We'll Fly Away

by Bryan Bliss

  Because that’s the other thing about being in here: once you step through these doors, people drop you.

  Friends, family—it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s scaling these walls. Nobody’s coming on visitation day, talking about how much they miss you. Crying for you. That’s one of the subtle tortures of this place. It doesn’t involve needles, or getting jumped. Just the deafening silence of everybody you know forgetting your name.

  So when Sister came walking up, I already knew what she was going to say. I didn’t stop playing, though. I was throwing that ball as hard as I could against the backboard. Not even trying to make it in. When she finally told me to stop, it took everything I had to not punt the basketball over the fence. To the moon, if I could.

  She looked sad standing there watching me. I threw up another shot—missed—the whole time trying to build a wall between me and her. Trying to pretend it didn’t matter that Eddie had ditched me. People get frozen out all the time in here. But that’s the problem. I never saw it coming from Eddie. And I should have.

  She tried to say something but I was like, “Whatever. I know all about Eddie.”

  That stopped her, T. Looked like she was about to fall over right there on the court. But man, I don’t know why. Everybody leaves you. Every single one. So when she asked how I knew about Eddie, I shook my head. Put another brick in that wall. It was bound to happen, I told her. And then I cemented the whole thing together with four words: “What do I care?”

  Her mouth dropped open when I said that, and pretty soon, I felt pretty stupid standing there with the ball in my hand, so I tossed it behind me and tried to walk away. Make that cut clean. Honestly, though? I was surprised Sister didn’t say anything back.

  She was staring up at the sky, her lips moving like she was praying.

  When she looked down, there were tears in her eyes. They blew the whistles and just before I lined up, Sister reached over and squeezed my shoulder so hard that I felt her fingers on my skin for ten minutes after I was inside.

  Luke

  13

  LUKE was halfway down the stairs when his mom followed him outside and called his name. Behind her, Ricky was telling her to let Luke go.

  “Luke. Please, stop. Stop.”

  Luke obeyed but didn’t turn around. Annie stood next to him awkwardly, eventually offering Doreen a quick wave.

  “Hi. I’m Annie.”

  Something inside Doreen lit up, incongruent to the situation, because her voice dripped with excitement. “Are you a friend of Luke’s?”

  “We go to school together,” Annie said. “And I live here. In the apartments. We moved in a few weeks ago.”

  “Well, don’t think all this yelling is normal for us,” Doreen said, laughing. “You know how boys can be.”

  Luke spun around. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Luke, not in front of your friend . . .”

  “I tell you Toby’s dad beat his ass, that he’s missing, and all you care about is what Annie thinks?”

  “Luke, it’s okay.” Annie touched his arm, but he barely felt it.

  “Why don’t you two go for a walk?” Doreen said. “Let everything calm down and then—”

  Luke didn’t wait for her to finish. He stomped down the stairs, hoping Annie would follow him. He was halfway across the parking lot when she caught up. She didn’t tell him he was being rude. She didn’t tell him his mom was nice, or pretend that she hadn’t just seen the definition of dysfunction. She walked beside him silently, eventually grabbing his hand and squeezing warmth into his whole body.

  Having Annie with him, feeling her hand in his, threw him off balance. Usually he would sprint to the plane and knock out fifty, sixty push-ups before the exertion slowly siphoned away the anger. But he was already dead tired, and the anger was still begging to be fed.

  They were half a mile away when she nudged him with her shoulder.

  “You got a plan?” she asked. “Or is this purely a symbolic march?”

  “I need to find Toby,” he said half-heartedly. He didn’t know what he needed.

  “Or . . . maybe we could go to Wilco,” Annie offered. “Get some snacks. Figure out a plan?”

  Luke didn’t answer, and she brought both of them to a stop. When he looked into her eyes, she smiled.

  “Listen, he didn’t want to be anywhere near me or you,” she said. “So maybe we give him a chance to cool off. And you too.”

  Luke opened his mouth to object, but Annie shook her head. When he tried again, she refused him again. Why it worked, Luke didn’t know. But when he opened his mouth a third time, she smiled and slowly started walking, dragging him behind her.

  They walked down the dark road, accidentally bumping into each other on the uneven road. When a car passed, Luke dropped behind Annie and instinctively grabbed her shoulders to steer her away from traffic, the way he did with his brothers. Sometimes even with Toby, because in all honesty he was less aware than either Petey or Jack-Jack. Every time Luke came up next to her, she retook his hand.

  Slowly he felt the edge beginning to dull.

  “I’m going to get a doughnut and some hot chocolate,” Annie announced. “And I don’t want to hear anything about making weight tonight. Life’s too short to be on a damn diet all the time.”

  Luke laughed. Tried to hide it. He didn’t know why.

  “Well, guess what,” he said. “I made weight.”

  Annie slapped him on the shoulder. “Two doughnuts for you!”

  Luke wrinkled his nose. “Or maybe a candy bar.”

  A truck rumbled past them, and when Luke took Annie’s shoulders, she turned and faced him. She was taller, maybe just a half an inch. They stood there staring at each other until Annie said, “Please tell me you aren’t hating on doughnuts. Doughnuts are the shit.”

  Luke shrugged. “They’re too sweet. I don’t know.”

  “This is . . . shocking.”

  Neither of them moved, their breath visible in the air. Finally Annie shook her head and spun around.

  “Let’s keep this show moving. I don’t have all night.”

  Luke held the door, and they both squinted into the bright halogen of the store. Annie rushed inside, rubbing her arms as she shot toward the empty doughnut case. Unfazed, she turned around and began stalking the aisles, indiscriminately pulling candy bars and bags of chips off the shelves.

  Luke stood near the cash register, unsure whether he should follow her. On the mat, he was polished and exacting. He seemed to know what his opponents were going to do before they did. But that was drilling. Constant repetitive motion. With Annie—if he was being honest, any girl—he second-guessed even the simplest movements. The most innocuous words. He didn’t have the time in. And more importantly . . . a wrestling mistake could be fixed. There was always another point, another match. He wasn’t sure if the same could be said about her.

  Annie came to the front of the store, her arms full of cellophane and plastic. She had candy and potato chips, a bottle of soda and a large water. The clerk looked baffled by the sheer amount of junk food on his counter. She smiled at him and—with a grand consideration—grabbed a pack of sugar-free gum from the stand right behind his register.

  “And something for my friend here,” she said. Then she stage-whispered, “He’s working on his figure.”

  “Is that everything?” the clerk deadpanned.

  “Now that you mention it,” Annie said, tapping a finger on her chin. “We’ll take one of those nudie mags too.”

  “For your friend?”

  “Trust me. He needs it.”

  Luke wanted to shrink into the walls as they shared a laugh. But the joke never went any further, because Annie didn’t have an ID and the strangely principled clerk wouldn’t even pull it out from behind the counter for her to inspect. By the time everything was bagged and in Annie’s hand, Luke was running out the door.

  “Hold up,” Annie said, rummaging in the bag. “Here.”

  She tossed
him a candy bar. Luke caught it and didn’t hesitate for a second. He opened it and took a big bite. Annie applauded and then sat on the curb and opened a package of cupcakes.

  “Back in Chicago, I used to hang out at a lot of gas stations.”

  “Really?” Luke asked.

  “Yeah. I mean, not professionally or anything. But me and my friends would go to shows and afterward there wasn’t much else to do. So we’d do this, you know?”

  She smiled, her teeth black with frosting and cake. “Hey, sit. You’re making me nervous.”

  “I’ve never been to a concert,” Luke said, dropping next to her.

  “What!”

  Luke didn’t want to tell her that he barely listened to music. Part of it was practical: without a phone or even the internet, there weren’t many options outside a dusty zipper case of CDs his mom had from high school. But it was more than that. Music worked you up. It brought you down. He saw it with the guys on the team, hip-hop or metal blaring, and it felt like a liability. He wanted to stay flat and even keel.

  Once, last year, the language arts teacher assigned him a poem about this rough-and-tumble guy who couldn’t let people see the bluebird that lived in his heart. How it would ruin everything. It floored Luke. Sometimes, when Luke least expected it, he’d think about that tiny bluebird and wonder if his was still alive.

  “Oh my god!” Annie said. “We should go to a honky-tonk show.”

  Luke laughed.

  “What?”

  “Honky-tonk show.”

  “There’s that place right past the school. The Silver Bullet,” Annie said. “And we should totally go.”

  “Is that the kind of music you normally listen to?”

  “Well, no. But you probably wouldn’t know any of the bands I like.”

  “What? Like rock and roll?”

  This time Annie laughed. “Yes, I love the rock and roll. It really swings. . . .”

  Luke shook his head, making Annie laugh even harder.

  “Japandroids. Beach Slang. At the Drive-In, if I’m feeling old school. Stuff like that.”

  “Are those . . . bands?”

  Annie nodded, taking a drink of soda. “Next time you’re in my car, I’m going to blow your mind.”

  Relaxation, familiarity, had snuck up on Luke. The fight with his mom and Ricky temporarily masked the bottomless anxiety he always felt. But now that the anger had burned away, Luke was left with an inescapable feeling that, in one blink, he’d managed to ruin everything between him and Toby. The questions launched through his mind like bottle rockets. Could he have rescued Toby without Annie? Would Toby trust him again? And of course . . . where in the hell did he go?

  He couldn’t answer a single one. He slumped on the curb.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m just thinking,” Luke said.

  “About honky-tonks?”

  “Uh, sure,” he said.

  Annie put an arm around Luke and pulled him close to her. He could feel her heart beating hard through her chest, either excited or nervous—Luke couldn’t tell. Or maybe she ran hot all the time, like an engine racing. The bag of chips dangled in her other hand. She stared at him, eventually rolling her eyes.

  “You’re not very good at this,” Annie finally said.

  And then she kissed him. As her lips moved over his for the second time, he wanted to give himself completely to her. She pulled away briefly and put her forehead against his, a move that felt strangely intimate to Luke. He had no choice but to look her in the eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “My pleasure,” Annie said. “Think you’re ready to go back?”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, Luke froze, suddenly conscious of what she’d seen. The broken table. Doreen and Ricky. The total chaos of his life.

  “I don’t care, you know,” she said. “About any of that stuff.”

  She reached a hand to Luke, and when he took it, she pulled him up until they were both standing. He wanted her to kiss him, but instead she led him away from the Wilco. Not letting go until they were in the parking lot of the apartment.

  Ricky was leaning against the railing, beer in hand.

  “Doreen, they’re back,” he called, watching Luke and Annie climb the staircase.

  Luke’s mom walked onto the landing, and the smell of perfume was immediate. Her makeup was redone, her hair now up. When Luke looked at Ricky, he realized he was wearing a pair of pressed blue jeans and a button-up cowboy shirt, complete with bolo tie. Doreen smiled cautiously.

  “Ricky has a surprise planned for me,” Doreen told Annie, taking her hand and leading her inside the apartment like they were a couple of friends rushing to gossip in the bathroom. Luke tried to follow, but Ricky stopped him.

  Luke braced himself, but Ricky reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out three twenty-dollar bills, holding them out to Luke. “We’ll be back late. Maybe tomorrow morning.”

  Luke looked at the bills but wouldn’t take them. Ricky sighed and folded the money back into his palm. He took his hand off Luke’s chest and let him into the apartment. As soon as Luke was inside, Ricky said, “Make sure you get that mess cleaned up too.”

  Doreen was talking to Annie in the living room. At first, Luke didn’t think anything of it, but Annie wouldn’t meet his eyes. She looked like she’d seen a ghost.

  “Okay, okay. Do I need to bring anything?” Doreen asked, turning to Ricky. “Did you give that money to Luke?”

  Ricky chuckled. “Golden boy doesn’t want my money.”

  Doreen took the bills from Ricky’s hand and held them out to Luke. “Take the boys to IHOP or something. Annie too.”

  Luke didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

  “Baby, don’t worry about it,” Ricky said. “Let’s get out of here. Wait until you see what I’ve got in store for you.”

  But Doreen was still staring at Luke like she couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t accept the cash. Wouldn’t bend over backward to thank Ricky for everything he was doing for their family. She shook the confusion, the annoyance, away like cobwebs and gave Ricky a faint smile.

  “I assume we’ll be home soon,” Doreen said, hitting Ricky playfully. “But who knows with this guy? He won’t tell me a single thing!”

  They kissed each other, Ricky’s hands inching closer to Doreen’s ass. She yelped and spun away from him, grabbing a pack of matches from the kitchen.

  “This is Ricky’s cell, just in case.” She wrote the number down and put it and the cash on the kitchen counter. She looked past Luke, to Annie. “Remember what I told you.”

  Annie blushed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  When they were out the door, Luke turned to Annie, who had started to clean up the pieces of glass and wood on the ground. “What was that all about?”

  Annie froze momentarily, but then kept picking up the pieces of wood and glass like she hadn’t heard the question. Luke was about to follow his mom and demand an answer when Annie stopped him.

  “She told me she has condoms in her bedside table.”

  “Jesus Christ . . . ,” Luke said. “Why would she say that?”

  “Well, she specifically said she didn’t want to be a grandmother.” Annie laughed nervously. “It was obviously no big deal for her. And that makes me think you’ve been messing with me. That she’s given that talk before.”

  “What? No.” Luke stared at Annie. “I can’t believe my mom told you where to find condoms.”

  “It’s, you know, fine.”

  Luke could hear Toby yelling instructions in his ear. Followed by laughter and the good-natured ribbing that usually followed one of Luke’s epic failures on this front. All he needed to do was say something terrible like, “Would you like to accompany me to my mother’s room?” Even thinking it made his skin crawl, so he stood up and got the vacuum cleaner.

  When he came back, Annie was smiling. He vacuumed, trying to figure out a way to segue into sex the whole time the machine was working. W
hen he was done, Jack-Jack came out of the room, rubbing his eyes and complaining about a bad dream. Annie pulled him onto her lap, and eventually they both fell asleep. Luke turned off the lights, knowing he should go into the room. If Petey woke up alone, he would freak out.

  But he didn’t want to leave Annie, still harboring vague fantasies that she would wake him up in the middle of the night, condoms in her hand. He didn’t want to be in the back room in case Toby made a U-turn and showed up at the door. Eventually he pulled his pillow and blanket to the floor, lying on his stomach and watching the stillness of the late night.

  14

  THE first thing Toby saw was Jesus, bloody palms outstretched as if he was welcoming him into the new day. That alone would have normally startled him, but when Lily moved behind him he nearly jumped off the couch.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “I have school,” Toby said.

  “Skip. I’m sure you feel like shit.”

  Toby’s head was aching and his entire body felt as if he’d drunk kerosene, not PBR. What was one more day? If anything, it would lend credibility to the story that he was sick. Give the bruises a chance to become nothing more than whispers. Something that could’ve happened any number of ways.

  Lily shifted behind him, her body warm against his. And it was settled.

  “If you insist,” Toby said, and Lily nodded absently, her eyes closed. It left Toby in a bit of a quandary. Last night, he’d dropped onto the couch without a second thought. Half drunk, half there—it was a no-brainer. But now, in the full light of the early morning, anxiety creeped into him. He didn’t know how to act. Lily opened her eyes and said, “Jesus, settle down. Please.”

  So he did. And a few minutes later he was asleep once again.

  The next time he woke up, Lily was singing softly to herself in the kitchen. Toby walked in sheepishly, not saying anything until Lily noticed him. When she did, she jumped—almost dropping the avocados she was holding.

  “Shit, you scared me. I didn’t even hear you come in.”