The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

by Lindsey Lee Johnson

  He put up his fists.

  His dad smiled and swung. Damon wasn’t fast enough this time. His dad’s knuckles cracked on his jaw. A flash of pain. Blood rushed up his neck, into his cheeks and his ears. Before he could think, he ran at his dad, bear-hugged him, and threw him on the couch. Damon landed on top, and him and his dad grappled on the leather cushions, his dad struggling beneath, Damon slamming him against the couch, exhaling, “Fuckin’ asshole. Motherfucker.” Damon’s dad grunted and struggled as Damon pummeled him, searching for soft spots, hitting whatever he could reach, neck, ribs, kidneys.

  “Fuckin’. Asshole. Mother. Fucker.”

  But his dad had stopped resisting. Breathing heavy.

  Damon stopped. Pulled back. His dad was sprawled across the leather cushions, pants twisted under the slick black belt, shirt untucked to show a triangle of fleshy belly. His eyes were closed, his forehead damp. Across his cheeks a ragged flush like sunburn, and a fault line of blood on his lip. He opened his eyes. They were this round, watery blue like Damon’s, and there was a thin pink skin over the whites. It was how you looked when you were wasted, but also when you cried.

  Holy shit, Damon thought. What just happened? Like, what did I just do?

  Then his dad broke. Fell back laughing. “Your face,” he said.

  “Fuck you.” Damon got up and shook out his fist. His jaw hurt but he wouldn’t touch it.

  Damon’s mom was standing in the doorway of the kitchen with her hand over her mouth like after all this time this shit still had the ability to shock.

  Then she ran up to touch his dad’s cheek.

  Damon turned, and got out the front door.

  He walked to the end of the driveway and to the end of the street, then hiked up Horse Hill where no one would find him. Since he was a kid he’d loved those horses, and whenever his dad was done doing his thing, Damon would go up to tell them about it. He sat down in the grass and pulled a blunt from his sock and blazed it. He could text Ryan and Nick to come swoop him but didn’t feel like it yet. The horses were busy chomping yellow-green grass and he knew they couldn’t talk back, but he felt like they got him anyway. They kinda shuddered their flanks when he told them, and when he reached out to touch them they didn’t even spook, just whipped their coarse mane hair against his hand, like they knew exactly who he was. Like they wanted to tell him that he’d be okay in the end, that there would be an end to this.

  —

  When Damon got home from rehab, he was ready to be different. He remembered what Lance said: Always breathe. Catch the anger before the switch flips and it’s too late. Though he might feel like he’d been dealing with this shit forever, in the story of a whole life he was just in chapter one. If he kept it together for one more year, he could leave and have a different life. Never see his dad again if that was what he chose.

  When Damon got back from rehab, he got out of bed when he was supposed to. He went to class when he was supposed to. He didn’t start shit that didn’t need to be started. For example. His mom said he couldn’t have his BMW back, but he didn’t let it get to him, just told her, “I could get a ride from Ryan.”

  His mom relaxed, like the storm she was bracing for was gonna pass by after all. Then she smiled. “Why don’t I drive you? Remember how much fun we used to have cruising around together?”

  “Not really.”

  “When you got cranky, I used to buckle you into your car seat and drive you around and around. We’d listen to the Mill Valley theme song, remember? You used to bounce along to the chorus and kick your little chubby legs.”

  “Whatever,” he said, skimming through texts on his phone, but there was a glimmer of memory there. That song that sounded like carnival music, something they played while you zipped around in circles, then hurled your corn dog off the side.

  “Well, you loved it,” his mom said.

  He didn’t fight her. Just got in the car and let her drive him to school. It was weird to be back, but good. It was where he belonged. In first-period English the whole class was pumped up to see him, and his teacher Miss Nicoll—who always used to eye him like she had one finger cocked on her pepper spray—came up and gave him this bigass hug in front of everyone. It was weird as shit, but in a way he didn’t hate it.

  After sixth period, he went to the tutoring place down the street. The tutors there hated him. They hated him because the old Damon would mess with them at every session. For instance, when a tutor tried to talk to him, he’d tip his chair back on two legs, wave to his friends across the office and yell, “Yo, Jonas, where the function at tonight?” or “Hey, Ry, you jerking off in here again?” Or he’d throw pencils at the back of some dork’s head who was pushing his face right up to the computer screen to type. Sometimes he’d just sit there munching Cheetos loud as possible, lick the dust off his fingers and wipe them on the sides of the chairs. If he was tired, he’d act like a retard until the tutor gave up and just told him the answers. And the last time he’d had the cute-ass college chick, Jenny, as his tutor, he’d huddled over his paper and scribbled real careful until she asked to see his work—then he showed her his sketch, which was just of some bitch naked, and cracked up when her cheeks got all red and she jumped up and huffed out of the room. He’d watched her leave, tipped back in his chair, and grinned real big ’cause no one was gonna make him do shit he didn’t feel like doing.

  This time it was gonna be different.

  The front-desk lady saw him and sighed. “Jenny?” she called over her shoulder.

  Jenny appeared from a back room. She was about five feet tall and had these glittery earrings on and a bright purple hoodie and green Converse. At first she did the glance thing, like Really, you’re doing this to me again? but when she realized Damon could see her, she smiled. She had dimples when she smiled and it almost made him forget how she’d looked when she thought he couldn’t see her. He knew it was her job to be nice to everyone, but still.

  “Hey, Damon. Did you bring your stuff with you?”

  “Yeah.” He unzipped his backpack and held it out so she could see it was actually full of books: U.S. history, physiology, English, intermediate algebra.

  Jenny just stood there looking shocked, so he said, “So? And?” Then stopped himself because Lance would say that was the attitude he used to push away people who were tryna help him and he didn’t have to do that anymore.

  Jenny cocked her eyebrow like Is this some kind of trick? Then she said, “Okay. Well, good. What are you working on today?”

  “I got math. I tried to look at it already, but it’s fuckin’ bullshit—”

  Someone cleared their throat. It turned out to be a mom standing behind him with her hands on the shoulders of two little kids. The kids’ eyes were saucers and the mom was glaring.

  Damon turned back around. “I mean,” he said, “could you, like, help me.”

  “Come on back,” Jenny said. She led him through the office toward the little isolation room they always made him go in, the one with the glass wall that looked out into the main room where everybody else got to be. In the main room was a circle of computers with kids and tutors sitting all around.

  “Yo, Flint! My nig!”

  “Hey! Language,” Jenny snapped.

  It was Ryan. Sprawled back in a cushy office chair sucking on a Big Gulp while his tutor was asking him questions and typing. Damon thought, This was exactly what his life was like. He got put in the isolation room with Jenny who expected him to work, while Ryan got to chill at the computers with a tutor who acted like his secretary.

  “Ryan. Hey, man. We’ve talked about that word,” Ryan’s tutor said, all earnest. This fuckin’ weirdo. Pale and bony with a ponytail drooping down his back and a neck so skinny his Adam’s apple looked like an elbow jerking up and down.

  “Yo,” Damon said. “You do the Decker homework?”

  “Naw, I’m in advanced, remember?”

  “Yeah. Sucks to be you.” He always forgot Ryan was in advanced
algebra, not intermediate like him. Ryan wasn’t smarter or anything. But the day that Nick was gonna help them cheat on the placement test, Damon had forgot and dipped math class. When he came back, he had to take the test legit. It didn’t go too well.

  Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Lance said fuck the past. Lance said the present was the place to be and the future a place you made up as you went along.

  “Come on,” Jenny said now. She pushed Damon into the isolation room. Her small, warm hand on his shoulder. She was little but strong. He wondered what she looked like out of that hoodie and jeans but couldn’t really picture it. She didn’t touch him again, just pointed at the chair and closed the door behind them. It was a stupid setup because him and Ryan were still facing each other through the wall of glass, but he didn’t say anything. He thought, She’s, like, a professional tutor, she should know better by now.

  “Okay,” Jenny said, taking a breath. “Let’s find out which problems you’re supposed to do. Where’s your planner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You lost it?”

  He shrugged.

  “Damon. We talked about this. How are you going to do your homework if you don’t write down the assignment?”

  It was starting to feel like the old days. He could feel the slide back, like when he was a kid and his big brother, Max, pushed him down the plastic tube at the playground—he was sliding and sliding and tryna stop himself by holding on to the staticky plastic but there weren’t any edges to grab.

  To stop the sliding feeling, Damon opened his backpack and pulled out a piece of binder paper. Unfolded it and pressed the wrinkles out on the table. On the paper he’d written the numbers of all the problems Mr. Decker said to do that day in class and the first couple that he tried to do by himself during tutorial. Which meant one actual answer and then a lot of shit he’d penciled in and crossed out.

  “I wrote it here.”

  Jenny was shocked. “Damon, you did this?”

  “At tutorial.”

  “You did work during tutorial?”

  “So?”

  “That’s amazing, Damon. I mean it. Really great.” She looked like she might be in love with him. Just for a second. She wasn’t that much older.

  “I guess.”

  “Right on. Okay. Let’s do this.” Then she did this crazy thing. Usually, she stayed across the table from him and they kinda stared each other down until he gave in and did some work or she got pissed enough to leave. This time, no. This time she got up and pulled her chair around next to his and reached across him to slide the algebra book between them and she smelled like grass after the rain. “You ready?”

  He nodded.

  Then she helped him. For every problem, she had him write down the numbers that mattered and then they worked it out together. It was boring as fuck and most of the time he had no clue what she was talking about, but there was something different when she was sitting there next to him and smiling and tucking her hair behind her ear and talking to him like she liked him and there was the jingle of her silver bangles when she wrote and a little whiff of coffee on her breath.

  Out the glass wall, there was Ryan tipping back in his chair, throwing a Koosh ball straight up in the air and catching it, and when he saw Damon looking he stopped the ball and made like to throw it Damon’s way, jumping his eyebrows and sticking out his tongue. It was hilarious how his tutor didn’t notice and kept right on typing Ryan’s homework, and the old Damon would have seen it as an opportunity. He would’ve jumped up and run out to catch the ball, or even just raised his hands and hollered, “Blast that motherfucker!” through the glass, even knowing those little kids were doing their ABC’s two tables over. Every inch of his body was itching to get out of that hard plastic chair.

  Lance said stop and feel what he was feeling. Breathe his way through it. Wait. So Damon watched the imaginary smoke move in and out of his body. Red and blue, hot and cool. The plastic clock ticked on the wall. Then Ryan’s tutor woke up and took the Koosh away, and the moment was over.

  By the end of the hour, Damon still didn’t give a fuck about any kind of algebra and had tried to visualize six or seven times what Jenny’d look like naked sucking dick. But the homework was done.

  “Awesome! Damon, you did it!” Jenny said. He thought if Mill Valley had cheerleaders she’d be one.

  “Cool,” he told her, and stuck the paper in the front of his math book and shoved the book in his backpack. Thinking about Cool Ranch Doritos and gummy worms and how many zombos he was gonna kill when he got home.

  “Cool. So what else do you have to do tonight? Let’s make a list.”

  Fuck. What else? The clock on the wall said 5:45. Jenny started looking through his backpack and writing down a list of all the other homework he already forgot. Read two chapters for English. Write a three-page paper for U.S. history. Do the study guide for the quiz tomorrow in physio. Then there was the late work he could maybe still get credit for. And the electives. Spanish. Art. Motherfuckin’ PE. He stopped looking. It just went on and on. Lance would have said it was his choice to do it or not. It was his choice but there was consequences either way.

  “Damon. You can do this,” Jenny said. Like she was right in that plastic tube with him. Like she saw him sliding down.

  “I know,” he told her.

  She let him out of the isolation room.

  Ryan gave him a ride home. “We got the hookup,” he said. “Nick’s supplier came through. You down?”

  Damon thought, I could do the rest of this shit tomorrow before school. Get up hella early, bomb through it. I could say I did it but I lost it. I could say I forgot it. I could do it tomorrow night. Hand it in late for half credit. I could not do it. Toss my backpack in the back of Ryan’s Expedition and forget it. And for a few hours out of twenty-four do what the fuck I want to do.

  “Naw, not tonight,” he told Ryan. “Fuckin’ washed, bro.”

  “Whatever, chag,” Ryan said.

  When Damon got home, he went straight to his room. He turned on the desk light and shoved the sweatshirts and candy wrappers and broken pens and DVDs onto the floor. He scrolled through his phone to look at funny shit on Vine but didn’t even stay on five minutes. He got all his books out and Jenny’s list and for the first time ever he did everything on it. Not even joking. Every last thing.

  After a couple weeks, it got to the point where Jenny didn’t even cringe when he came in. He was turning in work, and his math grades had gone up to C’s instead of F’s. And he was feeling different. Not smoking or drinking, so his head got clearer. He was still killing zombos on Xbox but it wasn’t the first thing he went to, and he didn’t lose those hours that used to go by before he was even aware. Now mostly he played at Ryan’s or Nick’s place. It was better than playing alone and they were mostly cool with him not smoking. Most of all, he was doing better at what Lance said, like not getting so heated when teachers glared at him, and breathing when he felt cooped up. At the tutoring place, Jenny started leaving the door to the isolation room open so he could hear the buzz of kids outside. She said pretty soon they’d be out in the main room and he’d get to use a computer again. She didn’t even mind when he came in—came right up to him and asked to help without glancing at anyone.

  —

  The night of Elisabeth Avarine’s party—the night he got the BMW back—Damon went and picked up Ryan. As they bombed down the half-empty streets toward Elisabeth’s house, they were slapping old-school Tupac loud enough to shake the seats. He didn’t know what was gonna happen that night, but he hadn’t had a drink in weeks and he didn’t think he needed one. He was good. He was back.

  Elisabeth Avarine lived in one of those big old ghost-story-looking houses in the canyon behind Old Mill Park, on a street that was like two mountains sucking in so cars and people could sneak through. Damon slid the car into a little groove next to a redwood tree and stepped out feeling pretty good—considering he hadn’t had a car in months, h
e still parked like a fuckin’ pro. He didn’t bother to lock it because this was Mill Valley and anyone who’d be tryna take a BMW was going to be inside the party with him. And people would be getting too wasted to be running around stealing cars and shit.

  The house was jammed into the side of the hill, so he and Ryan had to hike down this cutty staircase in the dark just to find the front door. As they descended, Damon’s heart started punching his ribs and he thought of what Lance said, like how it’s never too late to change the game. People were starting to look at him different. Not everyone—most adults still kinda flinched when he walked in a room—but some. Like Jenny. Like his mom, who was acting just a little more relaxed lately. Not like his dad, but who gave a shit about that asshole. That’s what Lance said. “You’ve gotta adjust your expectations,” Lance said. “Don’t expect him to be different. And if he comes at you, stay cool. Don’t take the bait.” Lance said a lot of dope shit and Damon tried to remember it all, running the lines through his brain on a loop. Instead, there was that thing his dad said earlier. Just for the night. See how you do. Shaking the keys in Damon’s face. Why did he have to do it like that? Why couldn’t he just be decent and say, Good job, Damon, you’re not a fuckup after all, you’re doing all that homework and not doing nothing to chill yourself out, not drinking, not smoking, not even when your body’s screaming at you to give it some relief, and in the three months you’ve been home the teachers haven’t complained about you once? Instead he had to shake those keys like Damon was a dog begging for a walk and raise that eyebrow like he was a hundred percent sure Damon was gonna fuck it up. Like he wanted him to. Like he’d rather be right than have a son he could actually try to like.

  As they walked down to Elisabeth’s front door, Damon still had his dad in the back of his head, not his words but his face, that smirk like I know who you are. Damon tried to put Lance’s words on top, to remember that the past was not the future, he could be anyone he decided to be. But when they got into the party, the music wrapped them up, and there were girls and red cups scattered everywhere, and he knew this was where he belonged.