151 Days (53 page)

“Why aren’t you in school?” he asked like a bouncer at a speakeasy.

“Because a guy pointed a gun to me,” I quipped back. “I have a feeling if I’d been winged, I wouldn’t have to show up for the rest of the year.”

Robbie’s voice sounded darker than normal. “Don’t joke about that.” He opened the door a little more. “Come in before someone sees you and thinks I’m open.”

“Why aren’t you open? I mean, it’s….” And I froze.

Half the clothes were missing from the racks, and there were giant cardboard boxes scattered throughout. I looked around in amazement, and then I got a good look at him. His hair wasn’t styled, and he hadn’t shaved in a few days. He was dressed… well, not like he normally dressed. He was wearing normal jeans and a T-shirt that didn’t have any rainbows or anything glittery.

“What’s this?” I asked, worried.

“What’s it look like?” he almost snarled at me. “If there’s anything you want, better grab it before I pack it up, because once these boxes are sealed, not even Tyler Hoechlin could get me to open them.” I gave him a look, and he half smiled. “Okay, maybe him, but you don’t have a chance. So take now or forever hold your tongue.”

“I don’t understand…,” I began to say, but he just kept talking.

“Think of it like an episode of
Supermarket Sweep
but without the shopping carts. The good stuff is over on the right, but you know the store well enough. Also I think in the back there might—”

“
Robbie
!” I shouted, trying to get him to stop. He looked over at me. He looked exhausted, to be honest. “What’s going on?”

He sighed and then sat down on the stool behind the counter. “I’m done, that’s what’s going on. Game over, exit stage right, th-th-that’s all, folks.” I looked at him, confused, and he asked dryly, “Which pop culture reference did you miss?
Aliens
, Snagglepuss and Porky Pig. I swear, I don’t even know what they’re teaching you kids in school these days. In my day the classics were—”

“Robbie, seriously what is—”

He slammed both fists down on the counter, and the glass cracked under his blow. “
I’m not going to watch anyone else fucking die, okay
?” I froze, not sure what to do. “I’m done with caring about people so I can just watch them die. I’m not burying anyone else in this town again. I’ve hit my corpse quota for this lifetime. Foster wins. It always does. I just wish I knew that before I let Riley move back here.”

He sounded so defeated, so unlike himself. I was terrified. There was no sarcasm, no biting jokes. He was just done. I had honestly never heard him talk like this.

“When I was growing up, me and my sister played a lot of board games, mainly ’cause we were poor, and it was the cheapest way to spend an afternoon while my mom worked. I always liked Monopoly because I liked the different-colored money, but Nicole loved Clue. She would want to play that damned game over and over, each time someone new dying in a new room a new way. And I remember one day we were shuffling the cards and I said, ‘You’d think after a while these fucking idiots would just not come to the house where all these murders happen. They’re just asking for it.’”

I saw a tear fall down his cheek.

“We were just asking for it,” he muttered, looking at his broken reflection in the glass.

My mind seized up for a moment, the mental equivalent of grinding gears, as I tried to figure out what to do.

“Well then, this is for the best,” I said as nonchalantly as I could. “Some kids have to wait a lifetime to figure out what lies they were told growing up. I’m glad I got this out of the way now.” He barely raised his head and looked at me. “I mean, if this didn’t happen, then I would have graduated, moved to California, and thought this whole time everything I tried to do was worth something. Kelly, the school board, everything was worth something if someone got better from it. I mean, that is what you were trying to tell me at the Bear’s Den, right? That if this town was going to be fixed, it had to be fixed from the inside, so you gave me this song and dance about how I needed to step up and do something.”

He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was listening.

“Now I can leave and know that none of it matters. If it gets too hard, give up and run away. There is no fighting the good fight. There’s just surrender.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he proclaimed darkly.

“Of course I don’t, because I’m, what? Five and a half years old and know nothing? Also I’ve only known you fifteen seconds, so I couldn’t know a thing about you, right? Did I miss anything? Well, you’re wrong, Robbie, because I know everything I need to know about you. I know everyone thinks you stayed here because you wanted to wallow in your misery of losing Riley, that you were just a bitter old queen who hated the world. That’s what they think, but they’re wrong. You stayed here to make sure it didn’t happen again. You gave up the rest of your life to make sure that what happened to Riley would never happen again.”

I’m not even sure he was blinking.

“You want to play that whole diva card, but that’s the same reason that Bruce Wayne dresses up as a bat every night. Because it conceals who you really are from everyone else. You hide away the real Robbie so they can’t get to him, but the whole time, you’re just looking for the next innocent to save from this town. You want to give up? Fine. You want to just walk away, good, but you don’t get to walk away thinking it was for nothing. You were the one who put these thoughts about fixing Foster in my head, and that counts for something. No matter how hard you try to deny it.”

I was panting like I had just run a marathon. I had no idea if anything I said got through to him. At this point I wasn’t even sure if my words made sense to me.

Finally he croaked out a gruff, “You’re wrong.”

And I knew I hadn’t gotten through.

“I am nothing like that. I’m not a superhero, Kyle. I’m just a man. A tired man who has gambled away too much and can’t afford to lose more. You can look at it like I’m giving up, but all I’m doing is stepping away from the table before I lose everything.”

“So is that what I should learn? That when it gets bad, to just walk away?”

He sighed and seemed to pull at his hair in frustration. “Kyle, you can take anything you want from this. You’re a big boy and can find your own messages in life. I’m not fucking Yoda.”

I wanted to argue with him, wanted to debate his whole mindset with him, but something told me that it was a losing battle. He wasn’t going to listen to me. My words were going to be wasted on him.

Luckily, I knew who he would listen to.

Once I took care of that, I had two more names on my list. The first was Jennifer, which I was going to have to do tomorrow since she was at school. The second happened to have the same address as me, so I knew where she lived.

I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but I did know that we needed to talk. Only someone who had lost their sense of smell would have missed the fact my mom was trashed during the shooting. Luckily for… well, I have no idea who it was lucky for, to be honest, so scratch that. In a twist of fate that had no real effect, good or bad, on someone’s life, my mom was a pretty functional drunk. She could go from completely trashed to acting completely normal in no time flat. I suppose in some college-party type of movie that ability would be seen as wicked cool, but in real life it was scary as shit.

I guess if I was a guy who had sex with a pie or a Van-something-or-other, going from stupid drunk to sober would be awesome, ’cause then I could outwit the hapless dean who was out to close down our frat or whatever and get the upper hand. But as just a person, having someone around when it was almost impossible to know if she was under the effects of a mind-altering substance was terrifying. You walked around in a constant state of concern that the person who was supposed to provide food and shelter for you might actually be in the middle of a three-day drunk and had no real idea how long the milk had been bad or that we’ve been out of bread.

Also, if a guy comes to school and holds your son hostage in the library, being drunk is no state to be making choices.

It’d be easier to deal with if she was always a horrible person, because then I could hate her with impunity and move on. And don’t give me that look of “But Kyle, you could never hate your mom. She gave birth to you.” Don’t kid yourself—that whole “they are family” argument doesn’t fly with everyone. Sometimes the people in your family are just that, people. They aren’t warm balls of love that you wish would stop being so mean to you. They are people you are legally required to live with until you can find a way out, and you can hate them as easily as you can hate a stranger.

In fact, it’s easier to hate family than strangers, ’cause odds are the strangers haven’t done nearly as much to you as so-called family has.

But, see, my mom wasn’t all bad, and that was the crux of my problem. It was like she was being held hostage by a much darker version of herself that came from drinking and drugs and all that crap. And there would be days, weeks, she would get free from her captors, and things around our house would change for the better, and all would be well. Except I had become used to the fact that it wouldn’t last. Sooner or later she would be taken again, replaced by the drunk and uncaring woman who resisted the urge of being a mother so much that when I was younger, she had her boyfriends discipline me instead of her.

I’m sorry. I got off topic.

There needed to be a talk, but I had no idea what to say.
Mom, don’t be a drunk? Mom, stop killing yourself? Mom, go to hell?
Yeah, it was a multiple-choice question that didn’t have a right answer. I felt the familiar pain of my stomach souring as I approached the house, wondering if I should just drop it and let it go as I always did. I was almost out of this town, and with it, her drama.

But from past experience, it was pretty clear I never really did what I should do.

When I opened the door, I had that weird disorientating moment where you recognize everything around you yet it all looks completely wrong. I knew I had walked into the right house because my key worked, but it couldn’t be my house because Gayle from the diner was standing in my living room. I was so confused I looked back at the number on the apartment door and then back at her. I opened my mouth to ask a question, but it just kinda hung open as I gave her a quizzical look.

“Oh, you’re home early,” she commented, like her being in my house when I got home from school was normal, and me coming home early was the only abnormal thing about this situation.

My mom walked out of the bathroom. She was wearing clothes that, compared to her normal wardrobe, would be considered fancy. “Did you say something…?” she began to ask Gayle and then saw me. “Kyle? What are you doing home?”

“I live here,” I finally blurted out. “Least I thought I did when I left this morning, but now I’m not sure.”

Gayle chuckled. “The place doesn’t look that different, does it?”

I had no idea what she was talking about until I looked around again. I had never seen our apartment this clean, ever. Everything was polished and sorted and just… not normal. Also, the ashtrays were gone along with the bong that sat on the bookshelf like it was supposed to be a work of art or something. “What’s happening?” I asked, sitting down before I passed out.

The two of them looked at each other, and Gayle nodded to my mom and said, “I think I’ll make a cup of coffee while you guys talk.”

My mom sat down on the couch, and I just stared at her as Gayle walked out.

“So… I’ve made a choice,” my mom said hesitantly.

I held my hand up. “I swear to God, if you say you and her are dating or something, my head might explode.”

She made a curious look like she had no idea where I had gotten that from and then laughed at my observation. “No, this is not me coming out. This is something else.”

I edged forward as I waited for her to say something.

“You know how I’ve always had this….” And she hesitated. “Well, you know how….” She paused again.

“Your mom is an alcoholic,” Gayle said, standing in the kitchen. I looked at her, and she added, “You do know you’re going to have to stand up and say that in front of a lot more people, right?”

My mom closed her eyes as Gayle’s words seemed to hit home.

Gayle came in and sat down as well. “Your mom is sick,” she began to explain as she pulled her keys out of her pocket. “And she wants to get well. I’m helping her with that.”

She handed me the keys, and I took them, not sure what I was supposed to do with them. Then I noticed what looked like a bronze poker chip hanging on it. There was a triangle on one side and some writing on the other. I looked back at Gayle, not understanding.

“That’s a ten-year chip of sobriety. I’m a recovering alcoholic as well.”

Gayle? Like my mom? Not a chance.

“She’s going to be my sponsor,” my mom tossed in. “I know I’ve let you down, but I need to change. I need things to….” She trailed off, and I could see the pain in her face. “I’m just tired of letting you down.”

“I was going to take her to a meeting this afternoon before you got home from school,” Gayle said, taking her keys back.

“Then go,” I almost shouted. “I mean, yes. I want you to go and get better.”

I could see my mom’s eyes tearing up, and mine started to in sympathy. “I never meant to…,” she began to say, but I stopped her because I didn’t want to hear all that.

I’d heard everything she was going to say before, several times, in fact. She never meant to hurt me, she was trying her hardest; she was upset I was the one to suffer. I was done with her telling me stuff. I wanted to see her do something about it.

“Just go to your meeting,” I said as firmly as possible. “We can settle the rest later.”

I don’t know if she got the hint or if she bought it, but either way, she looked at Gayle. “You ready?”

Gayle nodded and got up. When my mom walked into her room to grab her purse, she said quietly, “You don’t have to forgive her.” I looked at her, and she added, “Just because she is getting help doesn’t mean everything she did wrong is ignored. You have a right to be mad. This doesn’t take that away.”