by Ashley Love
It's an endless helpless loop going around and around in his head, and when he exits the school, he really doesn't feel like going home yet. He doesn't want to just go back to his house where he'll have nothing to distract him from this vicious cycle in his brain.
He spots Ariel with her friends walking out of the back door of the school, and he watches them head towards the theater. Right, he'd seen the listings for the cast of the winter play. Ariel was chosen for one of leading parts. Zane had snorted to himself when he'd realized Ariel was cast for the part of Stephanie, the school bully/mean girl in the play. How ironic.
Zane hesitates, chewing on his lip, glancing between the door where Ariel and her friends just entered the theater, and The Docks, where he sees Slate and Ryker sitting with their backs to him. He's pretty sure Noah mentioned something about Zane and his friends going to Ghost Town this afternoon, but right now, that's frankly the last thing he wants to do.
So he turns, and before his mind processes it, he's walking towards the theater. When he slips inside the door, he sees a crowd of students hanging out on the stage, and he quickly ducks into the shadows at the top of the auditorium, taking a seat in the furthest row from the stage possible where he's fairly certain none of the students up there can see him.
And he watches.
He watches Ariel interact with her friends. He watches her laugh at something a short guy with chestnut hair says, and Zane watches her accept a stapled stack of papers from the teacher when she arrives, and he watches her move to the side and read over what's on the paper, her lips moving as she reads.
He watches as the company split up into separate groups, and start running lines for what he assumes is the winter play. But mostly, they just laugh. Zane finds himself smiling as he crouches like a fucking creep in the back of the auditorium, because watching Ariel and her friends practice lines is like watching the blooper reels of some comedy movie. More often than not, all of them, Ariel included, are on the floor hugging their stomachs, laughing with tears streaming down their faces because one of them decided to say their line a bit more dramatically than necessary. Even the teacher is laughing, and Zane is in the back covering his mouth so he doesn't laugh out loud too.
This. This right here. This is why he has a crush on Ariel. Sure, she's gorgeous, and mysterious, and intriguing, and smart. Sure she's noble, and admirable. But this right here...seeing Ariel with her friends, laughing and carrying on as if she doesn't have to deal with Zane and his friends hurting her every couple of days, as if she doesn't have to deal with being emotionally and physically beaten down constantly, is why he likes her. She's brave, and strong. She's everything he's not. Ariel can take a beating, and then go laugh with her friends like nothing happened.
Zane is as jealous as he is infatuated. Ariel is this bright beacon of light in an ugly world where people let their problems eat them alive. She doesn't seem to let her problems get to her too much; at least not with how she appears today, laughing and carrying on with the theater company.
Maybe Zane is reading too much into it. Maybe there's more going on in her head than she lets on. Maybe she's just putting on a strong face, and really, her problems are eating her alive inside. It would make more sense, than thinking she's this superhero. Zane knows firsthand how possible it is to fool everyone around you into thinking you're alright. To take yourself out of your mind and put on a strong face. He does it for Liam, all the time. Maybe that's what Ariel is doing.
But it doesn't change anything. Zane still feels an ache in his chest every time he sees or thinks about her, an ache made of jealousy, longing, lust, admiration, and adoration. He tries so hard to swallow it down, but he's never felt this way about anyone before. It's so hard to just ignore it. But he has to, for the sake of his own sanity.
When the teacher directing the theater practice (who is ridiculously hot, by the way, although nothing compared Ariel's exotic beauty) announces that the session is over, Zane snaps out of his daze and quickly ducks out before anyone can see him. He glances over at The Docks before slipping into the trees. His friends aren't there—they must have left for Ghost Town already.
Zane doesn't know what he's feeling right now. It's a mix of every emotion possible at the moment, and it's brewed into a roiling, bitter taste in the back of his throat. He doesn't go straight home. He stops at the gas station at the edge of town first and buys a carton of menthols, planning to sit on his roof and smoke as many of them as he can before he pukes. He wants to drink, but he can't do that to Liam again. So he'll smoke. He'll smoke like a fucking train, until the nicotine makes him so dizzy he falls off the roof and breaks his neck. That's what he'll do.
But when he gets home, his plans instantly change. He hears shouting from inside the house, and then something clatters loudly against the floor. He breaks into a jog as he hears something else crash inside and tears open the front door. No, no, no, when did Mike get home?
His father is in the kitchen, and there are broken dishes and bottles everywhere. Liam is hunching near the table, which is currently on three legs and lopsided, but he's keeping it between himself and his father. Mike is shouting incoherently, something about Liam breaking something. Zane fleetingly wonders why the hell Mike cares so much, when it looks like he himself has broken half the dishes in the kitchen already. Liam is bleeding from his forehead, and Zane wonders if he took a plate to the face.
Seeing his little brother bleeding blinds him. He forgets about everything that happened today. He forgets about Ariel. He forgets about the carton of cigarettes he wants to smoke. He forgets about his friends, and the sound of a beautiful angel laughing, and about himself. All he sees is Liam with blood on his face.
"Dad! What the hell are you doing?!" he shouts over his father, and Mike turns his way, not even stopping in his tirade as he throws the bottle he's holding at Zane's head. He's got fantastic aim for a drunk bastard, but Zane ducks just in time and the bottle smashes on the wall behind him.
As he quickly makes his way across the kitchen to where Liam is huddling behind the table, he glances at his father and sees that Mike is holding a picture frame in his other hand. There's a picture of Diane Peterson inside, but the glass on the frame is broken. It's the picture that's usually hanging in the front hallway, but now it's broken in Mike's hands. What the hell is going on?
Their father keeps shouting and Zane dodges a few more things being thrown his way as he moves to block Liam from the flying dishes and the yelling. He grabs Liam's arm and shields him with his body as he drags him towards the hallway. Liam is frozen in place, but he stumbles after Zane when he yanks him harder, urging him to move. There are tears running down his face, mixing with the thin trail of blood leaking from his forehead.
When he reaches the hallway, Mike shouts something that sounds a little like, "You fuckin' listen to me when I'm talkin' to you!" but it's more just a jumbled mess of syllables worthy of a mute man. There's an empty bottle of Jack Daniels laying shattered on the floor in the hallway.
Well, that explains a lot.
When a shot glass clocks Zane in the back of the head, he ducks and grabs the spot in pain, giving Liam a shove towards his room. "Lock the door," he growls, and Liam takes off down the hall as Zane turns back towards Mike.
"Dad, stop!" he begs. "Just fucking stop! You're drunk!"
Mike is suddenly close enough to reach Zane, and his fist connects with Zane's stomach. Zane gags as the wind is knocked out of him, hunching forward with the punch, stumbling back a few steps. He wants to hit back—he wants to defend himself. But he can't. He'll never fight back, not when it's Mike hitting him. He remembers the Michael Peterson his father used to be before The Accident. He remembers the man who used to pour his cereal in the morning, and fix his buttons when he did them up uneven, and tuck the corner of his bottom sheet back around his bed when it popped off. No, he'll never fight back. Even if the man before him is no longer his father, is no longer human. He'll never
fight back, no matter what Mike does to him.
When Mike lands an impressive punch across Zane's face, disturbing the healing gashes from a few nights ago with the Tabasco glass, Zane falls to the floor. He crab-walks backwards away from Mike, but Mike manages to get a good kick in right to Zane's shin. He cries out in pain, but scrambles up and half-runs-half-limps down the hall, falling into his room and kicking the door shut, locking it just as he hears Mike crash into the other side and begin jiggling the doorknob.
He's shouting incoherently still, and Zane hears a bit of splintering as the door starts to break when he kicks it a few times. Zane feels blood running out of his nose and wipes it away with the back of his hand, scrambling up and limping to the window. He throws it open and all but falls out of the house into the garden just outside, which is basically just a dirt patch filled with dead weeds. He winces as he feels some of the weeds scratching his arms and face, but he forces himself to stand, clawing his way over to Liam's window.
He bangs his palm against the glass, and Liam appears, opening the blinds. Zane waves his hand, signaling for Liam to get his ass out here, now. Liam is crying and bleeding, and it breaks Zane's heart as he fights back the nausea building from his aching gut where Mike punched him. Liam pushes open his window and swings his feet out, and Zane scoops him up under his armpits and lifts him out of his room.
"You okay?" he asks, and Liam nods shakily, grabbing his hand. He doesn't hold Zane's hand often, but tonight is one of the worst they've had with Mike in a long, long while. It's been months since Mike was this bad.
"Come on," Zane says, holding his stomach with one hand and Liam's hand with the other. He pulls Liam along and they run down the street. The next door neighbor—an old lady with about seventeen little yapping dogs and a garden of rotten squash in her front yard—is peering out from between her blinds. Zane doesn't blame her. Mike is loud. He and Liam are almost to the end of the block by the time they finally can't hear Mike's shouts anymore.
They make it as far as Hartley's Bend before they finally slow to a walk. Zane's leg is aching like a son of a bitch where Mike kicked him in the shin, and he can feel a throbbing swollen lump already forming right over the bone. They don't stop though, not even to take a few seconds to catch their breath. They keep walking, past the rusted swings and the creaking merry-go-round and the dilapidated slide at Hartley's Bend, and Liam sniffles quietly beside Zane, wiping blood off his forehead as it grows sticky and cold.
Zane already knows they're heading for Alfred's. It's where they always go when things are bad. Alfred and Susan and Abby are warm and gentle and remind Zane of goose feather pillows and lavender candles and apple pie. Everything nice—that's what the Singers are.
He glances down at Liam as the kid starts crying harder, and he pulls his brother to a stop, turning and kneeling down in front of him. Liam has a death grip on his hand, and he isn't letting go, so Zane simply holds back just as tightly. "Hey, hey, dude, none of that," he says, reaching up and wiping tears and snot and blood away from Liam's face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. "How you ever gonna pick up any girls when you look like a Shrek reject, huh?"
Liam chokes out a watery laugh, but it sounds so broken and ugly that it just hurts Zane more. He nudges Liam's shoulder.
"What happened tonight, Liam?" he asks. "Why was Dad so pissed?"
Liam sniffles a little, staring at the asphalt between them, not looking Zane in the eyes. "I tripped in the front hall and broke Mom's picture," he replies, barely understandable through his tears. He hiccups a little as he scrubs at his eyes. He's not doing much good, just smearing blood and snot around.
Zane recalls seeing Diane's picture in Mike's hand, the glass cracked in a few places. Combine a bottle of whiskey, a few beers, a late night, and a broken picture of the only person Michael Peterson has ever truly loved, and Zane can see how their father got so angry so quickly. Tack on Liam probably trying to apologize and calm him down, and you get the raging hurricane of a monster that he became tonight.
Zane's glad he got home when he did. He should have been there all along. God dammit.
"Hey Liam, look, it's not your fault, dude," he says, wiping at Liam's face again with his sleeve and then ruffling his shaggy, messy hair. Liam doesn't say anything, just sniffles, but Zane knows the kid doesn't believe him. He's got this thing where he blames himself for everything bad that happens—a lovely habit he picked up from his older brother.
Zane sighs and stands again. "You wanna hitch a ride?" he asks, and Liam sucks his lower lip into his mouth before nodding. Zane gives a little smile and stoops down, turning his back on his brother so that he can climb onto his shoulders.
Once Liam is situated, Zane holds onto his legs and stands, wincing as his shin protests with a sharp stab of pain that shoots up his whole leg and right into his groin. He groans in pain, but tries to cover it with a laugh.
"Jesus, Shamu, lay off the Hostess next time," he grumbles to Liam, and Liam laughs another broken, watery little laugh, resting his arms on top of Zane's head to keep his balance.
Zane limps the last dozen or so blocks to Alfred and Susan's house, and when he gets there, Susan answers the door with a huge smile on her face, and it's only then that Zane realizes he forgot about the dinner Alfred invited him to yesterday, and Ariel as well. Wouldn't that have been a wonderful disaster.
The smile disappears from Susan's face the second she sees the state of Zane and Liam, and she ushers them inside. By now, Liam has stopped crying, and is just hanging on quietly. Zane lifts him off his shoulders and sets him down on the floor, and he gives Susan a little smile.
"Plane crash," he tells her as an explanation for the blood and him limping. She sets her lips in a thin line, and gives them a push towards the bathroom in the back of the house, telling them to go get cleaned up and dinner's in a little while.
As Zane and Liam slide into the bathroom, Zane pokes his head back out really quickly. "Hey Susan, you mind if—"
"The bed's already made upstairs," Susan cuts him off. "You boys are staying here tonight. No exceptions."
Zane gives her a grateful smile. "Thanks, Susan."
"No problem, sweetie," she says. "You know where the first aid kit is."
Zane knocks twice on the doorframe and then slips into the bathroom, closing and locking the door. He sits Liam down on the toilet and kneels in front of him, taking a washcloth and wetting it in the sink.
Liam's chin begins to quiver again as Zane cleans his face, and Zane tsks. "No more crying, you baby," he says. "Come on, you think chicks are into that whole sensitive guy act? It's a hoax."
Liam bites his lip and glances up at Zane for the first time the whole night. Zane looks at him for a second, and then finishes cleaning the blood off his face.
"There," he says as he secures a bandage over the gash on Liam's head. "Rub some dirt in it, it'll be fine."
Liam sniffs. "Are you okay?" he asks, and Zane flexes his quickly-swelling jaw, feeling the blood from his nose drying on his lip and chin.
"I'm alright dude, don't worry about me," he says, grinning at Liam and trying not to wince as he stands and walks over to the mirror, beginning to wipe away the blood from his face.
"Zane?" Liam asks, and Zane glances over at him.
"Yeah?"
"How do you talk to girls?"
Zane laughs. "Your timing is impeccable."
Liam shrugs, wiping his eyes where a few tears still cling to his lashes. But he's not going to cry anymore. He's such a good kid. "I just don't wanna think about Mom, so I figured we should talk about girls or something."
Zane grits his teeth at the mention of his mother, but swallows down any and all emotions related to the subject, massaging the heel of his hands into his scars a couple of times to stave off the phantom pains. "Uh," he says, pursing his lips. "I don't know. Just, you know, talk to her. Tell her you like her shoes."
Liam snorts. "Kylie isn't really a gi
rly-girl. I don't think she cares what shoes she's wearing."
"'Kylie', huh?" Zane grins, raising his eyebrows. "What happened to Sarah and Sophia?"
Liam shrugs with a little huff. "Sarah was too clingy, and I was never really into Sophia. She's a year younger than me."
"Right, right, you go for those older ladies," Zane teases, and Liam rolls his eyes.
"I do not. Kylie is in my class."
Zane chuckles a little. "Alright, alright, I'll accept that," he says. "Well do you know what she likes?"
Liam chews on his lip as he thinks, and Zane prods at the swollen lump on his jaw, pushing out his cheek with his tongue to test the elasticity of his stiff skin. It aches, and he winces, swallowing coppery-tinged spit. "She plays on the soccer team," he says after a minute. "And she told me she wants to go to law school."
Zane laughs as he hoists his injured leg up onto the counter. "She's twelve, how the hell does she know she wants to go to law school?"
Liam shrugs with a little smile. "She's really mature; she knows what she wants."
Zane snorts as he rolls up his pant leg, and grimaces when he sees the size of the lump on his shin. It's like a golf ball, and it's a sickly shade of purple-gray, like a brain growing on his bone. He belatedly realizes that Mike was probably wearing his steel-toed boots like he often does. He'll have to ask Susan for some ice or something.
"So just ask her about what college she wants to go to," Zane suggests. "And ask her if she would mind you coming to one of her soccer games or something. It's easy. Just pretend like you're interested in what she's interested in. Chicks can go on for hours about all the shit they're interested in."
Liam huffs. "I am interested in what she's interested in."
"Well then it should be extra easy for you!" Zane grins, slapping him on the back. Liam eyes Zane's swollen leg and winces.
"What about you?" he asks.
Zane pokes at his injury gently. "What about me?"
"You got your eye on any girls?" Liam asks, and his voice is teasing.