“I just wanted to go home, you know? But they put me to bed in this room all by myself. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I had to take a leak, and I didn’t even know where the bathroom was. Stupid whack jobs. Like that’s the first thing you show a foster kid—where the freaking bathroom is.” He rolled his eyes, then leaned in and spoke more quietly.
“I had to go bad enough that I finally got up, and as I walked down the hall, I heard this moaning sound coming through a doorway that was cracked open. I couldn’t help it. I peeked.” He shook his head disgustedly. “And so I’m standing there, right? I’m wondering if someone’s sick when this pimply-faced excuse for a human teenager climbs off his foster sister and sticks his head out through the crack in the door.”
Michael raised the pitch of his voice and added some manic gravel to it. “‘Hey, stupid,’ he said to me. ‘I wanna show you somethin’.” Then Michael leaned back and threw up his hands in front of him, as if he were warding off the teen all over again. “I was like, ‘No way,’ and I tried to bolt, but he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the hall, down the stairs and out onto this dirty back porch. The concrete was all uneven and cracked.” Michael paused and then scratched at the back of his neck anxiously.
“I just can’t understand it, Catherine. How you knew about this.” He glanced away, then back. “See. There was this beat up wooden door in the floor and—”
“I’ve seen that door! Jason showed me a picture of it. I couldn’t believe it!”
“Jason? Isn’t that your pretty, eyebrow-waxing boyfriend? Did he use his super techno smarts to help you stalk my past?”
I looked away guiltily. “Ex,” I said.
“You don’t think maybe he’s trying to impress you? Just a little?”
“No,” I said defensively. “We’re over.”
“Uh huh. Well, he might have shown you a picture of the trapdoor, but that’s not what I meant about you knowing things you shouldn’t know. That foster kid told me something that night that you won’t find in any freaking cyber file.” His eyes became cloudy and distant, and he nodded a few times. “Yeah. I’ll bet that teen thought he was so funny, scaring the crap out of a little kid...” Michael’s face went slack for a moment, and then he made a face as if he’d smelled something bad. He lowered his voice more.
“The kid unbolted the door and pulled it open, and this nasty, only-something-dead kind of smell poured out of the dark hole. Then he said, ‘You know who lives down there, kid? The Johnson’s first foster kid, only he’s all growed up now. They keep him locked up down there because he murdered their second foster kid with an ax. Yeah.’ And then he belched this laugh right in my face and shoved me down the crumbling concrete steps and slammed the door shut. All I could see were piles of dirt as tall as me and spider webs before the door closed. ‘Do you see him, stupid? He sleeps back in the corner with his ax, Cletus the Ax-toting Freak! Do you see him, you stupid ass kid? Do you see him?’” As Michael’s voice faded he watched my face carefully, waiting for the reaction he knew would come.
I was momentarily paralyzed by the wave of shock that slammed into my chest, and I was finding it hard to breathe. How the hell did his most terrifying childhood memory flash through my mind on the night the coyote attacked? Without that “Cletus the Ax-toting Freak” memory, I would have charged into the bathroom and been torn to pieces. It probably saved my life. No. It did save my life. I was stunned. I was lightheaded—
“Breathe, Catherine,” Michael said suddenly from the air next to my ear, and I sucked in a deep shaky breath. “How did you know about that, Catherine? How could you possibly know? I never forgot that night, and I never told anyone. Telling would have made it—”
“Real,” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
We were both quiet for a few minutes until a flock of crows landed in the trees above us and stirred up our silence with their raspy calls. The chaotic rustle of flapping feathers drew my eyes upward, and I watched them force their way up through the tops of the pines on their shiny black wings. I gripped the edges of the deeply-grooved log I was sitting on with my fingers. The world had shifted, and I was dizzy.
“I just don’t get it,” he mumbled anxiously and then looked at me curiously. “Can you read my mind? Did you read that thought in my head? Did you pull the dreams out of my head?”
I shook my head in confusion. “No…I don’t think so…it’s got to be you. You’re the supernatural…whatever.” I waved my hands in his direction. He started to shake his head. I raised my eyebrows, and he sighed again.
“Shit. I don’t know…maybe. Maybe you were right about me putting thoughts in your head. Like that song, ‘Hope Bleeds.’ I have to admit, that song pretty much said everything I was thinking when I first saw you that night.” He dipped both of his hands into the snow and then pulled them back out without knocking a single icy flake out of place. Then he asked suddenly, “What am I thinking right now?” He furrowed his brows in deep concentration, and I stifled a laugh.
“What? I’m serious,” he said, but then the corners of his full lips turned up, too. He mashed his lips back together and said, “No. Seriously.” Then he closed his flickering eyelids and rubbed his thumb and forefinger across his forehead. I cleared my throat, closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, too.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re thinking this is all so stupid.”
He looked annoyed and said, “Yeah…but you could have guessed that.”
I fought back another grin. It was true. He wasn’t that hard to read when he was fired up.
“Try again,” he said, closing his eyes and placing his fingers on his temples. I laughed outright.
“Catherine!”
“Okay…” I closed my eyes again and waited to be inspired. I didn’t see anything except the back of my eyelids for a few minutes. Then a picture of Stephen, the murdered boy, flashed in front of me, and my stomach soured. My eyes flew open, and I found Michael staring at me, waiting with a pensive look on his face.
“What did you see?”
“I…” I shook my head and bit my lip.
“What. Did. You. See?” he asked again, enunciating each word slowly. And I wondered again why I had to be the one to poke and probe his wounds.
“I saw Stephen.”
“Wrong.” He dropped his chin and rubbed his hand over his face. “But then…Stephen’s never that far from my mind.”
“I’m so sorry, Michael.”
He looked up with eyes full of anguish. “I froze, Catherine, when it all started. He was just a little kid, and I ditched him when he needed me. The Johnsons…” His voice was swallowed up by his grief.
“Michael, they tortured you! You were only eleven. The cigarette burns—”
“If it had only been cigarette burns, I would have at least tried to beat the shit out of Mr. Johnson when he went after Stephen. The cigarettes were nothing,” he said bitterly. He looked down at his forearm and pointed to the top burn.
“This was my first. I got it for biting that foster kid when he finally let me out of that hole in the floor.” A choked, dark laugh erupted from his throat. “Yeah, but it was worth it. He thought twice about bothering me after that.”
“And the rest?” What could those awful people have faulted him for?
“Talking back, breaking things, running away. Mostly running away. They were ticks on the government’s ass. What can I say? They drew their foster care paycheck every month and did their best to ignore us or make us miserable, depending on the day.” He glanced down at all the burns on his chest. “I guess I’m a slow learner. They realized eventually that they needed a bigger stick to threaten me with.”
My tongue felt thick in my mouth. “I don’t understand.”
He sighed and opened his mouth, but let it fall closed helplessly, soundlessly. Then he shook his head and tried again, with the same result. When he finally regained vocal t
raction, he said, “Catherine, there are other ways to burn.”
He stood up slowly and motioned with his chin for me to do the same. Then he turned to expose his naked back to me. Misshapen black and blue bruises from his fall marred his upper back, and there was a ragged laceration over his right shoulder. I took a step toward him and looked more closely, and he dropped his chin and sighed softly. Underneath the destruction his fall had caused, there were three ugly maroon scars running diagonally all the way across his back. They cut him from his right hip bone to the tip of his left shoulder blade. The end of each thick scar was curved and sharpened to a point.
And the snow kept falling through him, as if he wasn’t even there, as if he’d never mattered at all. My throat ached. I wanted to soothe his ruined back with a handful of soft icy snow, to clean and bandage his wounds, to help him heal, but he was trapped somewhere beyond my reach.
“Bastards. What did they—”
He looked back over his shoulder at me. “Fireplace poker,” he spat. “Three strikes and I finally heeled for them. Like a stupid fucking dog…sorry, Catherine. And when Mr. Johnson was done with Stephen, he found me cowering in my room with my tail between my legs and locked me in the cellar. I was eleven years old, and you’d think I’d be over my fear of the dark by then, but all I could think about was a nut job with an ax waiting in the corner for me to fall asleep. Two days, Catherine. I was scared shitless for two days before the police showed up and found me in that hellhole. And when I crawled out of that hole, I told myself, never again. Never ever again. No one else would ever die on my watch. I’d be ready the next time.” His whole body flexed hard then, from his fists to the cords of muscle in his neck. He stared off into the woods, nodding silently.
Next time. It was then that I realized how deep his wounds went, down to the core of his being. He’d spent the next four years of his life trying to numb the pain, forever looking over his shoulder, always on defense, trusting no one. Jason was right. Michael had plenty to forget.
“He was evil, Michael. A sick bastard. Not everyone is like that.”
“Maybe. But you never know, do you? People can turn on you over the stupidest things.” He sighed and paced away, then back and pointed at me. “You have to be ready, Catherine. So I did whatever I could to get stronger. I ran and did push-ups, pull-ups—whatever I could think of. I kept waiting for the day I’d reach six feet. My dad was over six feet tall, so I figured I had a good chance.” He paused and tilted his head to the side, thinking. “I wonder if I would’ve been six feet tall if I’d lived longer.” He looked down at me as if he wanted my opinion, but didn’t wait for me to answer.
“Wherever I went, I was always on the lookout for a weapon I could use to protect myself. I tried carrying a knife for a while, but for some reason I tended to get searched frequently. Can’t imagine why.” He gave me a cynical grin. “I guess my reputation sort of preceded me. But…” He paused and looked me in the eye for dramatic effect. “It paid off. Like in a big way.” Then he started pacing again, his feet leaving no trace at all in the snow, his hands gesturing animatedly in front of him to help him explain.
“See, there was always something nearby that might be handy in a fight. A trash can lid, a sharp pencil, a flower pot.” The corners of my lips inched up at the thought of him wielding a deadly pot of pink petunias, and he turned and said, “Hey, don’t laugh. You’d be surprised what you can do with a flower pot. And I had plenty of practice. I went through several foster families, and none of them lived in the best neighborhoods.
“So, I ended up in this Roberta lady’s house when I was twelve. She lived in one of those dumpy duplexes on the near East side, and she had a collection of the most awesome weapons right on her living room wall above her orange plaid sofa.” When he looked at me this time, a slight grin played at the corners of his lips. “Take a guess,” he said.
He had me there. I had no idea. I’d seen people hang medieval swords and shotguns on their walls, but I couldn’t see someone like that being approved for foster care. I shook my head.
“A wild guess?”
“Trophies?”
“Not bad,” he nodded approvingly. “But no. She had a whole collection of cast iron frying pans. She was freaking nutso about them! I mean, like who the hell collects frying pans? She oiled them and blogged about them and cooked us sausage and eggs in them. They had these Indian heads on the back, and she said they were made a long time ago in Wapawhateverville, Ohio. Very valuable.” He grinned dangerously and then went on.
“I couldn’t give a flying um…well, you know…why they were valuable to people like her, but for kids like me, they had one purpose only. Weapons Grade Food Utensil. Those suckers were heavy. The biggest pan was over sixteen inches across, and when I pulled it off the wall one day to test it out, it was a good thing I used two hands because it weighed more than a freaking bowling ball. I put it back. Rejected. I couldn’t have swung it with any kind of speed or accuracy. But the Number Five, now that was perfect. It was about eight inches across, light enough to wield without breaking my wrists but heavy enough to do some serious damage.” He swung his arms in a quick arc in front of him to demonstrate, and his muscles rippled across his body in time with the movement. His body was a finely tuned machine.
“Did you ever—”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Her boyfriend was a freaking redwood and a total dickwad. I had a three-year-old foster sister. Cherish. She was adorable. She had thick reddish hair like my mother’s, but it was curly, like yours.” He let his eyes linger on my hair for a moment. The strength of his gaze made me blush, and he smiled, and then glanced away.
“She tripped over her Little People house one day and started to cry, and I don’t know why, but she wouldn’t stop. Roberta couldn’t console her, and her whack-job boyfriend was on the phone. He said, ‘Shut that little bitch up, Bertie!’ And I was like, Oh shit, here we go. I eyed my favorite pan. When Cherish kept bawling, he slammed the phone down and grabbed her out of Roberta’s hands.
I grabbed the Number Five.
“When he started to shake her, I shoved him in the back. ‘Hey! Treespawn!’ I said. ‘Pick on someone your own freakish size!’ He threw her down hard on the sofa and started to turn on me. ‘What. Like—” was all he spewed out of his mouth before I had the Number Five slamming into his big, ugly face. When he started to fall, I was like, shit, please don’t fall on top of Cherish, but he didn’t. He broke the glass coffee table into a billion pieces and was out cold.”
I was breathing fast and staring at Michael in amazement. He took a deep breath and slowed his speech down. “So I sat down on the sofa, shaking like a leaf, major adrenaline overload, and I picked up Cherish and balanced her on one knee and the Number Five on the other, and said, ‘Call an ambulance, Roberta. I just broke his effin’ jaw.’
“Cherish stopped crying then and started tracing the Indian head carving on the bottom of the pan with her tiny fingers, and I kissed her on the top of her head. I told her I’d protect her. So when Roberta got off the phone and tried to take her from me, I waved her off with the pan. I told her she didn’t deserve to have little kids when she kept dickwads like her boyfriend around. She called me a psychopath. ‘Whatever,’ I said. I held onto Cherish tight until the police got there and then handed her off to them. They took one look at the fallen redwood on the coffee table and arrested me.”
“With handcuffs and everything?”
“Yeah, Genius,” he said sarcastically. “That’s usually what people mean when they say ‘arrested.’”
“But you saved her!” I protested.
He rolled his eyes. “Cherish couldn’t tell them what happened, and Roberta was…um...less than helpful. Who were they going to believe? I’d already been in trouble for fighting in the neighborhood and ditching school. I just wish I knew what happened to that little girl.”
I couldn’t say that Cherish was probably alright, because there was no way I could know that.
Not after what he’d told me that day. For all I knew she was six feet underground too, and that thought made me sick. So instead I asked, “So what happened to you?”
“I had some dumbass lawyer tell me to plead it out, so I copped to some assault-type charge and was sentenced to probation and six months community service.”
“That’s totally not fair!”
“It was just picking up trash and painting fences. It really wasn’t so bad…” he said, kicking distractedly at the snow with his toe.
“So what went wrong next?” I was fuming. How could one kid have the whole world’s ration of bad luck dumped on him?
He stopped kicking his foot, but didn’t look up from the snow for a long beat. When he finally raised his eyes, he said, “My mom got custody of me.”
I was shocked. I’d assumed his mom was dead by then. “Was that—”
“Good?” he finished for me. “Depends on what you’d call good.”
“What’s your definition of good?” I asked, afraid to hear his answer. I backed up slowly, sat back down on the log, and patted the spot beside me. He eyed the log nervously and shifted uneasily on the balls of his feet. What was it he didn’t want to tell me? I already knew that he’d experimented with drugs.
“No more secrets, right?” I reminded him quietly. “We’re mind-melded, remember?” A pained look flooded his eyes in response, and he crossed his arms over his bare chest, debating something within himself. Then he turned and flopped down next to me on the log and leaned forward on his elbows. He looked down at his balled up black T-shirt, which he was twisting and untwisting around his ragged fingers.
I waited him out for a while and when he didn’t say anything, I said, “Michael, you already told me you had some problems with drugs.”
He tipped his head in my direction, a look of utter disbelief filling his eyes. “Are you freaking kidding me? Some problems? Is that what you heard me say? You weren’t listening.” He looked back down at his T-shirt and shook his head patronizingly. “It’s not me that’s avoiding my past. It’s you.”
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