by Allen, Jacob
I spent the next… God, probably the next fucking hour just driving aimlessly around, listening to the heaviest music I could find. Five Finger Death Punch and Pantera seemed to do the trick at first, but even then, I found myself looking for something harder. Korn, Demon Hunter, Disturbed—nothing was good enough. Eventually, Rammstein, the heavy metal German band, seemed to match my anger.
God, how much of a fucking asshole could that old man be?!? Why did he have to be such an arrogant ass? Why did my mother have to fall for him?
Why did my father have to die?
I suddenly knew where I had to go. I had avoided doing this now for nearly thirteen years, but in this private moment—something no one would ever know about, not even any girlfriends I happened to stumble my way into, and certainly not Ryan, Nick, Kevin, or my mother—I knew I had to suck up my pride and go.
It was a place whose address I had memorized by heart, even though I had not so much as parked and driven off out of fear. It was a place that I knew from perfect memory, even though I’d only gone there when I was five years old and never again.
It was my father’s grave.
* * *
I drove up in a hurry to the nearest parking spot, cutting off some truck trying to park. He honked once at me, but then, perhaps thinking better of creating a shitload of noise in a graveyard, drove off with a middle finger. He was the least of my concerns—actually, he didn’t even register as a concern.
I found my father’s tombstone. “Andrew Travis. Dec. 8th, 1978-August 1st, 2006.” Every year that passed that I got closer in age to my father made me terrified that I might face the same fate someday. 28 years old seemed far too young an age to die, and if that was my fate, I didn’t want to spend it getting hounded by some fucking octogenarian who couldn’t leave his paternal instincts to the side.
The only thing that reassured me was that my father, apparently, had died from a freak illness and that it wasn’t the kind of thing that was hereditary.
What did not reassure me was that the freak illness was AIDS, apparently wrought while he cheated on her after Ryan’s birth. Was it any small wonder that I had such little faith in the stability of relationships?
This was something I had only learned after my stepfather’s words to me just after eighth grade, a time that had destroyed me and turned me into whatever the fuck I was as well. It was no wonder Emily hated me.
Some days, I liked to believe I could be saved.
And then, most days, I remembered my dad wasn’t going to pull a Jesus and rise from the dead, my stepfather wasn’t going to suddenly turn into a new man, and Emily wasn’t going to just magically forgive me. I was as good as fucked, cursed and single forever.
At least I’ll get a lot of pussy being single.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, putting my right hand on the top of his tombstone as I knelt by it. “You know, shit’s getting really crazy at the house. Old man… no, I’m not going to say his name… that bastard is being his usual asshole self. Mom’s not doing a goddamn thing about it. Ryan… Ryan might be the only sane one left of us.”
I laughed bitterly, bowing my head.
“Did you have to leave us so soon?” I said, feeling my lip quiver a bit. “Did you have to cheat on Mom the way you did? Did you have to… did you have to be that way?”
I sniffled.
“Do I have to be that way?”
Not surprisingly, since this was real life and not some dumbass movie, I got no answer. There was no resurrection, no speaking from heaven, none of that stupid religious shit that I didn’t believe in. There was just silence, the occasional hum of a far-away car engine and the chirping of some distant birds the only thing to fill the air.
“How can I do better, Dad?” I said as tears started to well in my eyes.
Don’t cry. Don’t be this bitch. What if someone else shows up and sees you like this? What if they know you’re weak? What if they know you’re scared and afraid?
I took a deep breath, sat back on my heels, and closed my eyes. Slowly, the tears receded, and I managed to avoid crying. It took a couple of almost meditative breaths, but I managed to avoid looking like a coward.
“I just want to be better,” I whispered, my eyes still closed. “I want to be the man who doesn’t continue this streak in the house. I want to be the man that… that people can trust.”
But was that really possible? With my father cheating his way to the grave, with my stepfather acting like a scoundrel behind everyone’s back, with my mother knowing everything and just accepting it… how could I ever learn how to develop trust? How could I ever learn to be a trustworthy person? No one in my life showed me how.
The only person that ever seemed to trust me was Emily Zane. And now, she was the person that I pushed away the most, the person who most reminded me of how worthless I was.
Emily Zane was everything I wanted to be that I was not. Kind. Honest. Sweet. Sincere. Trustworthy.
Maybe I’d thought before of her as a whore or someone who lied, but even then, beneath many layers of scars, I knew the truth.
And now, I’d pushed her so far away I’d shoved her into the arms of Nick.
Fucking Nick Locke. I couldn’t fucking believe it.
I opened my eyes and looked at my father’s tombstone.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” I said. “But I’m not going to take any more shit in this world, Dad. I’m not going to be a repeat of you and my stepfather. I’m not going to be a pushover like Mom.”
I took a deep breath.
“Fuck. I guess I’m going to have to do better somehow.”
13
Emily
Despite Nick’s awkward attempted kiss at the end of Saturday night, I still felt pretty good by Monday.
He may have been a Broad Street Boy, but he was the nicest of the group. He’d keep Adam at arm’s distance—or Adam would keep himself away, if Saturday was any indication—and I could focus on school, soccer, and saving money. I could finally have a senior year worthy of actually being a senior year. I didn’t have to spend it as if in constant fear of the bully coming to steal something much more valuable than my lunch money—my dignity.
We were wrapping up soccer practice, kicking into high gear just in time for the postseason. I had managed to win the free kick competition again, putting me on an even higher note. Best of all, I had been the one to win us the practice competition, meaning that my teammates mobbed me in celebration.
If there was any concern about rumors or anything of that sort smearing me in the school from Adam’s actions, I sure didn’t feel any. I just felt really good.
As practice ended, I made it to the locker room, changed, and walked out without any incident. It was nice to go through a weekday without encountering—
I should have known I spoke too soon.
“Really,” I muttered under my breath as I walked to my car and I saw Adam’s Corvette blocking my own.
Something seemed different this time around. For one, instead of his usual casual, don’t-give-a-fuck outfit, Adam had a button down shirt to go with his jeans. He had well-groomed facial hair. He had his hands in his pockets instead of crossed over. He looked less intimidating and more curious.
“I guess your stepfather laid down the law on you when he came home, huh?” I said sarcastically as I moved to the trunk to toss my soccer equipment in, ignoring that he was still blocking the driver’s side door.
“Why are you going to homecoming with Nick?”
Oh, God, this shit. I should have known that the souped up dress was nothing more than a decoy.
“Because he’s not a sociopathic asshole like you are,” I said as I stood in front of him, motioning to move.
“You actually believe that?”
I took a deep breath, trying not to let this turn into yet another situation of Adam turning me into a public bitch. I knew my teammates saw me, but I didn’t need their help. I’d gained more confidence in standing up to Adam
, anyways.
“I believe that at one time, you were a nice guy,” I said. “So no, maybe you’re not a sociopath. But you sure are a massive asshole, that part is truer than what I had said.”
“Come with me instead.”
I laughed. Did he hear a word I had said? Or had he just waited for me to finish talking so that he could interject himself into whatever he wanted to say?
“Adam, I gotta go.”
“Come with me instead to homecoming,” he repeated, as if a broken record no one could bother to fix. “Fuck Nick anyways. He’s not your type.”
“Really?” I said, not caring to hide my sarcastic laughter. “If that’s the case, what is my type?”
“Me,” he said, causing me to roll my eyes.
“Do better than that, buddy,” I said, trying to slide my way in between him and my car.
Adam kept his weight against the car, making it impossible for me to get by. I fought for a few more seconds before I gave up.
“You like the strong, aggressive types,” he said, a growing cocky smirk on his face. “You like the kind that takes action and isn’t afraid to do whatever he needs to get what he wants. Like me, right now. Nick is a pussy in comparison.”
Adam was so goddamn annoying right now. It really wasn’t helping matters that, whether he knew it or not, he was right.
But that didn’t mean I was about to give Adam the benefit of that being true. I wasn’t going to give Adam the benefit of everything with the way things had gone in high school.
“Yeah, maybe so,” I said. “But you’re just a giant dick. And being with you only left me hurt. Maybe being with a so-called pussy will leave me feeling a little bit better.”
Adam tilted his head to the side, let out a sigh, and sarcastically shook his head side to side, as if witnessing a horrid tragedy.
“Do you even hear how retarded you sound right now?” he said. “What woman on the face of the Earth, before you, has ever said ‘oh, yeah, I’d rather have a pussy than a dick?’ Lesbians, sure, but let’s face it, Emily, as hot as you with another girl would be, that is not what you go for sober.”
I swear, that guy had a way of dropping something offensive into every single sentence. It was a skill, really, to be able to say something so casually while also insulting me so easily.
“If I ever do girl on girl,” I said. “I’m sure as hell not going to do it in front of you. Maybe I’ll do it for Nick, though.”
“What has gotten into you?” he snapped.
“Me?”
How was it that these arguments always turned into referendums on me? And why was it that, after going for a decent span of time without having to deal with this nonsense, Adam had suddenly turned his attention to me? Was homecoming that big a deal?
He couldn’t possibly want to go with me because he liked me, much as the idea sent a shiver through my body. No, even if there was a part of Adam that liked me, it was because he either wanted to show up Nick, wanted to fuck me, or just wanted the thrill of a conquest on a level broader than the sexual.
But it was Adam. The least I could do was give him an answer.
“You could start by realizing that whatever shit you have going on at home never had anything or has anything to do with us. You could then—”
“How did you know about that?”
Adam’s question was not interrogative, aggressive, or dangerous. It was… emotional?
Pleading?
Yearning?
His facial expression, too, wasn’t just a flicker of something. It actually remained hurt. Was his family life that bad? I definitely couldn’t tell him Nick had made me realize it, although I felt intellectually honest in saying that I had considered it a strong possibility before this.
“I mean, it’s obvious, and—”
“Where did Nick ask you out?”
And just like that, for a brief moment when the gate guard of a bully had turned his back, he had emerged with his sword held out. What could have been a sweet, breakthrough moment to help Adam and I get closer to neutral instead of adversaries had vanished. Adam couldn’t handle it.
Too bad.
“At Mama’s Ice Cream,” I said.
“When?”
“Couple of weeks ago, I think, can you let me go—”
“Get in the car.”
“Finally.”
But Adam wasn’t budging.
“I didn’t mean your piece of shit car,” he said. “I meant my Corvette.”
This cannot be happening. He cannot be serious. At least right now it’s a Monday without class.
“If you think I’m impressed by the fact that you own a Corvette and that I’m going to change my mind about Nick, you really don’t know me at all.”
“And if you think that I need to rely on a cock envy car to get girls, then you really don’t know me at all. Get in.”
I sighed. Admittedly, I was getting curious to see how this would turn out. Would Adam really treat me kindly? I didn’t fear the worst—he’d never hit me, even in our ugliest of verbal confrontations. I didn’t fear rape or assault. But that didn’t mean that a kind of verbal raping wasn’t also possible.
But, on the other hand, I had seen Adam’s guard drop a little bit more frequently. Maybe this could be an opportunity for something unrelated to homecoming. Maybe…
Maybe we could be neutral. Or even go back to the way things were. How thrilling that—
“Let’s go,” I said with an exaggerated eye roll, cutting off him and myself from saying anything else.
He unlocked the car as he wore his typical arrogant expression. After I grabbed my phone and my wallet from my gym bag, I sat down in a leather seat far more comfortable than I had ever sat in—and a lot closer to the window. Adam had certainly not had his parents spare any expense in the type of car that he had.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re going to woo me with ice cream. You’re going to tell me Nick is a giant bitch. You’re going to tell me you’re a changed—”
But before I could finish, Adam gunned the car in reverse, nearly sending me into whiplash. Then, just as quickly, almost shifting gears while the car was still in drift, he jammed it forward, speeding through the parking lot at way too high a speed. “Stricken” by Disturbed blared at a stereo-shattering volume.
“Scared?” he said as I grabbed the coat hanger for dear life.
“What the hell do you think?!” I shouted.
He slammed on the brakes at the entrance, producing a sensation akin to my torso jerking away from my arm. Before I was settled back in, though, he was speeding out again. It was difficult to see his speedometer from where I was, but a brief glimpse of its positioning suggested we were probably doing over 60 in a 35 mile per hour zone.
“Do you trust me?”
“No!” I shouted.
Adam just laughed. How the hell else was I supposed to answer when I was holding on for dear life?
It wasn’t until we got onto the highway that I finally felt like Adam wasn’t going to go herky-jerky on me and deliberately drive bad. Granted, he was still approaching a hundred, but at this time in the early afternoon, there weren’t any busy Nashville highways.
“You should trust me more,” Adam said, keeping his eyes ahead. “After all, I hold your life in my hands.”
“That’s so reassuring,” I said. “Maybe if you have my life in your hands, you should take care not to throw it into another car?”
“What?” Adam said, lurching hard into a nearby lane. Another car honked at us, but Adam just laughed and gave him the middle finger. “Here’s where you are wrong, Emily. I know exactly what I’m doing. You think I have any desire to go to the grave? Hell no. You should trust me.”
“I don’t know, Adam, that’s—”
But then, again, he covered three lanes in what felt like a second and a half. We came to the highway exit that, only in a brief moment of adrenaline-lifted haze, I recognized as the exit for Mama’s Ice Cream. It was e
tched into my memory as the route that my father took me down to get to middle school.
I may have been the only person in all of Providence Prep who preferred middle school to high school.
“Are you sure you’re not trying to kill us both?!?” I shrieked. “You trying to make this some modern day Romeo and Juliet where we both die in the end?”
“Aw, are you saying we fall in love before it’s over?”
I regretted that comparison immediately. I just went silent, biting my lip and staring out the window at someone pulling up and giving us the middle finger. It was a much more appealing sight than having to make Adam think that some sort of love reunion was possible.
Thank heavens that the car ride to Mama’s Ice Cream was just another minute. Adam pulled the car into the lot, roared with the vocalist of Disturbed, and then, abruptly cut the car off.
“Have I ever hurt you?”
“Are you stupid?”
“I mean actually, physically hurt you?”
I hated having to confirm something that made Adam look good. I shook my head no.
“Did you think I was going to do that just now?”
“You were driving like it was a NASCAR race on the highway, how else was I supposed to see that?!?” I shouted. “Jesus, Adam, you—”
“Always make sure you’re protected.”
He said those words very gruffly, but there was something incredibly sweet about them. I knew I shouldn’t have read any further into that, but he couldn’t have chosen those words by accident.
“So I’ll ask again. Do you trust me?”
I sighed. I could not answer him unconditionally. I already saw what he was doing, and I wasn’t going to let it get there.
“I trust you not to kill me.”
Adam pursed his lips, clicked his tongue, and then got out of the car. I suppose he was thinking the same thing I was. Good enough for right now.
I unbuckled my seatbelt, but just as I went to open the door, Adam opened it for me. I looked at him and laughed, but he didn’t change his facial expression.
