Almost Kings

by Doty, Max

  “Hey,” I said. “How you feeling?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “So everything went okay?”

  “No.”

  Her eyes were wet, and she reached into her purse for a compact. She flipped it open and examined her face.

  “God,” she said. “I look horrible.” She wiped away her tears and started applying mascara, but it still ran a little. “He won’t stay with me now. Everyone at school wants him so bad. I mean, he was going to have to screw up at least once. I shouldn’t have gotten so upset. Two years together, and just one screw-up, right?”

  She’d go back to him. At her feet was Hass’s backpack, the yearbook inside. She took out foundation and started dusting her cheeks. She was going to let him get away with it, and he’d never change.

  “Could you hand me that bag?” I asked.

  She picked it up, set it on my lap, and went back to applying her makeup. I looked across the hospital parking lot checking for the other Kings’ cars or some sign of my brother. It wasn’t much past 8:30, though, and they were probably still asleep. Truck hadn’t even come by.

  I unzipped the backpack and took out the yearbook.

  “Here,” I said. “Flip to the back.”

  I handed her the wrinkled book and watched her turn to the last page. She read the contract and the scoreboard and flipped back to the middle to see the girls’ scores. She wasn’t crying now, just very quiet, taking it all in. She looked back at the scoreboard and double-checked my brother’s columns, as if hoping they’d gone blank. Then she closed the book and stared into space.

  Lizzie didn’t say much more as I drove her home. She held the yearbook clutched to her chest like a teddy bear. Morning was melting the thin sheet of snow that had fallen over the valley, and the white was scabbed with patches of grass and dirt. It was the kind of snow that looked ugly.

  Truck was sitting on Lizzie’s front steps when we got to her house. A bouquet of weathered roses lay at his side, and he had worn out brown lines in the snow with his pacing. I wondered how long he’d been out here.

  “Lizzie,” he said as I stopped the Ford and we got out. She tried to blow past him and get to the door, but he stepped in front of her. She shoved the yearbook into his chest.

  “The worst thing is I knew half of these girls,” she said. “They knew we were engaged.”

  My brother pulled the ring out of his pocket. He reached for her hand, trying to put it back on.

  “You don’t have to marry me now,” she said. “It’s been taken care of.” The mascara she’d so carefully applied was running now, dripping down past her chin and into the snow at her feet.

  “Lizzie,” he said. “Please—”

  She pushed him aside, and he let her pass.

  “It’s over,” she said as she walked up the stairs and closed the door behind her.

  My brother stood still, breathing steam into the cold air, tightening his hands into fists and then loosening the fingers, over and over. He stared at the closed door for a long time. His roses sat against the wet concrete steps, looking wet and dead.

  He pulled Lizzie’s ring from his pocket and held it up to the sun, where its tiny diamond caught the light. Then he put the ring back in his pocket then turned to look at me.

  “Truck,” I said. “I—”

  “God damn it, Ted,” he said. “I trusted you.”

  He walked right past me to the driver’s side door. Before I could even reach for the passenger’s side handle, he started the engine and peeled out of the driveway. A few seconds later, he’d disappeared around a corner, and I was alone.

  It was four miles back to my place, some of it along the highway. Maybe I could ask Lizzie for a ride home. But her car was still at Reggie’s place, and I couldn’t bring myself to climb those steps. I wished I’d worn boots instead of my tennis shoes. They were old and worn-through, and the left one had a crack in the sole that let the wet in.

  I walked down her driveway and started for home.

  15.

  The room was ripped up. Truck had pulled clothes from their hangers and the drawers from his dresser. Our Playstation was a mess of broken plastic and microchips, and he’d torn every poster from the wall. Most of Truck’s stuff, not that he had much in the first place, was gone.

  “What the hell did you do?” my dad asked as I surveyed the damage.

  “Truck and I, we had a fight.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Well fucking fix it. And make me some breakfast. I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday.”

  He wheeled himself to the kitchen, and I listened to the clink of ice against a glass as I sat in my silent, decimated room. I waited there for a while, staring at the destruction. It all seemed impossible to put back together.

  After a while, I headed to the kitchen and made my dad eggs. He ate without looking at me before wheeling himself back to his bedroom to drink and listen to old records. Old rock songs poured muffled through the wall as I cleaned the dishes and dried them without help.

  Back in my room, I picked up my cell and scrolled down the list of names. Sam and Joel wouldn’t understand what had happened. Reggie, Wood, and Hass would all take Truck’s side. Lizzie wasn’t going to be my sister anymore. I hadn’t talked to Emily since the night we’d almost done it, and I didn’t feel like explaining why everyone at school thought I’d slept with her. I scrolled past Kallea and got all the way to the ‘Z’s before I realized hers was the only voice I wanted to hear.

  I called her, and the phone rang. Please, I thought, be there. But she wasn’t.

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s me.” I lifted a half of a broken CD with my foot and recognized my copy of Madden. “How’s it going? Stupid question maybe.” I lifted the blinds and was surprised to find the window glass intact. “I just really wanted to talk to you.” I felt like I was going to choke up and hung up as fast as I could.

  I set the phone down and stared at the wall for a little while. Eventually, I started tidying up. I threw out the posters, the busted CDs and electronics. I tried not to identify the broken items, but picked them up and tossed them out without feeling their loss.

  I lifted up a dresser drawer, and tried to put it back in place. I must have been trying to put it in the wrong spot, or the wood had bent, or something, because no matter how hard I tried to squeeze it into place, it wouldn’t fit.

  After that, I put on decent boots and headed out for a walk. It was cold but sunny out. Most times when I had a problem, a walk like this calmed me. I could figure out a course of action, or at least a way to cope. This time, though, each pace I took seemed to recall some fault with my new reality: everything from taking care of Dad to getting a ride to school to buying groceries. And under it all, I felt a creeping sense of guilt. What Truck had said was true. He’d trusted me.

  The more I walked, the worse everything seemed, and at some point it started snowing again, and I realized I was miles from home again with no one to call, and I sat for a while in the snow wishing for any other life but mine.

  I was cleaning up after dinner later that night when my phone buzzed. The caller ID read “Kallea” and I quickly dried my hands and walked back to the room so my dad wouldn’t listen in.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Bug! Guess what. We’re throwing a party at Reggie’s. For you!”

  The voice on the other end of the line was not Kallea’s.

  “Truck?” I asked. He sounded drunk and slurry. “Why does it say you have Kallea’s phone?”

  “Your little girlfriend’s here,” he said. “Came over for a few drinks. You gotta catch up. We all had a few too many.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Take Dad’s car and get your ass here,” he said, all the warmth suddenly going out of his voice. “Girl is primed and ready to go. Thought I’d pay you back for all the help you gave me earlier. But hey, if you don’t want her, I’ve got a room full of guys who do.”

  “Truck�
�”

  The line went dead.

  Only a couple of lights were on in Reggie’s place, not like the parties we’d thrown before where the whole place blazed like it was on fire. Snow hung on the roof and blanketed the earth. It was coming down hard enough to blind drivers, and I would have crashed on the way there if the road hadn’t been so familiar.

  I found the guys sitting in the living room. Two empty handles of vodka lay on their sides on the pool table, and a huge wet stain bloomed over the green felt. Shot glasses, some upturned, were everywhere.

  “Bug!” said Hass as I walked in. “What you doing here so late? You missed the other girls. Everyone got a little too drunk, you know? Your chick passed out on us.”

  I looked around for Kallea but didn’t see her. Truck’s shaved head hung over the back of a couch at the far side of the room, but he didn’t turn to face me.

  “Bad night for me,” said Hass. “I was counting on some points from that Emily girl. But she got all upset when I tried to put a finger in her. Said she was a virgin. Now, I thought to myself, that can’t be true. This girl must be lying to me. Except. Thing is, I don’t think she was.”

  “How fucking stupid do you think we are?” asked Wood. “Did you think we were going to just—”

  “Where’s Kallea?” I asked. I walked over toward my brother as the other guys watched me silently. When I got close to the couch where he was sitting I saw Kallea laid out and asleep, her head in his lap. He turned to look at me.

  “There you are,” he said.

  I ignored him and leaned over to shake Kallea’s shoulder. She stirred and opened her eyes.

  “Ted?” She asked, groggy. Her eyelids fluttered and she frowned. “I got too drunk. We were playing. What was it called—?”

  “Get up,” I said, trying to pry her up. “We have to get out of here.”

  Truck slid out from underneath her, carefully lowering her head onto the couch. She closed her eyes again and rolled so that she faced the back cushions as Truck took my arm and led me a few steps away.

  “Better let her sleep it off,” he said. He took a condom out of his pocket and put it in my hand. “Chicks hate it their first time, most of ‘em. She’s better off this way.”

  “Most of the bedrooms are free,” said Reggie.

  “Fuck that,” said Hass. “I say he does it right here. Verification and shit.”

  “We’re going,” I said.

  “The hell you are,” said Truck. “You think I was just gonna let this shit slide? Couldn’t lie to Lizzie, but you could lie to us, right?”

  “You’re calling me a liar?” I asked. “I’m not going to have sex with—”

  “Yes you are. And it you don’t, I will. And Hass too. And Wood. And Reggie.”

  I looked across the room and the Kings. Hass and Wood stared at me with venom in their eyes, but Reggie just looked away uncomfortably.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m sorry, Truck. Okay?”

  “You’re sorry,” he put on a fake smile but couldn’t hold it for more than a few words. “You’re fucking sorry? You ruined my fucking life. You wanted Lizzie to catch me. You just stood there.”

  “You think this was my fault?” I asked.

  “You showed her the yearbook.” He was in my face now, moving back and forth like a boxer. “Going behind my back like some bitch. Now you get over there and fucking fix it.” He pushed me back toward Kallea but I stood my ground.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m fucking sorry. I guess I shouldn’t have cheated on my girlfriend and lied about it to my brother and then blamed everyone but myself when I finally got cau—”

  His punch knocked the wind out of me. It was way harder than the one Miller had thrown a day earlier, and it made me stagger back and double-over. And Truck wasn’t done. He walked toward me as I tried to stand up straight and catch my breath. It must have been that next punch that broke my nose.

  “You’re supposed to be my brother,” he shouted, punching me again. I hit the floor, and he held my shoulders down with his knees and he hit my again and again. A plume of blood flowed out my nostrils, and I couldn’t breathe without choking. “My little fucking brother.”

  The world was getting red and blurred.

  “Stop it!” A girl was shouting. “Stop it!”

  “Someone hold that bitch back.”

  “Truck, man. Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “He looks like he’s had enough.”

  “I hate you,” Truck was shouting. “I hate you!”

  And then he got off of me. He was sobbing, and saying it again and again: “I hate you.” His fists were red with our blood, and he kept staring at them. A soft touch met my shoulder and stung. I opened to eyes to see Kallea, unsteady on her feet, reaching down for me.

  The rest of the Kings were just staring at us, not quite sure what to do. Hass had walked over to Truck and was down on his haunches, one hand on my brother’s shoulder. Reggie and Wood sat quietly as if frozen.

  I sat up, trying to ignore the pain radiating out from my face and stomach. As Kallea, barely able to stand herself, walked me out of the garage, I blew blood out from my nostrils and onto the sleeve of my coat until I could breathe better. I didn’t look back as we opened the door and stepped outside, but I could still hear my brother sobbing and shouting that he hated me.

  The world came back into focus as we walked through the swirling snow toward my dad’s car. The cold made me aware of the wet places on my face, and I wiped at them with my good sleeve as I got into the driver’s seat. Kallea buckled her seatbelt and tried to sit straight. She rubbed at her eyes and looked over at me.

  I felt the bridge of my nose and winced at my own touch. The bone was loose in its socket and when I touched the skin, I stroked bare nerve endings and nearly blacked out.

  “Hey,” Kallea said.

  I felt along my ribcage, trying so feel if I’d broken anything else. When I leaned forward to start the engine, more blood dripped out of my nose and dotted my jeans.

  “Hey,” she asked. “Are you okay?”

  Epilogue.

  It’s strange looking back. Almost eight years have gone by, and writing this all now, it feels like someone else’s story. I’ve still got the crown on my back and the boxer’s nose my brother gave me that day, but aside from those two scars, there’s not much to link me to that fourteen-year-old kid, growing up in Jefferson.

  After Dad saw the way Truck had messed me up, he didn’t want him around the house anymore, not that Truck wanted to come back anyway. I’m not sure the two of them really talked again, and they were probably both better off for it.

  Without Truck helping out with bills, money got tight for a while. Dad and I cut down on some luxuries through the rest of school, and a cousin of his stepped in to help us out a couple of times when money got real bad, but mostly we got by.

  As I went through high school, Dad was good about showing up for academic competitions or awards ceremonies, and he did his best to stay sober on those days, or at least to chew gum and pretend.

  Later, when I was a Freshman here at Stanford, he called to say he’d been seeing a woman, Amy, and not much later, she moved in. I stopped by the old house for a few days for spring break that year and felt like I was visiting a stranger. The windows were all open, and light poured in on new couches. They’d torn out the mildewed carpets and discovered old hardwood floors underneath. Amy was a good woman and an artist. Pictures of tropical birds occupied most of the walls.

  Dad had been sober for months. He was clean-shaven and clear-eyed and seemed to understand the differential equations problems I was working on when I explained them. He kept saying how proud he was and took special pride in drinking too much coffee from the Stanford Dad cup I’d sent him for father’s day.

  I guess I should have been happier, seeing Dad cleaned up like that, but I couldn’t help but feel the timing was unfair. Maybe that explains why I wasn’t too upset when he called drunk and ranting a couple of ye
ars later to tell me Amy had left him. I was just glad I wasn’t around to watch him break down again.

  I made peace with Kallea and Emily in time, but we were never really close again. We were still in most of the same classes and clubs and stuff, but we didn’t hang out after school, and none of us were into parties anymore.

  Sometimes, though, Kallea and I would find ourselves alone in a room together and catch ourselves talking like old friends until some passing mention of football or sex or dating or some other loaded topic interrupted our exchange, and we remembered it was too late for us. Whatever sweetness had existed between us with tinged with something darker now that we both wanted to forget.

  More and more, I started hanging out with Sam and Joel, who only wanted to hear the good stories about the Kings. There were never girls around, and that was fine with me. Whenever a dance came up, Sam and Joel would obsess over whether they could get dates and chicken out at the last minute. There was a kind of sweetness to it, and I liked watching them play it cool at school then agonize over their heartache as we chatted online.

  I would have wished that for myself, if it were possible. When a girl from my Mock Trial team, a little blonde freshman, asked if I’d take her to Prom my junior year, I flinched bad when she put a hand on my arm. For a while, I thought maybe I was gay. But it wasn’t that. I just couldn’t handle people touching me for a while, guys or girls.

  When I got my acceptance letter into Stanford I realized that the first person I wanted to tell was Kallea. I guess I wanted her to be proud of me. When I called, she asked if I wanted to get coffee, and we met at a little place near her house downtown.

  It had been a few years since I’d really looked at Kallea, though I’d thought about her a lot of nights. I had these fantasies where I floated in a black tub of hot water at night, only my feet knees, face, and penis floating over the surface, and then some cloud would pass over the moon and the water would freeze instantly.