“I need all the brownie points I can get. Jenkins hates me. Especially when I don’t wear a skirt he can look up.”
Tyler changed the subject, worried he wouldn’t be able to talk if he thought about her smooth thighs peeking out from under a skirt. “You do just as well as any of the boys in there.”
“You’ll find out that doesn’t always matter.”
Unable to think of anything clever to say, Tyler simply said, “Well, that sucks.”
The bell was going to ring any second, but Tyler didn’t care. He tried to remember if Sam had always been so beautiful, if she’d always been so quiet. He wondered if her dad still drank too much. If things had gotten any better at home.
Fifteen feet from the door, the bell sounded, signaling the start of the seventh period. Tyler opened the door and held it for her.
“Will you just go?” Sam begged. “I really don’t want to see you get in any trouble.”
Tyler nodded started jogging backwards. “I have a present for you. I’ll give it to you after school.”
She smiled before she turned to head inside. Mr. Jenkins, with his creepy mustache and safety goggles, ushered her in. Someone inside the class whistled. It was Bradley who was sitting at the table closest to the door. The prick patted the empty chair next to him, telling Sam he had another place for her to sit if she didn’t want to sit there.
Tyler headed back, didn’t care that Mr. Jenkins was in the middle of roll call. He pushed open the door all the way. “Excuse me?” Mr. Jenkins said, clearly pissed.
“Go take your Ritalin or whatever it is they give nut jobs like you,” Bradley said.
Hector and Kent laughed. Mr. Jenkins snorted.
Tyler didn’t waste any words, just headed straight for Bradley. The look of surprise on Bradley’s face was priceless as he pushed back in his chair, struggling to get to his feet. If Tyler had been a hair quicker, and if Sam hadn’t yelled at Tyler not to do anything stupid, Tyler would have embarrassed Bradley in front of the entire class.
But Mr. Jenkins was quick. He blocked Tyler’s path, a two-by-four in his right hand, his left hand extended like a crossing guard. “Don’t you have somewhere to go?”
“Yeah, go see your shrink.” Bradley pointed at Tyler. “You and I will talk after school.”
Tyler imagined how good it would feel to rip the wood out of Jenkins’ hands and bash Bradley’s face.
“Ignore him,” Sam said. “I can take care of myself.”
Without looking at her, Bradley, Hector, Kent, or any of the other assholes laughing at him, Tyler spun around and headed for the administration building. He was late. His heart was pounding. He took deep breaths and practiced Heckman’s positive thinking drills, told himself that Bradley wouldn’t really try to fight him after school, that the punk would end up chickening out. He tried to forget about Mr. Jenkins threatening him with the lumber, and concentrated on the smile Sam gave him when he told her about the present.
Tyler pulled out the wooden cylinder he’d only finished the night before. He hoped Sam would notice the effort he put into the picture-perfect alignment of the bracelet she’d given him back when he was in the detention facility. Sam and Tyler: Best Friends Forever, the bracelet said. He wondered if she knew how happy he had been to get it from his mom when she visited him. He wondered if she knew that bracelet was what got him through so many lonely, scary, miserable nights. Maybe, someday, she could be more than just a friend.
Tyler entered the office, nodded at the secretary, and headed to the last door on the left. He stopped in his tracks when he saw that his mom sat across from stuffy old Heckman.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. This couldn’t be good.
“Your mother is here because I asked her to come in.” Heckman folded his wrinkled hands. “The real question is, why are you late?”
“I forgot I had to come today. I got all the way to woodshop before Mr. Jenkins reminded me.”
Heckman glanced in the folder. “You have woodshop first period.”
“I …”
“I’ll have to put this into my report to Officer Wright. I warned you that I would.”
Tyler shrugged his shoulders, trying to seem like he didn’t care, but he did.
“Should I also add insolence?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, so do whatever the fuck you want.”
“Tyler!” his mom said. “Watch your language!”
“And have a seat,” Heckman said.
Tyler did as he was told, well aware that Heckman would love to bury him in the progress report to Tyler’s probation officer. Tyler took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry I’m late, but I did forget that I had this appointment.”
“That’s a convenient excuse.”
Not about to take the doctor’s bait, Tyler sat quietly.
“We’ve talked about this, Tyler. Making excuses is one of the road blocks to your recovery.”
“I thought I was recovered. Why else would they let me out?”
“Your rehabilitation is ongoing. We’re to ensure you never do to anyone else what you did to that boy.”
Tyler wondered if a high school junior Donnie’s size should be considered a boy, but he kept the question to himself.
“Not taking responsibility for your actions, that’s been an issue for you, hasn’t it?”
Tyler felt his mother’s stare and nodded.
“Only by taking responsibility for the wrongs you have committed can you begin to respect yourself, and only then will others be able to respect you.”
“I’m trying. If I screw up, I try to admit it.” He turned toward his mom. “Right?”
“Well, for stuff around the house you do. Like when you forget to take out the trash or don’t clean up after Lucas.” She turned to Heckman. “That’s our blind Labrador. Tyler’s real good with him.”
“But that’s not what we’re talking about, Tyler, and you know it,” Heckman said.
“I’m not admitting to something I didn’t do. I just forgot.”
“Tyler,” Heckman began.
“Okay, I was talking to a girl. I’m sorry. Happy?”
“A girl?” his mother asked. “Not that Samantha.”
“No,” Tyler said way too quickly.
His mom was silent for a moment. She looked at him and said, “What did we do wrong, Tyler? Your dad and I did our best to raise you right. How did you get like this?”
Before she became hysterical and started to cry, Tyler said, “Nothing. You guys did nothing wrong!” Then he looked at Heckman and added, “Neither did I.”
Heckman cleared his throat. “Then why were you arrested? Why did the judge sentence you to three years in juvenile detention?”
“Because no one believed me. Is it so hard to believe that I’m telling the truth? That I didn’t do anything?”
Heckman shook his head. “The facts are the reason why no one believes you. You were found covered in his blood.”
“I was trying to help him.”
“After the damage you’d done.”
Tyler tried to remain calm, tried not to think about every humiliating experience in juvie. “You can’t even consider that maybe Donnie fell down?” He looked at Heckman and then his mom. “He did have epilepsy.”
The doctor pointed out that the tests proved Donnie didn’t suffer a seizure that day.
“Maybe the test was wrong? Ever think of that?”
“What he did have was a history of beating you up and teasing you.”
Tyler shook his head. He wasn’t going to convince Heckman or anyone else, even his mom. Only Tyler and Sam knew that he hadn’t hurt Donnie. And only Sam knew what had happened before Tyler arrived.
Tyler had been on his way home from elementary school when he heard the scream coming from the alley. The second scream he’d recognized as Sam’s. He’d run full speed toward the sound of her cry.
He’d never told anyone that part of the story, and he wasn’t about
to now. Heckman wouldn’t have believed him anyway, and he couldn’t bring up Sam in front of his mom, who always said there was something wicked about that girl. His mom was right, but she didn’t know the whole story.
The doctor asked Tyler’s mom some questions, leaving Tyler to his memories. He remembered racing into the alley, his heart thudding against his chest, seeing Donnie on his back, flopping around like a fish. In Donnie’s clinched fist was the cherry donut Tyler had given Sam earlier in the day. It was smashed just like the cupcakes in her pink box.
Hearing his name, Tyler snapped back to the present, realized Heckman was asking him something. His mother started speaking when he interrupted her. Tyler told the doctor he didn’t feel well. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
Heckman excused him with a wave of his wrinkled hand. “Make it quick.”
The memory replayed as Tyler left the building and jogged past the bathrooms. Sam had been standing over Donnie, her shirt ripped, her cheek an angry red, a palm print still visible. Donnie’s face was red, too. His blond hair was red. The concrete was red.
Donnie’s eyes were wide, staring at Tyler. Donnie was scared, his expression begging for help as he raised his own head off the ground and smashed it into the concrete with a sickening thud, blood spraying everywhere. Without a word, he brought his head up again and smashed it back down, over and over, again and again. Sam just sat off to the side with her eyes closed.
Tyler’s jog turned into a sprint, the woodshop building still fifty yards away. He hoped he was overreacting, that Sam wasn’t doing it again. He was probably just imagining things. But if he wasn’t, this time he would do the smart thing and take Sam away. He wouldn’t listen to her cry while he tried to make Donnie stop bashing his brain into the ground.
Running faster, the distance closing, Tyler’s heartbeat sounded like the thud, thud, thud of Donnie’s skull. He remembered how Sam stood and watched Tyler try to restrain Donnie from hurting himself even more.
“He tried to kiss me,” Sam had cried. “He tried to kiss me and touch me. Don’t tell my dad, Tyler. Please. He’ll say it was my fault.”
Now only ten feet away from woodshop, Tyler heard the scream of machinery. That was not unusual, but Tyler still hesitated to open the door. He gathered his courage and entered the building. Most of the students were bunched together in the far corner, staring at their feet or at the back of the person in front of them, their hands clapped over their ears.
Hector was the closest of the three boys who were not lucky enough to be part of the herd. He stood in front of the planer, both of his pinky fingers on the floor looking like bloody sausages covered in sawdust. His face twisted in a horrified grimace, but he just stood there letting the whirling blade tear through his fingers a millimeter at a time.
Kent was on the machine to Hector’s left. He kept feeding his fist into the grinder, a slow soggy push.
Tyler spotted Bradley over at the rip saw. He was on his knees in front of the massive blade that was spinning, whirring, inching closer. Bradley looked at Tyler with his wild eyes as he pumped his groin into the spinning saw, chunks of meat and cloth and blood spraying everywhere.
Jenkins was overseeing it all, shaking in the corner while his favorite pupils mutilated themselves.
Sam was sitting behind Jenkin’s desk. Tyler ran over to her, pleaded for her to stop. She told him to leave, her voice cold and calm, nothing like it’d been with Donnie.
“Why, Sam?” Tyler asked. “Why?”
“They were going to hurt you.”
It took Tyler a moment to find his voice. “You have to stop.”
“I can’t let you take the blame again. Plus,” she motioned toward the other students, all the eyewitnesses she let live, “it’s too late for that. Now go.”
Tyler knew she was right, that there’d be no way out of this incident, but he wasn’t ready to leave her. While Hector took off his remaining fingers, the grinder polished Kent’s forearm, and Bradley completed his evisceration, Tyler took the wooden cylinder from his pocket and placed it on the desk.
“Happy Birthday, Sam.”
Sam smiled, stood up from her desk, and kissed Tyler on his cheek. A few of the other students ran from the building. Sam told Tyler, “Go.”
Tyler could only think of the kiss, the kind words, not caring of the carnage surrounding them. “I’ll stay.”
“No, you won’t. I need you to leave. The cops are going to show, and I don’t know if I’m ready to let them take me. You can’t be here for that.”
Tyler tried to stay, but Sam forced his feet towards the door. Her control over his body weakened when Tyler stepped outside. He jammed his foot in the doorway and tried to call Sam’s name, but nothing came out. All he could do was watch as Sam focused her attention on Mr. Jenkins who’d just started the jigsaw.
Twisted Memory
The key wouldn’t turn. The goddamn lock was always sticking. Tom slid out the key to examine it, making sure he had the right one, then he shoved it back in. The deadbolt still wouldn’t move. Tom pounded his fist against the door. “Gina! Open up!”
That bitch must’ve changed the lock while he was out. He banged his fist again.
A man shouted from inside the apartment. “What the hell’s going on?”
She had a man in his apartment? “Open the goddamn door!”
Huge, clonking footsteps came toward him, and the door whipped open. A heavyset Hispanic man filled the doorway. With a scowl on his face, he asked, “What the hell’s your prob —”
Tom’s heart was pounding so hard he didn’t even hear his fist striking the man in the mouth. The man stumbled backward into the apartment. Tom followed, slammed the door shut behind him, and ran after the guy, who was trying to hide behind the couch.
Tom grabbed the man’s collar and looked into his soulless eyes. Gina and this asshole probably laughed about Tom when they had sex. Before the bastard could ask for forgiveness, Tom threw a devastating elbow at his head. A loud crack filled the apartment. The man’s legs gave. Tom dropped him and rammed a knee into his chest, then shoved him into the cheap particle board entertainment center.
An ancient, thirteen-inch, tube television set crashed to the floor next to the broken man. Tom wondered where his forty-two-inch flat-screen and the mahogany piece it sat on had disappeared to. Figuring Gina had let her lover sell Tom’s stuff for crack money, Tom yelled for her. “Get out here, Gina!” He stood over the crumpled man, woke him with a kick. “Get out here now, Gina, or you’re gonna end up like your boyfriend.”
The man spat out a mouthful of blood and held his jaw as he mumbled, “No one’s here. Fuck, man, you got the wrong place.”
Tom kicked him in his thigh. “She’s got ten seconds. You better call her.”
“There’s no Gina here. Never even heard of her.” The man used his shoddy entertainment center to get back to his feet. He motioned to the frames on the wall. “This is my place. Look at the pictures.”
Not about to look away and get sucker punched, Tom pushed the man’s chest, sending him into the hallway. He planned on knocking the damn liar out when he rebounded off the wall, but the bastard must have seen it coming, somehow stopping himself and taking off down the hallway, racing for the bedroom.
Tom flew after him before the man could get hold of Gina or call the cops, but the guy was already shutting the door behind him. Tom threw his body at it before it closed all the way.
A loud grunt came from the other side of the door as it popped open, spilling Tom inside the strangely decorated bedroom. There were balloons all over the walls, something Gina must have done earlier that morning. The intruder spun his arms and stopped himself before hitting the crib. Why is there a crib? Tom thought, as the man picked up the cordless phone in his left hand and a baseball bat in the other.
“Put my shit down. Now!” Tom yelled even though he didn’t recognize the bat. It was bright red. Tom realized it was plastic
“I’m calli
ng the cops.”
Tom could barely contain a chuckle. “You’re gonna call the cops on yourself? I don’t think so. Put my shit down and maybe I’ll let you leave.”
“Back off.” The man waved the bat back and forth. “I mean it.”
Tom took another step, the length of the crib between them. “So do I. You got any idea how fucked you are?”
The deluded guy looked down at his bat. Tom lunged forward, placed one hand on each end of the bat, and twisted, the robber’s wrist snapping in a satisfying crunch.
The robber’s surprised cry was silenced when Tom chucked the bat and began pummeling the side of the man’s head until his arm grew heavy, the loud smacks splashing blood over Tom’s face. The man was begging him to stop through his sliced lip when a baby cried.
Tom let the man drop next to the light-blue dresser and walked over to the crib. A baby, red-faced and squishy, wailed. “What the hell is this?” Tom asked.
“It’s my kid, man. Come on, please, I don’t know any Gina.”
A quick search reassured Tom that Gina wasn’t there for some unknown reason. He picked up the brown leather wallet that the amateur had left on the entryway table and stuffed it into his front pocket, figured he should hold onto it, just in case. He didn’t even know. His head was spinning as he walked out.
The midmorning sun blinded him when he walked onto the sidewalk. Disoriented, he looked up and down the block, searching for his convertible Boxster. He clearly remembered parking on the north side of the street, but his car was nowhere to be found. I drove it, didn’t I?
Tom could still hear the baby crying in his head. He dug his keys out of his left pocket, tossing aside a one-way bus ticket from Folsom he must’ve picked up by accident. He went to press the panic alarm on the remote, only to realize there was no remote. His shiny apartment key and a worn key for Gina’s Honda were all that was left. The Porsche key must have fallen off the ring earlier that morning. Some rotten son of a bitch must have come across it and stolen the car.
Instead of making himself sick thinking about it, Tom decided he would file a report with the police after he found Gina. He had to make sure she was okay. If he was so materialistic that he placed his car above her, he didn’t deserve to be called her boyfriend.
Twisted Reunion Page 4