“That wasn’t nothing. What did you say to me, Jackson?”
I knew better than to open my stupid mouth to pick a fight. Still, there was a chance I could placate him, maybe.
“I was just being stupid, sir. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘you’re trying to get into medical school’,” I repeated myself with no expression.
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
It was too late to play it off like a joke. He had me backed into a corner—both metaphorically and physically because he was between me and the door. Fucking bully. Fury rolled over me and through me. The thing about anger, it made me reckless and haughty, self-righteous and offensive.
“Jokes are funny. Grown men living vicariously through their kids aren’t. I don’t want to go to medical school. You’re the one who wants that.”
His face twitched once, then he held out his hand. “Your phone.”
I handed it over, the anger replaced by dread. “It’s summer break, Dad. Come on.”
“You’re grounded.” His voice was calm, but he was shaking. “You can spend the summer thinking about your priorities. There will be no running around with that Wilson girl. No parties. No staying out all night. This disrespect will not be tolerated.”
I closed my eyes. I’d lost my one connection to Ritchie because I was too weak to keep my mouth shut. “Yes sir. I’m sorry.”
Three weeks before my seventeenth birthday, I sliced a long, deep cut into my left thigh and watched the blood well up out of it with a panicked sense of satisfaction. I didn’t cut my legs often, and I wondered absently why not.
I hadn’t seen Ritchie, Ade, or anyone at all except my parents since the spring semester had ended. Ade had tried to see me twice. Both times, my dad sent her away, but I saw her car sitting out in front of the house.
I thought she might come again today, but then I realized that being friends with me was too much work, and I would probably never see her again.
Nausea swept over me, and I pressed a towel to the wound. I picked up the razor and made three quick cuts over my left wrist, then three over my right. They were shallow, worthless cuts for a shallow, worthless boy.
I would never be enough. I couldn’t even commit to this. I was suddenly furious. If my life was going to be so goddamned meaningless, why the fuck wasn’t I doing something about it? What was the use of keeping the peace?
I found my father in his office. “I don’t want to go back to Princeton.”
He looked up at me, shook his head, and resumed his work without saying anything. Fury swept over me. “I said I’m not going back. I don’t want to be a doctor. I get sick at the sight of blood.”
“Jackson, you’re being childish. Go back to your room.”
“Fuck you.”
He was up from his chair in a flash, and the back of his hand cracked hard against my face. I shoved him back against the desk and gripped his shirt in my fist.
“Don’t you fucking dare hit me.” I hissed at him. “You keep me here like a fucking prisoner. You don’t let me see anyone, speak to anyone. I say one word—one!—about what I want, and you hit me? You’re not a father. You’re a fucking waste of air.”
“You’re not a son!” he roars, pushing me back.
I stumble, and I fall, catching myself on the edge of the sideboard.
“Go to your room,” he orders.
I shake my head.
“Go to your room, now.”
“Give me my phone.”
“I pay for that phone. I pay for your Ivy League university education. I pay for your food and your fancy clothes and your weekends in the city. You exist because I pay for you.”
“I exist because you were too fucking stupid to wear a condom.”
His hand cracked across my face again, this time hard enough that my teeth dug into my lip, and I started to bleed.
“Go to your room.” He pointed at me, then turned and walked out of the room. I was alone—in his office.
I ran for the desk and dug around until I found my phone in the bottom drawer, between two file folders. Then I retreated to my room. Once the phone was charged and turned on, the notifications came pouring in.
Hundreds of missed calls, almost all of them from Ade, but a few from Ritchie. And texts from both of them. Ade’s were, predictably, more and more panicked the longer I went without responding to her. But Ritchie’s were different.
Ritchie: I figure you either did some dumb shit like sneaking out to a show and getting your phone taken away, or you found someone more appropriate to kiss. I’m pretty fucking selfish, cause I hope it’s the first one.
That made me smile. Then, a few days later:
Ritchie: Playing a gig down your way next week. I’ll put you and the lovely miss Adriana on the list. Hope you can make it.
A week later:
Ritchie: Adriana came to the show alone. She says she hasn’t seen you since June. She’s scared. If I see her without you again, I’m probably going to let her talk me into breaking and entering.
I smiled so hard my face hurt. Well, that might have also been the black eye forming.
My thumbs flew across my phone screen.
Jacks: I’m okay. Just a little stir crazy. I’ve been grounded all summer. I’m still grounded, but at least I just got my phone back. If you wanted to b&e, I would welcome the company.
Then I texted Ade.
Jacks: I missed you so much. I’m sorry.
It was all I could say. I didn’t want Ade and Ritchie to worry about me, but I couldn’t really promise anything to anyone.
Ade’s text came first.
Ade: I missed you too. When can I see you?
Then Ritchie’s.
Ritchie: Breaking and entering it is, then.
I knew he was joking, but even the thought of seeing him gave me a jittery, expectant energy I couldn’t shake. I decided to take a shower. The hot, soapy water flowed down my body, stinging the cuts I’d made that morning. I thought about jerking off with Ritchie on my mind, but then I accidentally opened the deep cut on my thigh, and my hands got shaky, and my vision went black for a second.
I turned off the water and sat down in the bath, pressing a washcloth to the cut. This was stupid.
I don’t know how long I sat there, shivering and bleeding, but then my mom was knocking on my bathroom door.
“Jackson, there’s a boy from Princeton here to see you.”
A boy from—? I wasn’t close with any of my classmates. Certainly not close enough that I could expect them to show up out of the blue.
“Who?” I called back.
“A tall boy with black hair. He said you took English together last semester.”
I hadn’t taken any English classes the last semester. Tall with black hair. Ritchie. Of course, it was Ritchie.
“I’ll be out in a minute. Is he downstairs?”
“You know you’re not supposed to have guests while you’re grounded. But a friend from school…” She sounded confused like she didn’t know the rules any better than I did. Of course, she didn’t. They changed at the whims of a monster and she was likely drunk as fuck.
“We’ll be quick. Can you send him up? He probably just wants to compare schedules for the fall semester.”
How had Ritchie gotten here from the city so quickly? But he had said he was from Jersey too. Maybe he had been nearby already when I texted. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and started digging around in my drawers for a pair of clean socks. I was still rummaging through them when Ritchie loped into my room with a smile.
“My breaking and entering skills were not required.” He pulled me into his arms and hugged me tightly. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. What happened to your face?”
“I thought you were joking.” I hugged him back, ignoring his question about the bruises. “How’d you get here so quickly?”
“Helping Teri get some stuff from her dad’s
house. They live about twenty minutes from here. They’re kind of, uh, religious. They aren’t in a cult or anything, but they don’t much care for what they call our ‘lifestyle’. I go with her when she has to see them. She says I’m her boyfriend so they leave her alone. She’s waiting for us in the car.”
My heart sank. I had my phone, but not my freedom.
“I can’t go anywhere. I’m sorry.”
“Not even to get a bite to eat with a friend from school?”
“I can’t.” I stepped back away from him, crossing my arms over my bare chest. “I kind of goaded him this afternoon. Then stole my phone back when he left the room. It wouldn’t be good to leave right now. I don’t know what he’d do.”
“Goaded him? Jesus, Jacks, you’re bleeding.” Ritchie gaped in horror at the red spot growing on my sweatpants.
“Oops. I didn’t mean for that to happen.” Nausea swept over me again and I swayed on my feet.
“You’re not fucking spending another day in this house.” Ritchie scooped me up in his arms and it felt so nice to be held, I simply wrapped my arms around his neck and clung to him.
Dimly, I was aware that he was carrying me out of my father’s house with nothing but a pair of sweatpants and my scars, but it didn’t seem real. Not even when my father shouted at him to put me down and get out of his house.
“Respectfully, sir, you don’t want me to do that. If I put him down, I’m going to break your fucking nose.”
I laughed, but it sounded far away. Then the hot July air was kissing my skin and Teri was helping Ritchie put me in the car, and then Ritchie told her to “Go. Drive. Anywhere not here.”
“Jacks, I need to put pressure on that wound to stop your bleeding.” Ritchie pushed his own t-shirt tight over my bloody pants leg.
“It’s nothing. I cut too deep, and sometimes the sight of blood makes me woozy. It’ll be fine. I don’t even need stitches.”
“You did this to yourself?” Ritchie’s horrified shout filled the car.
“Can we go see Ade? I have some clothes at her house.”
“Jackson. What did you do?” He sounded hurt, viscerally hurt, so maybe he would understand.
“I have to let the pain out sometimes. It’s too much to feel it all on the inside. So, I let it out.”
He hugged me tightly. “Don’t you ever do this again. It’s dangerous. If you lose too much blood you could die.”
“Sometimes I want to,” I said. “Then I won’t have to live like this anymore.”
They didn’t take me to Ade’s house. They took me to Teri’s apartment in Queens, where Ritchie crashed on the couch. Teri’s friend Natalie was there and had apparently been waiting for a while by the tones of the conversation coming from the kitchen.
“He did what? Oh, that poor kid.” Natalie came out of the kitchen and looked me over. She wasn’t scary like Teri was. She was small and butch, with really short hair and tiny breasts. She looked like some kind of androgynous fae with dark eyeliner and spiky hair. She was hot, which wasn’t something I was used to thinking about women. But then, she didn’t look like any woman I had ever seen before.
“You gonna show me?” She asked, gesturing at my leg. I shook my head. I wasn’t showing this stranger my junk. Even if she was hot.
“What about the rest?” She had a southern accent. It was charmingly discordant with her punk butch aesthetic.
“The rest?” I played dumb.
“You’re telling me that’s the only one?”
I shook my head and held out my arms. She inspected the fresh cuts on them and grunted. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a first aid kit.
“You like music?” She asked as she pulled on a pair of disposable gloves.
I nodded. “I love music.”
She started humming then, an older song that sounded familiar, like the kind you might hear covered on reality TV singing shows.
“What song is that?” I asked her as she cleaned the cuts on my left arm.
“Come to my Window, by Melissa Etheridge. It’s been stuck in my head for days.” She pulled out the liquid bandage bottle. “This is going to sting like crazy.” Then she started singing the chorus as she painted the foul, stinging crap all over my cuts.
“Fuck!” I winced, flinching away.
“Hold still.” She sang a few more lines. “Sing it with me, if that will help distract you.”
“I don’t know it.”
“Yeah, it’s an old one. I was just a little kid when it came out, you probably weren’t even born yet.” Her gaze met mine and she gave me a soft smile. “Ritchie’s influence. I think he knows every song ever written. You’ll see.”
I smiled at that, and then she continued.
“Look, you’re with us now, and you don’t have to go back. We’ll take care of you. My uncle knows a lot of really influential people—more influential than your father. If you want to stay here, he’ll help us figure out how.”
“What does he do? Is he in politics?”
“No. He’s a chef.” She blew on my wrist. “Let’s do the other one.”
I let her clean and treat the right arm while she sang her pretty song. “How can a chef keep me from having to go back?”
“I don’t want to pry, but Ritchie says your home life isn’t great. You could sue for emancipation. I didn’t have to, because my parents didn’t want me back, but it’s one option.”
“Your parents didn’t want you back?” I stared at her, trying to put the pieces together.
“I was fifteen when they kicked me out.” She hummed a few bars of the song again. “My uncle took me in. I still live with him, and we work together—we can probably get you a job if you want one too, washing dishes or waiting tables most likely.”
Washing dishes—when my whole life I’d been raised to be a doctor. It sounded terrifyingly like freedom. And I wanted it.
I nod. “I could do that. But I don’t think I’d make enough to sue my parents. Lawyers cost money and I don’t have any.”
“Trust me?” She smiled and handed over the first aid kit. “Here’s how this will go. You’ll take care of the wound on your leg. Teri or Ritchie can give you something to wear after. I’m going to go call my uncle. After that, you can come home with me and meet him if you want, but I wouldn’t blame you if you’d rather stay with Ritchie. That was some knight in shining armor shit, wasn’t it?”
The whole evening had seemed surreal, but I knew I would never forget the way it felt to be picked up and carried—carried!—out of my father’s house. It made me feel warm, and safe, in a way I never had before.
I nodded, unsure what to say. She reached out and tousled my mohawk.
“You’re going to be just fine, Jacks. You’re with family now. I’ll leave you to fix up that cut on your leg.”
She left me alone with the first aid kit, disappearing back into the kitchen. A moment later, before I had a chance to even take my pants off, Ritchie appeared.
“My clothes are in that bag there.” He gestured toward a duffel sitting at the end of the couch. “Take whatever you need. When you’re ready, come on into the kitchen, and we’ll call Ade and let her know you’re okay.”
He disappeared again.
The cut was much deeper than the ones on my wrists, but it had stopped bleeding in the car on the way to New York. I dabbed at it with the peroxide, then used the rest of the bottle of liquid bandage on it. It burned, but somehow, that was satisfying, like the way it felt to dig my thumbs into the old cuts on my wrists when they were partly healed. For good measure, I also put one of the giant bandages over the deepest part of the cut. I opened Ritchie’s duffel, and his familiar scent wafted out. I pulled out a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and pulled them on, wrapping myself in soft, worn cotton that smelled like him.
Finally, I took a deep breath and made my way to the kitchen. They all stopped talking when I walked in. Natalie, her phone to her
ear, stepped outside the apartment to continue her conversation.
Teri studied me carefully. “Would you like something to drink? Water? Tea? A glass of chocolate milk?”
I scowled. “I’m almost seventeen.”
She smiled back. “I know; it was a joke. I don’t drink milk anyway. I do have some herbal tea my last girlfriend swore would make me sleep like a baby. I can put the kettle on.”
I nodded. “That would be nice, thank you.” I paused. “Is Natalie not your girlfriend?”
Teri snorted at that. “No. She’s a very good friend who I fucked once or twice and probably will again.”
My eyes widened. For all my joking about dying of priapism, I wasn’t used to the reality of people I knew fucking each other.
Ritchie nudged my arm. When I looked at him, he was holding out his phone. “Call her, she’ll be worried about you.”
I took his phone, and to my surprise, her number was in it already. I looked up at him questioningly.
“She gave it to me after the show—the one you didn’t come to.”
I nodded and made the call. She answered frantically.
“Ritchie, oh my God, Jacks is gone!”
“Ade, it’s me.”
“Jacks? Oh, thank God. Your dad is—”
“I’m sorry, Ade.” I cut her off. “It all happened so fast. Ritchie came to see me and then he took me away. And I don’t want to go back.”
The line fell silent. Then: “Are you safe?”
I looked at Teri and Ritchie, both watching me warily. Thought about Natalie out in the hallway telling her uncle about me. “Yes, I think I finally am.”
“Okay. Can you tell me where you are?”
“I’m in—” I glanced up. “Where am I?”
“Queens,” Teri supplied.
“Queens,” I repeated.
“I can come see you this weekend if that’s okay?” Ade asked. “Maybe sooner, if I can get someone to cover one of my volunteer shifts.”
“Okay, I really miss you.”
“I’ve been so worried, and then when your dad called me tonight and wanted to know if you were here—I was terrified. I tried to call your phone, but I guess he took it back after you sent that text.”
I laughed at the irony. “Actually, I stole it back tonight. My dumb ass left it at the house.”
Out of Sync Page 4
