by Xavier Neal
The girls giggle and mad rush me with arms held out. “Presley!”
Hugging back the three that are present, I make note to question where the other half of the team is. It's not a requirement to come to every home game for them, but they're supposed to come to as many as they can. Spread ourselves out a bit through the stands to give bigger support. I smile the best smile I can, and follow them over to where they were parked. Taking the seat in the middle while Carmen sits beside me, I enjoy the other girls surrounding me. The bubble of joy is the first nibble of normality I've had since Ryder broke up with me over a week ago.
“We thought you weren’t coming,” one of the freshman girls pipes out, the ribbons in her hair swaying in the breeze.
“And why wouldn’t I?” I knew the answer to that. The entire damn school knew the answer to that. When we started dating, Ryder and I were very much the 'it' couple. We didn't get voted homecoming king and queen, but we were the couple others strove to be like. We were the couple girls would use to complain to their boyfriends about when they weren't getting enough hand holds or love notes. We were known through the grades as 'that couple' whose bond could never be broken. And then it was. Even now I'm not completely sure why. Sometimes when I lie in bed and replay his final words to me, I swear there's something behind them, something more to them, some mystery he wanted me to solve and save him from.
The freshman, slyly points a few bleachers over to Ryder who's strolling in. He's not alone.
My lips press together as my heart begins to speed up like it was given a shot of adrenaline straight into it. There's a tingling on my tongue. I need to put something on it. Something to take away the bitter burning sensation that's searing my senses. I turn to Carmen and snap, “Gum?”
Briefly baffled by the abrupt change of subject, she casually pulls a piece out of her bag.
The immediate flavor flows across my taste buds, pushing my nerves back towards a level I can deal with. “Ryder has a new girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend is a strong word for that girl,” the freshman, whose name I need to remember, jokes.
Suzie, a junior who joined us her freshman year, leans over my shoulder and states, “That girl has slept with half the football team on our side and the opposing.”
Raising my eyebrows I lean back. “You know her?”
“Unfortunately she’s in my grade.” My eyes can't seem to stop from staring. Her long in the front short in the back bobbed hair. Her fair freckled skin. Her clothes that look like they're suffocating rather than hugging in a complimentary sense. All of this I could see past. The way his hand is intertwined with hers....I can't. I miss most of the details about my replacement, but come back just as Suzie announces, “...not to mention she just transferred into your marketing class as of Monday.”
The mint flavor in the gum has vanished. There's no reason it shouldn't still be lingering. None at all. I need something else. I need...something to bathe my taste buds.
“You two were like Brad and Jen,” Carmen starts to ramble. “I guess that’s his Angelina.”
Now it's a war. Now instead of watching us with jealousy jumping in their eyes, people are watching to see what we're really made of. Who's stronger? Who can get over who faster? Who is going to save face and who is going to lose it? The entire school is waiting to see who has not only the better hand, but the better poker face. Funny how quickly the world that claims to love you can't wait to see you fall. My problem isn't falling. It's surviving once I hit the cement.
Carmen looks unimpressed at the sight of them. “Name?”
“Bambi. Bambi Summers.”
Carmen and I turn around as we snap in tandem, “Tell me you’re joking.”
“I wish I could,” Suzie sighs before she starts to giggle.
“Clearly her parents had a thing for Disney,” the freshman comments.
“Or were high as shit like mine,” Sunny, another senior chuckles. “What happened between you guys anyway? There's a rumor he dumped you because he thought you were getting too fat.”
“Fat?” Carmen sneers. “Puh-lease. You see that thing he’s with? She’s like a 4’11 ball of fat! Like a baby whale walking around. Like an overweight penguin. Do you see that? She waddles!”
Katherine folds her hands in her lap. “How did that make you feel?”
“To be rumored to be fat?”
“Yes.”
I reach for a bread stick, but stop mid motion, the possibility of turning into what they thought just as real in this moment as it was then. I ruffle my hair instead. “It's like being the ugly puppy in the pound. You know that everyone is going to come in, coo over everyone else, that those you share a misery with, will get a glimpse of the outside world, but you...you'll always be trapped, wondering what it feels like to be loved. To be wanted. No one would ever look at you because you were a little too shabby for their liking.”
Katherine looks like she's making a note yet she doesn't move a muscle. I'd rather her make notes in front of me than behind my back. “How'd that evening end? Did you runaway? Did you in engage in the hurtful conversation about Bambi?”
“I listened.” Clearing my throat I continue, “Carmen was an instigator. My own personal counselor in the court room of High School Justice. She called that girl every name in the book she could think of. I knew part of it was to make me feel better and the other part because she was just bitter and bitchy. We were all battling something back then. Instead of facing it, she punched everything else with her words. Made girls hate her and men worship her.”
“At any point, did you and Ryder talk or communicate?”
With a quick glance over my shoulder, I watch the two of them continue to shove their tongues down each other’s throats for show. Ryder's got his hands gripping her hips. She's running her hand over his jean covered crotch. They're stuck together like someone poured super glue between them.
A hot dog. I need a hot dog. Lots of mustard. Relish. Something fizzy to wash it down.
In a quick mumble I command, “Let's get food, Carmen.”
“Not hungry. I plan to drink my calories later.”
“Smoke?”
Her addiction to cigarettes plays in my favor. “Yes.”
The two of us slide our way out of our seats. I know I shouldn't look again, but I do. Addicted to the self-torture. Addicted to the way it hurts. The pain reminds me I'm sadly still alive. That life does move on whether you're emotionally sane or not.
To my surprise someone a few seats up shouts, “Hey, Collins! This isn’t a drive in movie man! Save it for the bedroom!”
Ryder pulls away and chuckles slightly, wiping the spit from the corners of his mouth while looking at me. There's no shame. No sadness. Nothing. In fact he looks as empty inside as I feel. He paints the playboy facade he's recently taken up and turns around to say, “Sorry bro. Don’t you ever just get carried away sometimes?”
“Yeah, but I keep it behind closed doors,” he brushes him off. Before I realize it, the voice calls down to me, “Can I holla at you ma?”
Looking around, I curiously point. “Me?”
He hops up and starts to move my direction. “Yeah.”
“Careful with that one,” Ryder sighs, his grip on Bambi disappearing. “She’s rough.”
“That’s the only way it’s fun.” The guy winks at Ryder and travels down until he's closer to me than I'm comfortable with. My eyes glance up at Ryder whose hands are now folded. His body is leaned towards us, scrutinizing the situation. “So what do you say, ma? Can I get a min' of yo' time?”
“You can buy me a hot dog.”
“I'll get you anything you want, ma.”
“There's just something about a sporting event hot dog,” I recall seconds before the taste of garlic overwhelms my starving stomach. “Can't find it anywhere else.” Katherine's face smirks. “Speaking of food, can we have dinner now?”
Katherine nods and motions to the waiter to come over. Casually, she turns the reco
rder off. There's no more textbook lines spoken. No more questions. No more dragging me down the abandoned avenue where love thrived somewhere between the depths of depression. At least not right now.
Ryder
-“I tried to replace you in various way, but always failed.”-
With my eyes planted out my locked bedroom window, I stare at the blonde woman getting out of the pool. The world would consider her perfect. It doesn't matter her tits are a botch job clearly done by an amateur. Or how her highlights cost as much as the average person's car note. No. Her leather skin and overly starved body are what most people consider unblemished. I've fucked hundreds of women like her. I hate them. Almost as much as I hate myself.
There's a sharp knock on my door. “Mr. Collins?”
I don't turn to answer. I don't answer at all.
“Mr. Collins, you have a visitor.”
I watch the blonde drag her towel across her wet body. The body she's spent thousands of dollars perfecting. The same body she spent thousands of dollars harming. She's the epitome of sacrilegious ideas to what makes a human being worth anything. She's a haunting reminder of the false idol of inconceivable immortality that never came from the life I've plummeted into. The life I'm not sure is done letting me fall.
“Mr. Collins,” the nurse impatiently repeats. “You have a visitor.”
Turning, I slide my hands in my white linen pockets. Without a word spoken I follow her out of the bare bastille I've ticked away countless reveries of remorseful pleas to the one person I've ever met who deserves them.
Down the long hallway, I'm lead to the illusive visitor center. It's towards the front of the building, closer to check in. It's as if they placed it there so those who loved you enough to visit you but not enough to actually fucking help take care of you didn't have to risk being plagued with the sickness that is addiction. Like it's a disease that could be passed around by staring into the eyes of someone for too long. Like we need to be quarantined from functioning society, which is exactly what rehab is like. Being cursed with an illness too real for people to want to witness, but not real enough to be taken seriously by those in the position to help make a fucking difference.
She opens one of the double white doors exposing me to a large area filled with tables where people are playing board games, couches where people are gathered sharing smoothies or milkshakes, and oversized chairs angled towards one another where people are engaged in laughter. The entire room feels like a snap shot from a Leave It To Beaver episode. It's frightening. This facade they've created to give the misleading impression that the visitors actually want you to feel as if you still matter to them, that you're not some stigma in their otherwise healthy life, reminds me of the one my mother tried to create for me. This entire scene is an ode to my adolescence.
In the time I've been here, no one has yet to visit me. Honestly, it's what I expected. My father pays the bill, so he doesn't have to speak to me while my mother insists that once her own life is back together, she'll make the time to rehabilitate mine. Once upon a time, I bought into that idea. I even went so far as to believe her when she said she would do whatever she could to help get my feet back on steady ground because that's what a mother should do. I believed her because I wanted something, fuck anything, to hold onto at that point. That was a life time ago. Back before I tangled myself up in delivering drugs for the ZD MC just to feed my fix. Back before I was attending prescription pills in P.J.'s parties. Back when I had hope that I could still make it out of the hell my life had turned into with self-respect.
I sit down at the table across from him. My eyes immediately roll at the different card games displayed on it. Neither of us speaks. I'm not sure what I should say. I didn't ask him to come to see me. Hell, I have no fucking clue why he would ever want to see me. Not after some of the shit I've done.
“You look like shit,” my brother, Noah, states adjusting the collar of his flawless navy blue and white button up. He looks like something from the Macy's catalog. A salute to overpaid logos and overworked hours. He looks like Dad. This makes me want to get up and walk back to my room.
“Not all of us got the perfect Collins genes,” I sneer back as I fold my hands together. Silence starts to settle, but I stop it. There's no reason we should have to drag out this suffering. The lynching I deserve. “I didn't expect anyone to come visit me here.”
“Why?” Noah's concerned face makes me cringe. Even now. Even when no one can fucking see him he's a goddamn boy scout. The model citizen. The model son. The one who would be included in a goddamn patriotic commercial for the perfect American dream. I try not to solely blame him. He had all the love and affection he needed whenever he did. He was nurtured. He was groomed and cloaked with the Collins name and traditions. He was what they wanted. Why would he ever have reason to step off the immaculately laid undebased path? For a small amount of time I wondered what life would be like in his shoes. The polished suits and haircuts. A salary with enough zeroes your mind couldn't help but wonder how you would ever spend that much money in multiple life times. Pride in every decision you made. The thoughts were worse than trying to learn a foreign language blitzed out of my mind. They were so fucking incomprehensible it caused tears to clog my throat.
“Who would come?”
“I came.”
“Why did you come?” I quickly ask.
Noah looks away briefly. When our eyes meet once more, he's pushed away whatever he originally had floating around in his head. “You've been in here awhile.”
A shrug escapes me but my muteness remains.
“Do you like it here?”
I don't answer.
“Do you hate it?”
I still don't answer.
“Do you want to switch facilities?”
I rest my face on the opened palm on my propped up elbow with a look of disinterest. Captain Perfection reporting for duty. Operation Feel Less Shitty About Abandoning Your Baby Brother in full swing.
“Damn it, Ryder. Fucking talk to me. Do you wanna go home?”
On a disgusted laugh I ask, “And where the fuck is home, Noah?”
His mouth drops open but nothing comes out.
“Exactly. You have a home. A luxury condo-”
“House. Shelly and I bought a house.”
“Congratulations,” I mutter.
“Thanks,” he whispers out uncertain if the words mean anything or not. Honestly, I don't know either. “You um...you're welcomed to come see it. To stay with us for a few when you get out. I'll help you get on your feet.”
“Not afraid I'll steal your motorcycle again?” The words cause him to twist into a tight fashion. “Maybe your darling wife's pearls this time? Or who knows, maybe I'll just grab a check from your check book and write myself one for a million dollars to wash away all my problems.”
Shame tries not to slip onto his face, but fails. Miserably. “I apologized for that incident, Ryder.”
“You accused me of stealing from you!”
“You stole from Mom.”
“I never fucking stole from her!” My voice, like my face, is heated. Harshly I point. “I never stole from any of you! Don't think for a minute that shit didn't cross my mind because it did. It fucking did. It crossed my mind so many times...and how easy it would've been to take money you all considered play money and never be caught, but I didn't. Steal from Mom and Dad? Sure. Fuck it, why not? They stole so much from me it's the least they can do, but to accuse me of stealing from you Noah...the one person in our family who treated me like I was at least human a portion of the time, like I wasn't tainting the family name for just being alive, was fucked up. I know I said some shit in the past I probably shouldn't have. Slept with women you were chasing to prove how imperfect I wanted you to be, but I never would fucking steal from you.”
His pure blonde features hardly ever wrinkle. They rarely rumple in solace. Much like our father unless intoxicated, he always carries a pleasant demeanor where the world can
watch. “I didn't come here to fight with you, Ryder.”
“What did you come here for Derek Noah Collins Jr.?” I mock with a shrug. “To stare at the family failure from my latest and greatest holding cell? It's quite lovely here in cell block six on Sunshine Avenue.”
Noah gives his forehead a rub. “Why do you have to be so goddamn difficult?”
“Born this way. At least that's what Dad says.”
There's a brief pause before he asks, “Do you wanna know how he is?”
“Not really.”
“He's got testicular cancer,” Noah announces calmly.
Like the apathetic son that bastard created, I comment, “He'll buy another pair.”
