Bottled Up (5 page)

I used to collect every kind of bottle cap I could find—back when I was young enough to think stupid stuff like that mattered.

“Can I have them?” Bugs asked.

Why not? I wasn't using them.

“If you pick up everything you knocked over, you can take the bottle caps. But you have to get lost—take them out of here.”

I looked at some before tossing them back into their box. I remembered every cap. I knew where I'd gotten each one and how hard some of them were to find. Dr Pepper, grape Nehi, Yoo-Hoo, Chocolate Cow—they were all there.

Mikey took off flying with the box under his arm. I leaned my back against the wall and looked down at my closed fist. I opened my hand and stared at the cap I was holding—the one I didn't put back in the box. The one I'd decided I didn't want Mikey to have.

It was a Budweiser cap. It was from off the top of my first beer.

The one my father gave me.

I was nine.

It got dark out and I figured Mom was putting Mikey to bed. By eight o'clock I knew the Grinch was sitting in front of the TV with a glass in his hand. There was no way he was thinking about how far I was getting in the garage. He'd been telling me for weeks to clean it and then kept forgetting to check if I ever did. That night wasn't going to be any different. I knew they'd forgotten about me in the garage. You know, the whole family dog thing.

So I left the garage pretty much the way I found it. I moved some boxes from here to there. Swept some crap into a pile. Then I walked the mile to that party Johnny had talked about crashing.

He was there, passing a pipe around so nobody would ask him to leave. We get to crash parties without too much trouble as long as he supplies some of the party favors. Nobody asked us to go.

Not until Slayer pulled the knife.

I didn't see what happened. I was out back under the cheerleader's deck, smoking a bone and finishing off my fourth Bud.

I was watching Jenna across the yard. It was dark and I was wasted, but I could see her. I couldn't miss her. She has this way of moving that isn't like any other girl I know. She moves her shoulders when she talks and tips her head to one side a lot.

Right before all the noise started, she walked by.

“Hey,” I said.

She turned to look at me and smiled.

It was
that
smile.

“How's it going?” I asked.

She took a couple of steps my way. “I'm not much of a party person,” she said.

“Maybe this will help.” I held my joint out for her to take.

“Is it helping
you
?” she asked, not making a move to take it out of my hand.

I took a hit off the joint and held my breath, keeping my eyes on her.

“You're out here alone,” she said. “You're under a porch, and you don't look like you're having any fun.”

I blew the smoke out behind me. “I'm not alone.” I smiled. “I'm with you.”

“I was just heading inside to get a soda.”

“I'll come with you.” I put the the joint out on the bottom of my shoe and shoved the rest of it into my sock. Grabbing my half-empty bottle of beer, I stood next to her. But she didn't move.

“Ever go a day without that stuff?” she asked me.

“What do you think I am? A total waste?”

“What do
you
think you are, Pip?”

“Just me,” I said, feeling high from standing next to her.

Jenna started walking, and we made our way up the deck steps. I could hear the yelling from outside the door. When I pulled it open, I knew something was up. Guys were cursing, girls were screeching. I took off from Jenna and ran into the living room to make sure my boys were okay. Slayer had his pocketknife out and was facing off with one of the football players.

“I told you to step away from my girl,” the guy was yelling with his finger pointing at Slayer.

“She was on my lap.” Slayer flicked some blood off his lip. “She's very friendly.”

The jock took a swing, and Slayer swiped at him with the knife and missed. This wasn't going to be good.

I shot Johnny a look. He was thinking what I was thinking. I put up one finger at a time, counting to three. On three Johnny and I jumped the jock. Johnny got him from behind in a headlock, I twisted his arm back, and Slayer came our way. I let go of the jock, grabbed the knife out of Slayer's hand, and took off out the front door. Johnny held the jock while Slayer nailed him a few shots to the gut.

I ran a block down the street and dropped the knife down the sewer. The cops were going to show up for this fight—that much I knew. A knife on anybody was going to mean a trip to the precinct. That was worse than getting kicked out of school. I was covering my own ass as much as Slayer's.

When I ran back into the living room, fists were flying and stuff was breaking. I took a few hits to the face and knocked somebody into a cabinet that had a hell of a lot of plates in it.

“Cops!” somebody yelled, and half the guys that were fighting took off. I had a fullback pushing me into a corner, throwing punches into my kidneys so I couldn't get out of there.

As I watched four cops run in, I noticed Jenna looking at me.

She wasn't smiling.

I looked away and took a sharp hit to the chest.

“You seem like a smart kid,” Officer Wanna-Be-Your-Pal was saying.

He was driving the squad car with me in the front seat, my head leaning on the window. I felt like I was going to puke. He kept talking like this was the Big Brother program or something. How there's more to life than drugs and fighting. This road is only going to lead me into tunnels I can't get out of. Crazy stuff like that. I didn't hear half of what he was saying. I did a lot of shoulder shrugging—a bunch of I dunno's.

The whole thing sucked. The jocks only got a good talkin' to, but Johnny, Slayer, and I all got rides home in cop cars. I think it was because we're the ones with the long hair, tattoos, and earrings. Cops hate guys like us.

Getting brought home by a cop is pretty bad, but I wasn't flipping out like I did in Giraldi's office. I'd done so much partying that I wasn't feeling any pain and I couldn't really give a crap. Besides, getting in trouble for fighting wasn't going to get me thrown out of the house or tossed into rehab like being expelled would.

And I figured that if my old man was still awake, he'd be more tanked up than me and I could outrun him.

“This is it?” Officer Pal asked, pulling into the driveway.

“Home sweet home,” I said.

“What's going to happen when your parents open the door?”

“Keep your hand on your revolver,” I told him.

“The way you crack jokes, it's like you don't really care. It's like nothing rattles you.”

One of the upsides to getting high.

We got out of the cruiser and walked halfway up the driveway. Then I stopped, bent over, and hurled.

One of the downsides to partying.

The cop waited for me. He stepped back so I wouldn't splash his shoes.

“You all right?” he asked when I started to stand up again.

“I never ate dinner tonight,” I told him, wiping my mouth on my shoulder.

“If you're going to drink, you should eat.”

What he didn't know was that trying to eat in my house could make you just as sick.

“You know what?” I asked, looking around like I was confused. “This isn't my house. I live down the block.”

He kept walking, then rang the doorbell. As soon as it started to open, I was back on my knees, puking up some stringy green crap.

I couldn't hear what anybody was saying. I couldn't even hear if it was my mother's voice or my father's. The cop was only there for about a minute. He walked past me, stepping over my spew.

“Try to stay off my shift,” he said. “The next time you're in trouble on my clock, I'm bringing you in. Got it?”

He dropped a business card next to my knee on the ground. “There's my number at the precinct. If I can help keep that trouble from happening, call me.”

Everybody wanted to help me. I could play poker with all the business cards I was getting.

His car door slammed shut, the engine started, and he drove off.

I didn't look over at the front door. I didn't move. If it was my father standing there, I had to get ready to run. If it was my mother, I wasn't so sure I wanted to see her face—or have her see mine.

“Pip.” It was my mother.

I was still on my knees looking at the ground. My mother's slippers stopped right in front of me.

I tipped my head to look up. The sky did a little flip and I saw her face. She looked like I felt—all washed out from a shit day. She looked tired, sad maybe, even ready to throw up.

I think I make her sick sometimes.

“Come into the house.” She put a hand out and helped me stand. “Wash your face, brush your teeth, and get into bed. Try to do it without waking your father. I don't want to be up listening to him all night.”

She went inside. I watched the back of her head walking away from me.

I dragged myself into the house and up the stairs to my room, stopping to throw up in the bathroom on the way. I kicked my shoes off in the hall, went into my room, and jabbed my foot stepping on an action figure. I told that kid to stop playing in my room.

I stood next to the bed, pulled off my jeans, and some quarters fell out on the floor. I took off my socks and then grabbed everything I had just put on the floor and shoved it all under the mattress.

I flopped onto the bed and hit my head on something hard.

It moved.

It was my brother.

“Pip,” he said. “What are you doing in my bed? Did you have a bad dream?”

I closed my eyes.

I was so wasted and tired, I couldn't even tell him to shut up.

I opened my eyes. Everything was fuzzy. I felt as if someone was slamming his foot into my head over and over again. Mikey was sitting cross-legged next to me on the mattress.

“How come you went to sleep in my bed?” he asked.

“You're in
my
bed, skank-ball.” My mouth felt like a mix of sand and Elmer's glue.

He chomped into a cookie, and eight million crumbs fell on my face. “Look,” he said. “These are my Superman sheets.”

He was right. I sat up to look around. The Superman posters, stuffed animals, Legos, and action figures started spinning.

“Oh crap.” I put my hand over my mouth and ran into the bathroom. There wasn't really anything left for me to throw up. I kept spitting and spitting, and my mouth tasted like dried-up Play-Doh.

Mikey pushed the door open into my foot. “Daddy's in the bathroom downstairs,” he said. “He's doing the same thing as you.”

I saw his arm come at me, and I tried to swat it away. He pulled something off the back of my head and smiled.

“I was looking for that,” he said, and showed me the half an Oreo he'd taken off of my head. If he put it in his mouth I was going to hurl again.

“Turn the shower on for me, Bugs.”

He put his two hands together over his head and tossed the cookie into the garbage pail next to me like he was taking a foul shot.

He turned the shower on. “Pip?”

I stood up as much as I could without falling over. “What?”

“Are you and Daddy sick?”

Another one of my brother's genius questions.

“Get me some clothes,” I said.