by Scott Kelly
“Alzheimer’s,” he explained as we walked into the forest behind the trailer. “Sometimes she remembers me. Usually not.”
“That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Not anyone’s fault, just life.”
I looked back at her. She’d reset, and looked just like we found her. Oblivious. “It’s like dying every minute. Forgetting it all, like it never happened in the first place, over and over.”
“There you go, noticing things again,” David said.
10. Grounded
Now
“David was a sociopath, Jacob. He probably didn’t realize it was strange to be in your dad’s house. He had no sense of personal boundaries. He didn’t even know what other people were, really,” Mr. Aschen says.
“He just didn’t know what a parent was—why would he?”
Mr. Aschen holds the pen in both hands, twisting it against the cap. It’s the way he gets when he wants to say something, but knows he shouldn’t.
“Just say it,” I prompt, lifting my palms to the cell around us. “I think we’re past pretending you’re going to do a good job, here.”
“I’m upset that David is dead. I feel partly responsible, of course: I’m the only counselor he saw, and I certainly didn’t improve his situation,” he says. “But I’ve always felt like you had the best chance, out of everyone to come from that mess. You’re the one that reached out for help. That’s why I figured you’d want to tell us how David died, you know?”
I look up at the camera mounted in the corner of the room while I speak. “You won’t understand David’s death if you don’t understand our situation. Being poor wasn’t enough; we also had the landlord to deal with. He changed everything. When you say I helped my friends, you’re talking about junior year, right?”
“When you called the police, yes.” He pushes his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. “You saved them all, really.”
“I have a story about that, too.”
*
Junior year
Spiked hair; swords big as surfboards. Save screens and main themes—electric guitars only played on the boss fights; that’s how I knew when things were serious. Pixels and pigments, pixies and pygmies.
Or space marines with guns like leaf blowers, jet packs on backs, hold the grenades for no more than two seconds, save shotgun ammo for the little fast ones. Circle strafing contests of skill. Ballistic trajectory determined on balance sheets, digital sports played out by mathletes.
Really, it was about getting our minds the hell out of Broadway. I played the video games in Steven’s trailer a few times a week. Everything was used, bought from a pawn shop, but we didn’t mind.
My glasses-clad friend excelled in the virtual realm. “I beat David three out of five yesterday,” Steven said.
I looked away from the screen long enough to cast an unimpressed glance at him. “Yeah, so? David could beat you in real life.”
Steven grunted, then settled the argument with another headshot. My ninth loss in a row.
“Play again?” he asked.
“So you can keep beating me?” I dropped the controller.
“It’s fun.” Steven started another game anyway. My half of the screen stared out, unmoving, while his half went on the hunt.
“Fun for you,” I stood and looked out the yellowed window. The landlord’s trailer sat a dozen feet away, biggest one on the biggest plot, dominating the park. Constant reminder. “You see him lately?”
Steven turned. “This morning, I could hear him snoring out my window. Passed out on his lawn chair again. Someday I’m gonna turn the sprinkler on him.”
“Whatever you say.”
He smiled. The screen’s image reflected in the bulbous lenses of his glasses; my character filled his frames. Steven pulled the trigger. My avatar’s head exploded in a mess of red polygons.
“Would you really mess with Kent’s dad?” I asked, forehead pressed against the window.
Steven began to hunt for my new spawning place. “Fucking menace, not to mention his mongoloid son. You can’t tell me the world wouldn’t be a better place without Mr. Gimble. You know he used to ‘play’ with Cameron, right?” Our two halves of the screen met. Three shots to the chest, and my half went red again.
Suspected it. Years ago—the dirty package of sugar in Cameron’s hand, the landlord waiting for her. It made sense, even though it made me feel sick. ‘Menace’ was right.
“Why does he get away with it?” I asked.
Steven turned and shrugged. “Because he’s huge. Because he has guns? Because this is the cheapest place to live in Kingwood, and he could kick our parents out if he wanted?”
“Or is it because we don’t do anything about it?” I asked, running my finger through the dust collected on the window blind. “I mean, how can we really say he’s gotten away with anything, if no one has ever tried to stop him?”
Steven turned back to his game, hunting my avatar down again.
“What do you think he really deserves?” I challenged. He put down the controller, stared up at me. “I mean, if you had to do something.”
Didn’t even have to say it; he just knew. I’d been ‘it’ since last week.
The trailer rocked with our sudden movement. I jumped across the living room, hand extended, brushing Steven’s leg as he scrambled up and over the couch, laughing.
“Tag,” I hollered.
Steven lay on the floor. He straightened the thick black frames on his face and ran a hand through his hair.
“Go ahead,” I said. “Do it. Stop talking about how this place should be. Let’s change it.”
He glanced around the apartment, big eyes focusing on one thing then another, searching for some way to change his life in the next fifteen minutes.
Legs carried him across the trailer, arm reached for the phone on the wall. Fingers dialed three digits, then stopped.
There was only one possibility: nine-one-one.
“Hello, officer? Yeah; I live in Broadway Trailer Park. The landlord here, Mr. Gimble—he’s molests this girl, Cameron. Her mom lets it happen.” Steven’s voice quaked. He stared at the phone, like the receiver had just come alive in his hand. He slammed it back down on its stand.
I stood, jaw hanging open. “I’m outta here. Tell the police I said ‘hi.’”
Three days passed before an unusual number of well-dressed adults began snooping around Broadway. Things were inconspicuous at first: a man with a clipboard talking to a few parents. Then the next week, a man and a woman. Then a man, a woman, a police officer, and a German Shepherd.
One morning: pandemonium. The sound of car doors slamming and unfamiliar adult voices speaking in commanding tones. The warble of walkie-talkies. I peeked through the worn bed sheet covering my window and saw a number of official-looking men and women getting out of police cruisers and black Suburbans.
I hurried to the living room, where my father slept. “Dad? Hey, wake up,” I said, nudging him. “Some guys are coming over.”
“No friends over,” he mumbled. “Sleeping.”
“No, Dad. They’re grownups. They’re all over the park. I think they’re cops or something.”
This woke him up in a hurry. Dad leaned forward with a tremendous groan. He’d been lying on the bed/couch/dinner table at the far end of the trailer next to our best TV—his nest. He lumbered shakily from the bed, steadying his legs by pressing against the thin walls.
Dad brushed his teeth, smoothed his long mustache, then closed our tiny bathroom door. The shower ran for a few seconds and, in less than a minute, he returned.
There was a knock on the trailer door.
I opened our home to a tall black man with a clipboard. As soon as the door swung open, he pushed a shoulder in and looked around the living space.
“Hi. What can I do for you?” Dad asked. Super polite, now.
“Hello, my name is Zach. I’m with CPS,” Zach said in the same fake-friendly voice doctors used.
I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Child Protective Services,” he explained.
“Jacob, don’t bug the man,” Dad said with a nod. “What can I do for you? Nothing is wrong, I hope.” Every consonant hit. Perfect elocution.
Zach cleared his throat as if to say, ‘nothing is under par, but yes, everything is wrong.’ Still, he continued in the same professional tone: “It’s not about you. We just want to talk about your neighbors. Is there a place we can speak in private?”
“Sure. Jacob, why don’t you go out and do something?” Then Dad cast a glance at Zach. “Something safe. Go somewhere supervised.”
There was more of the same outside. It was like a goddamn raid—a very polite one, but a raid. Cops at every trailer.
I crossed the park in a daze. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Mr. Gimble was being led into a police car. Fat arms barely reached behind his back; it took two sets of handcuffs linked together to bind them. The landlord faced the ground with the same sad look as when I caught him sleeping outside the trailer. Not rage or denial or disbelief, but sadness.
Kent wiped tears from his eyes. He stood in front of the mobile home where two of the CPS women held him back as he tried to get to his dad.
Cameron and Steven stood in an embrace, each crying onto the other’s shoulder. More police cars pulled up; before I could ask why Steven was crying, I watched an officer lead his dad toward one of the arriving cruisers.
His walk of shame was interrupted by a howl from across the trailer park. Two policemen dragged Cameron’s mom, shirt ripped, drooling, kicking, and cursing to the nearest cruisers. She bit into her handler’s knuckles and was dropped face-first into the ground with a dull thud. Ms. Merrill screamed as officers locked her cuffs into place, then bound her feet as well.
The cops carried Cameron’s mom like a carcass, one with an arm looped around her arms and another holding her legs, nose dangling inches from the ground. She screeched incomprehensibly, howling harpy. Cameron stared, eyes wide and mouth agape.
A final figure was led down Broadway’s catwalk of shame: an older woman with a confused expression on her face. Automaton, brittle like rusted iron. Ms. Bloom put up no struggle as she was led into a police cruiser.
I blame the death of David Bloom on the fact that no matter what, everything changes.
11. Other people’s dads
Junior year
Water from the lake in Nora's backyard sat in little beads on my arm. I blew on the droplets; they trembled in the sun, light dancing across my skin.
“So, wait, how did everyone’s parents end up in jail?”
Good question, Nora.
“Cameron was her mom’s rent payment; she was in on the whole thing. We told them that when we called the cops. When they got there, they went into every trailer, asked questions, dug around. Didn’t take them long to realize David’s mom was so sick he’s the one taking care of her, not the other way around. Steven’s dad was just bad luck—there was a roach in the ashtray, some weed. Apparently that’s enough for CPS.”
“What are all your friends going to do if their parents are in jail?”
“They’re at—I don’t know. I went there; it was like a camp. They sleep in bunks, with like ten other people in the room. Sucks.”
“When do they go home?”
“Never? They’re fifteen, sixteen. No one is going to adopt someone that old. It's weird. I thought everything was normal in Broadway—crappy, but normal. Then the cops come in, and they're totally shocked by what we were going through. Even my dad had to go to court. Makes you feel like—I don't know. It's messed up to have someone see your life and be like 'Oh my God, you poor thing, how did you survive?' Plus, it’s kinda too late, you know? We already survived it. I’m glad Mr. Gimble is going to prison, but the damage is done."
“I’m sorry, Jacob,” Nora said.
Grackles circled overhead, laughing noisily. I'd been visiting her house a lot, lately. Where else was there to go?
I continued: "We all have to go to counseling. My dad was so pissed about it. They think that Mr. Gimble might have screwed with us all, so we should see this psychologist in case we're crazy. And I get in there, and the therapist already knows about this game we play. It’s all he wants to talk about."
"What game?" she asked, cheeks and nose red from the sun.
"I've never told anyone from school about this before."
"Well, what is it?" She stretched the black t-shirt—the one that wasn’t see-through when it got wet, the one she always wore when she was swimming—over her knees.
"You don't want to know," I said. "You won't get it."
Nora rolled her head back, smiling at the sky. "I do want to know. Come on, you can't say something like that and not explain it, dork."
"Okay, fine. So, someone tags you. Like, David in this case—and you have to change your life in the next fifteen minutes. You have to do anything other than what you planned on doing. If you were going to go to school, don't go to school. If you were going to let the landlord ruin your life, don't let him."
Nora said nothing. I continued: "Then you're 'it' and you can tag one of the other players, and they have to do the same. Anyway, the counselor is not crazy about it."
She bit her bottom lip, then spoke: "You should listen to your counselor; the game sounds…kinda stupid."
"I don't think it's stupid. Sometimes the things we're afraid of doing need to be done most."
"Okay, so maybe once." She drank from a jam jar full of iced tea. "Or even twice. But how do you make plans? How do you get stuff done?"
"That's not the point, though."
"Not the point you want to make, you mean," Nora said. "Why screw up your future?" She opened her hands at the lake below us, at the wooden deck where we sat.
"Because my future sucks. Have you seen my life? Most high school students don't go see a state-appointed counselor. Not everyone lives on the lake and has a nice dad who makes them lunch."
Nora's father smiled from behind expansive windows, where he washed the dishes from the sandwiches he'd made us.
“You have to work hard to get the things you want,” Nora said.
“Yeah? Did you work really hard to be born in this house, with a nice dad who has money?"
"My dad did! It sounds like you just don't want to try," she snapped. Then Nora shook her head, seeming to reconsider. "Sorry."
"I'm sorry I even told you about it." My throat tightened around the words. "Can't one person on this planet agree with me?"
"I would never agree with you for the sake of agreeing, Jacob. I actually care about you," Nora said.
This must be true, but neither of us ever voiced it until that moment. I couldn’t stay mad. "C'mon, let's go inside."
12. Sport
Junior year
Lunchtime, high school. Another daily battleground. Forced to stand stupid at the watering hole, waiting to get my tray filled—carrots, mashed potatoes, fish sticks. In the untamed wilderness of the cafeteria, the snobs stalked their prey slowly.
Girls with sequins like snake scales. Brightly-painted vixens with toxins. Only a few words, except they sunk into you like venom, eating you from the inside out while she batted innocent eyes.
The boys were different. Pack predators. The bravest traded turns, getting closer each time, building off each other’s excitement until one drew blood. They always stopped, at least for a moment, when that blood showed. It was a choice: respond like a person, or an animal.
Always, animal.
An attack was coming. I had enough experience to read the signs. I could already hear the little hyena giggles, building as courage grew and the game intensified. The lunch line moved slowly, so I was trapped. Laughter increased as food was slopped onto my plate. Build that bloodlust to a boil, then:
“Hey, Jake,” the tallest of the five said, after some prodding from his friends.
“What?” Trying not to show emotion. Yet.
>
“I’m having a party. I was going to invite you—what’s your number? I’ll text you.” More snickering. Didn’t have a cell phone. Probably one of ten kids in the school who could say that.
Still, this was the bait. It’d be stupid to react; that was part of their game. Make it look like my fault. I ignored them.
The boy who initiated contact withdrew a cell phone. The flat, vibrant panel bathed his hand in healing light.
I wanted one, but those kinds of things weren’t meant for me.
“Whatever,” I mumbled, and turned around to face the lunch lady.
I wasn’t taking the bait. Now they had a choice: back off, or go for blood.
They crowded around me in a semicircle, drawing closer.
“Look at his shoes,” a boy from the group said loudly, pointing. My two-year-old Goodwill sneakers were coated in trailer-park muck. “Did you have to climb a telephone pole to pull those down?”
Laughter. Students in the line in front of me turned to watch this unfold; the event began to cross the threshold.
“Who are Def Leopard?” asked one of the vipers in the back. To be honest, I wasn’t sure either. It was my dad’s shirt.
“Gross,” another girl murmured.
Steven, Kent and Cameron got up from our table and walked over. The three stood behind me; I’d done the same for them before.
“Why do you guys do this?” Kent asked, stepping in front of me and looking down at the greasy, spiked hair of the one who called out my shoes.
“Why do you screw your cousin?” a kid from the rear of the group quipped, protected by the layer of bodies between him and Kent.
Someone tugged at my sleeve and I turned, frustrated by the distraction. Cameron pulled on my shirt.
“What?” I hissed.
“Tag. You’re ‘it,’” she murmured.
Christ. Of course. Fifteen minutes to change.
I didn’t even think about it—any change would do; I was sick of everything. I turned and knocked the cell phone out of the closest boy’s hand, sending the device clattering across the ground. Now the entire cafeteria sat riveted.