Beast (6 page)

One day later and it's like my escape to the city never happened. Mom and I are tucked snug into our tiny two-bedroom bungalow with one extra plate at the table tonight. But we don't mind. JP has a stacked, infinity-bedroom, infinity-bathroom palace far away in Irvington, and yet he lives in a tree house his dad had built for him instead. It's a nice tree house, don't get me wrong, all hooked up with electricity and stuff, but it's a little cold and crappy in the wintertime, so Mom and I just say hi when he comes here. A place to be, a house on the ground, where he can sit and eat and feel normal. When we were kids, I always wanted to go to his house—his toys were way better—until I realized there's a stark difference in parenting techniques between his mom and mine.

We never talk about it. Ever. But it's there, like shadows attached to the bottom of your shoes, following you in silence. Because I mean, shit, if I were JP, I'd never go home either. And I'd be sitting on my best friend's living-room floor and playing video games too, which is exactly what we're doing.

“Get the fuck out of here, you piece of shit.” JP's fingers fly with his new controller.

I run over his corpse as it evaporates and switch guns. “Kiss my ass,” I say.

“You mean, kiss my Sasquatch ass.” JP wastes a life and respawns at the start of the level way the hell over by the crumpled-up Empire State Building. “In which case, that'll never happen,” he says, and runs to catch up. “I don't want furballs.”

“Whatever,” I say. “Come over here again. I'll still kill you.” Angling my guy to jump off a pile of crushed taxis, I stall. I hate this part. I always screw up here. Something about jumping doesn't sit well with me anymore.

Crap. I die and regenerate over by the Empire State Building.

“And the Beast chokes again,” JP says.

Sometimes I want to choke
him.
He's always just…I don't know. Lucky. He's lucky. I have no idea how he does it, but whatever tricks he has up his sleeves, girls practically wait for their turn with him. If only they knew his skater bro shit was a farce. He might look like one of the original Z-Boys of Dogtown, but in reality he gets off the bus two stops early to fake like he skated the whole way to school.

JP curses me out after I kill him: “Blow me, you hairy asshole.”

“Blow yourself.”

“Nah, I'll get Katie to do it later.”

I grumble to myself because here's the thing: I have no idea if that's true or not. JP is north on the compass, no doubt about that, but there's no way of knowing if anything he says is the truth or just him exaggerating. He's been caught doing both, so I let it go.

JP claims he's done it, but he says it was with a girl he met while he was at baseball camp. Wait, there's girls at baseball camp? Oh, no worries, she was at the softball camp. Same fields, different buildings. Sure. Why not? And she was from California, where they have no email or phones, so there's no need to keep in touch. Sounds good.

Oddly enough, now I've got the same problem. I want to tell him about Jamie, but there's no proof. No number, no email address, no glass slipper, no nothing. Jamie's real, but she sounds too good to be true. A girl—no, wait—an interesting girl, who even JP would think is hot, bought me (yes, me) a cup of coffee and we talked. For a couple of hours on a perfect fall day, we were a We. I never knew what that was like before (it was awesome) and I might never know what it's like again, which is depressing.

“Hey, uh, Adam Michaels? Talk to him yet?”

“Shit.” I totally forgot. And/or slightly hoped Adam Michaels had paid up by now. He's kinda older and not as big as me but big enough to leave a mark. I like it better when they can't fight back. “Will do.”

“Thanks, man.” JP jerks to launch another round of flame bullets at the little baddies protecting the big baddie in the corner. “How's the Wormhole?”

“Amazing,” I say, because it is. Then I chuff to myself because it's funny, the stupid things we do for each other, JP and I. But fine, I'll go talk to Adam Michaels.

Mom leans in from the kitchen, bringing the smell of simmering spaghetti sauce with her. “You guys ready for dinner?”

“Yeah,” JP answers for both of us.

JP puts the game on pause, hops up and out of the beanbag chair, and trots into the kitchen like a dungaree-wearing farm boy whose mama done rung the dinner bell. Left for dead, I lug my corpse up from the deepest depths, mentally scream in agony because my leg freaking hurts like hell whenever I move, and hop stupidly to my place at the table. Even if I'm not supposed to be up and about just yet, I have no choice. My wheels are folded up and left by the door like an umbrella because our house is too small for me to actually use it indoors. I have to use a cane to hobble around the house instead. I try to gently bumble, but when was that possible back when I had two working legs?

The wooden chair groans under my weight. I lift my cast for elevation and wait for the pain to stop. It doesn't and I wish I could rub the bones straight. Mom ladles organic, grass-fed meatballs onto the plates heaped with pasta and sauce. Two for her, five for JP, and twelve for me. Fair is fair. “Ready?” Mom asks.

Both her and JP bow their heads. Mom thanks the Universe. JP thanks God because unlike me, he's an actual Catholic and not going to St. Lawrence because it's the best education in town. While they say their own version of grace, I pretend to. Although I never know where to send prayers, so I just think:
Hi, Dad.

Their heads pop up and we begin to eat. “Go easy on the cheese,” Mom says to me.

I lift the Parmesan from the grater. “Why?”

“Because that's the last of it for the month.”

Money. As in, as soon as I finish dinner, I'm off to go study so I can get a full ride to Stanford or Yale or Harvard or MIT with all the bells and whistles. One day this mutt will have a pedigree.

But as I shovel food in my mouth (from the ever-rising food bill we never ask JP to help pay because apparently lost boys eat for free), I wonder…would I change places with my best friend? The answer is yes. In a heartbeat.

I imagine waking up in his body. One smile from my perfect teeth that align one perfect row on top of the other, and I'm wrapping up girls in my new lean arms. My brains in his body with all his money? Unstoppable. The world won't know what hit it. I'd never give his body back. He'd be stuck inside my old one and man, would he be miserable. But I bet, dollars to donuts, he'd take my body and do something real stupid with it. He wouldn't turn to a book to keep it in check. He'd go whole hog and end up in prison. No doubt.

My hand squeezes into a fist underneath the table. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if my fuse really lit. I haven't punched anyone since last year. Some junior. JP had asked me to do it, like he'd done a thousand times, but this time I enjoyed it. Way too much. It's not my size that scares me. It's what I'm carrying inside. My secret Hulk is always crouching under the surface, needling me. But I know the tricks to keep it locked up.

JP doesn't have control. He's all id: I want, I want, I want.

He'd want to beat the shit out of someone and he wouldn't know when to stop.

I drop the fantasy. He'll always be him, and I'll always be me. He'll have his face, his genes. All he has to do is hold on a few more years and he's gone. His dad will pay for college without breaking a sweat. JP can dick around for four years and earn some bullshit degree, smile with his pretty teeth, and he'll get by forever. Not me.

But whatever. It's science. It's fine.

Mom reaches out and lays a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, sweetie?”

“Huh?” I snap to.

“You look a little down.”

“I'm okay,” I say. My plate is empty, food eaten on autopilot.

JP guides half a meatball through thick red sauce, his eyes tracing its trajectory. “It's been one of those weeks.”

“Right?” I side with him.

“You're not kidding,” Mom agrees. “Can't believe it's only Wednesday.”

“Hump Day is the worst. It's like all I can do to make it to Friday,” JP says. “And even then, I don't want to deal with Saturday and Sunday.”

“You know you're always welcome here,” Mom says.

JP nods. “Thanks. It's just, I don't know, like my mom's like even worse these days and it's like no matter how—”

My chair shrieks to the side as I get up. “I have a test on Friday. I should go study.” Throb goes the leg as soon as I stand.

They both stare at me. Mom frowns.

JP puts on the same face I catch him in all the time at school when he's talking to the guys at our lunch table. The slightly glazed half smirk. His mask. “Kill that test with fire, Beast,” he says, one pump of his chin to finish off the sentence.

The two of them pick up where they left off, JP starting to elaborate on the most recent rage his mom was in. She's a mean drunk. It kicks me out a little faster. I just can't hear about it, I don't know why. It's like I want to be there for him, but I prefer to leave it at that. I got you, we're friends, moving on. Hearing about JP's mom issues gives me a mild temptation to go down to the basement and see the trains.

When my dad first got his diagnosis, he started building a train set. I was a baby at the time, so Mom told me all this later, but it's still down here. Dusty and lost. As the years went by, my father expanded the table and added tiny mountains and villages. It takes up an entire corner of the basement next to full-length mirrors. Maybe he wanted the fake little trees and tracks to reflect into infinity. A miniature father and son wait at a faded red train station for a locomotive that will never come.

The whole thing works. All the lights and switches and town houses with doors and windows that open up. He even left behind Christmas bunting for the entire town to get gussied up for the holidays. Mom tried to get me into the trains when I was eight and then again at ten. I never wanted to flick that switch and make them run. They made me deeply sad, but I didn't know what kind of sad to call it.

I still don't.

I wander into the living room to get my school bag, but my leg hurts so much I have to rest. Mom would've filled that frigging prescription if she knew what it felt like to have your bones try to grow inside a cast.

I'm growing again. I know it. No book or quiz or podcast can save me.

I think of Jamie. She understands.

Another cup of coffee sounds so good right now—let's stunt these legs right up!—but group is so far away. One more week. All I have to do is hold on, and we can be horrible again.

I sink into the oldest, softest chair we have and disappear into the cushions. No wood to creak, just worn-out springs that gave up years ago. Mom hates this chair. When she sits in it, she can't climb out because it's an abyss of threadbare plaid and compressed foam. Once it was my dad's, but I've made it my own.

Pulling some books from my bag, I open one and shake my head sharp and fast. Focus. Study. Chemistry. Let's get pulled into Coulomb's law, pun intended, because opposite charges will produce an attractive force while similar charges will produce a repulsive force. I'm ugly as fuck, so let's get some lovely equations to give me a lap dance.

“How are things at home?” my mom says loud enough so that I know she's making sure I hear too. I should've gone upstairs.

JP sighs. “She tripped and knocked herself out on the coffee table. Again.”

“Did you pad the corners, like we talked about?”

“Yeah, but then that pissed her off even more and she threw them away. She's like, ‘I'm not a baby!' and all that, but she's real bad right now.”

“And you sent that email to your dad?”

“He doesn't care,” JP says. “I could get a plane to write it in the sky over his office and he wouldn't give a crap. He's like, no one can make her go back to rehab, so it's not his problem anymore.”

There's rustling. I don't have to see them to know they're hugging.

My mom hugs and I punch. Go figure.

When JP started doing this loan-business stuff back in the eighth grade, I didn't give it much thought. Why would I? I was there for the first transaction. Chase Cooper wanted a pack of gum and was short a dollar. JP spotted him and a week later, with my help, got two dollars back. It was even a little fun shoving Chase into the wall; I'm not going to lie. It's a rush. Now we're in high school and his side project has gone school-wide, which is weird. Especially since he doesn't need any cash, ever, but it's his thing and we all have a thing. Something to distract from real life. He gets off turning guys who need a favor into clients who owe him. So if I can make him happy in some dumb way, then that's what I do to help. Better than sitting in the kitchen.

When Mom gets up and fills their glasses with more ice, I sneak my things into my bag and whisper away off the couch. The cane is wood with a worn-down rubber tip that normally tack-tacks against the floor, but I work to be as light as a cotton ball.

It takes forever. I breathe once I'm in my room and the door is closed. I hop over to my window and stare at the roof. That football still taunts me. I close the curtains and sit at my desk to ignore the pull to go get it. I search for a podcast I haven't already heard, but I've heard them all, so I randomly pick the one about dazzle camouflage. The spine of the chemistry book cracks as I lay it flush against the flat wood. I'm reading, but my eyes slide down the page. My mom and my best friend are downstairs talking about wine-bottle-dodging strategies while my leg screams in pain.

I mean, jeezus. His own mother throws empty bottles at him. I've seen the welts. He's shown me. And afterward JP's head would shake, and his perfect hair and perfect body and perfect face would follow as he slumped against the wall, looking like a young Greek god on a bad day. It dawns on me I would still trade places with JP. Any day. So WTF does that say about me?