A Broken Kind of Life (15 page)

Aaron felt anxious, like his skin was crawling, but he also felt embarrassed by his display in front of Spencer. Quickly, he typed out a message in the chat window.

AARON:
I’m sorry. So, should we pitch this idea to Dr. Mayer
?

Aaron was trying to change the subject before Spencer could ask about his bizarre behavior. Spencer looked at him for a long moment, and Aaron could feel his gaze even though his own eyes were fixed determinedly on the keyboard in front of him. Finally, his chat client displayed a new message.

SPENCER:
Sure, we can show him our idea after class if you want. There’s no point going forward if he doesn’t approve
.

Even after Dr. Mayer had started class, Aaron was distracted and upset by his reaction in front of Spencer. For the last two years, it hadn’t mattered what people thought of him, because he never stuck around long enough for it to matter. It used to; the “before” Aaron used to care. Fate separated his life into “before” and “after,” and he could remember clearly how “before” Aaron cared, but now he was in and out of the restaurant, or in and out of the doctor’s office, or in and out of the classroom before anyone could speak to him. He didn’t make friends, didn’t form relationships. So, if some guy stared a little too long in the hall or some girl tried to talk to him in the library, he could just brush them off. This time, however, he couldn’t just walk away. He needed to work with Spencer in order to get this project done, not only for his own grade, but for his partner’s. It was more than that, though. Aaron found he didn’t want to brush off Spencer, or to walk away. For the first time in so long, he’d found someone he could talk to, at least superficially connect with over code, if nothing else.

Without ever intending to, over the five hours they’d spent chatting about code, Aaron had found a friend. That thought scared the hell out of him.

Aaron was drawn out of these thoughts when the lights in the lab came up, signaling the end of the lecture. He still felt shaken and off balance. Spencer didn’t make any move to touch him again but rapidly typed out a chat message.

SPENCER:
We could just put together something and e-mail it to Dr. Mayer
?

Great, Spencer thought he was a freak, just like everyone else. He didn’t even want to stick around to talk about their project with the instructor—the project Aaron was so excited about. To Aaron, it looked like Spencer couldn’t wait to get away from him, and Aaron couldn’t blame him. He wished sometimes he could get away from himself.

Quickly, he typed a message to Spencer indicating that was fine with him. He didn’t even wait for his computer to log off completely before he was out of his seat and down the stairs two at a time. In his haste, he nearly knocked over a boy just getting out of his aisle seat in the second row. He didn’t stop until he was outside. As soon as his mother stopped in front of him, he was in the car and they were gone.

“A
ARON
,
are you finished eating?” his mother asked gently as she reached to take his dinner plate.

He nodded, noticing the rest of the family had already left the table. The smell of the meatloaf his mother had made had dissipated. The sound of the news filtered quietly from the living room, but otherwise, the house was fairly quiet. Aaron started to get up from the table when his mother spoke again.

“Honey, you’ve been preoccupied since I picked you up from school. Did something happen in class?”

On the surface, her voice was pleasantly curious, but there was an underlying tension there. She was worried about him. Looking to his left and away from his mother, Aaron stared out the glass door leading to the weathered deck. A little boy and girl played in the backyard of the lot adjacent to theirs. They couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. The girl’s hair was in pigtails, and she wore a set of denim overall shorts while the boy was in a Superman T-shirt and red shorts. As Aaron watched, the boy slid about halfway down the slide and then jumped off, his arms out in front of him as if he were flying. He grabbed the girl’s hand as he hit the ground, and together they took off for the other side of the yard, laughing as they ran. It took a second, but then Aaron realized that he’d just witnessed Superman saving the girl. He wondered when the little boy would learn that there was no Superman, and that the girl was never safe.

Turning his eyes back to his mother, Aaron hoped the pain radiating through his chest wasn’t as apparent to her as it was to him. He couldn’t tell her he’d laughed in class. It would give her hope, a hope he certainly did not feel and would not expect. He couldn’t tell her he’d freaked out when Spencer tried to touch him, or how any of that made him feel, because he couldn’t take away her hope either. Without hope, they’d send him away. Right now, he just wanted to go upstairs and try like hell to do something about his homework. That would help him to forget everything, at least for a while, and he wouldn’t dwell on what it meant.

“No, Mom, everything is fine. I’m going to go up and work on my homework.” His mother nodded, the worry lines deepening in her face. He could tell she was trying not to let on that she was hurt he wouldn’t confide in her.

Of course he saw it; he always saw it.

It certainly wasn’t personal. If he was going to open up to anyone and talk about what was bothering him, it would definitely be his mother. He heard her soft sigh as he left the room. A few minutes later, Aaron walked into his room and flipped on the light. The grief started to overwhelm him as he stood quietly in the doorway. Any little trigger seemed to set him off lately: the laughter in class, the boy playing a superhero. Sometimes it was just a bleeding paper cut. How was he supposed to get through life like this?

Aaron decided to forego his homework tonight. The depression had left him drained, and he didn’t feel like taking any pills to make it better. The sun hadn’t quite set as he changed quickly into a long-sleeved T-shirt and sleep pants and then crawled into bed with what little energy he still had.

He was asleep within minutes.

H
IS
heart thudded in his ears as he lay with his bare stomach on the cold, smooth concrete, the knee between his shoulder blades a constant reminder of his helplessness. The smell of grease, gasoline, and sweat hung heavy in the air, almost like a fog, penetrating and inescapable. Scalding, blinding pain all over his body tugged at his consciousness. Each place where they had hit him, cut him, or burned him pushed him closer to that sweet oblivion, that darkness in which he knew it would all stop.

He could hear Juliette crying beside him—soft, agonizing sobs that were at least marginally less painful to listen to than her screams. Her piercing screams of pain, anguish, and fear as she begged for them to stop, as she begged for her mother, had torn at his soul. He knew by the raw tenderness of his throat that he had made the same piteous cries, but he refused to allow his mind to remember why.

Summoning his last reserves of strength, he turned his head to the left, laying his right cheek against the cold dirty floor as his eyes found Juliette’s. The haunted, pleading look in her eyes suddenly made him feel ashamed. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to make it stop. They flew open again at the sound of Juliette’s horrifically interrupted scream. Her head was pulled back hard by her hair until her face was pointed toward the ceiling. The flash of metal, the spray of hot, sticky blood was so quick that Juliette’s panic-stricken voice was cut off midscream. He watched in horrified disbelief as the life drained from her warm brown eyes.

A sharp pain in his scalp caused him to fight. He knew he was next, and he thrashed and kicked, punched and screamed, trying anything he could to stop the coming horror.

He saw the knife coming, angled toward his throat.

H
IS
mother’s face swam across Aaron’s vision as he fought against the hands that held him down. The harder they held him, the harder he fought. He screamed and thrashed, and finally, they let go. His conscious mind started to take control of him, pulling him from the dream, and he saw his mother’s frightened face more clearly. Aaron tried to calm himself as her voice registered in his mind.

“Aaron, baby, please…. Please wake up.”

Aaron opened his eyes again and looked around, seeing it was his father and brothers who had been holding him. As he stopped struggling, they pulled away, and he crawled up against the headboard of his bed, pulling himself into a tight ball.

“D-don’t… t-touch….” He took a deep breath, trying to will his pulse to slow, to stop the pounding in his head. “Please, don’t touch me,” Aaron finally pleaded quietly, and they all backed away to give him some room. He continued to rock slightly, his back against the headboard, his face on his knees. Their voices reached him as they spoke softly to each other, but he didn’t even try to understand what they were saying. After a few minutes, someone sat on the edge of the bed. Looking up, Aaron saw his mother holding out a small bathroom cup and a full glass of water. Everyone else must have gone back to bed, because now they were alone in the room.

Without comment, Aaron took the cup and dropped the pills into his palm. Two pills this time. He must have really scared her. After popping the pills into his mouth, he washed them down with the water and lay back down in his bed. Her hand shook as his mother covered him up with the blankets, being exceedingly careful not to touch her son. She murmured soft platitudes to him: “It’s all right now” or “Try to rest,” maybe even an “It’s all over.” He didn’t much care what they were. The sound of her voice was soothing, and he suspected they were as much for her comfort as they were for his. As he watched, she turned off his bedroom light, her soft sniffle barely audible even in the stillness of the room. Then she left, closing the door behind her.

He tried to muster up some measure of guilt for scaring her so badly, but the room became fuzzy and blurred as the tranquilizers began to take hold of him.

D
R
. M
AYER
started class, and Spencer glanced at the empty seat next to him before settling his attention on his interpreter. The way Aaron had jerked away from him the day before had hurt. Did he really think Spencer would hurt him? Spencer thought they’d gotten along really well as they talked about the project. Maybe it was reflex, something Aaron couldn’t control. But then, why did he look so sad when they started talking? Spencer had no idea what he’d done to screw things up already, but he was determined to make it up. Logging into his chat client, he saw Aaron’s status was offline. So instead, he pulled out his cell phone.

SPENCER:
Hey, you want me to take notes for you today
?

Nothing.

With a sigh, he dropped the phone back into his pocket and took very good notes so he could copy them for Aaron. Maybe when he’d reached out to touch Aaron, it reminded him of the quad. He never did apologize for that. Damn it. He didn’t want to do it over text message.

SPENCER:
Are you around
?

SPENCER:
Want to talk later about the project? I had some ideas
.

By the time class ended, he’d sent half a dozen texts to Aaron with no response. He wished he could call Aaron, even if neither of them liked to talk, but of course he wouldn’t be able to hear. Instead, he was forced to just pack up his stuff and hope Aaron came back to class.

He found it wasn’t just the project he was worried about.

“What did he do before he jerked away? Had he said anything?” Henry Thomas asked his son as they sat across from each other at D’Margio’s. They’d decided neither of them really wanted to cook. Spencer was still upset about Aaron’s outburst the day before, and Henry seemed more than happy to talk about it. It was an opportunity to talk to his dad, and Spencer refused to pass it up.

“No. We. Were. Just. Talking. About. The. Project. Then. He. Got. Quiet. He. Looked. Sick. I. Asked. Him. If. He. Was. Okay. And. He. Jerked. Back. Wait…. I. Reached. Out. To. Touch. He. Just…. He. Looked. Like. He. Needed. A. Friend.” Spencer took a drink of his water to quench his suddenly dry throat.

Henry picked up his glass of wine and took a small sip as he watched his son. “Maybe it had to do with being touched. A lot of victims of violent crime do not like to be touched, especially rape victims,” he added as an afterthought.

“Oh. God. You. Do. Not. Think…,” Spencer started and set his glass down. Revulsion rolled through him as he thought about someone hurting Aaron like that. It had to be something else. Maybe he’d been hit by a car or his high school exploded. Grasping at straws, he tried to think of anything else that might cause the kind of fear he saw in Aaron’s eyes.

“I don’t think anything. I haven’t even met the guy.”

“Maybe. You. Should.”

“What?” Spencer’s father asked, his expression laced with skepticism, but Spencer was already sitting up straighter in his seat.