel kitchen, and no knick-knacks of any kind in any of the rooms. Mom doesn’t like things on places; she prefers bare surfaces.

  I don’t do normal things like show him around or introduce him to Dad. I never felt comfortable with formalities. Instead we bring glasses of flavored seltzer water into the living room (Mom forbids anything that can leave a stain) and watch TV—some show about Vikings.

  “You should do your hair like that,” Ryan says.

  The woman on the television has her hair styled in an elegant mess of braids and tousled blonde that makes her look more like a warrior than the men.

  “I don’t think I have enough hair for that.”

  Mom and Casey arrive home just before eight, and Casey comes into the living room to find Ryan using rubber bands and paper clips to try and make my hair more Viking-like. The look of shocked confusion on Casey’s face is priceless. She hurries back out to the kitchen declaring, “MOM, Angela has a boy over!”

  23.

  I don’t know what to think. How to feel. I feel like I love Jason. I will never stop loving him. It feels like betrayal to even think of being with someone else. How do I go forward? How do I ever get married? Have children? Do I even want children?

  It’s too much.

  We thought we were soul mates. Was that just the drugs doing our thinking? I try to remember if we got close before or after we start
ed snorting oxy in Rick’s apartment, but I can’t. I can’t remember ever feeling completely in love with Jason before we started snorting oxy, and that kills me.

  We could sit for hours without speaking, content to be near each other. Holding hands and watching TV shows for hours at a time—we both liked crime dramas, and X-Files marathons on Netflix. Driving around aimlessly along pothole covered country roads listening to whatever we were into at the time, usually heavy metal or classical music.

  It can’t have just been the drugs. But when I try to remember times likes that before… nothing. I remember the very beginning—Jason awkwardly asking for my phone number that day after school, after pretending he’d lost his cigarette lighter. The first two sort of awkward Saturday night dinners at the diner. We started talking about Lord of the Rings on the ride home after the second night at the diner and ended up sitting in Jason’s car at the end of my street for almost two hours going on and on about The Hobbit, the One Ring trilogy, and The Silmarillion—all of which we had both read more than once.

  I develop an ache in my temples trying to remember more, trying to remember specific events before we started doing the oxy. I had already been taking Percocet. Had Jason ever taken painkillers before his friend Rick gave us those pills? I know he drank as much as the average teenager on weekends and sometimes smoked pot, but I don’t remember him aver doing anything stronger than that before Rick gave us the oxy. I still feel like I made him an addict. I killed him. My fault.

  What if I never felt like I loved Jason until after we started doing oxy? Does that mean the drugs made us love each other that much? Does that make the love less real?

  I think about what Dr. Allen said about needing to grieve before I can move on. If I had grieved then, would I still be this confused?

  *

  “So, there’s this guy…”

  I run through the fight, the thing with Derek being something else, the driving and junk food, and before I finish, Dr. Allen tries to disguise a laugh as a cough.

  “What?” I prepare to jump on the defense.

  “I think this is wonderful, Angela.”

  I still get caught off guard with things like “wonderful” and “Ryan Reagan” existing in the same realm.