He just appeared. He didn’t ring the doorbell as far as I know. I looked over to my right at one point and there he was standing in Gore’s backyard, watching me like a screwed-up, giant ghost that had arrived out of thin air. His shirt was untucked and his hair was all messy. Gore’s dad saw him, and they shook hands and talked for a minute. Then Dad motioned for me to follow him. Gore stared at me, her mouth hanging open. I shrugged. Whispered “Bye.” I think I also whispered “I love you,” which is a little over the top, I guess. Then I followed Dad away.
No, it wasn’t late. It was like 8:30, sir. Not even totally dark out.
In the car, he wouldn’t look at me. I told him all about the protest and how I’d led it (in a lot of words, sir! I went on and on) and how Deevers had responded. I told him about how I might have a girlfriend and how things were getting better for me so fast.
Dad breathed deep and said, “Shaver was fired this afternoon.”
I stared out the window into the growing dark. “Oh, no,” I said. “I forgot that was even happening. So much—”
“You’re forgetting a lot.”
“Well, there’s a lot going on,” I said, raising my voice.
Then Dad whispered, “Dancing with those men?”
“What?”
“You defy me and go dancing.”
“Please, Dad. Please understand. This has been a crazy week, okay? Please?”
“Dancing,” he said, shaking his head.
At our house, he pulled into the driveway, into the garage, then got out of the car. I got out too. Then he turned to me and said, “Give me your phone.”
I stood staring at him, hating him.
“Give it to me now, Gabe. You’ve lost your privileges.”
“Did you hear me? I have a lot going on right now.”
“Now,” Dad hissed.
“Fine,” I said. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and put it on the floor next to me.
Dad glared hard. “Go in the house. New rules.”
I walked into the dining room. Grandpa leaned over the stove, stirring a pot. He nodded at me. Real nervous. Not like Grandpa at all.
Dad followed me in a second later (I guess after he picked up my phone). “Sit down in the living room, Gabe,” Dad said.
I took a breath and did what he told me to do. In the living room, I said, “Dad, please. I appreciate that you’re upset and I get it. But you’re not hearing me. This week has been—”
“Shut up,” Dad said. “Shut your mouth. I’ve heard enough.”
“I…just wait. Dad—”
“I said enough!” he screamed. He breathed hard. His eyes watered. “Here’s how it’s going to be. You’re not to leave this house. You’re not to talk to anyone. No computer. No phone. No landline. No job. No girlfriend. No nothing! Do you understand?”
“No job?”
“I’ve already talked to Dante. You’re not to go in.”
“Dad!”
“You will obey me. You will pay attention to what I say. You will not live under my roof and eat my food but treat me like I’m some minor annoyance you can swat away without thinking twice.”
“Dad, I never—”
“You will do nothing!” Dad screamed. His chin began quivering. He let out a little cry, sir. I’m serious. Like the beginning of a sob. Then he turned and stomped away back to his room, where he slammed the door shut.
I looked over at Grandpa. “He took your computer,” he said.
“What the hell am I supposed to do?” I shouted. “Dad!”
No answer.
Grandpa shook his head. “Boy,” he whispered. “Tough times. Come here, Gabe. You want some spinach soup?”
“Shit,” I whispered. “No,” I said and I headed for my terrible doghouse.
Hey. “Did you know somebody egged our windows?” Grandpa called after me as I climbed down the stairs. “Ten minutes ago. Three boys. Let launch about a dozen before I chased them away. You know what that’s about?”
I didn’t answer.
What about Shaver, sir?
Yeah, school board. Met at Kaus’s house, for God’s sake. With Mr. Deevers’s consent, they dismissed Mr. Shaver not only for his drunk-driving ticket but because he had gotten on Facebook and incited a riot at the school. That “riot” had nothing to do with Shaver. He held no sway over us. The school board is just wrong. They know they’re wrong. They don’t care. They just like slapping us around.
Jesus. It’s still all new, sir. This whole thing. Shaver’s such a good guy. Why did he get drunk like that?
Yeah, we’re not a band at all anymore.
Okay. I went a little crazy.
When you’re used to being connected all the time and suddenly you can’t get any word about anything that’s going on and someone has egged your house and your band teacher has been fired and you’ve just gotten what seems to be your first legitimate girlfriend but you can’t talk to her, you start to go crazy. At least, I did.
I lay down in my bed, tossed and turned, then showered because I smelled like a sweaty donut. Then I lay down in my bed again and started to sweat again, getting all twisted up in my sheets, and I cursed Dad’s name because I felt a great hatred for him deep in my guts.
I started thinking about what he’d said. It wasn’t “No work for a week.” He’d said, “No work.” For how long? Forever? Was crazy, terrible Dad cooping me up in the house forever? I’d be like some pale freak trembling in the corner of the basement when the police finally came for me?
Then I thought, Oh, my God! We’re being egged. Shit! I knew exactly what that was about. Seth Sellers was coming after us! Shouldn’t I call Gore to let her know? I needed to call her! Shouldn’t I Facebook Austin Bates because Seth would be coming after him? And Mike Timlin and Raj? The jocks would beat those guys hard, right? Not just throw some eggs! I needed to do something. I couldn’t do anything.
Just me and my thoughts, sir. Not a good combination.
The school board fired Mr. Shaver! They took our money, drove Shaver crazy, and then fired the guy!
Look who loses. Look at the loser. I’m the biggest loser in the world.
I’d only been down there for like forty-five minutes at that point, I swear. But I lost all hope, plowed into the swamp of despair, and the hole opened up.
Okay. For more than a week, I hadn’t gone into the refrigerator, you know? In that week, I’d become the leader of a movement (a small and dumb-ass movement that was losing bad—but hey). In that week I’d gone from having friends who call me Chunk to hanging out with a great quarterback and a hot goth chick who respect me. I can’t tell you how hard I’d worked, Mr. Rodriguez. I tried so hard and Dad was taking it all away. No Dante’s meant no RC III, no Gore. Trapped again.
Yeah, trapped, sir. After Mom left, I went to Justin’s for a week. When I came back home, I pretty much stayed with Dad all day long, all night long, all weekend long. It wasn’t because Dad stopped me from going then. He never said that I couldn’t leave and see friends, but he was so ripped up, okay? He just kept crying and I was scared. Mom told me to take care of him, so I didn’t want to leave him alone. I’d pay the pizza guy at the door or walk over to the IGA to buy chips and cookies and crap. I called into the college a bunch of times to tell his secretary he was sick and I stayed home from school a bunch of times to keep an eye on him. On Saturdays, when I would normally be over at Justin’s playing video games or whatever, I sat in front of the TV and I ate with him because I didn’t know what to do, because I wanted him to be okay. And look what happened to me. Look what became of me.
Dad didn’t want me to escape Chunk.
I did the wrong thing, Mr. R. I reacted badly.
I felt empty. I felt alone again. I thought, Screw it. I’m going to fill this. I’m going to eat myself to death if I have to. You like that, Dad?
You want me to be Chunk?
Because I’d been so under control, I was weirdly excited to go after it. I got a burst of adrenaline.
I leapt back up the stairs from my sweaty bed and went into the cupboard, where there are usually chips. There weren’t potato chips, just a half-eaten bag of tortilla chips, which didn’t sound like it would hit the spot. If I was going Mexican, I wanted real tortillas. Grandpa stared at me from the table, a bowl of soup in front of him.
“Spinach soup?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “We have tortillas?”
“Fridge,” he said.
I went into the fridge and grabbed tortillas and shredded cheddar and sour cream and salsa and I assembled a bunch of cheese burritos on a platter.
“Gabe?” Grandpa asked.
“Mexican,” I said.
I stuck them in the microwave for like thirty seconds. The cheese didn’t even melt completely, but I was hungry. I whipped a bunch of sour cream on top and then headed to the table to eat. Grandpa took a deep, sad breath, got up, and went into the living room.
Oh, balls, Mr. R. I sucked those suckers down. Didn’t even taste them. Inhaled the crap out of them. Then I was still hungry, but we were out of tortillas. I went back into the cupboard for the old tortilla chips, dumped them on a plate, dumped cheese on top, microwaved the pile, and ate the stack with salsa and the rest of the sour cream. Didn’t taste a thing. Sucked the suckers down.
I needed more. So I opened the fridge again. Bread, ham, butter. I pulled them out of the middle shelf. I couldn’t find Swiss cheese, which is what I like on my ham sandwiches. I bent down to look in the back of the fridge and saw it. Not Code Red but straight-up old-school Mountain Dew. Two 20-ounce bottles. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “Shit.”
Grandpa wouldn’t buy that crap. Dad bought it. Dad doesn’t drink Dew. He’s a Coke guy. He bought it for me, Mr. R. He had to have bought it for me.
My dad doesn’t know how to care for me. He was trying to be nice in the crappiest kid of way. I know it. That asshole! Fine, I thought. You got it.
I reached for a Dew. I pulled it out. I opened it. Took a swig. The liquid fizzed in the back of my throat. The sugar stung in my mouth. I took another swig and choked a little. Then I felt the real weight inside me. I’d eaten dinner at Gore’s. I’d eaten six burritos. I’d eaten a giant plate of nachos. I’d kissed the enemy, the lip of the Dew. My stomach turned hard. I coughed, choked. “Oh, shit. Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, shit!”
“You good, Gabe?” Grandpa called from the living room. “You okay?”
I coughed more, put the Dew on the counter, and stumbled downstairs.
In bed, my whole body ached and I could barely breathe. After an hour, I tried to throw up, but I couldn’t. I sweated so much and my head pounded. I lay back down and tried to sleep.
Then around eleven, something weird happened. I was buried in pillows, suffering huge nausea when the landline rang. Our landline almost never rings. Nobody knows the number. It’s unlisted. It’s only for emergency. In fact, because me, Dad, and Grandpa all have cell phones, I don’t even know why we have it. Of my friends, only two knew the number.
Justin and Camille.
Grandpa answered and I pushed myself up in bed, strained my ears.
“No…no…he can’t come to the phone. Grounded. No. No. I told you, no!” He hung up.
“Jesus Christ!” I shouted. There was silence, but I could tell Grandpa was at the top of the stairs, looking down. Then my guts totally turned on me. I went to the bathroom and threw up bad. While I did, a door slammed above. I stopped barfing and heard Grandpa yelling at Dad. Then the door slammed again.
They were fighting about me.
CHAPTER 25
It was 8:30 a.m. I guess this was yesterday, although it feels like a year ago.
I’d woken up because I heard Dad leave to open up the community college for Saturday classes. He didn’t say a word to me, you know? Grandpa definitely told him I went on that eating freak-out and he didn’t care. He didn’t stop down to say anything about how I hurt his feelings by disobeying him or how he was worried about me getting hurt by staying out all night. He just left for the day.
I was awake, groggy. I brushed my teeth twice but still had a bad taste in my mouth. I still felt ill—but not like I was going to throw up. My heart beat funny, high in my chest, like it was trying to get out. I read a mystery novel Mom had in her collection (which I kept hidden in a box in the closet) to keep my mind off all the crap in the world. But I couldn’t concentrate.
That’s when someone started pounding on the front door. I sat up. I heard Grandpa talking to this someone. I even heard him say I wasn’t available because I was grounded. Justin is good like that. He talked his way in.
I put down Mom’s mystery novel and shakily climbed the stairs and met Justin in the hall off the kitchen. He was pale and trembling. So mad. His oxford wasn’t buttoned right.
I whispered, “Oh. Jesus. What?”
“I didn’t know you were capable of this, dude.”
My heart accelerated. “I guess getting robbed by the school changes a guy,” I said.
“You know this isn’t about the band,” he whispered.
“Of course it’s about the band.”
“No. It’s about me. Something good happens to me and you want me to pay because I’m leaving you behind.”
“Are you kidding? I’m leaving you behind,” I said. “You have it backward.”
“What are you talking about, Chunk?” he spat. “You’re the same fat nerd.”
“Go away, Justin. I don’t have time for traitors.”
“You have time for posting porn pics of my girlfriend though?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb, you fat freak!”
I took a deep breath, took a step forward so I was inches from him. “Say that again and you’re dead,” I said.
“Are you going to get Austin and Mike Timlin to kick my ass because you can’t fight your own fights?”
“Dude, who are you?” I sneered at him.
“I’m the guy who’s going to sue your ass for defamation of character. I’m the guy who’s going to kick your ass for getting our teacher fired. I’m the guy you’d better not mess with ever again because it will get so ugly, Chunk, so bad for you. I’ll teach you not to mess with our girlfriends.”
I took a deep breath. Blinked. “Whose girlfriends?”
He paused for a second. He exhaled and then stood up straight. “Mine and Seth’s.”
I nodded at him. I took a deep breath, sir. “That’s all I need to hear. Get out of my house.”
“Chunk, you did this to me.”
“No, dude. You’re doing it to yourself, and if you ever call me Chunk again, you’ll feel the weight of my foot on your skinny ass. Get out.”
Justin’s face turned the color of an apple, sir. He looked like he was choking. “See you later,” he whispered. He nodded, turned, and left.
I had to bend over to catch my breath. Man. That’s the guy I almost lived with after my mom left me. His mom made cakes for me to make me feel better.
Okay, okay, okay—
Sir, my ass is killing me. Don’t you pretty much know what happened after this? Haven’t the police filled you in? I really, really feel like crap.
Fine. Okay.
Porn pics? Porn what? Of Janessa? How could I have anything to do with that? I couldn’t begin to get my head around it, sir. I figured it was on the Internet someplace—but hey. No computer access.
After Justin left, without even thinking, I walked to the fridge, opened it up, looked in, and saw bread and cheese and ham. I saw the other bottle of Mountain Dew. Shit. I slammed the fridge and then went downstairs and started to sort of lose it, thinking about all the fun stuff Justin and I hav
e done over the years, thinking about his mom and dad and singing stupid songs in the car with them while we rolled off on the family trips. The Cornells took me with them. My mom and dad never took me anyplace.
I picked up the stupid mystery novel again, tried to stop thinking. Couldn’t read it because my eyes were burning, so maybe I was crying.
That’s when I heard footsteps on the stairs. I put the book down. A second later, Grandpa came around the corner.
“What do you want?” I whispered.
Grandpa sniffed, made a face. “You need to clean this place up. It’s disgusting.”
“Thanks. Thanks for creeping downstairs to insult me. I appreciate it.”
“Aw, Gabe. Come on, kid.”
“What?”
“I’m on your—I’m trying to help your ass out. That’s my job. That’s the only reason I’m in this sad little house of yours.”
“Good work so far,” I said.
“Hell yeah, good work. Got you exercising, didn’t I?”
I took a deep breath, nodded. “Yeah. What do you want?”
“Okay. This is my assessment, boy. You ready?”
I shut my eyes, got ready for another insult, but that’s not what came.
“Your dad isn’t in good working order. I’ve been trying to tell him that you’re acting like a regular teenaged dumb ass, not a damn criminal, but he’s not getting the message. I’m beginning to figure out that this jail cell he wants you locked in has more to do with your mother than it does you.”
“I don’t get it. How?” I asked.
“She’d been sneaking around for a year before he noticed, and by the time he noticed, she was already packing up her life to leave him for another man.”
“I’m not his wife.”
“He has no wife. He tried to get hold of your mother all afternoon yesterday to tell her about your troubles. When she finally responded to an email, she told him that you and he were a past life and she was no longer living in the same realm.”
“What?” I gasped.
Gabe Johnson Takes Over Page 14