Blazed (6 page)

“Well, there's nobody else,” she says. “You don't have anyone else.”

“I know,” I snap. “I know I'm alone. So please just stop saying it. I understand
that
.”

WHERE I'M SPENDING THE NIGHT
is at the apartment of my mother's first-ever dance instructor. This seventy-one-year-old woman named Ida who taught my mother until she was sixteen and moved to Chicago for dance school.

Ida doesn't like me too much, though. Just like my grandmother, she condemned my mother for deciding to have me. Unlike my grandmother, though, the two of them made amends not long after my mother came back to Joliet with me.

Ida's apartment smells like old. I've never been able to describe that smell, but it's definitely a thing. And it's rough on the nostrils.

It's eight on Thursday night, and Ida tells me that on Thursday nights she likes to stay up an extra hour to watch
Law & Order
, which means she'll be going to bed at ten.

Normally, I wouldn't give a shit, but there are a couple of things I need to do before I leave for San Francisco, so it's nice to have this information.

Not once since Ida picked me up have we talked about what happened, which is a stinking relief. Cos I can't do that. I don't wanna do that. There's nothing to talk about
anyway. Everyone—the doctor, the cop, the child welfare lady, the paramedics, fucking Ida—they all think she was partying too hard. None of them know the truth.

I told them she'd been kinda sad lately and was on a bender.

I told them she hadn't slept in two days.

I told them she's an alcoholic and a prescription pill abuser.

Hearing those things come out of my mouth, it made me sick. I felt like I was betraying her. I'd promised her a long time ago, promised myself, that I would never do that. That I'd never ruin her in the eyes of other people. I promised her that I'd never leave her.

But it had to be done. I had to tell people the truth about my mother's depression and addictions in order to preserve the lie about what really happened this afternoon.

I wait Ida out from the kitchen. I put my headphones on and listen to the Neutral Milk Hotel record “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.” I read about it on Pitchfork's website when I was ten. The way the music made me feel that first listen, so good, even though it is this kaleidoscope of emotions just the like the Pitchfork review said.

For me, it's an album I can put on no matter what my mood is, no matter how good or shitty things are in my life.

I think that's what most people want.

Not always, but most of the time.

When I write music and poetry, that standard is always
in my head. I aspire to that for every note or lyric or sentence I create.

I give it a half an hour after Ida goes to bed before I sneak out. I call a cab and it drops me off at my house.

It feels the same as it always does when I walk in. It's like the house doesn't remember I flushed my mother's suicide note down the toilet.

I'm strong. I know this about myself. I don't break. That's one thing I've really learned about myself since my mother's drug-and-booze-induced spiral started a couple of years ago, right after her boyfriend was killed in a car accident. She was in the car with him, and they were wasted. They jumped a median and crashed into the side of a car wash. He was driving. It ripped another deep, deep hole in her. Poor fucking thing.

In the kitchen, I take a beer from the fridge. Then I go upstairs and sit down at my computer. Ripping a piece of aluminum foil from the roll next to my desk, I drop a baby blue on it.

I smoke the entire pill in less than twenty minutes while I listen to the Growlers album
Hot Tropics.

But memories of the girl who wished her name was Emma come storming back to me and it's too much right now, so I stop playing music and float, like the fog I am now, into the bathroom.

I finally take off my school uniform and strip down to my underwear.

I flex the muscles in my stomach.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to do a hundred push-ups and two hundred crunches.

I plug in my razor and touch up the two lines I keep shaved into the left side of my strawberry-blond hair.

When I'm done, I step back and just stare at myself in the mirror. I'm so cute and in awesome shape, and my black eye doesn't even bother me.

I don't get why that girl didn't want me anymore. That guy she went to, he was total garbage. He had these stupid black plugs in his ears, and his bottom lip was pierced, and he was always wearing these dumb leather wristbands. His hair was dyed black too, and it was always styled messy. It looked like he bought all his clothes at Hot Topic.

Fuck that, actually. Dude looked like he stepped out of a Hot Topic catalog.

He was so gross.

The first time I saw him he was wearing a black AFI T-shirt that looked two sizes too small on him. I was embarrassed for him, and part of me is embarrassed for myself because I was with a girl who wanted that.

She was so pretty, though. And she was reading a James Morgan book the day I met her.

She bought a root beer float the first time we, like, really kicked it together. She asked me to split it with her. Later that day, she played the Murder City Devils song “Boom Swagger Boom” on her iPhone. We were at the playground
near her house and she did this awesome dance to it just for me.

It was really sweet. I smiled a lot that day.

I thought it was really cool that she wanted to use the same straw for the root beer float.

Back in my room now.

I snap a blue in half and drop one of them on a new sheet of foil.

When I'm finished smoking that, I put the Growlers back on and slam the rest of that beer while I pack my backpack.

Like, fuck it.

There's no way I'm gonna let a fucking girl ruin an entire album for me. I love this band too much.

Plus, I totally listened to them before she ever did.

I'M ON MY SKATEBOARD, FLYING
down the street with an address written on a small slip of paper. Besides grabbing my laptop from the house, this is the other thing I need to do before I leave tomorrow morning.

It takes me about ten minutes to get there. Right away, I see his car. It's parked in the driveway, next to a really nice white house, even though I was prepared to break into the garage.

I dump my skateboard in some bushes about half a block away and open my backpack. I take out two cans of spray paint, one red, one black, and then I slide the black bandanna that's tied around my neck over my face and shake the cans for a couple seconds.

I wait for this dumb truck to drive by and clear the intersection up ahead before I go back and survey my new canvas.

I go ahead and spray the words:
Shave the rest of your hair, dick,
on my principal's white Mercedes-Benz.

I write:
Quit talking shit.

I paint:
Your secretary's a whore.

I tag:
I'm better than you, bitch. And so is my mother.

When I'm through, I sprint back to my board, pull on my backpack, and skate away listening to that Cage song “Agent Orange.”

I'm laughing, too.

I'm stoked.

And like, fuck that guy.

No one says shit about my mother in front of me.

That dude's a piece of shit.

Like six blocks later, I stop skating for a second and drop a baby blue down my throat.

Now I'm ready to leave Joliet, I guess.

My business is finished here,
I'm thinking as the chorus begins. . . .

“People said his brain was infected by devils . . .”

MY MOTHER'S RIGHT PINKIE FINGER
is in a splint. It shattered when she hit my face. They did surgery on it, which I wasn't aware of at all yesterday. To me, it just shows you how tough my mother can be. Like, she spent all morning and most of the afternoon with a shattered finger.

According to the doctor, she'd ingested the majority of the booze and drugs about an hour before I found her. That's some tough living right there. And it makes me super happy, as fucked up as that may seem.

I stand in the corner of her hospital room, underneath the TV that's hanging from the ceiling, with my arms crossed.

“There he is,” my mother says slowly. “There's my boy, my big hero, my Jaime.”

She looks terrible. Her face seems sunken, and the bags under her eyes are so dark and big.

“Jaime,” she whispers. “Come here. Let me touch you.”

“Why?”

“So I know that this is real.”

My eyes well up. I'm so pissed at her. Goddamn it, she tried to kill herself, and she's handed me right over to the one person she's tried to keep away my whole life.

“Please,” she whispers again. “Please, Jaime. I'm your mom.”

And she's right.

She is, even if I barely recognize her right now. Even if I've barely recognized her over the last year or so.

She's still the woman who raised me all by herself, and sacrificed everything that was sacred to her so I could even fucking be here right now.

She's still the most amazing soul that ever existed.

She's still the beautiful lady with the best taste in music and books.

So I go to her, because that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to go to your mother when she needs you the most.

She lifts her left hand, and I take it in mine and squeeze it. She smiles so big and pretty.

“That's nice,” she says. “It's so nice to see you again, Jaime.”

“You too,” I say back.

Then she frowns and pulls her hand away and sits up.

“What's wrong?” I ask her.

“Your face,” she says. “What happened to your face?”

As hurtful and sad as it is for me to hear that question spill from her lips, it's exactly what I wanna hear from her. It's perfect. She really doesn't remember anything about what happened the other day. So I figure that at some point yesterday, she put two and two together. Her busted right hand and my black left eye.

This had to have been what triggered her suicide attempt. But she drank too much, and she took too many pills, and now she can't even remember why she tried to take her life.

It's disgusting.

It's also the best scenario that can come from this total disaster.

I sigh and shake out my shoulders. “I got into a fight at school yesterday,” I tell her. “That's what happened to my face.”

“Oh, Jaime,” she says. “Why? Why did you get into another fight?”

I shrug. “It just happened.”

She groans. “Great. What did the principal say?”

“Not much. I just had to spend the rest of the day in detention.”

“Damn it,” she says. “Do you know how much I pay for you to go to that school?”

“Does it even matter right now?” I ask. “They're sending me to San Francisco with my father.”

This incredible look of shock and anguish washes over her face now, and she slides her left hand slowly down it.

“Oh my god,” she whispers.

I make a face. “You didn't know?”

She doesn't say anything.

“Mom, you didn't know this was happening?”

“I did,” she finally says. “I did. I just . . .” She stops and closes her eyes.

With all the rad drugs my mother is being pumped with right now, I bet she's in heaven.

I bet she feels so fucking good.

Opening her eyes, she goes, “I just forgot. Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, Mom.”

“That bastard is here, isn't he?”

I nod.

When I arrived at the hospital with Ida (she was rather curious how I had a skateboard and why I wasn't in my school uniform still), the doctor informed me that my father was in the cafeteria having breakfast.

I rolled my eyes. Like I fucking care what he's doing.

“Fuck him,” my mother shouts. “Just fuck him!”

“Hey,” I say, and grab her hand again. “Just relax. It's only for eight days. I'll be back here next Monday.”

My mother, she begins to cry. “No,” she sobs. “No, no, no. He can't have you. He doesn't deserve you. He ruined my life.”

I bite my tongue.

And she goes, “He's a monster, Jaime. Don't trust him. You can't trust him. He's the worst man in the world.”

Swinging my eyes back to her, I say, “I know.”

“I'm so sorry. I didn't want any of this to happen.”

Again, I say, “I know.”

I say, “I'm not scared. It'll be over before you know it.”

Her lips press tightly together and she forces a smile.

“It will be,” I say.

“I'm sorry,” she says again.

“You're gonna be just fine,” I tell her. “You'll get out of here, and you'll be sober, and everything will be better than it was. Better than it's ever been.”

She looks away.

This whole thing is brutal and ugly.

Turning back to me now, my mother goes, “Be strong, Jaime.”

“I will.”

“And don't like him. Okay, my boy? Don't trust your father, and don't like him.”

“Right.”

“He's a monster.”

“I know.”

“Don't let him ruin your life too.”

“I won't.”

MY FATHER LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE
all the photos I saw of him when I Googled him the other night. I guess he's about six feet tall, maybe even an inch bigger, and he's got strawberry-blond hair too. It's parted very neatly from the left to right and shaved down about an inch shorter on the sides and in the back.

His eyes are brown. His face is very defined. And he seems very fit and toned. His skin looks healthy. He just looks healthy and looks successful and happy despite how awkward he gets when I appear in the lobby and stare at him.