by Lila Felix
When I walked in that afternoon, after coming home from the library, I could hear voices coming from the door, which was ajar. I didn’t know whether to fight or flee so I kept one foot on the top stair and prepared myself to run.
“How long before she finishes school?” a male voice said and its sleazy undertone told me exactly who it was.
“She’s got three or four weeks who knows. And I think she can handle it. She’s a good kid, responsible. If I can just convince her that the money is better than all her big bad college girl dreams, we’ll be fine. You’ll have a new girl and business will be booming.”
I walked in infuriated by the conversation being held about me.
“Hi, Havok, you know Dean, right?” I looked over to the man who had a toothpick in his mouth and whose hand rubbed up and down his thigh.
“Yeah…Hi.” I threw my bag on the counter and rummaged the cabinets for nothing in particular.
“Havok, get on over here. Dean came by just to see you.”
I turned around and gave her a look that screamed ‘You’ve lost your mind’, grabbed my bag again, and headed out. She opened the door that I had slammed and screamed at me, “Don’t come back until Tuesday you little stuck up bitch. Be here or find another place to live.”
I would have to sneak back in later in the night when she was gone and gather some clothes. I wondered if Ali’s parents would let me stay the night. I’m sure they would, they kinda knew my situation but damn it, it was still humiliating.
As much as I wanted to tell her to keep her apartment there was another part of me that pitied her. She used to be a good mom even though she was always fond of the habituates. She used to cook and come to all of my soccer games. But then one day she was approached by Sleazy Toothpick and our lives changed. I was ten, and in the fourth grade when she started dancing. She only danced for maybe four or five years and our life remained fairly normal although the dancing made her harsher, rough around the edges. She was always tired and always grouchy but she still cooked and came to as many games and school activities as she could. And then one morning, she didn’t come home. The babysitter was so pissed, she left at three a.m. not caring if I was alone or not. But by this time I was almost fifteen and could basically take care of myself. I would find out later that this was the first night that my mom started hooking. And her payment was cocaine. Whoever that man was should fry in Hell.
“Where ya been baby?” She said trying to be sultry.
I checked for a pacifier or a rattle—nope, not a baby.
Ugh—I always found it funny when girls tried too hard to be sexy. They tried to make their voice sound all low and 900 numberish. It didn’t work for her. To tell the truth, I’d never seen it executed well—ever. Strike that, there’s this one girl who fills in for Buzz sometimes and her voice is hot, but she’s married.
“I’ve been working and sleeping. What have you been up to?”
She got up as I unlocked the door and I got a whiff of the beef jerky and nearly gagged. I went inside and put the groceries on the table. And here’s another thing that bothers me—lack of manners. I know I’m a guy and she’s a girl and all that gentlemanly southern boy stuff, but when you see someone, anyone, holding a bunch of stuff and you’re only holding a bag of beef jerky and a purse, the polite thing to do would be to offer to help. I’d never let her, don’t get me wrong, but at least she could offer. It’s like the car door unlocking thing. When a guy unlocks a girl’s door and makes sure she’s in, the girl should lean over and unlock the driver’s side door for him. I’ve never had a girl do that for me yet. Everyone says men should have manners, show some chivalry, but in my book, chicks should have manners too.
Now you’re just nitpicking Fade, just let her down easy and hope the door doesn’t hit her where the good Lord split her.
“Well, I’ve been waiting to talk to you.”
“About what?” She finally put down the jerky and I offered her some coffee just in hopes of making her breath smell different.
“I was thinking of a way that we can spend more time together.”
Stop her. Stop her now before she embarrasses herself.
“I just thought maybe I could move in and then I would be here when you weren’t at work…”
I didn’t hear the rest of what she said. I just stood there not believing the first part and hoping not to hear any more.
“Look, Beth, I really think it’s time for us to move on. I just don’t have the time for a girlfriend or even dating. I’m sorry. I just think it’s better for us to break up.”
She moved to sit at my table and opened the bag of jerky again like I hadn’t even spoken to her.
“No, I don’t accept that.” She said and popped another foul nugget in her mouth. Now I was getting pissed.
“Well, that’s the way it is. So, if you don’t mind…”
I opened the front door and pulled a Vanna White, making sure she got my drift.
“We’re still not broken up.” She said as she passed.
“Yes, we are Beth. Goodbye.”
I shut the door and banged my head against it once, just to make sure this last relationship was hammered into my brain. I wouldn’t do that again.
I made a pot of coffee and called my friend Jett to see if he wanted to come over and watch a movie. He said he would come over later after he ate dinner. He lived across the street from his parents and had something like nine or eleven brothers and sisters. Someone should gift his parents Netflix.
I ordered a pizza for myself and ate while watching a D grade sci-fi movie. Jett walked in an hour later; letting himself in with the key I gave him. Sometimes his girlfriend and he got into some wicked fights so he needed a place to crash and I didn’t mind since I wasn’t here anyway.
“What’s up DJ Dork?” He plopped on the couch and took a slice even though he’d already eaten.
“Nothin’, what’s up with you?”
“Work, girlfriend, dodging calls from your girlfriend,” He shrugged and snatched the remote from my hand.
I sat up quickly, nearly spitting and spilling my bottle of water all over the place. “She called you? How did she get your number?”
“I’m guessing she pulled a nosey ninja move on your phone while you weren’t looking or something. Girl is wacked out.”
“What did she say?” He chuckled and put his pinkie and thumb next to his head.
“Oh, Jett,” He fake cried, “He told me he thought we should break up. What should I do?”
“And?” I attempted to move him along with hand motions.
“And nothing. I told her I could barely handle my own girlfriend, much less yours. So I thought I had shut her up. Wrong! She has called,” He pulled out his phone to check, “six times in the last hour.”
“Ugh…” I flopped back on the couch and scrubbed my hands over my face.
“What you need is a girl who digs you and not the guy on the radio, for real. These girls you go out with are ridiculous.”
“Tell me about it.” We sat back and watched TV like an old married couple until around ten when Ariana called him, wanting him to come back.
Even though I’d woken up extra early I wasn’t sleepy at all. This was my usual morning though the night screamed sleep at me. I strolled through the streets, no goal or purpose. I walked by the bakery I usually stopped at and the woman inside waved at me, probably thinking I would stop in.
I roamed aimlessly until I spotted her and the mere sight of her stopped me in my tracks. I wouldn’t have recognized her except that when she crossed the street towards me, the headlights from a car shone on her eyes and I knew it couldn’t be anyone but her. She had a backpack on and untied black boots. Something in me wanted to know why she was out so late. My stomach had formed an invisible hand and arm and it reached for her.
“Hi,” I choked out as she approached with her head down.
She looked to her left and then back to me, slowing to an unsteady halt.
I knew it. I knew she would be witty beyond what I’d already experienced. I knew she’d be spunky and shrewd. And it was just what I needed, someone who wouldn’t buy into my persona. Me on the other hand, I had turned into a blubbering idiot, conjuring up something coherent to respond.
“Yeah, that’s me—sorry. I’m Cal.” I stuck out my hand.
Put your hand back in your coat, asshat. She’s not the mayor; you don’t have to shake her hand.
I put it back in my pocket and smiled awkwardly at her. If I were her, I would’ve kept walking.
“Cal, is that short for something?”
“Um, yeah, Calhoun, named after my grandfather.”
“Sounds like a good, sturdy, Southern boy name.”
“I guess so. So what’s yours?”
She looked back at the street where she came from and back to me.
“Havok.” She whispered, almost ashamedly.
“Do you wreak havoc wherever you go?” I would say anything to keep her in this conversation, keep goading her for more information until she got tired of me.
“Something like that. Look, I gotta go. See you around Cal.” Her lips twitched like they wanted to disobey her attitude and smile at me but she reigned them in quickly.
“Bye, Havok.” I said to her as she stomped away from me. She lifted a hand and waved backwards, fingers meeting her palms in the way that a mother teaches her toddler how to wave.
I watched her until she turned the corner two blocks down and I was ever so tempted to take the next block over and watch her cross through the streetlights. I resisted. My phone rang and the caller ID showed my mom.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi Cal, how are you, honey? Camille said you haven’t called in a while.”
“Camille always has been a tattle tale. I’m fine, Mom. Just working, same old, same old.”
Camille was my twin sister. Her real name was Camille Aurora, and outside of the family people called her by her full name, but we all called her Camille. She worked at the local high school as a guidance counselor. We were alike in that respect alone. In everything else we were totally opposite.
“She’s not a tattle tale Calhoun Fade. She’s your sister and she just worries about you.”
“I know Mom. I do. How’ve you been?”
“Come by tomorrow and find out for yourself young man.”
She hung up on me. My grandmother, who we called Nana, had always held Sunday lunch at her house. I had been absent, always blaming it on my schedule until they found out I was off on Saturday and Sunday nights. Then I was in trouble.
I made a U-turn and stalked home. A playlist built in my head as I did. I huffed out a laugh at myself. She must be some girl. All I’d found out was her name and a plethora of songs swirled in my head like I’d discovered music for the first time.
I knocked on Ali’s house for the third time, running the backup scenarios through my head. I turned to leave since no one answered. I put my hands on my hips, letting them help me decide where to go.
“Havok!” I heard someone whisper and turned to see who it was.
“Havok!” I looked and Ali was very loudly whispering to me from the side gate that led to her back yard.
A wave of relief washed through me and I tiptoed towards her.
She whispered, “Come on, I’m surprised all that knocking didn’t wake up the whole neighborhood.”
We snuck to the backdoor and upstairs together to her room. She pulled the trundle from underneath her daybed and it was still made up from the last time I had to cop a squat at her place. I changed into a tank top and an old pair of pajama pants and hopped in. I thought she was already asleep until she mumbled, “What happened Havok?”
“She was just in a mood, banned me until Tuesday.”
“Avery and Abby are at girl scout camp this weekend so it should be fine until then. We’ll figure out Monday when it comes.”
“Thanks Ali, you saved my butt again.”
Her answer came in the form of a snore.
The next morning Ali’s mom came in while I still laid in the bed, wide awake.
“Havok, you okayste?” She said as she knelt next to the bed.
“Yes ma’am. I’m sorry, I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
“It’s fine. If we have room, you know you are always welcome. How long do I get to keep you this time?”
This was who Ali’s mom was. She was just this loving, good-hearted woman. If anyone in the world deserved to have all the kids she did, it was her.
“If it’s not too much trouble, I need to stay through Monday night. After that I can go back.”
She leaned over and kissed my forehead, a gesture that even in her good years my mom had never bestowed on me.
“Ok, pancakes in twenty minutes, do me a favor and wake up lazy bones over there.” She pointed to Ali, patted my leg once more and left. I lay there for a few minutes more just enjoying a real bed when Ali rolled over and put her face in mine.
“I don’t care who you are, when it comes to Mom’s pancakes, if you eat my share, I will cut you.” She said it all with a smile.
“You can have them all; just get your cat crap breath out of my face.” I swatted at her and rolled away at the same time.
We both rushed at the door of the bathroom squeezing and pushing against each other seeing who could squander through first. I won, which meant she would have to keep her nasty breath company for a few more minutes while I brushed my teeth. She turned on the radio and to my chagrin, Fade’s show had ended for the night and I hadn’t listened to any of it. But then I remembered something. I’d figured out a while ago that on Saturdays and Sundays his shows were repeats. I heard this particularly prairie dog sounding girl call in about her drunk dad about three years ago and then one Saturday I heard her again—same voice, same problems. That’s when I figured it out.
I opened the bathroom door and Ali was pretending to be livid.
“You’re so dumb.” She spat at me, hands on her hips.
“Why?”
“Because you just brushed your teeth before you go eat sticky ooey gooey pancakes. Then you’re gonna have to brush your teeth again.”
“Whatever, your dragon breath is going to kill everyone at the table.”
“Just come on.” She pushed me until we got to the stairs and she took the banister down while I tromped the stairs one by one.
We stuffed ourselves with blueberry pancakes and helped her mom clean up.
Ali went to church with her family later. They asked me to go but I passed. I’d probably be engulfed in flames just stepping on the hallowed ground. The daughter of a prostitute—yeah, I was pretty sure there was a keyword for that in the concordance of the Bible. Not to mention that at Ali’s church girls wore skirts only and that wasn’t happening.
I walked to the newspaper offices in search of my paycheck. It wasn’t much, but it usually let me get the things I needed. I grabbed a lemonade from the jambalaya shop next to the paper’s office and headed towards the library to check my email. I passed by the building marked with big signs and a blaring intercom out front. It was the 92.3 The Edge’s building, the radio station that carried the voice of Fade to me every night. There were posters of him everywhere but all they showed was a hooded figure or a subtle silhouette.
I strolled along, having a couple of hours until Ali got out of church. I sat atop a picnic table in the local park. It was more of an urban park than the parks in magazines and movies. There were trees, but they were in pots and the children walked on tiles made of recycled tires rather than lush grass. Swings that had seen better days rebelled against the rust that grew over their hinges.
One red faced mother yelled at her equally red faced child for crying. Then she realized she’d put the kid on the scalding ground with no shoes on. No wonder the kid’s crying lady. You’d be crying too if your feet were broiling.<
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I sat there for hours parked on the bench under the trees watching the kids play and I wondered if this would be the consistency of my life. Sitting here, waiting for something to happen, risking the chance that it never would.
I thought of Cal, as much as I had tried to force myself to forget. There was one aspect of him that attracted me the most. He didn’t know who I was or what weight I carried. He was almost a new species to me. It could never be anything more than a friendship, of course. If it was, I wouldn’t be able to dodge questions about my mom or about her occupation. If I saw him again, I would pursue just that, a friendship. And Lord help me, it wasn’t what I wanted when I looked at him. Friends can touch each other, right? Last night it was all I could do not to reach out and see if the scruff on his face was soft or coarse. And his voice was so low and deep, I swore if I wasn’t looking for a physical place to sleep, I would slumber in the hammock of his voice forever.
I got up and trashed my lemonade cup and nodded at myself. Yes, if I saw him again, I would try to make him my friend, a reprieve from my life.
After eating a huge meal with Ali’s family, we went to the library to study, or so we said. Ali bee-lined for the cowboy romance section. She was so weird. She loved Goth guys but snuck in the library to read about cowboy sex. I snorted and she turned around and tipped an invisible cowboy hat at me and did a little line dance in between the stacks. She was such a goon.
I handed the librarian my school ID and plopped into one of the hard wooden chairs at an isolation desk with a computer and checked my email. It was all junk. I went to the sci-fi section of the library to see if there was anything I hadn’t read. I tapped my fingertips over the bindings, ruling out the ones I’d either read or never intended to read. Down the row, one book fell off of the shelves and I looked around expecting Slimer or Venkman to barrel down the aisle. I snuck over to pick it up and as I bent over another one flopped out of the shelf and conked me in the back of the head. I picked it up too and set them back on the shelf. Through the other side I could see someone crouched low to the ground. So I decided to one up them.