Blank Confession (13 page)

“We'll talk later, Mikey,” Jon said.
“Later.”

I watched him ride off, followed by Kyle and Maura. When I looked back at the school, Mr. Peterson was still there.

Shayne was gone.

What did I expect? That Shayne would run up and congratulate me for standing up to Jon? That Jon would be frightened off by my sudden display of fearlessness? That my dad would hear about me standing up for myself and look at me with pride, for once? That I would get an immediate testosterone-driven growth spurt?

Well, yeah, I guess I expected a little bit of all those things. The same way you buy a lottery ticket and expect it to be a winner. Even though you know it probably won't be, there is always a chance. A small chance. Very small.

My bus pulled away from the curb. I would have to walk home.

With any luck at all, Jon would be on his way across town to his brother's place. How had my luck been running lately? Not so great.

I started walking. About half a block ahead of me I saw a figure walking with a rubbery, high-kneed gait, as if the sidewalk was paved with six inches of foam. It could only be the perpetually wasted Carlos Reye, one of Jon's best customers. I caught up with him as we were coming up to Thirty-third Street.

“Hey, Carlos,” I said as I passed him.

Carlos stopped and looked at me, drawing back a little as if I had popped into existence from some other dimension.

“Whoa, hey, little suit dude!” He peered at me closely. His eyes were red, his pupils dilated. “You are, like
intense
!”

“Yeah, that's me. Mr. Intense.”

Carlos thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. I waited for him to stop giggling, then asked him if he'd talked to Jon lately.

“Jon, yeah, he's like living across town with some scary biker dude.”

“Is he still dealing the same stuff as always? Weed and X?”

Carlos had to think about that for a few seconds. “I guess. Only he's more into ups lately.”

“Ups?”

“Andale andale, arriba! Yee-ha!”
Carlos started laughing so hard there was stuff coming out of his nose. I tried to make sense out of what he had just said, but failed.

“What is
andale?
” I asked.

“You don't know
andale?
I thought you were Mexican.”

“You have me confused with yourself,” I said.

“Wow. Dude. That is
intense.
”

Talking to Carlos was giving me an unpleasant contact high. This must be what it's like to make first contact with an intelligent alien. Except for the intelligent part.

“So what's with the
andale?
” I asked.

“That's what Speedy Gonzales used to say.”

“Who is Speedy Gonzales?”

“Dude! You don't watch cartoons? Speedy's like this really fast mouse.”

“Speedy …” I said. “You mean Jon's dealing speed now?”

“Speed, crank, it's messed up, man. I don't mess with it myself. I mean—” He grinned. “I'm already seeing leprechauns in suits.” He cracked up again.

He was still giggling when I walked off.

Shortly after Leon Sullivan's rooftop freak-out, we spent one whole period in Mr. Wiseman's Health class talking about methamphetamine, also known as meth, crank, crystal, speed, glass, and I-don't-know-how-many other names. Basically, it's a Godzilla version of Adderall. According to Mr. Wiseman, it can turn you into a raving psychotic addict overnight.

Mr. Wiseman has been known to exaggerate.

“So why do people do it?” I asked him.

Mr. Wiseman told us one of the most common reasons is because meth is not only the Godzilla of amphetamines, it is also the Godzilla of diet drugs. It pumps up the metabolism almost to the point of heart failure and completely kills the appetite.

I could see a few of the girls in class perk up at that. But then Mr. Wiseman went on to describe the other effects, and when he got to the teeth-falling-out, foul-breath, terminal-acne part, those same girls seemed to lose interest.

I was thinking about that as I walked toward home. Thinking about Marie. I was thinking so hard I didn't even hear the motorcycle pull up behind me.

“Need a ride?”

My heart stopped a millisecond before I recognized Shayne's soft, edgy voice.

“You scared the crap out of me,” I said.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“You mean except for having to worry about Jon every second of the day? Yeah, I'm just great.”

“You don't have to worry about Jon today—he's over at his brother's place.”

“How do you know that?”

“I followed him to make sure he wasn't hanging out around here, waiting for you. I don't know what you said, Mikey, but I think you pissed him off stupendously.”

“It was probably a stupid thing to do.”

“Probably,” Shayne agreed. “Hop on. I'll buy you one of those high-octane coffee drinks.”

“You're re-friending me?”

“I never
un
friended you.”

Shayne took off so fast I almost flew off the back of the bike. He leaned hard into the corners, wove in and out of traffic, and took an illegal shortcut through the Walgreens parking lot. When we got off at the Starbucks, I was a little shaky.

“Drive fast much?” I said.

“It helps me think.”

“Or not think.”

“That too.”

We went in and ordered drinks. It's not on the menu,
but they will make a double-triple venti cappuccino if you ask. I asked. Shayne ordered a decaf latte. Sort of wimpy, but I didn't say anything because he was paying. When we sat down he started talking right away.

The first thing he said was, “Look, Mikey, I'm sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Everything. I'm afraid all I did was shove a stick in a hornets' nest.”

“What difference does it make to you?”

Shayne sat without speaking for a long time, then he said, “Remember that day I met you?”

“It was only like the week before last.”

“You know how come we got to be friends?”

“I can't even keep track of whether we're friends or not.”

“Yeah, well, it's confusing, because I'm not actually here.”

“You look here to me.”

“I'm here now, but I'm not here for long. I'm just passing through. I mean, I won't be living here for years or anything. Because of my situation.”

“What situation is that?”

“With my parents and all.”

“Your doctor-soldier-spy whatever parents from Afghanistan-Australia-Africa-whatever?”

He waved his hand, as if to erase all that. “It doesn't matter. The point is, I hadn't planned on making any friends at all here, but I figured it was safe to hang out with you because you seemed like …uh, don't take this wrong, but you seemed like kind of a dink.”

I stared at him in shock. “A
dink?
” I said.

“Like somebody I wouldn't like. Wouldn't miss. See, if I didn't make any friends here, didn't get involved, then it would be easy to leave. But then I got to like you. You're an okay guy once you get past the suit and the sarcastic mouth.” He grinned.

“What's wrong with my suits?”

“Well, they sort of give the impression that you think you're special.”

“I
am
special, to me. But that's not why I wear them.”

“I know that now. You wear them for the same reason gang members wear colors, the same reason girls wear makeup, the same reason Jon rides a bike that's too big and too fast for him.”

I didn't get that at all.

“For protection,” he said. “It's like psychological body armor.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. But I knew he was right. I always felt safer when I was wearing a suit. Like it would protect me.

He took a sip of his latte.

“Did you really think I was a
dink?
” I asked.

He shrugged. “Something like that.”

“What you should have done, you should have picked Jon for a fake friend.”

“I tried, that day in the cafeteria. It didn't take.”

We stared at each other over our coffees, then both burst into laughter.

“You're kind of a dink too,” I said.

“I know.”

We laughed again, then Shayne suddenly sobered and leaned forward.

“I like your sister, too,” he said.

“Marie?”

“You have more than one sister?”

“Not the last time I checked.”

“I think she's in trouble. Because of me.”

“She was a mess before she met you.”

“I made it worse.”

I saw something then in Shayne that surprised me: He had an ego the size of Jupiter.

I said, “It must be hard to be responsible for everything that happens.”

He nodded, taking me seriously.

“That was supposed to be sarcastic,” I said.

“Oh.” He got it then.

I said, “Let me tell you about Marie.”

“My dad used to drink,” I said. “He'd come home from work and have a couple scotches. Sometimes three or four. That was okay—it just made him all smiley and jokey. He was actually kind of fun. Then, at dinner, he'd start drinking wine. My mom would have maybe one glass; Dad would drink the rest of the bottle.

“And then he would get mean.”

“You mean like physical?”

“Not at first. The kind of mean he got was more like he'd start staring at one of us, like he'd look at me and say, ‘You look like crap.' And then he'd go on to list everything he didn't like about the way I looked—my shirt was dirty, my mouth was hanging open, my hair was wrong, I was too short …always getting my height in there somehow. He was always telling me to ‘man up.' How was I supposed to man up? I was only twelve years old. Or he'd go after my mom:
You used to have a nice figure—why don't you get off your fat butt and start exercising? You used too much oregano in the sauce.

“Little stuff mostly, but he was relentless. It was like being pecked to death. Marie got it worst of all:
Get that hair out of your face—you look like a slut. What boy
would look at you twice? You're going to be as fat as your mother. Sometimes I wonder if you're really my daughter.
And that was back when she was in the eighth grade. One time he called her ‘nothing but a whore waiting to happen.'

“It got worse and worse. After a while he would come home with a few drinks in him already and start in on the scotch. That was when it started to get physical. At first it was like he'd give Mom a slap on the butt, like he was being playful, but you could see it hurt. And he would give me and Marie what he called dope slaps on top of the head, but really hard. Then one day Mom came down to breakfast with a big bruise on her cheek and Dad was being super-nice to her and she wouldn't talk to any of us.

“The next day he came home drunk again and took his scotch into the den and turned the TV up loud and didn't hear Mom when she called us for dinner. He finally came out halfway through dinner and started yelling at Mom about why hadn't she called him. He grabbed a plate and filled it with food and said he was going to eat his dinner out on the patio.

“My mom—I was really proud of her—as soon as he went outside, Mom locked all the doors.”

“What did he do?” Shayne asked.

“He freaked. He started screaming at us and banging on the door and running around the house trying to pry open windows. All the neighbors came out to see what was going on. One of them called the cops when Dad smashed the glass in the patio door with a shovel. He cornered Mom in the kitchen and started slapping her. Marie was
screaming—I think I was screaming too. Mom got away and ran outside, and he followed her and grabbed her hair and threw her on the ground. That was when the cops showed up. They tried to calm him down but he took a swing at one of them so they arrested him for assault. He spent the night in jail. They said my mom could press charges, but she wouldn't. He hasn't had a drink since.”

“He just quit?”

“Yeah. I think it really scared him what he had done. One thing about my dad: When he decides to do something, he does it. He didn't go to treatment or AA or anything. The drinking stopped, he always got home from work at the same time, he complimented my mom on her appearance, and he took care of chores around the house right away, never letting them pile up. And he stopped criticizing me and Marie. He turned into this perfect, flawless, model father. In a way, it was even worse than when he was drinking.”

“How so?”

“You ever live with someone who's trying to be perfect? Believe me, it sucks. Every time I did anything wrong—anything I knew would bug him—I'd look at him and he wouldn't say anything. His jaw would get tight, and I could hear in my head all the things that would have spilled out of him if he'd had a few drinks. And I could see how it pained him to hold it all in, so I'd feel doubly guilty for making him hurt. He's relaxed some in the past year or so. Mom says he's been on a ‘dry drunk,' and it's taken him this long to find his new ‘normal.' Things are better now, but he's still pretty tensed-up.”