by Alice Mura
Trouble Comes
in
Twos
Copyright © 2020 by the author
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For more information, contact [email protected]
FIRST EDITION
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A GIFT FOR YOU
Hi! I have something special for you to say a little thank you for picking up my book.
It’s a short story from Jet’s past:
Jet’s New Home
You can pick up your free copy here.
CHAPTER ONE
Jet sat on the porch of his foster home, waiting for his dad to pick him up. He ran a hand nervously through his feathered bangs. His black slacks matched his eyeliner and his never-smiling lips were tensed in the corners. Sitting next to him was his foster mom, Paula. An elderly, plump woman, she always wore quarter-sleeved button-downs with floral prints. Her wrinkled hand rubbed his back as they waited. It was a warm August afternoon in Northern California.
“I’m going to miss you,” said Paula, her thick glasses fogging with the heat of threatening tears. She pulled a wrinkled tissue out of her pocket to wipe them. Jet examined his shoes, and the chipped concrete steps, and gazed down the road.
“I’ll miss you too...” he mumbled through the sleeve of his hoodie. Despite the bright rays of sunlight that fell on them, his body felt like ice, as it always did. Paula pulled him towards her and kissed the side of his head. The wool muffled her lips.
“You can call me any time, you know,” she murmured, squeezing his shoulders.
“I know…” Jet’s throat closed in. It was an alien experience – this tightening of the throat thinking about leaving a foster home. With Paula, Jet had felt like he could breathe deeply for the first time in his life. And now he was holding his breath again, plunging into the unknown.
A white four-door hatchback slowed and pulled into the driveway. Jet’s brows jumped, his dad was on time. Jet stood up, clutching the black garbage bag full of clothes and sketch pads. He didn’t own anything else. Paula leaned on him as she helped herself to her feet with a groan. They hugged one last time. Jet promised himself he wouldn’t cry. He hugged her like he was afraid to break her, feeling the fragile ribs under her plump frame. Paula hugged him back with all the strength her aging body could muster.
Tony DeVille stepped out of the car and removed his sunglasses. For the first time in Jet’s memory, his dad didn’t have dark sags under his eyes. He had lost weight and started shaving. Trouser pants and a neatly tucked in dress shirt hinted at a respectable job, probably in an office somewhere.
Jet fixed his eyes on the cracked, concrete driveway. If it were up to him, he would have stayed with Paula until he was eighteen, but that wasn’t how things worked. Over fifty thousand kids were in the system. There was simply no room for a guy who didn’t need fostering. It would be like stealing a spot from someone who really needed it.
“Hey, kiddo,” said his dad, wrapping him in a tentative hug. Their eyes were at the same level. “Look how much you’ve grown. I can’t believe it.” This hug was not like hugging Paula at all. It was a cautious, possessive hug, like being wrapped in packaging before being shipped across the state. Jet didn’t say a word.
“Just toss your things in the boot, and we’ll get going,” said his dad as he turned to exchange pleasantries with Paula. Toss? Had his dad used that word on purpose? Probably not, but how fitting. Jet climbed in the back, clutching his life wrapped in a garbage bag.
“You take good care of that boy,” said Paula, an edge clinging to her ordinarily pleasant voice.
“Yep. I promise I will,” Tony said, his shoulders stiffening.
“Don’t promise me, promise him,” Paula pointed to Jet in the back seat.
Tony’s shoulders rose with a deep breath then he leaned in to face Jet. “I promise I’m going to take care of you.”
Jet stared back at his father. Would he really keep his promise this time? Why would now be any different?
Tony’s brow creased. “You don’t want to sit in the front?”
Jet shook his head.
“Okay then…”
As his father sat in the front, Paula poked her head in the back. “Call me when you get home, so I know you made it okay,” she said, her cheeks slick from tears.
Jet wanted to say he was home, but a lump of granite was squeezing against his windpipe. All he could manage was a half-hearted “okay”. As his father started the car and pulled away, Jet turned around in the back seat to watch her standing in her driveway until she faded into the distance.
“Seat-belt,” said Tony, looking in the rear-view mirror. Unable to muster the energy to put up an argument, Jet buckled his seat-belt. The metal tip clicked into place loudly. On the freeway, his father fumbled with the radio dial to break the heavy silence, but none of the stations were getting a clean signal. He clicked it off again. The weight of seven long years apart bore down in the silence. Jet closed his eyes, feeling a faint sting in the back of them.
“So...” Tony began slowly, cracking open the void between them. “How was foster care?”
Jet’s chest pulsed with a dry puff of air. “It was a fucking nightmare,” he said, staring at the road ahead and ignoring his father’s face in the rear-view mirror. He thought he saw his dad’s lips twist together. Another long silence stretched out between them like a magnetic force pushing against two sides of a rocky chasm.
“I thought Paula seemed nice. Are you saying she wasn’t?”
“Paula is an angel. I was happy there for the first time since…But the other places, the institution...” Jet trailed off with a shudder. Too much bad water flowing under that bridge. Water that his dad would never know about. There was no point.
“I know it’s not much to you, but for seven years I wanted to say, I’m sorry I put you through that, kiddo. I hope they told you I wasn’t legally allowed to have contact with you. I wanted to tell you…how sorry I am. I wasn’t a very good father.”
Jet let out a single, hollow laugh, like wind escaping a dead tree.
“Yeah, so I was a terrible father. Part of getting sober, doing the twelve steps, is apologizing to everyone you ever wronged. I know I wronged you. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me the most. I didn’t get to watch you grow up…” Tony shook his head. “I failed you, and I’m sorry. Those days are gone now.”
Jet clenched his fists. Sorry didn’t take back any of the sufferings that began when he was only ten years old. Losing his mother, then his father right afterwards, had been a nightmare. Passed from family to family, labelled as a weirdo, called names, beaten…other things. Never once had he had family, or been accepted and loved, until seven months ago when he had moved in with Paula.
Silence descended and lingered like fog between them. The hum of the engine reminded him that every minute that ticked by carried him further from his tiny little island of peace. They drove in silence for so long that Jet nodded off, lulled by the sunshine warming the window beside his face. He woke when the engine switched off. They had pulled into a garage for fuel.
“We’ll have lunch here.” Tony chucked his head toward the diner attached to the service station. “There’s still a long way to go.”
; Jet would have rather stood on spikes than sit across from his dad while they ate, but he was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten out at any kind of restaurant. Tony asked him about the mundane things that adults thought made a person; school, friends, hobbies. Jet answered as little as possible. In his experience, what a kid could be was determined by his environment. And Jet had yet to see what his new environment was like. When they climbed back in the car, Jet leaned against the door and pretended to sleep. Tony got the radio working before driving off.
Despite his pretense, busy thoughts kept Jet awake. He grieved the miles that stretched him further away from Paula. At some point, the sun began slanting directly into his eyes and he realised it was late afternoon. They had been driving all day. The reality of the distance snapped the hope he’d been holding of seeing his foster mom again. Jet wiped angrily at a stray tear. He was cold and needed to pee.
The car slowed and Jet sat up. They were leaving the freeway.
“Are you wearing eyeliner?” Tony suddenly asked.
“What of it?” Jet snapped. He ran a finger under his eyes and found a tiny smudge.
His dad sat more upright, wide eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror several times.
Jet waited for the rest of the judgment, or the questions, or reprimand. He glanced at the mirror, tensing.
Tony opened his mouth once, then tried a second time. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to stop at Wal-Mart and pick up a few things. My treat.”
Jet looked at his dad in the mirror. His treat? No shit. No one else here could pay for anything. He stayed silent. What strings would be attached?
They turned off the freeway exit onto a busy main road. For maybe the eighth time in his life, Jet was being snatched from the home he had tried to make for himself and dumped somewhere new. Watching the traffic and stores go by on unfamiliar streets, this new town might as well have been another world. Their car slowly waded through evening traffic until they pulled into the Wal-Mart parking lot. Tony honked at a grey sedan that nearly backed into them.
“I was thinking we grab something for dinner tonight to celebrate. You can pick anything you want,” said his dad as they got out of the car together. “You still like French fries? I remember they were your favorite.”
Jet checked the car doors had locked. He didn’t have much, but people would take anything given half a chance, even if it was in a garbage bag. “French fries haven’t been my favorite food in years. I’m a vegetarian now.” Jet strode towards the entrance with his hands sunk in his pockets.
“Are French fries not vegetarian?” Tony muttered to himself, following Jet into the store. Jet didn’t turn around to see if his dad was with him as he stepped inside. A blast of icy air-conditioning hit him as he entered, bringing a shiver to his skin. The store was busy in the evening, with hundreds of strangers waddling around. Jet headed straight for the makeup aisle. No one had ever brought him here to shop, and yet it felt strangely comforting to Jet. Instinctively, he looked around before grabbing an eyeliner pencil. If Tony was really trying to make amends, Jet was going to test him. He grabbed a pair of the most expensive eyeliners in the store, a tube of mascara, a bottle of clear lip gloss, an eyeshadow palette, and a pack of makeup wipes. The palette slipped and he lunged for it, clutching the hoard awkwardly in his hands.
“I grabbed a cart,” said his father from behind him, making Jet jump. It wouldn’t have been the first time Jet had been caught taking makeup from a store. Jet dumped his haul in the cart, avoiding eye contact with his dad. He wiped sweaty palms on his thighs.
“Did you get everything you need?” his father asked, sounding way too kind and supportive for Jet’s shitty attitude. Sooner or later, the mask would have to slip. Tony flashed him a grin. Jet wondered if he was enjoying shopping with his son.
“Yeah...” Jet conceded. He took a deep breath and let his shoulders relax. There had been plenty of opportunities for his dad to ridicule his look, but so far he had been nothing but supportive. Maybe he deserved at least a bit of a chance. Together, they circled the store until they got to the arts and crafts section where a display caught Jet’s eye.
Stealing makeup was usually easy because it was pocket-sized, but nicking nice notebooks was risky. Jet always bought cheap spiral bound notepads for a few cents each. This time he bypassed the cheap paper. One by one he picked up a box of quality color pencils, some fine tip markers, four sketch pads, and something called a manga kit which had a protractor, sharpener, blue pencils, and a comic book with no drawings or dialogue that the artist was supposed to fill in. After his dad found him, Jet dumped all the supplies in the cart without a word.
“Oh, you’re into drawing?” asked Tony cheerily, as if excited to finally be able to learn something about his son.
“Yeah...”
“You’ll have to show me some of your work sometime.” They continued down the outer circuit of the store until the father stopped at men’s clothes. “How ‘bout you go pick out a jacket for the fall?”
“I have clothes...” Jet grumbled.
“I know, but I want to do this for you. Give me a few paychecks and we’ll go shopping somewhere nicer for clothes, but I want to be sure you stay warm when it gets cold out later this year. It’ll be a few degrees colder than you are used to. Get what you want, but please keep it to one, we still have to get groceries.”
Jet immediately darted for the women’s clothing and went through the available hoodies. He settled on a purple one with an oversized skull on the back covered in splatters of rainbow paint with black stars, swallows, and hearts shooting out from it. Like all the graphic clothing in Wal-Mart, it didn’t seem to mean anything and was only created for teenagers to feel unique. Still, Jet thought it was cute, and the hoodie fit his small frame perfectly. He also liked knowing how wearing feminine clothes agitated people. When he changed clothes, he remembered the small, white scars on his wrist and hurried to hide them before his dad saw. His father lifted his eyebrows as Jet returned, wearing the zip-up hoodie.
“That looks great,” his dad declared before they continued to the supermarket side of the store.
Jet scanned the tall displays of stacked pasta, rows of sauce jars, mayonnaise and cooking herbs, and suddenly felt very hungry. They walked past an entire aisle of cereal. What would it feel like to have a pantry full of these things? The bright designs on the premium boxes called to him. He ran a finger over a cartoon alligator. Foster families with three blood kids plus two extra fosters didn’t buy these sorts of things. Fights had broken out over leftovers more times than he could count, and as a small kid, he never won any of them. The lack of food was probably why he was only five-foot-four-inches while his dad was nearly six-foot-tall. He couldn’t remember how tall mom had been.
“Grab whatever you want, as long as it isn’t all junk food. I waited until today to go grocery shopping.” Tony beamed at him.
Jet looked up and down and felt a tremor crawl along his skin. “You want me to choose?”
“Sure.”
Since when did he get to choose for himself? Growing up in the system, virtually all decisions were made for him. The state decided where he lived and who he lived with. His foster parents decided what he ate, where he slept, and what clothes were his. And his foster brothers decided how miserable he would be while he lived there. But, things were different now. Jet’s heart pounded as he walked down the snack aisle and grabbed a familiar bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos before tossing them in the cart.
“Whoa, don’t worry about me stealing your Cheetos. Those are too hot for me,” Tony said, trying to connect. His dad was trying so hard, but Jet didn’t share his smile. They were a long, long way from forgiveness. They continued through the food aisles.
Tony grabbed a whole raw chicken shrink-wrapped in plastic. “I know you said you’re vegetarian, but I haven’t made that big step yet.” He shrugged apologetically.
“Yeah.” Jet answered. Until today, dec
laring he was vegetarian was one of the only ways he could feel in control. Now everything was shifting, and the anxiety of finally having choices made his heart race. Jet grabbed a couple of bags of frozen vegetables that could be cooked in the microwave, a familiar-looking family bag of rice, plus pasta, cans of beans, and a huge pack of frozen French fries. Tony hid a smirk. In the produce aisle, his dad encouraged him to go nuts.
“Guess I won’t have to fight you about making you eat your vegetables anymore,” said his dad. For the first time in years, Jet remembered how fussy he had been when he was little as his parents tried to get him to eat his vegetables at dinner. Now he dumped lettuce, cabbage, mushrooms, onions, broccoli, spinach, jalapenos, carrots, celery, potatoes, green beans, cucumber, and zucchini into the trolley. He threw in a bag of rice noodles. He had liked the Asian food one of his foster moms had made.
“This is great. You’re going to have to show me how you cook all this. Ya’ know, a big part of getting sober is eating right and taking care of your body.”
Jet didn’t turn around to acknowledge his dad but was mildly satisfied he was taking getting sober so seriously. At the checkout, Jet helped unload the cart. The cashier, a woman roughly the same age as Paula, gave Jet a second look as she rang up his makeup.
“Oh, sweetie, that’s a girl’s hoodie,” she said as Jet held out the tag dangling from his sleeve.
“No shit,” he snarled, making the cashier gasp. The scanner beeped, and Jet stalked off towards the doors, not helping with the bags. He ought to be used to it by now, but he was raw in all kinds of ways right now.
“Cashier needs to mind her own business,” Tony said, approaching moments later with a cart full of bags. Jet nodded his head in agreement and helped load the bags into the tray. Maybe, just maybe this fresh start would work out.
CHAPTER TWO
Jet’s new home was a mid-level apartment. The neighborhood was surprisingly clean. He couldn’t see any graffiti on the walls, and none of the windows were broken. Instinctively he looked for shoes tied by their laces hanging from the powerlines, but there weren’t any in sight. His eyes widened. Maybe there wouldn’t even be gunshots in the distance when he tried to sleep at night.