Tweaked (9 page)

It's beginning to drizzle. I set the windshield wipers on intermittent. The headlights of oncoming cars dart off the shimmery surface as we cross the bridge. It's dark and gloomy outside, but the mood inside the car is even gloomier as Jack and I discuss how to track down Chase.

“Where are we going?” asks Jack.

There is no point in going back to Burnaby. Chase won't return to that drug house for some time, not now that I know where it is. “Downtown.”

“At this time of night? You're crazy. I'll tell you right now these doors are staying locked. And I'm not getting out of this car either. Which means I'm not coming to look for you if—I mean
when
you get rolled.”

“You don't have to get out. I just want to drive around. Maybe we'll spot him.”

“Just walking down the street?”

“Look, have you got any better ideas? I don't know what else to do.”

The rain is no deterrent to the number of bums, junkies and hustlers hanging around the rundown hotels and barred pawnshops along East Hastings. Women and girls, some probably not even as old as us, stroll next to the curb. Life on the street has been brutal, leaving them with missing teeth and skin covered in sores. When we stop at the intersection along Hastings near Main, one of them knocks on the window.

Jack squirms in his seat. “This is really creeping me out. Let's face it, you're not going to find him like this. Come on, Gordie, let's get out of here.”

“Ignore her. Just keep your eyes open for Chase.” The light turns and I continue driving while scanning the people on either side of the street.

“What are you going to do if you see him? He'll recognize the car. He'll take off before you have a chance to pull over.”

I know this. I also know how useless it is to search for him this way. I just don't know what else to do. “I don't know. I just know I can't go home without him. It will kill them and they'll hate me.”

“Hate you? You were trying to help. If you don't mind my saying, this whole thing doesn't make any sense.”

“Nothing makes sense in my house anymore, but that's what will happen.”

We are stopped at another traffic light. In the doorway of a boarded-up building an addict is shooting up. He fumbles with his sleeve, but he can't get it up fast enough. Finally he hits his mark and the drug rushes through him. As he leans back against the building, the needle slips from his hand to the sidewalk. “God, what a life,” mumbles Jack.

The light turns and we have just started moving again when I am sure I see him, standing on the corner with two other guys. “There he is!” I hit the brakes and swerve sharply to the curb.

Jack looks back to where I'm pointing, to the three guys standing together, hands stuffed in their pockets, hair dripping, no jackets. Their shirts are soaked through and clinging to their chests. “Where? I don't see him.”

“He's behind the guy with his back facing us. He's in the shadows—the skinny guy with the dark T-shirt.”

“It's not him.”

At that moment, the guy with his back to us turns to shout at someone on the other side of the street.

“See?” says Jack.

He's right. The one in the shadows isn't Chase.
But the guy who is shouting comes closer to our car. He seems to be saying something to us. I get Jack to roll down the window to hear what he's saying, maybe he knows something that could help us find Chase. But before either of us has a chance to react, his head is suddenly inside the car; his oversized pupils peer wildly out of a waxy ghoulish face.

It takes Jack a few seconds to find the words, but when he does he sounds as disgusted as he does terrified. “Get out of here!”

The guy begins fumbling with the handle as he tries to open the door. When it doesn't give, he weaves a gnarled hand through the window and attempts to pull the lock.

Jack gets hold of his wrist and wrestles with him. He manages to get his hand away from the lock. “Go, Gordie! Drive!”

I can't just pull back into the traffic—not without the guy's head coming along with us. “Get out, you nutcase!” I yell.

Realizing our predicament and that we can't go anywhere with the man's head still inside, Jack shoves his hand in his face. He pushes him hard, and he stumbles backward to the curb. I step on the gas and speed back into traffic.

“Are you satisfied?” Jack barks. He sinks back against the seat like he's just missed being hit by a train.
“Can we go home, now? I've got to sterilize my hand.” Jack holds his hand in the air like he's been crippled.

I don't answer.

“Come on, Gordie, this is not only dangerous, it's a waste of time. You'd be better off to go home and make some phone calls. Call Ryan Linscott.”

I know Jack is right. It's a suicide mission to go home, but to take off, or to just not tell my parents what happened would be the kind of thing that Chase would pull. We drive back to the North Shore in silence. I drop Jack off in front of the Watts' house. Pulling his jacket over his head, he sprints toward his house. I watch him disappear around the back where he is headed for the basement door.

I continue driving down the street, turn the corner and pull into the deserted parking lot of an elementary school. It's after midnight, but I still decide to follow Jack's suggestion and call Ryan's house. I dial directory assistance to get the number and then have them connect me. The phone rings many times before it is answered.

“What is it?”

It's Mrs. Linscott's voice—tired and annoyed.

“Is Ryan there?”

“No, he's not. And I don't want you calling here again. Ryan wants nothing to do with you.”

For an instant, I am taken aback at how sharp and distant she is. But of course, it doesn't take me long
to realize why. She'd recognized the last name on the call display. “I'm sorry for bothering you so late, Mrs. Linscott. This is not Chase Jessup. This is his brother, Gordie. I'm trying to find him. I just thought Ryan might know where he is.”

There is a long pause, before a slightly kinder Mrs. Linscott says, “I'm sorry, I thought you were your brother. No, we haven't heard from him. Ryan is in a rehabilitation clinic, and to be honest, we really don't want him to have anything to do with Chase again.”

I am surprised and, in a weird way, somewhat envious to hear that Ryan has actually followed through on what he said he was going to do. I thank Mrs. Linscott. I then tell her that I completely understand; my parents would say the same thing.

I start driving again, but I just can't bring myself to go home. Every time I imagine facing my parents and telling them what happened, my heart speeds up and my stomach twists into a knot. Twenty minutes later I am cruising past the park where Harris was found bleeding to death. If Harris hung out there, Chase might also have done so in the past. But I really didn't think he would return so close to home tonight.

It is no longer raining, but the night is overcast and the air is still heavy with moisture. In the distance, on the other side of Burrard Inlet, the lights of the city
are muted by fog. The park is illuminated by only a few small halos of yellow cast by the streetlights.

I see figures moving near the bushes. Are they imagined or are they ghosts? Harris come back; even death couldn't end his habit? A light flares—a match leaping to life—and the pinprick end of a cigarette glows. Someone is sitting on the bench. I consider going over to be certain it isn't Chase, but I can already see that it isn't by the shape of the head.

On the way home, I pull into the parking lot of the shopping mall near our house. It's an ordinary collection of buildings, a gray L-shaped block made up of a grocery store, a convenience store, a drug store, a small restaurant, a dry cleaner, a hair salon and a department store at one end.

Sitting in the empty parking lot, I recall a conversation I had many months earlier with Chase. He'd just come back from one of his stints in rehab, and Mom was reluctant to let him out of her sight. Chase had nagged until she'd finally agreed to let him pick up a few things at the grocery store. “All right, but don't be any longer than an hour. Here's my list.”

Chase was gone for even less. He'd still come home high. I couldn't believe that he'd been able to find drugs so fast and my surprise must have shown on my face.

“I can score anywhere at anytime, Gordie boy,” he told me. He'd then followed me into my bedroom where
he continued to babble in his arrogant spaced-out way. “You have no idea how easy it is. I had to go no further than our friendly neighborhood mall.”

I told him to get lost.

“You know, you are such a baby sometimes. You should hang around with your big brother once in a while. You'd learn a lot. You'd get some street smarts.”

He'd said it like it was something I really lacked. It struck me how disconnected we'd become, how we lived in the same house but in two very different worlds. “What for?” I'd asked. “I don't hang around the streets.”

I think now that if Harris had had what Chase called street smarts, it sure didn't do him any good.

The neon light above the convenience store blinks. I can no longer avoid going home and telling my parents. They will probably be asleep, which will give me until the morning to think of what to say. Five minutes later I pull into our garage. I close the kitchen door, turn out the light in the front entrance, walk past the living room and down the dark hall toward the stairs and my room.

“That was a long movie.”

Dad's voice frightens me almost more than anything has tonight. I return to the living room where I can see him sitting in his favorite armchair in the dark. He switches on the table lamp next to where he sits. “Where's Chase?”

I figure I might as well get right to the point. “He took off. I've been all over the city looking for him.”

For the first fifteen years of my life, I'd thought that only mothers cried. I'd learned differently over the past two years. But I'd never seen Dad's eyes fill with tears as quickly as they did at that moment. I was braced for a lot of yelling and questions: Why had I let him take off? Why wasn't I watching him? Instead, Dad speaks as steadily and as evenly as his emotions will allow. “No luck?”

I shake my head, no.

Mom appears in the doorway between the dining room and living room. She strikes me as old, older than I've ever noticed before. I'm not sure if it's the light, but her hair is no longer blond but gray. She holds her dressing gown tightly to her body as if it might help keep away the world's troubles, or at the very least, ours. It's apparent she's been crying, her face is pink and swollen, and she's clutching a ball of tissue in one hand. When she sees Chase isn't with me, she starts softly crying again. I look from Mom to Dad. I wonder how they could just know he would take off, and if they knew, why did they let us go? They were obviously waiting up and they were already extremely upset.

“We had a visit from the police tonight,” Dad explains, “a little more than an hour ago.”

I catch my breath. So this is it. Something like what had happened to Harris has finally happened to Chase. That's the reason for the state they are in.

But even that might have been better news than what the police had really come to say.

“The man that Chase assaulted, Richard Cross, has died.”

Mom's sobs are suddenly punctuated by a loud moan as she turns and leaves the room.

I am stunned. So many emotions roar through me that I can't get a grip on just one. “What does this mean?”

“It means that the charges against Chase have been upgraded to second degree murder. We were to return him to the custody of the police as soon as he came home tonight. He'll have to apply for bail again, but aside from that, it's very likely he will be facing serious prison time. He did kill a man.”

It's suddenly all so strange, like I'm watching what's happening from a theater seat. My brother isn't really a meth head—he never has been. He's never lied or stolen anything, and I haven't really just been told that he's murdered a man. And my dad—he isn't really sitting there, flushed from crying, looking like his life has come to an end. I've created the whole crazy skit. But why would I do that?

My mind goes white, like a sheet of lightning. An image flashes across it—Richard Cross's wife and little
girl in the lobby of the hospital. The drawings of the unicorns taped above his bed. The man with the bandage around his head is no longer alive. The machines that had been hooked up to him no longer pump and hum.

I drop into the chair across from Dad and cover my face with my hands. Moments later, I feel his hand on my shoulder. “You may as well go to bed, Gordie. Nothing's going to change tonight.”

“His drug dealers were after him,” my voice comes out muffled through my hands. “I thought if I paid them off, it would be done. You and Mom wouldn't have to know about it. We could all go on from there.”

He sighs. Kneeling down next to me he squeezes my shoulder. “You too, huh? How much did you lose?”

“Everything I had. Two thousand, including the money Nana sent me for my birthday.”

Dad groans. “Well, I wish I could say I'd reimburse you, but I can't. Not now anyway and probably not for some time.”

I feel a pain deep in my gut—like a raw wound I can't reach and can do nothing about.

I wish Chase was dead. I wish he'd disappear off the face of the earth instead of this—the way he keeps coming back, over and over. It's like torture; he's dragging us down along with him, slowly, and we can't fight back because we don't think like him and we never know which direction he'll be coming from next.

I guess that's because what we want and hope for are so different. We always hope it will get better, that he'll change, while he only hopes he can find that next fix.