Survivor Stories

by J P Barnaby

  God, he wanted to see the sun again.

  [Anthony]: Okay, I’ll come. OMG, I will. I’ll pack up some stuff, get in my car tomorrow, and come to Detroit.

  [Jay]: Really?

  [Anthony]: Yeah, where am I going? I’m going to need to print out directions.

  His heart pounded, slamming against the inside of his ribs as he pulled the laptop onto his legs. It took him two tries to reenter his password, but eventually, he brought up Chrome and opened the navigation site. He couldn’t do it, leave home with no money and go live with a guy he’d never met. It was insane. Then images of him onstage at his graduation came to mind: standing alone next to the principal, getting that fucking paper, in front of all those people when guys started to yell “faggot” or worse.

  He typed his address into the first box.

  He typed the address Jay provided into the second box.

  Five hours. It would take only five hours to escape, and he could be with Jay. Jay understood him better than anyone did. When Anthony’s mother wasn’t ignoring him, she battled with him. She hated his hair. She hated his friends. She hated that he wasn’t Aaron. Allen had abandoned him, and Aaron, well. Aaron never gave a shit in the first place.

  His life would never change. He’d be eighteen in a matter of weeks and had no reason to stay. No hope. No light.

  [Anthony]: It will take me 5 hrs.

  [Jay]: So when do you think you’ll get here?

  [Anthony]: If I pack up quickly tonight, my mom should be gone by 11, so I can be there by about 4.

  [Jay]: That’s perfect. I can’t wait to see you!

  [Anthony]: I’d better go, it’s already 3 and I need to get some sleep before I pack. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.

  [Jay]: That’s so awesome. Sleep well, babe. Tomorrow night you’ll be sleeping in my bed.

  [Anthony]: I can’t wait.

  Anthony logged off the Xbox and sat back against his pillows. He’d really done it. He’d really planned to leave. His controller dropped to the floor as he set the laptop back between the bed and the dresser. The bottom drawer creaked as he pulled it out and felt around the old socks for one with a distinctive rounded edge of thick glass. It took a minute in the dark, but eventually, he found the sock with his pint of Absolut. For four long years, he’d taken a few swigs out of a bottle before bed to help him fall asleep. Right then, it would take more than a few, keyed up as he was to leave the next day.

  As he drank, he imagined Jay’s hand caressing his face as he knelt on the floor at a party.

  He wouldn’t call Anthony a fag.

  Their dream lips met, and hope kindled in his chest just as Anthony drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

  Two

  ANTHONY SNATCHED another duffel from his closet and began to shove every pair of underwear he owned into the crevices and rounded corners. He’d packed jeans, T-shirts, and most of the hanging clothes he wanted to take. They lay folded in the big box where he’d always kept his Lego sets. He didn’t want Jay to think he was lame, so he dumped the little plastic toys into a garbage bag and threw them in the closet. He couldn’t bring himself to throw them out, no matter what his parents decided to do with his room after he left. It took years of birthdays and Christmases to collect them. But the Mustang wouldn’t hold a lot.

  Almost everything he wanted to take sat in boxes or bags at the bottom of his closet next to the Legos. They stayed hidden from view should someone come into his room.

  No one did.

  No one bothered to check on him and stop him from packing everything important to him. They didn’t care enough to stop him. By eleven o’clock, he’d finished packing, showered, and sat in his room waiting for his mother to leave so he could. He didn’t want a confrontation. She would tell him to stay, yell at him until he took his stuff downstairs and unpacked—not because she wanted him to stay, but because she had to be in control.

  He almost considered messaging Jay at eleven thirty to let him know about the delay when his mother yelled down the stairs.

  “I’m going to the store before I go to the committee meeting. Do you want anything?” She couldn’t even be bothered to come all the way downstairs to talk to him. She just yelled at him as if he were the lone lunatic still left in the basement of an asylum.

  “No,” he yelled back. He didn’t need anything. He’d be gone by the time she returned.

  “You’re almost out of Dr. Pepper,” she persisted. “Want me to pick you up a case? It’s on sale.”

  He didn’t want to arouse her suspicions, so he shouted back a “Yeah, sure.” Maybe someone else would drink it.

  Fifteen agonizing minutes later, he finally heard the side door close. He crept up the stairs and watched from behind the blinds in the living room as she backed out of the drive. Fear and excitement warred in him as the tail lights disappeared at the end of the block. She’d be gone a couple of hours, so he had plenty of time, but he ran for the basement stairs anyway.

  It took about twenty minutes for him to run up and down the stairs carrying everything that would fit in the car. His heart pounded with anxiety and guilt. He left the furniture, the television, and a bookcase containing most of his paperbacks. He had them all on his phone anyway.

  His phone.

  Shit.

  It killed him that he had to leave it. First, the plan belonged to his parents. More important, if his mother decided to track him, she could do it with his phone. He shredded his soul and deleted all the pictures first. He deleted the texts, removed his e-mail account, and deleted his Facebook app. He left the lock code on, just in case.

  Anthony glanced out the window again. When he saw nothing, he turned and headed for the hall. The walk to his parents’ room made him paranoid. Every creak of the floor sounded like a person, every bang of a branch on the house like a car door slamming. He turned the knob on their door and went into the one room of the house he never entered. Anthony had no reason to crawl in bed with his parents anymore after a nightmare. He’d stopped doing that when they moved him and Allen to the basement so they could coddle Aaron. It didn’t matter that Anthony was terrified of the dark. It didn’t matter that for the first year, he thought mice would crawl in bed with him. He’d nearly failed fifth grade because he never slept. They all just said it was because of things happening with Aaron.

  Fucking Aaron.

  The carpet muffled the sound of his feet as he searched the top of the dresser. If he were going to run, he’d need cash. The hundred bucks he’d hidden away in his own room wouldn’t be enough. Whenever he or Allen asked for money for various things, Mom always went to her room to get it. There had to be something in there.

  At the opposite end of the dresser, he found a small wooden chest. Carved into the top were a Bible quote and image of footprints in the sand guarding the contents. Great, now Anthony had to worry about God striking him with lightning for stealing, on top of everything else.

  He opened the box and pushed aside papers and a watch to find bills underneath. He pulled them out, all of them, and riffled through. About two hundred and fifty dollars would supplement his own hundred and at least let him eat for a while.

  A dark voice in the back of his mind reminded Anthony he didn’t know Jay. He could be forced to return to DeKalb the next day with his tail between his legs. How would he explain stealing money from his mother to Allen or Aaron? Self-hatred clawed its way through the inside of Anthony’s chest, making it hard to breathe. He was a fucking thief and a drug addict, all before he’d turned eighteen. His family must be so proud.

  With jerky, shaking hands, he put the money in his pocket, slammed God’s little box of guilt, and left the room without so much as a backward glance.

  In the kitchen he looked around his childhood home, the prison that had held him for the last eight years, and sighed. Everyone else had escaped, and now it was his turn. Aaron had moved in with Spencer a few months before, and Allen had gone off to Purdue, coming home less and less often wi
th each passing year.

  Anthony pulled a notebook and pen from a rack next to the phone. The fight drained out of him, spilling onto the counter as he stood there trying to figure out how to explain his decision. He started writing again and again, each note ripped from the metal spiral and thrown in the kitchen trash before he signed it. One more try, one more, then he had to leave.

  Mom & Dad,

  You’ve been telling me for months that if I wanted to live under your roof, I had to go to college. Even Aaron went to college. That’s great. Not sure if you noticed, but I’m not Aaron. I’m one of the kids you hid in the basement so you could focus on Aaron. I don’t know what it would have taken for you to focus on me, but I’m done trying to guess. I’m done waiting for you to see that I’m still here.

  I’m leaving. I have a friend willing to take me in for the summer until I can figure out what to do with my life. My graduation ceremony doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just an excuse for the other kids to scream awful things at me like they do at school, so I’m not sticking around for it.

  I just can’t do this anymore.

  Anthony

  His anger seeped into the paper, infusing the ink, searing the words into his heart. He threw the pen on the counter and propped the notebook up against the coffeemaker so his mother wouldn’t miss it when she came in.

  The walk to the front door seemed longer than necessary, but eventually, he closed it behind him and tested the knob to make sure it locked. A force of habit drilled into him by his mother. Blood roared in his ears as he took the sidewalk to the driveway and climbed into the Mustang loaded down with most of the contents of his bedroom.

  The car roared to life and nearly drowned out the little voice in the back of his mind telling him to call it off. He needed only to carry his stuff back in the house, return the money to his parents’ room, and rip up the note. Anthony gagged the little voice and backed out of the drive.

  By the time he turned out of his subdivision and onto the main road, a sick, giddy nausea had settled into his stomach. No matter how slow he went, the feeling didn’t dissipate. He turned into a gas station about a mile from his house and coasted up to the pumps. Inside the station, Anthony grabbed a Coke and a bag of chips and prepaid for gas, all with the cash in his pocket. It felt weird to have that kind of money. He usually carried twenty bucks at the most, since his mother wouldn’t let him get a job until he graduated. She said it would interfere with his homework. As if.

  Anthony watched the traffic while gas flowed into his old beater. His parents had bought the car for Allen to take him back and forth to school. When Allen went off to college, he left it for Aaron. When Aaron moved out, he left it for Anthony. There was no one else to leave it for, so Anthony took it with him. A pink cement truck passed. Anthony frowned, and it took him a minute or two to realize he was watching for his mother in the traffic. Eventually, she would return from her errands and find the note in the kitchen. Would she look for him? Would she even care he was gone?

  The pump handle clicked in his hand, indicating that the flow had ceased—twenty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents. He grinned. At least he wouldn’t have to go back in for change. With a full tank of gas, Coke, chips, and the directions he’d printed from the computer, he was ready.

  Anthony climbed back into his car, turned it toward the highway, and pulled out smoothly into traffic. The post office lay just ahead and beyond that, the grocery store where his mother shopped for stuff he’d no longer need. Instead, he turned left to avoid it and went past the high school he’d never see again. His heart didn’t stop pounding until he merged onto I-88 headed east.

  The sun seemed too bright on the cars as they closed in around him. It exhilarated and terrified him to watch the needle on the speedometer climb. The miles ticking away made a giggle threaten to erupt from deep in his chest.

  He’d really done it.

  He’d left.

  The details of the landscape crawled past as one suburb turned into another and the cloudless blue sky stretched out into endless possibilities. Anthony tried to imagine the look on Jay’s face when he met him on the doorstep. His eyes would light up, and for once in his life, someone would be happy to see Anthony.

  God, he couldn’t wait.

  It didn’t take long before Anthony rolled down the windows because sweat made him stick to the seat. Wind whipped through his hair, drawing it into his eyes, and he smiled. No more lectures about haircuts. Keeping most of his attention focused on the road, Anthony grabbed a bandana from the bag on the passenger seat and pulled the mess out of his face. He added sunglasses and watched the road stretch out toward his future.

  As he merged to get onto I-294, Anthony gave up on silence. He fidgeted with the radio, a custom job Allen put in when he’d had the car. Deep in the back of his heart, he knew if he found a good song, a good sign, a good omen, he’d be okay. It was such a chick thing to do, but he kept punching through programmed stations. On the second to last button, he smiled. Outbreak Monkey was one of his favorite bands. He’d been into them forever, especially since Mackey Sanders came out as gay and told the world if they didn’t like it, they could go to hell.

  Does it help to say I’m sorry?

  That I didn’t mean to make you cry?

  Does it help if I am truthful

  And tell you truly why?

  So if I break you, should I fix you?

  Will that be a bitter end?

  Or maybe just not break you

  Just shake hands with my good friend.

  The words settled into his heart. He reached into the recesses of his imagination and saw Chase saying them to him. In the afternoon traffic, he could almost hear Chase’s voice and maybe even feel the soft touch of a hand on his face. But Chase had broken him and had no intention of fixing things. The hate lingered, and he forced the image in his mind to change. Anthony focused on Jay’s gentleness, on Jay’s touch, and he relaxed. In just a few hours, he would feel that touch for real.

  Anthony Downing, the dreamer of children’s dreams.

  IN THE shadow of the biggest city he’d ever seen, Anthony swung onto I-94 East, where he would stay for the next two hundred plus miles. He watched the tall buildings in the distance and wondered if Detroit would swallow him up like Chicago might if he just turned north instead of continuing east. If only Allen lived near Chicago instead of Aaron, he might have put on his turn signal. But Aaron would send him back to his parents with a lecture on college. None of them fucking asked if he wanted to go to college. They didn’t care what he did with his life as long as they wouldn’t have to foot the bill.

  He couldn’t tell them that he had no fucking clue. Maybe staying with Jay and getting away from the weight of his family’s expectations would help him figure it out.

  By the time he reached the Indiana border, his head hurt. He hadn’t slept well the night before, and keeping the radio loud enough to hear over the wind didn’t help. The air hadn’t worked in the Mustang since long before he’d gotten it, and the day scorched outside his windows.

  A sign on the side of the road caught his attention. He was coming up on I-65 to Indianapolis. One quick turn and he could be on his way to see Allen. Allen, the brother who had always been there for him, always protected him—until one day, he wasn’t. He’d left Anthony to navigate the horrifying, shark-infested waters of high school as the skinny, effeminate, gay kid brother of a lunatic. Yeah, that went well.

  Besides, Allen would be pissed when he found out Anthony stole money from their parents. Allen lived and died by their mother’s approval. He’d assume Anthony had stolen it for a fix. Everyone would. When he came home from rehab, he’d ceased being Anthony and just turned into the junkie down the hall.

  Anthony moved into the left lane, determined not to catch the exit to Allen’s when it appeared. His heart broke a little when he drove past it. It broke a little more at the sign for a college called Purdue North Central. He remembered all of them togethe
r taking Allen down to Purdue and how his heart hardened all the way home because Allen had left him.

  Well, now it was his turn to leave.

  The road droned on, mile after mile, until he reached a sign that took away some of the sting in his heart. Across the endless forest of trees, a blue oasis of a sign read: Welcome to Pure Michigan. He didn’t know what was so pure about it, but the sign made his tired back not so sore.

  Just two hundred thirty-five more miles to Detroit.

  He nearly exited the highway at one point, because the idea of a Chocolate Garden called to him, but Anthony stayed his course. The sheer number of signs for wineries, distilleries, and breweries made him wonder if he’d entered a state full of alcoholics—maybe he was home. One song melded into the next like the miles of the highway surrounded by trees, grass, and cracks in the asphalt. He wished about a hundred times for his phone so he could either listen to one of his playlists or check out what was happening on Facebook. Did they know he was gone yet? Did they care?

  Anthony learned many things down the next stretch of highway. In Decatur, he learned if he popped a piece of gum from the foil package hard enough, it would bounce off the steering wheel and fly out the window. He waited for the ten-car pileup from the errant piece of gum, but it didn’t happen. About ten miles later, he figured out there was fucking nothing but trees between Chicago and Detroit. In Paw Paw, he learned Walmart had taken over the planet with all of their cloned stores selling cloned T-shirts with interchangeable sports teams. He learned you’re seriously bored when Sprinkle Road makes you giggle. But in Oshtemo, he watched the forest green disappear in a shower of white clouds and blue skies as far as he could see. The world seemed bigger then, far too big for Anthony to be able to navigate alone.

  Okay, the Climax highway sign made him laugh too.

  The sunset behind him contrasted with the vibrant horizon: a sky bruised with dusky clouds, farmhouses peeking through the trees, and the shells of dead truck tires scattered like shrapnel of a forgotten road war. The serene picture occupied his mind, and he zoned out for a few miles. That’s when he almost missed the cars stopped on the highway. His heart thundered against the sudden surge of adrenaline in his blood, and he slammed on the brakes, narrowly avoiding the Kia Sportage in front of him. The driver in his rearview mirror laid on the horn, but at least he didn’t hear the screech of metal against metal.