Trapped with a Way Out

by Jeffery Martinez

  Vincent didn't look up, and his face didn't change. "The blackened hand of a mummy."

  The other teen cringed, but tried to hide his distaste for the drawing. "Why? What does that have to do with Christmas?"

  "My uncle me one the first Christmas I spent with him."

  Rodriguez's eyes softened and he came to accept the hand, analyzing the detail with awe now. "It's interesting to look at."

  "Yeah." Vincent smirked. "I still have it…look at it all the time, too."

  Rodriguez was sad again, hearing the boy's words. The black haired teen was rather quiet today.

  "It's going to be my first Christmas without him in five, six years."

  Vincent continued to draw while Rodriguez watched him. "Where is your uncle?"

  "He's ill, in the hospital. But he's not going to die. He'll get better soon."

  "Hm." Green watched the paper that was supposed to have a lady bug on it already. Slowly, he started to draw again.

  His uncle had found the sketches of the mummy hand and he was holding the pile of papers, looking from them to the hand in the display case. They were identical. The man frowned as a boy opened the front door and came into the apartment, his cheeks flushed from the fighting and chasing he had done with the other street kids. There was a swelling bump on his head, a common result of the play fighting that the other boys called an 'egg'. Vincent forgot about it as he stood, horrified, realizing that his uncle had discovered his pictures. He shuffled his feet nervously as blue eyes glared at the papers and then the hand on the shelf.

  "Where did you get these?" Walter demanded quietly, his voice cold and biting. Little Vincent's bottom lip quivered.

  "I…I drew them, Uncle."

  "You're a dirty liar." The man turned his glower upon his nephew and threw the papers on the floor in disgust. "Who have you been letting into my house? Who? Tell me, God damn you, or I'll belt you! Now speak!" The boy jolted at the loud voice and edged back towards the door, pressing against it.

  "Nobody. I drew them." The man came towards him and the boy's voice rose into a whine and he held up his hands protectively. "I drew them! I drew them! I swear, Uncle! I swear to God I was the one that drew the pictures! I didn't let anybody in! I didn't! Please! No!" He cried out as a hand wrenched his head down, holding his hair in a firm grip. The boy whimpered. "I'll show you. I'll show you that I drew them! Let me show you! Don't hurt me!"

  Walter let go of the boy, almost tossing him to the floor. He got a pencil and a piece of paper and slammed them down on the table with the mismatched chairs, hissing. "Draw it, and you better not be lying, for if you are not even God will be able to save you, boy!"

  Shaking, Vincent sat down with his uncle leaning over his chair, and he picked up his pencil and tried to fix the crinkled paper. His hand was trembling too much for him to draw a straight line. Gulping down air and fear, Vincent took deep breaths until his hand behaved. Then he drew. He drew the hand flawlessly as the blue eyes watched from above.

  Walter was silent. He picked up the paper before the boy was finished, and he stared at it. He stooped and picked up one of the other papers and stared at it. Then he stared at the boy. "Who taught you to draw like this?"

  "No one!" Vincent replied hastily, waving his hands. "I promise! I never let anyone in! I never have! Never! And I promise I won't! Never ever in a million years, Uncle! I swear!"

  The man said nothing, and then turned and picked up the papers he had thrown on the ground. He stacked them up neatly and set them in front of the boy and patted his head gently. "I believe you… You're very good at drawing, Vincentimir. You should keep it up. A man has to use his talents." Walter left the room after that, and for the years to come, the stack of paper and store of pencils in the apartment never ran out.

  Vincent was gazing down at the mummy hand, blending in the last of the shading with his lead-shined finger. He began to hear the other high school students yell and laugh around him, talking about what they were going to do over Christmas Break. The teen sitting at his table glanced at Vincent when he saw that he had come out of his trance.

  "What are you going to do over the break?" Rodriguez pushed away his paper while Vincent continued to hover over his own.

  Vincent didn't say anything.

  "Are you…going to just relax and enjoy the two weeks of no school?" Rodriguez leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head as he realized that this was the lowest table in the room, the only one with regular chairs.

  "Sure." Vincent leaned back into his chair too, but his arms fell into his lap. He licked his lips and prolonged the discussion. "What're…you planning on doing, then? I told you so you have to tell me."

  You didn't tell me squat about what you're going to do. Rodriguez sighed and looked up at the ceiling, trying not to smile. "Going to stay at home, celebrate and enjoy the holiday with my mom and my sister. My dad's going to miss Christmas."

  The black haired teen didn't comment on the last detail. "Are you going to get your own Christmas tree? And eat fat food for Christmas dinner?"

  Fat food? "My food is not fat…and we already got out tree. Did you get one, or do you not celebrate Christmas?"

  "Don't celebrate, but not because I'm not Christian. I am, I just don't go crazy over the holidays."

  Rodriguez's eyes moved to the black hair. "Do you have a tree?"

  Vincent's lips twisted into a sneer and he chuckled. "Does an ornament with a pine tree design count?"

  "No."

  "Then no, I don't have one."

  Rodriguez scooted forward in his chair and hooked his fingers together. He twiddled his thumbs. "Who are you going to be with? You're parents? Siblings? You going to visit your uncle?"

  Red eyes analyzed Rodriguez's face for a time, then stopped when they gave in to a blink. "The Chief didn't tell you anything?"

  An odd look went to Vincent. "You mean my mother?"

  Vincent nodded as he crossed his arms over his chest.

  "Tell me about what?"

  "Me."

  "What…I don't get what you're trying to say here." The blonde teen shook his head and pressed the pads of his thumbs together. "What do you mean she hasn't told me anything?"

  Pale lips twitched with a mixture of humor and contempt for himself. "My parents…don't live around here. I live with just my uncle."

  They were quiet for a while. Rodriguez uneasily stretched out his arms and kept his gaze welded to the table. "Do you ever visit your parents?"

  With widened eyes, Vincent was quiet for several odd moments, then he laughed, closing his eyes and ducking his head into his arms that he laid out on the table. "Sure. I visit them all the time. Every goddamn Thanksgiving and Christmas and Valentine's Day, the whole shebang." Rodriguez was glaring at Vincent now, and the boy noticed so he lifted his head, sobered. "No, Rodriguez. My…I don't visit them. They live too far away, and…" He snickered as he looked at the green eyes. "…does it look like I have the money to be buying plane tickets and other crap, I mean, stuff? God, you're a funny person, Rodriguez. You're fuckin' hilarious."

  "Are you mad at me or something?" The other teen shot back. Vincent quieted. "And cut it out with the cussing. You know I hate it."

  "Fine, fat ass." Vincent sighed out and lifted his hands over and behind his head, sliding down in his chair, as he stretched out his legs.

  "I'm not fat." Rodriguez frowned as his hands dove into his pockets. "How do you like the Christmas lady bug you requested? It's the best work I've ever done, and that's saying a lot since you're aware of how gifted I am in art."

  White arms went to the table and spun the picture so that the red eyes could examine it. Vincent cracked a wicked smile. "Big freaken eyes, eh?"

  "Hey. Don't make fun of the lady bug. I worked hard on that."

  "My apologies Michelangelo." Vincent maneuvered the bug through the air as if it was flying. "Damn. It's so life-like." He made some sound effects for the flying bug.

  "Damn it!" Ro
driguez scowled and grabbed the paper. "Stop making fun of my stuff!"

  A dramatic gasp surprised Rodriguez who flinched at the gape he received from the other boy. "You cussed, Rodriguez… Do it again, come on. One more time. Just for me."

  "Shut up." This time both of them laughed, and they easily blended in with the rest of the tables in the classroom. Though, a few eyes were watching them and mouths moved with the two boys' names.

  Rodriguez's chair scraped across the floor, jostling randomly when it slid over different splatters of paint left by vengeful students. The teen liked to believe that they had just been careless at the time, and he looked at the abstract art the paint sometimes became when a collection of splatters were able to dry together before they were mopped up by the custodian. Rodriguez went to the teacher's front desk after the main body of the students had gone up to turn in their art pieces when the bell for the passing period rang. Just turning back to look at Vincent, with no reason behind doing so, the teen was surprised to see the red eyes right behind him, about to leave. A tan hand caught Vincent's shoulder and stopped him.

  "You haven't turned in your art yet." Green eyes dropped to the empty hands and then roamed about the thin shoulders of the brown T-shirt the boy was wearing. He wasn't holding the hand picture, and he didn't have a backpack. Rodriguez's eyes narrowed and he squeezed the shoulder with a sigh. "You threw it away again, didn't you?"

  Vincent just blinked, looking at the teen's frustration and disappointment. "What's your point?"

  A growl came out with the words and the grip on the shoulder tightened until Vincent winced and shrugged it away sharply. "Because you did it, and you're not turning it in so you're not going to get credit. You don't care about your grades do you? You're good at this kind of stuff. Why not get something out of it? Like a good grade? Or you could even try for the National Art Merit Scholarship and go to college."

  Vincent was rubbing his stinging arm with a faint glower creasing his mouth and sparking in his eyes. "I'm not going to college Rodriguez. So it doesn't matter." He stepped away quickly as Rodriguez froze for a moment. Then the football jock hurried after him, scooping up the backpack he had set by the desk, but then he stopped, knowing that pursuing the teen would do nothing. So instead, Rodriguez circled back to search the trashcans. He found the hand pencil drawing and flattened out the creases on the edge of a table.

  Vincent watched from the doorway, then quietly slipped away to retrieve his sweatshirt from the other class. The sky outside was a sea of white and grey waves, wild air currents warping the clouds as they failed to give out rain, as if beating them for their incompetence. The crimson eyes didn't have the fire they normally did as they ran over the ocean of the sky and then fell to the horizon where land and trees began. He made his way to his next class to take an exam he had forgotten about. But he had read the chapters assigned for the history homework, so he knew what the test was on. Having failed it his Junior year, the class was easier this time around and he was managing to do fairly well in it, actually maintaining a B through the first quarter. He just always seemed…to take longer than the other students…to get certain concepts and understand the themes of the readings. That was probably why he always did so much better on the retake tests when he was allowed to take them. He still wished sometimes, while taking the tests, that he wasn't so goddamn stupid.

  The weather was insane. It was raining buckets of water as high school students poured out of buildings and into the onslaught of the storm. The flat levels of grass in the quad were under an inch of water that had not been swallowed by the drains that sparsely dotted parts of the campus.

  Rodriguez was in the school work out room, taking advantage of the variety of the equipment that had been provided for the school athletes. Members of the wrestling team were also in the room, along with other football players and one or two soccer players who had stayed because the turf field was too wet and the track was dangerous in this kind of weather. As lightening split the sky in the distance and thunder roared louder than the wind, droplets of rain made rings on the surface of puddles outside the open door. A girl closed it and then returned with her friend to a separate room where a few cardio machines were stored. The music became louder once its way of escape had been cut off, audile over the clinks of metal on metal and the voice of a coach.

  Vincent lingered by a large tinted window in one of the buildings on the main campus. The lightening reflected on the window and brightened his eyes for a moment. Rain dripped lightly from his bangs onto his sweatshirt as he watched the weather. He heard a car screech in the parking lot, but without the damning crash of two colliding forces and the absence of honking horns, the boy knew an accident had not occurred. The oil that had collected on the streets was being lifting from the asphalt and suspended by the rain, and this made the roads a little slick, a little dangerous. A drop hanging from the black bangs shuddered and danced before falling after a short struggle. No more drops fell after it.

  As the rain began to fall harder outside and trees bent and grazed the walls of the building, Vincent turned from the window and walked down a hall and through a closed door.

  It was dark and it was only growing darker as the sky howled and the heavens waged their war, beating their thundering drums and showering daggered sparks from their clashing swords. The sky was a grey blue color, retaining texture as if the color had been sponged on and the sky was a rough canvass. It was 5:07 PM on the wall, and the sky was only getting darker and the raging gods were only getting fiercer, but Vincent had to leave. He had already ignored his employer for two days. His only luck was that he didn't have any other activities today.

  The teachers had forbidden and stopped the students from loitering outside in the wet weather so Rodriguez had not been allowed to look for Vincent during lunch, which was rather fortunate for him because the black haired teen had decided to avoid him during that time. Now, as water flooded into the impractical ringed holes in his converse and spray from passing cars pelted him like buckshot, Vincent wouldn't have minded if he ran into the other teen. But as headlights, made hazy by the falling rain, dashed by the sidewalk, shooting the boy with stinging water, none of the cars stopped when they saw his silhouette in the dark.

  Vincent hopped off the curb and trudged through an unseen puddle, a hiss splitting through his teeth when he felt the dirty water, and he lifted his hooded head for a moment to glare death into the puddle. He passed the opening of a side street and pitched to the side when he made a strained step to reach over another puddle. His foot crashed into the puddle as he caught his balance and the teen jumped out of the water and onto the next sidewalk. His legs were dead with cold. He couldn't feel them while he wished his prickling toes were numb instead. Ducking his head, the boy stared at his soaking shoes while the headlights from cars zoomed by after brightening the outline of his shape. As a truck rolled through the river of water flowing down the side of the street, into a storm drain, the sound of a car door opening and closing in the alley was muffled. So Vincent was ignorant of the person that stepped onto the curb behind him and stretched out a gloved hand.

  Vincent gasped when a hard grip clamped over his shoulder and an even harder voice spoke behind his head. Then he paused and blinked, feeling the icy chill of his own face as he recognized the voice.

  "Do you need a ride, Vincentimir?"

  Vincent turned as a car swept by, illuminating the two circular lenses on the woman's face along with the patch stitched into the fabric of her sleeve. It was a police uniform, and blue shone out for a moment behind the glasses. The teen watched Richard without thoughts in his mind.

  The hand patted his shoulder and tugged on it loosely before letting go. "Get in. I'll drive you. Walking near the streets when it's raining like this is a hazard to your health and to those driving around here. We don't need a bloody accident so close to the holidays."

  Without commenting, Vincent followed the woman and waited beside her police car. She got in the
driver's seat and reached over to open the passenger door and then started the car as Vincent shut it again. Vincent, who was distracted by what was going on, did not watch the road to see where she was taking him. His eyes widened, shocked to see the familiar gate that opened to let them in, and he stared at the trees they passed. Richard pulled up her driveway and into her garage that opened after she pressed a button on her visor. She parked the car and got out, gruffly ordering the boy to hurry up. Vincent remained where he was, too stunned to do anything but stare at the white wall in front of the car.

  "Get out. You're dripping on the seats." The uniformed woman circled around the front of her cop car and opened Vincent's door for him.

  Stiffly, the teen followed the order. He closed the car door the woman abandoned when she marched to the mat before the door into the house and wiped her feet.

  "Wipe your feet. They're filthy." She called over her shoulder and disappeared.

  The disoriented boy slowly mimicked what Richard had done and went into the house, his shoes squeaking on the tile, tattling to Richard that the boy had failed to completely dry his converse. But that was to be expected after the amount of water they had been exposed to. Vincent left the corridor from the garage and followed the sound of the woman's boots as the squeaking converse became quieter. He skirted the perimeter of a curved wall and found himself looking at the kitchen where a few hanging lamps dropped light on the counters. The rest of the house was shadowed, the other lights mostly turned off. Richard flipped a few switches, brightening the house, and tossed her keys onto the counter beside her son who was bent over an arrangement of textbooks and notes. Rodriguez didn't even look up when the keys caught on some of his papers and pulled them a little ways over the granite counter space, messing up the collage of school work.

  "Hi Mom." He replied absently as the woman opened the fridge and pulled out some things that she slammed mercilessly onto an open counter. She went to the fridge again, catching the door as it began to close.