151 Days (41 page)

No one was allowed to come over. No one was allowed to talk to me on the phone. I would say I was a prisoner in my own home, but by that point I didn’t consider the place a home anymore. In the end it was Sammy who saved me from a fate I was pretty sure included my dad and I killing each other in a drunken rage.

She called the sheriff, and he came by to check on me since there had been some reports that I hadn’t been seen around town. My dad pulled me up from my room and shoved me at the policeman. “See? He’s just fine. Now get the fuck out.”

If there is one thing you shouldn’t do to Sheriff Rogers, it is tell him what to do. He doesn’t take kindly to it.

“You okay, son?” he asked me, ignoring my dad completely. I just stared at him, not trusting myself to even nod and not burst out into tears. “You can tell me if anything is wrong.”

“He’s fine,” my dad growled from behind us, the warning in his voice unmistakable. “Aren’t you?”

I nodded mechanically to the sheriff, who gave me a sympathetic look.

“There,” my dad bellowed. “You got your answer. Now get off my property.”

Sheriff Rogers seemed so unimpressed with my father’s order that it was like he couldn’t even hear him. “Not your property anymore—it’s the Mathisons’,” he said as he did a casual lap around the living room. “Not even your house—it’s theirs.”

“So?”

The sheriff looked back at my father. “So when I get called out to investigate something, the person who I am investigating doesn’t get to tell me to leave. Especially if he’s just a renter.”

“This was my family’s property forever, and you know it.” Spittle flew out of my dad’s mouth as he became incensed about a whole new topic.

“And now it’s not.” The sheriff paused and moved some papers off the table. “Richie, you’re going to tell me that you have a license for this gun, right?”

My dad and I looked over at the policeman, who now had a hand casually on his pistol. On the table was my father’s .357. Its action was open, and from where I was standing, I could see a clip on the table half loaded.

“I have a legal right to own that gun!” my dad insisted, moving toward the table, no doubt to retrieve his property.

Sheriff Rogers had a different plan.

He spun and placed himself between my dad and the table and now had his gun half drawn out of its holster. “Richie, you take one more step towards that gun, and I am going to take it as a hostile threat.” My dad stopped walking. “You are drunk, you are belligerent, and you have a loaded gun on your kitchen table where anyone can get to it. You may have a license to own and operate a firearm, but I am damned sure you don’t own one allowing you to be a fucking idiot.” My dad’s eyes locked with Rogers’s, and they said nothing for a few seconds, communicating solely through forms of anger and disgust.

It was the sheriff who broke the silence. “Richie, I need you to turn around and put your hands behind your back.” My dad gave him an unblinking look, and the sheriff just added, “If you don’t, I assure you I can make your arms go behind your back by myself.”

With the speed of molasses, my dad’s hands moved behind his back as the sheriff fastened the cuffs on his wrists. As soon as my dad was locked down, the sheriff got on his radio and asked for immediate backup to our location. He had an exposed firearm and an intoxicated citizen, and he wanted some witnesses. The dispatch lady rattled something off I couldn’t understand but made the sheriff relax as he looked back over at me. “Do you know if he has a gun safe?” I nodded. “Do you know the combination for it?” Another nod. “And do you know how to handle a firearm with respect?” Last and smaller nod.

The sheriff went over and made sure the piece was completely empty. Once he was satisfied, he handed it back to me, grip first. “Find its bag, secure it, and lock it away in the vault. And, Jeremy?” he asked as I started to move. “Hide the key somewhere only you know of it, okay? For right now, at least.”

I nodded quickly and dashed up to the attic, where Mom had made my dad store the gun safe. I never told my dad where the key was. He never asked me.

They took my dad away to jail to sleep it off. The next day a social worker came to talk to me. She asked a lot of questions that might have scared someone a lot dumber than me. Her pity was dripping with every word, and though she might have thought she was helping me, all I could see was the cowlike dullness in her eyes as she tried to understand a problem bigger than she was. Though my father was an idiot, his general apathy about my life was a good thing, because it allowed me to do the things I wanted. When she asked me about the bruises I was sporting, I told her I had fallen down the steps. It was as useless a lie as her question was, and we both knew it. After a while of this verbal sparring, she put her pen down and took off her glasses.

“Jeremy, you know I am here to help you, right?” The condescending tone in her voice as she looked at me like some abused creature was enough to make me want to puke. I wasn’t some poor, mistreated child who had no out. This was
my
life, this was
my
world, and so what if my father got drunk and felt like hitting me? He was as useless as everyone else in this godforsaken town, and when my time came around, he would pay just like everyone else would. They would all look up at me and wonder why they’d treated me so badly and beg me to forgive them.

I would look down at them and say no.

“I tripped and fell down some stairs,” I repeated, not bothering to make it sound convincing. I knew the rules here as well as she did. She needed proof, and without me, there wasn’t any. This woman was not going to disrupt my life just because Brad Greymark and his merry band of assholes decided to use me as target practice. Brad and his jock friends would pay too, not me. Them.

The next day my dad came home, and things returned to as normal as they got for us. He never said anything about the social worker or the arrest, and I went out of my way to stay out of his life the best I could. For the next year or so, it was a perfect arrangement. He let me be the person I wanted to with my friends in the basement, and I didn’t tell the world that he got off on punching his son.

Everything was okay until the summer before my senior year.

I was now undisputed lord of the drama club. Only Sammy and me possessed a set of keys to the place, meaning we could stay as late as we wanted and enter whenever we felt like it. I was practically faculty by the time I finished junior year, and it was only going to get better after summer. One of my friends got a used car for his graduation present, which meant for the first time in my life I had a way out of Foster, even if it was only for a night.

We went to Dallas and saw
Rocky Horror
on a big screen. We got to see Scum Allegiance, HRA, and Daggerwound live, which was insane on so many levels because live shows are way better than just hearing the music. I got to be around other kids who were like me, who were considered lesser than others. Angry like me, fed up like me, tired of getting kicked like me. I slowly started thinking I might fit in somewhere once I left Foster.

It was on one of these trips to Dallas with my friends that I ran into Kelly Aimes.

We had gone to the Tin Room in Dallas to see the strip show. It was one of the few gay clubs that allowed teenagers in the door, even though we couldn’t drink. Though all of my friends were straight, no one minded going to these places with me because they played great music, and who doesn’t like to see naked guys? Even the straight boys who were part of the group seemed to like the attention they got in gay clubs, so no one complained.

I had walked out of the club to get some fresh air and to have a smoke. Dallas was pretty Nazi about nonsmoking establishments, so there was a group of us outside grabbing our nicotine while we could when Kelly walked past us and into the bar. I almost choked and dropped my smoke as I pushed my way past the smokers to see if I had imagined him or not. When I looked in, there he was, paying the cover and getting his hand stamped as a minor by the doorman.

I looked around to see if there was anyone else following him in. A pack of straight guys from Foster invading a gay bar just to fuck with people didn’t sound completely crazy. I know that Tony Wright and his friends spent most of the weekend cruising by the gay club outside of Foster and calling out names of the guys who walked out. But Kelly was alone. I didn’t see anyone else from Foster with him. Curious, I followed him inside, trying to find out what he would be doing there.

It was Saturday night, and the bar was packed, so it wasn’t easy to find him again. I scouted around trying to see if he was near the bar or the dance floor. I almost tripped over my jaw when I saw him over by the bathrooms, staring up at one of the male strippers. At first I thought maybe he knew the guy and was trying to talk to him.

And then I saw the dollar bill.

I could not believe my eyes as I watched the stripper kneel down and let Kelly put a dollar bill in his G-string. This had to be a joke or something. My first thought was to look around for Ashton Kutcher because this had to be
Punk’d
, and then I saw the guy lean down toward Kelly’s face and give him a kiss. I swear I almost passed out in shock.

The stripper went back to dancing as Kelly went back to staring. I was about to walk up to him when one of my friends tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey!” she yelled over the music. “I was looking outside for you. We’re thinking of hitting Buzzbrews. It’s like five minutes away. You coming?”

Normally the answer to that question would have been “Of course I am—you’re my ride, you idiot,” but this was not normal. I shook my head and yelled back, “I’m not hungry. Call me when you guys are done, and I’ll meet you out front.”

She paused, obviously not expecting that answer any more than I was. “You sure?”

I assured her I was. “Just don’t forget me,” I said with a smile.

I watched my friends leave, all of them looking over their shoulders at me in confusion since they all knew I didn’t have a car. As soon as the last one was out the door, I turned and made my way to where Kelly was still staring up at the stripper. I had to give him credit; the dancer was gorgeous, but then again he got naked for money, so if he wasn’t it would have been weird. As I got closer, I noticed that the guy looked like an older version of Brad Greymark, almost. He had the same dark hair and clean-cut look that Brad had, though this guy obviously took way more steroids than Brad did. Looking at the trancelike state Kelly was in staring at the guy, I wondered if he looked at his friend the same way.

I took a deep breath and moved next to Kelly. “Didn’t anyone tell you if you keep making that face it will stick like that?”

The complete and abject horror on his face told me everything I needed to know in one expression. Kelly here was a closet case and was terrified that his straight little jock friends would find out. So he drove hours away just so he could sneak into a gay bar and stare at naked guys all night. He had thought that Dallas was far enough away that he would never get caught, but here I was, catching him and loving it.

“Cat got your tongue?” I asked him, relishing the power I had. “Oh wait, that would mean you like pussy, and we both know that’s not true.” I nodded up at the dancer. “He a good kisser? ’Cause you seemed to like it.”

Kelly tried to say something but failed miserably as his brain began to melt out his ears. His face was bright red, and he looked like he might pass out. Instead, he pushed past me and made a beeline toward the exit. I was hot on his tail. When we hit outside, I reached out and grabbed his shoulder, which I realized instantly was a mistake.

“Get off me, queer!” he roared at me, grabbing the attention of everyone outside smoking. Once he realized they were all looking at him, Kelly mumbled something under his breath and took off down the street.

I chased after him, though I couldn’t tell you why. It wasn’t like I cared if he was gay or not—well, cared past the point of laughing my ass off about it. Kelly was a first-class asshole, and everyone knew it. If it wasn’t for his skill on a football field, he would have been a moderately good-looking guy who couldn’t put three words together to form a sentence. But for some reason I chased him because I wanted to know more.

Kelly was the guy who shoved freshmen into trash cans every year because he thought it was funny. He was the guy who would slap your books to the ground for no reason whatsoever. If there was a guy who was a poster boy for being a complete and total tool and making other people miserable, Kelly was it. I swear to you that at the time, I didn’t have a thought about rubbing in the fact he was a closeted gay. I wasn’t chasing him so I could threaten to tell others I had seen him there; I really wasn’t. I just wanted to know
why
he was there, even though I knew most likely I was going to get my teeth knocked out for my trouble.

He had parked his truck three blocks from the club, no doubt hoping that was far enough away in case someone saw it. He fumbled with his keys as I stood behind him. “You don’t have to run away.” He spun around and glared at me, and I really thought he was going to punch me. “Seriously! It’s okay.”

He looked like a bull standing there, nostrils flaring as he huffed and puffed at me. I knew that look from my dad; he was too mad to even speak. His rage had overridden all rational functions, and all that was left was a red haze.

“No one else saw you,” I threw out there quickly. “I’ve never seen anyone from Foster there before, so you’re safe.”

That seemed to calm him down some, which gave him back the ability to talk. “I’m not a fag.”

It was such a stupid statement to make, I had to force myself not to laugh out loud at him. I mean, he was just in a gay bar kissing a stripper. I wanted to scream, “Dude, if you’re not a fag, you have some issues.” Instead I opted for nodding slowly. “Okay, cool. Never said you were.”

He looked around the parking lot, no doubt trying to see if there was anyone else nearby waiting to ambush him. “You tell anyone about this, and I’ll fucking end you.”