Waiting on Justin

by Lucy H. Delaney

  WAITING

  ON JUSTIN

  LUCY H. DELANEY

  Booktrope Editions

  Seattle, WA 2014

  COPYRIGHT 2014 LUCY H. DELANEY

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

  Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

  Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

  No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

  Inquiries about additional permissions

  should be directed to: info@booktrope.com

  Cover Design by Shari Ryan

  Edited by Erica Fitzgerald

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

  PRINT ISBN 978-1-62015-581-3

  EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-602-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919187

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  EPILOGUE

  LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS

  SONGS THAT INSPIRED WAITING ON JUSTIN

  MORE GREAT READS FROM BOOKTROPE

  To the students of the Wenatchee Valley Tech Center JAG classes of 2011-2013, this book is as much yours as it is mine. Each one of you left a lasting mark on my heart. I love you all.

  To Dr. David McDonald and the AHS staff of 1992-1995 who believed that a kid like me could grow up to make a difference and keep kids safe. Thank you.

  And to my Justin, thanks for the title bud. I owe you.

  CHAPTER 1

  I FELL IN LOVE with Justin when I was seven years old, and I have loved him ever since. I knew him forever, but before that night he was nothing more than a really cool big kid. He was eleven, and when you're seven an eleven-year-old is pretty much an adult. I suppose he was in my life even before I knew how to make a memory because as far back as I can go in my mind, he's always been there, protecting me, loving me silently.

  Justin was the most amazing boy I had ever known, even before I decided I loved him. Some people said he was worthless and good for nothing, a loser and a punk. Clayton, Justin's dad, even said he wasn't worth the oxygen he breathed.

  His hair was dirty blond and usually a little long. I remember once my mom cut it into a raggedy mohawk and then never kept up with it. Eventually the sides grew out, and the top and back were so long I almost couldn't tell he ever had a mohawk until he turned his head really fast; then the top hair would fly up and the shorter sides were obvious. Honestly, it looked ridiculous, but he liked it and kept it that way for a real long time.

  When I look back at his fifth grade picture I can see how young he was. His chubby cheeks, his uncombed hair, and his favorite Power Rangers shirt all showcase his youth. But I swear, when I was a kid I couldn't see anything but a grown-up when I looked in his green eyes. He was a man, and he watched out for me.

  We knew each other before we fell in love because our parents ran in the same social circle. By that, I mean that they partied and drank with the same people, and occasionally got high. I know now that it was more than occasionally, but when you're young, hours, days, and weeks are stretched out, and it feels like forever is between them.

  I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but his parents split up when I was in kindergarten. Clayton kicked her to the curb, and that's when our parents got together. I don't know what Clayton and Karina's love story was all about—that's their story to tell—but I'm sure in their addicted, co-dependent ways they could have loved each other at one time. But love is never enough, and their love ran out. And so did my dad. I don't know anything about him except that by the time Karina was gone he was already ancient history. The only thing my mom ever said was that he was no one I needed to bother knowing, so I never bothered, and neither did he.

  Justin's mom and my mom had been friends since they met in high school. They liked to go to grown-up parties, and they got into grown-up kinds of trouble. My mom was the good one, I guess you could say. Karina, not so much. She started sleeping around in high school and got knocked up her sophomore year by Clayton. My mom felt sorry for her, and they both agreed Mom was practically the only friend Karina had who didn't desert her when she decided to keep the baby and left the regular school to finish at the alternative high school. She dropped out before Justin was born, though. Clayton graduated the summer before Justin was born and went right out to get a job to feed the kid. He started his career mudding, taping, and sanding drywall and worked his way up to painting by the time he and my mom got together. For all I know that's what he does to this day. Our moms stayed close, and when I came along four years later, the young mothers let their kids play together while they partied and Clayton yelled.

  Karina was kind of mental from what Clayton says; I don't remember too much about her. She got into heroin and started shooting up and chasing the high. Clayton wanted nothing to do with someone who stuck needles in her arms (and legs), and that's why he got rid of her.

  After my mom and Clayton got together, Karina would sometimes find them and ask for a place to crash or money for “food.” If the parents were feeling benevolent, they would let her couch it for a day or two until she started fiending again, in other words, she wanted the high more than anything, even her son.

  Justin loved it when she came. He tried so hard to be good when she was there, as if he could be good enough to make her want to kick the habit for good. It kind of creeped me out the way she would fold him up into her skinny pock-marked arms and hug him, rocking him for too long until it was awkward for us all to watch. Even when he was bigger she talked to him like a baby. “Mama loves you so much, honey,” she would say, swaying him back and forth, or grasping his face between her hands, usually before she bailed again.

  She always took off after a day or two. She left the same way every time: we would leave for school, and when we came home she was gone. No note, no good-bye, just gone.

  I think it made my mom feel bad for Justin and guilty about being a lousy mom herself because she would be real good to us for a long time after that. On the days Karina bounced, my mom would be waiting in the car at the end of the road when the bus dropped us off after school. Clayton had a pick-up he drove to work, but Mom had a rattly black Accord with rusted fenders. It was barely street-worthy, but it got us around. We kept the inside clean—Clayton hated it dirty—but the cleanliness didn't hide how broken down it was.

  Mom only met the bus when Karina disappeared, and before too long we were used to the pattern. I got in the habit of watching Justin's face. He tried to hide it, but you could see it there plain as day, something that said, “She left me again.” I felt sorry for him but happy that we got to go out to eat. Mom usually took us out to McDonald's, where my friend Lizzie and I would play on the playground while Justin sulked.

  That's when my mom was the best kind of mom. I would stop playing long enough to see her rub her hand down Justin's arm to comfort him.
Sometimes he would pull his shirt up to his cheek and wipe away a tear or two. He could take a hit from Clayton easy, but take away the kid's mom and he was mush. I guess Mom tried as hard as she could in her own way to make it better for him. For days after that she would be way too happy and meet us at the door after school. She would turn on MTV and dance and sing to the videos with us. She would ask for the book Justin was reading, and we would sit at her feet and listen to her read it. I liked it when she read to us because she did the voices, something Justin refused to do. It was goofy and ridiculous, but it helped Justin forget that his mom didn't want him. I thank my mom for that, and I thank Clayton for mostly not yelling on those days.

  My mom and Clayton never dated or had a love story that I know of; they just kind of merged together. One day Mom and I were living in a tiny, cramped Section Eight apartment, and the next we moved into Clayton's place. It was a surprise, but then again, so was everything back then. My mom never told me what we were doing or how my life was about to change; she just did stuff, and it changed how I lived. I rolled with it; kids are resilient like that. I had to be prepared for anything because sometimes Mom and Clayton could go for what seemed like weeks being normal parents around the house, then BAM! they were off and partying, and we were home alone for a day or two. Once it was three days in a row—Labor Day weekend, if I remember right.

  It didn't bother us. Justin and I preferred being alone. We were better at playing house without our parents there to ruin it for us. Justin liked to fix all the broken things when his dad was gone. He never dared to do it when Clayton was home, and he made me promise not to tell. When I asked him why, he told me that one time when he was tightening a table leg Clayton accused him of stealing the screwdriver and thumped him good for it. There was another time too: my mom's car had a flat tire and he tried to change it for her, but the bolts were too tight and he couldn't loosen them, so she went inside to tell Clayton. He came out laughing, but he wasn't happy—he was mad and drunk. He pushed Justin out of the way hard and told him that boys shouldn't do a man's work, that he was sick of him trying to be the man of the family. So Justin learned to keep a list of things to fix when Clayton was gone. If Clayton or Mom noticed what he did, they never said a word.

  I was the chef when they were out and would make breakfast and dinner with whatever food we had. That was another good thing about them: they always made sure we had something to eat. It wasn't a lot, but it was food. Sometimes I think they must have planned ahead of time to leave but didn't tell us because the only times we ever seemed to have Captain Crunch in the cabinet were the mornings they didn't come home. When I was really young I made mostly cereal and sandwiches, but as the years went by I got quite good at a number of breakfast dishes. Omelets were my specialty, though, and still are to this day.

  It didn't scare me when they didn't come home; I honestly preferred it. We could watch whatever we wanted on TV, listen to the music we wanted, and play however and wherever we wanted. But the best part was the quiet. We didn't have to worry about Clayton getting mad and yelling at us. There was no blaring music unless we wanted it up like that. The house was still and empty and free of stupid people doing stupid things. Peace came in and filled the rooms, only disappearing when they came back home. If we could have bought our own food I don't think I would ever have wanted our parents to come home. Of course as a kid I didn't think about all the other things they were also providing us, like clothes and lights and shelter; I only thought if we could get our own food we wouldn't need them.

  Night was no less scary for me without them there. When they were gone I knew I couldn't be woken up by their fighting or Clayton's raging over some dumb thing my mom said or did. Justin would tuck me in with a story, he read to me almost every night of my life, but he read longer when they were gone. I wasn't afraid of being home alone because I had him, but he didn't have anyone. I think he was afraid and reading was an excuse for him to stay with me longer. Eventually I would fall asleep, and if I woke up first I knew I would find him not in his bed, but on the couch, with his bat in his hand.

  I don't know how Justin felt about it, especially after he started partying with them, but I really didn't like it when they brought the party to our house. That happened often enough to be more than a novelty. It seems like it was at least a couple times a month, but maybe it was less than that. Let's just say it happened so frequently that it was common to find hungover idiots passed out on our couch on any given weekend morning. Some kids wake up on Saturdays to pour their cereal and watch cartoons; we did the same thing, only we had to maneuver around vomit piles and sleeping ogres, too. Clayton was sociable with his friends, a real party animal, and he liked to invite people he and Mom knew, from the bar and work and who knows where else, to come over to our place.

  Once, on New Year's, some guys got into a pretty bad fight right after the ball dropped. Clayton made them take it outside. It was my “Uncle Jon,” who wasn't really my uncle, and this punk who thought he could take him. It stands out in my mind because it was the first time I had seen a fight in real life. I remember the sound of fist on face; it surprised me because it wasn't like the sound effects in the movies, like celery breaking crisply. It was flat, dull and deadly.

  They kept fighting, hitting, punching, bloodying each other with blow after gruesome blow. People were cheering, and somehow it stopped being a vengeful fight and turned into a fun boxing match. They took breaks to chug beer and slam shots, laugh, talk crap to each other, and have the blood wiped from their faces; then they went back at it. I don't remember how it stopped, but when those good old boys were done, a couple more stepped up to fight. It was horrible and wonderful all at the same time.

  I couldn't stop watching, but I stayed away from the crowd and watched from a perch in Justin's room. His upstairs bedroom overlooked the driveway, and his window had a bench seat. I could see everything from up there. Had I been in the mix I would have been lost behind knees and big butts. Justin wasn't up there with me; he was down with the guys, right in there with them. He wanted to box so bad, but they wouldn't let him. I don't think he was even ten then, or they probably would have let him. I saw them taking bets and trading money. I heard the laughs and cheers when a man went down. I saw the guys who got knocked out get pulled into the grass and watched as they gradually came to and got up. I saw it all and took it in.

  Someone in the neighborhood must have called the cops because they came. I don't know which neighbor it was—we were pretty tucked away from them all—but the noise was probably going on for too long. Nothing bad happened to my parents or anyone really. I saw the first police officer on scene, arms crossed and stern looking, talking to Clayton, who was swaying like a tree in the wind. He had fought and won, but his cheek was busted open and still bleeding a little. He was trying to laugh and play it cool.

  I couldn't hear the words, but knew he didn't want to get in trouble and was saying whatever they wanted to hear. It worked because no one went to jail, and after an eternity, the two cop cars finally left. Everyone must have stashed the illicit stuff—I know there was at least weed and probably coke too. Either they hid it well or the cops didn't look too hard because it was New Year's, and even adults were allowed to get crazy sometimes. They probably thought we only had parties once a year.

  Before they left I heard the big policeman tell everyone to quiet down, leave if they were sober, and let the neighborhood have its peace and quiet again. That was the only time I ever remember the law coming over—until I was older and they were coming for me.

  No one called the cops when the parental units didn't come home. No one called when Clayton and my mom fought. Maybe they didn't hear those fights because they were inside, but I don't see how anyone couldn't hear. That man could scream like a drill sergeant, even though he got kicked out of the Army for conduct unbecoming of an officer—a nice way to say his excessive partying made the Army look bad so they let him go. If he would have stayed in, I'm sure he wou
ld have become their best drill sergeant; he would have been great at it. Yeah, he could yell ... and yell ... and yell. I hated it when he got going because nothing could stop him—certainly not the weed he said mellowed him out. He would only stop yelling long enough to light up, but it didn't calm him down; it just gave us a momentary reprieve from the lecture. I wished the drugs would have relaxed him, but I don't think they ever really did.

  We knew when they were getting high like we knew when Karina left: they did the same things every time. They went into their room to do it, shut the door, and put a towel under the crack, as if a towel could keep the smell from seeping out.

  When they came out of the room, their eyes were red and it smelled like skunk, but Clayton was not more mellow. If he was in a mad mood when he went in, he would pick up right where he left off when he came out. I felt like he would yell more about everything and then broaden the targets of his anger from just us to the whole world: the governor, the president, the Iraqis.

  But he would always bring it back to us to wrap it up; he was gifted in the art of trash talk like that. He would chastise me for laziness, first getting up in my face, then into my mom's because she birthed me. He would go off on how disrespectful Justin was and thump him in the chest. Then he would circle back, complaining about how dirty we were, how dirty the house was, how pathetic our lives would be because we didn't listen to his sage wisdom, how pathetic my mom was for being so lazy and not teaching us how to be anything but slobs. When it was really bad he would scream right into my face, only an inch away, and if I moved, he would follow me, leaning into my face, twisting his head to match mine move for move. His spit flecked my cheek and sometimes splashed into my eyes, that skunk breath of his invading my nostrils.