Nothing to Lose

by Alex Flinn

  I back away.

  “Just … go over there. Would you, please?”

  I go to close the door. Victor begins to follow me, but something—the look on my face, maybe—stops him.

  “Faggot,” he says.

  I shut the door.

  They stay into the night, their own fight over, concentrating instead on keeping me awake by pounding the trailer. I pull my pillow over my head, but in my mind, I see the photograph of my mother.

  I don’t go out again. Eventually the others come in to sleep. When my alarm goes off at five thirty, I let it ring long enough to wake everyone.

  LAST YEAR

  After one day in the school cafeteria, I went back to eating by the roach coach with my former teammates.

  Tedder Dutton, a junior jock I didn’t like much, was doing an impression of Miss Hamasaki, our English teacher. Lest the term impression leave anyone thinking of Saturday Night Live or Mad TV, I’ll clarify. This impression consisted entirely of Tedder reading a poem from our English book in this phony accent, pulling his eyes back like a six-year-old pretending to be Asian.

  “The roods are rovery, dalk and deep,” he recited.

  His friends laughed, and Tris said, “You have to wag your butt when you do it.”

  “She doesn’t talk like that,” I said. Then, to Tris, I added, “This is what happens when siblings mate.”

  “Hey, Daye, why do you always bring your lunch?” Tedder demanded. “The smell of peanut butter makes me want to regurgitate.”

  The two players laughed some more. I shrugged. “Healthier, I guess. I could complain that I’m sick of the sound your arteries make when they harden—but I’m too nice.”

  “Right,” he said. “Gotta keep healthy for foot— … why do you have to keep healthy, Daye?”

  I told him to bite me. Dutton was the type of guy who’d let you do his sister if he could think of some way that it would improve his stats (“And if you haven’t seen his sister,” Tris had said). He’d get my position now that I was out. By my definition he should’ve been kissing my ass for allowing him to replace me. But Dutton saw it differently.

  “Can’t believe you ditched the Dolphins like that,” he said.

  “You did great in practice yesterday, Tedder,” Tristan cut in. “Though you could pass to me a few times, instead of grabbing all the glory.”

  “Yeah, right,” Tedder said. “You get glory when you earn it, second string.”

  Glory. There was this scrimmage last year, J.V. versus varsity. It had been third and fifteen, and J.V. was at the forty. The defense bore down on me, and I’d thrown this near-impossible pass to Tris. I could still feel my arm on the follow-through, and Deion Jacobs landing on me. I could hear our side cheering when Tris caught it and ran it in for a TD.

  “Remember that scrimmage last year, Tris?” I said. “I passed to you.”

  Tris grinned. “Yeah, that was cool.”

  “But that was last year,” Dutton said. “This year, we have a way better D. You guys would’ve taken the L-train against this year’s team.”

  “Don’t know about that,” Tris said. “Jackson got, like, huge over Christmas break. He juicin’?”

  “Stephawn Jackson on ’roids?” Dutton looked shocked. “Nah, I think he gained twenty pounds—mostly in his forehead—by doubling up on his Flintstone vitamins.”

  Tristan laughed. “Hey, Mike, you going to Lucas’s party Saturday?”

  I looked from them to my sandwich. I wanted to go. Vanessa would be there. But the knowledge of what could happen at home if I went—it was always there like an old song that sticks in your head, where you can’t stop hearing it no matter how hard you try.

  Tris was looking back at me.

  You don’t know them anymore. You don’t even know yourself.

  Finally I said, “Wasn’t invited.”

  “You don’t need an invite.” Tris slapped my shoulder. “We’re all going.”

  “Yeah, I’m taking Vanessa DeLeon,” Tedder said. “Looking forward to it too. I hear she has a weakness for men in uniform. What a hose monster.”

  The veins in my right arm tensed. It was a normal thing that, true or not, guys said about girls. On a normal day, I might have heard this with a nod, or at most called the guy an asshole. But that day I was ready to get majorly pissed at anyone who even minorly deserved it.

  “What’d you say?” My voice was quiet.

  “I said she’s a sure thing.” Tedder mimed hitting a home run.

  “Take it back.”

  “What?”

  I grabbed him by the collar. “Take it back, now.” I felt my fist, the one that wasn’t on his collar, clench. My pulse was racing, my arm was raised, and every molecule of my being was standing on end, knowing how good it would feel to hit him. Like soda bursting from a shaken bottle. Maybe this was how it felt to lose it—a relief.

  “Hey, what are you crazy, man?”

  The voice was Tristan’s. It sounded like he’d said it more than once. And I felt the arms of one of the varsity players pulling me off Tedder, holding me back, then pushing me away. The guys were all around me, on me until I felt trapped. I couldn’t breathe.

  I pushed through them and stared at Tedder’s red face. My fist unclenched, and I stood there, feeling it tingle a moment, barely knowing who or where I was. I’d never been a guy who started fights before. Who was I becoming?

  I walked away.

  Tedder’s voice called after me, “You’re lucky I’m in training, Daye. Otherwise, I’d have kicked your ass!”

  No one followed me.

  THIS YEAR

  At the library later that morning, the headline of today’s Herald reads:

  Life Sentence Likely If Monroe Convicted

  I reach into my jeans pocket. The business card Karpe gave me is still in there, and I touch it. Maybe I’ll go see his stepmother after all. Maybe there’s a reason he came to see me, even a reason I’m back in Miami at all. I’d wanted to go with the fair to escape. But I can’t escape who I was, or what I still am.

  LAST YEAR

  That afternoon I got home early. As usual Mom was sewing on the balcony.

  “I have an idea,” I told her.

  She jumped. “Oh, Michael. You scared me.”

  “Sorry. Hey, I thought we could take a run down on the beach.”

  I pointed to the sand below. Maybe if I could get her out of the house, I could, I don’t know, talk to her. It was three thirty, hours still until Walker was expected home. She glanced at the sand, then at the portable phone beside her. “I don’t know.”

  “Take the phone. It’ll work down there. It’s only a few feet. It’s a beautiful day out.”

  She studied me, looking for an excuse to say no. It would be that—an excuse, not a reason. “Since when do teenaged boys want to run on the beach with their mothers? When I was your age, you couldn’t get me away from my family fast enough.”

  “Well, I’m asking you.” It was suddenly important to me to get her outside. “You used to want to run a marathon, remember? Now that you don’t work, you could train for it.”

  She laughed. “That was a joke. I’m not strong enough. It was fine saying that before when I could never … and Walker doesn’t like female athletes anyway. He always says the other partners’ wives spend too much time at the gym. He once told me he thought needlework was such an elegant thing to do.”

  I remembered him threatening to rip apart the runner she’d made.

  “You should do what you’re into, not just what Walker wants.”

  “I’m into this.” She held up the fabric so I could see. The whole thing was covered in flowers with fancy, knotted centers that must have taken her days to stitch. “My grandmother taught me when I was little.”

  “But you hated it,” I protested. “You said she trapped you in the house all summer and made you embroider tablecloths while your friends went to Girl Scout camp. You said you felt trapped.” My mother was raised by her g
randmother, and I remembered her telling me that she used to look out the window and wish she could go outside. Now she was doing the same thing. Or maybe she wasn’t even wishing anymore.

  “But Grandma Mavis was right. She said I was learning a valuable skill. The girls who went to camp—what did they learn, except to cook over a fire?”

  “Might have come in handy a few times when the electricity got turned off.”

  “Well, we don’t have to worry about that anymore.” She started to stitch again. “I miss Grandma Mavis.”

  Which just proved how sucky things had gotten.

  “I never met her, did I?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “She never forgave me for getting married right out of high school. ‘Just like your mother,’ she said, ‘a big disappointment.’ She wanted me to go to college to study nursing. I was always best in my class in science. Did I ever tell you that about me?” The wind caught the fabric she was sewing, and she gathered it between her knees. “I wrote her when you were born, but she didn’t come. When your father left, that’s when she wrote back. She said I could stay with her if I gave you up for adoption. You were two.” Mom shook her head. “Crazy old witch.”

  “Thought you missed her.”

  “Oh, I do. She just didn’t understand.” She looked at me. “You were such a sweet baby.” She stopped stitching and stroked the fabric, which I now saw was some sort of coverlet for a crib. “I miss those times.”

  A horrible thought hit me. “You wouldn’t have another baby, would you?”

  I held my breath, waiting for an answer, picturing her stomach growing round and wide and having someone else to worry about. God, I was sick of worrying. I wanted to be like I used to. I wanted to play football and be selfish and make out with girls at parties, like Tedder and all those other guys I hated now, but used to like, could like again if I didn’t have to hate them.

  “No,” she said. “Walker says no.”

  For once I agreed with Walker. But I said, “You could find someone else. You’re only thirty-four.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll find someone else.” She went back to the flower she was stitching. “What a thing to say. Walker’s my husband.”

  “Your husband who threatened to kill you.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that. I was just upset that night.”

  “He still said it. I want to talk about it. I want to—”

  She put her head down, hands to her ears. “I did this for you, Michael. You needed stability.”

  The words stung. There’d been a night in eighth grade. Tristan and I and these older guys had been spray painting a fence near school. Of course when the cops showed up, the older guys had scattered, and just Tris and I got caught. It was kids’ stuff, but Mom had cried and said, “I don’t know what to do with you. I wish you had a father to help with this.”

  She’d started seeing Walker soon after. But I wouldn’t let her pin this on me.

  “Let’s go outside,” I said. “I saw a dolphin the other day.”

  “Walker’s working on his temper. We both have to help him, not do things to set him off.” She put down the fabric and gazed at me. “He did a good job yesterday, when you got him so upset.”

  Huh? “He broke a bowl. He pushed you.”

  “It was just a bowl, though. And it was an accident.” She finished the last petal of the flower and began another. How many hours had she spent on it today? I noticed that all the times we talked about why she stayed with Walker, she never said she loved him. She always made it about me, somehow.

  “Let’s go outside,” I repeated.

  She looked out again, for a long time this time, until I almost thought she would go.

  “Please,” I said.

  “I want to finish this.” She picked up the fabric again.

  “He hurt you yesterday. I could tell.”

  “We have to be more understanding of Walker. He has a stressful job. That new secretary’s incompetent, and his law partners don’t appreciate—”

  “He should beat up his partners then.”

  My mother laughed. “Sure. That’s a good idea.”

  Then she didn’t say anything, just kept sewing. The room was so still.

  I said, “You know what the big problem is, with you being married to him?”

  “Michael…”

  I remembered grabbing Tedder, how good it would have felt to hit him. And how bad, too. And I thought, Maybe the good part and the bad part are the same, like maybe if you do the dumbest, worst thing you can think of, there’s nothing left to worry about. I never would have thought that before. But now, it was like I was dying, but slowly. And all the good parts of me were dying first.

  I said, “Before Walker, I used to think I was a nice guy. I might not have been the smartest guy or the richest or even the most athletic. But I was a nice guy.”

  “Of course you are. You’re a sweet boy.”

  “No. No, I’m not. Because late at night, when I lie in bed, I wish he was dead.”

  She put down the needlework and looked at me a moment. “You don’t really wish that.”

  “I do. What kind of person does that make me?”

  THIS YEAR

  Why are you here?

  What are you doing?

  You don’t have to stay, you know. You can turn tail and leave down the service elevator, and no one will ever know.

  I’ll know.

  The door to the lawyer’s office is glass and dark wood. I reach for the handle, imagining the door shattering, splintering under my touch. But it doesn’t, so I step onto the pink marble inside.

  The receptionist gives me that special sneer adults reserve for teenagers in ripped jeans.

  “May I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Angela Guerra.”

  “Is Ms. Guerra expecting you?”

  “I’m Michael.” Intentionally leaving out my last name. “Her stepson, Julian, told me … he said I could come.”

  The woman presses a button on the intercom and speaks into it. She looks back.

  “Have a seat. She’ll be with you in a moment.” I see her mentally add, Don’t touch anything.

  I do as I’m told. The lobby is big and too open. I sit and think about leaving. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Angela Guerra, or even if I want to tell her anything at all.

  Then the door opens, and she walks in.

  Angela Guerra—Ms. Guerra—wasn’t married to Karpe’s father when I left town last year. She’s young for a lawyer, maybe thirty, with long legs and a real short skirt. Trophy wife. The hated expression leaps to mind, watching the swing of her long, dark hair as she leads me to her office. But something about her tells me, Angela Guerra is no guy’s trophy.

  She closes the door. The office has a view of the bay. The sun glints off the water, blinding bright, so I look away, staring instead at the business card holder on her desk. I know from Spanish class that her name means both Angel and War. She doesn’t say anything, waiting. For a second we have a staring contest.

  I lose. “I’m here about the Lisa Monroe murder trial,” I say.

  “Oh?” Looking at her legal pad, like nothing’s changed by my words.

  “Yeah. Yeah, she’s my mother.”

  A slight intake of breath. So Karpe didn’t tell her. But she recovers and clears her throat.

  “So, you’re the missing person,” she says.

  I smile. “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

  She doesn’t smile back. “Julian said you had a sense of humor.”

  “I had one.”

  “What happened?”

  “You know what happened. Everyone knows.”

  “They know what the newspapers say, what the lawyers choose to tell the newspapers. I’m a lawyer myself, so I know what we are.”

  “Liars?”

  This time she does smile. “Oh, no. Lawyers—good lawyers—never lie. We tell the truth better than anyone. But wh
ether we choose to tell all the truth—well, that’s a different story. What I know is, you left. What I need to know is, why are you back? And why here, talking to me?”

  Good question. I don’t answer a second, considering the possibility of standing and heading back out the door I came in. Finally I say, “I’m not sure. I thought maybe you could help me.”

  “With what?”

  With deciding what to do. With telling me whether being here will help my mother, or if I should stay a missing person forever.

  I say, “I came back to Miami. I’ve been gone a year, and no one knows where I was.” I wait for her to ask me where I’ve been, but she doesn’t. “So I wanted to know if anyone’s looking for me.”

  “Why would they be?”

  “I don’t know. To give information. To interview me on CNN. Because I ran away, maybe, to put me in a home for messed-up kids.”

  She smiles. “Well, forget that last one. If the police spent their time looking for runaways, they’d never do anything else. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I will. As long as you lay low, you can stay gone forever. And I get the impression you’re good at laying low … if laying low is still what you want. Where have you been all this time?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “I was just concerned about whether you’re someplace safe.”

  “Safe enough.” She keeps looking at me until I add, “It’s just, why should I trust you? How do I know that what I say won’t end up on Inside Edition or something?”

  “I guess you don’t.”

  “That’s comforting.”

  “How do you ever know you can trust anyone? But everything you say here is protected by attorney-client privilege. You walked in that door, you became my client. You walk out, I can’t tell anyone what you said unless you say it’s okay.”

  I test her. “I’m a client even though I’m not paying you?”

  She nods. “But I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me, Michael.”

  I look down. “Where I am, it’s … complicated.”