Still Waters

P
HILOMEL
B
OOKS

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Copyright © 2015 by Ash Parsons.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parsons, Ash.

Still waters / Ash Parsons. pages cm Summary: “High-schooler Jason, who lives with a drunk, abusive father at home, hopes to earn enough money to escape with his younger sister, Janie, by being tough at school, but the stakes grow ever more dangerous and soon even his fists and ability to think on his feet are not enough to keep his head above water.”—Provided by publisher.

[1. Violence—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. Child abuse—Fiction. 4. Family violence—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.1.P37St 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014020637

ISBN 978-0-698-18593-7

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

H
ere’s what you need to know when you get in a fight: You are going to get hit. It’s going to happen. No matter how good you are, no matter how fast you punch or how well you block. Sometimes you just have to get hit.

What’s important is how you take it.

I used to get in a lot of fights. Now the only hits I can get in are when the spontaneous fights break out in the boys’ bathroom. Some bright spark came up with this lame idea: Go to the bathroom, turn out the lights, and start hitting the first body you find. You can always tell when the fights are happening because guys will come back into class breathing heavily, smiling, and sometimes with red splotches on their cheeks or favoring their stomachs a little. I swear this one guy came back with a handprint on his face.

The teacher didn’t notice.

I always ask for a bathroom pass when there’s a dark-fight going on. Although I sort of think they know it’s me when I get in. I land a few hits, and all of a sudden there’s the flash of hall light as the door opens and the other guys go back to class.

I still get a few hits in, though. A few really hard hits can be enough.

I like school, and not just because of the bathroom fights. It’s quiet. I can sleep, and people usually leave me alone. Every now and then a jock’ll bump me in the hall, but I can handle that. And they all know I can fight—something I learned from my dad.

That sounds stupid, like some gauzy film shot in black and white and there’s this father teaching little junior how to make a fist.

My dad taught me how to take a punch.

That’s pretty important in a fight because, like I said, you’re going to get hit and what’s important is how you take it.

If my dad lands one and you take it right, showing impact but not crumpling, he’ll maybe leave off, even if you take a swing back. He might shove you away. Stop at one.

With him there’s no getting out of it, anyway. No putting it off or talking your way out. No running—it’ll just be there for you later. He holds a grudge like a knife, blade out, pale fist bowing around the handle, ready to mark you.

It happened last month. I got home and my dad was already there, which was the first sign of trouble. The second sign? Empty bottles clustered on the battered table, an arsenal of tiny missiles.

So when he started in, how he was tired of waiting for me to make some real money, tired of me wasting my time with school, I already knew what was coming. And that there was no way out but through.

Instead of handing over the twenty I keep for emergencies like a good little boy, I told him what a crock it was. That Uncle Sam, not my dad’s sorry ass, kept Janie and me fed.

He lunged, shoving me back, fist cocked at his side. I planted my feet and leaned forward while twisting and tensing my abdomen for the strike when it came. Which it did.

It always does.

A lot of guys don’t have a clue how to get hit. They aren’t prepared, haven’t tensed their bodies, aren’t ready for the pain. And no kid I’ve ever fought can throw a good punch anyway—not a real one.

One time I fought this martial arts puke. He thought he was Billy Badass and was talking trash everywhere. I was fine until he brought my sister into it, and since all the other idiots thought we should fight, we did. He fought to prove himself, and I fought so everyone would leave me and Janie alone.

It only took a few hits.

This puke was blocking my test punches, and he looked good doing it. My blocks are short and tight to my body, but his arced in these graceful curves, leaving his body open. It was easy to spot when and where to hit him.

I let it play out. Even though I knew how to get him. Because I kind of wanted him to hit me. It was just one of those days—I knew it would help.

I relaxed. I dropped my arms.

He pressed his entire body forward. His fist drove at my stomach, turning as he punched. I thought,
Here’s something,
because it looked good. I tensed my stomach.

But when it landed I started laughing.

That’s probably why everyone except Clay still thinks I’m psycho, because I let him hit me two more times while I just stood there laughing. Because his punches were nothing. They looked great but stopped short—a little thump, like getting hit by a paperback book.

At first I wondered why such a strong-looking punch whiffed. Then I realized that he’d never really hit anything. He was one of those guys you see in strip-mall karate places, punching at the air and pulling their punches when they face each other. His punch was like that. Robbed of its own force. I laughed and hit him so hard he doubled over. I thought about my sister, what he’d said about her, and broke his nose.

Janie wasn’t happy with me, so I felt like an idiot, but it was almost worth it because everyone pretty much leaves her alone now.

It would have been totally worth it, except I was suspended for two days. The suspension was nothing, but I ended up staying out the rest of the week because of broken ribs.

They didn’t come from the fight.

That was my second year in high school, and no one’s fought me since. I kind of miss it. I’m not a bully or anything, but it can feel good to take care of yourself. It can feel good to have some power for a change. But I don’t pick fights or mess with people. If they leave me alone, I leave them alone.

There’s nothing worse than a bully.

That’s what most everyone thinks I am. A lazy bully. A should-be dropout who somehow hasn’t gotten a clue. Teachers are afraid of me—ever since eighth grade. Which makes sense. Or they see me sleeping in their classes and act surprised when I actually turn in some homework or do okay on the tests. Although Clay gets most of the credit for the me-doing-homework part.

Teachers don’t get that I actually like it at school.

I stay as long as I can, and so I end up walking home every day. Sometimes I go to the old gym and work out, or I walk to my under-the-table job at the building supply store. But mostly I go hang at Clay’s house and play video games.

I met Clay at the start of seventh grade. We were all new to the junior high, and there was some stupid hazing getting handed out, but as the new kid in town, Clay wasn’t just new to the upperclassmen, he was new to us, too. That made it worse for him. For everyone else, the hazing was lame—shoving in the hall, pushing runts into lockers. Pack dynamics.

I already had a bit of a reputation, and I had begun to cement it on that first day. Punched an eighth-grader in the stomach when he got in my face, doubled him over, and walked away before a teacher saw. It was enough that unless I flirted with the wrong girl, I was pretty much going to be left alone.

The day I first met Clay, I was in a good mood. Having a pretty great day.

Not Clay, though. He was trying to get to class and the eighth- and ninth-grade pre-dropouts were blocking his way. They wouldn’t let him through to the hall. Stupid, proud fool that he was, Clay would not back down, turn, and go the long way around. And he wouldn’t throw a punch, either, but I didn’t know that at first.

Let me tell you, Clay shines like a new penny in a grate, and that is not a good thing.

Anyone could tell Clay had a future. That he had someone at home who cared about him. But he didn’t fit in with the preps; his clothes weren’t that nice. He didn’t fit in with any of the groups. That was enough for most people.

That was enough for me, too. Just in a different way. I walked right up behind him. Like I needed to get through the door, too.

It went about like you’d expect.

When the leader finally stepped to me and threw a punch, you could see it coming a mile away. I slapped it aside, pivoted, and drilled a fist into his solar plexus. Gasping, eyes big like he was trying to catch his slammed-out breath through them, the bully stumbled aside. The others backed up, except for one who lunged at Clay. He chunked a lousy punch at Clay’s face, mostly hitting his chin. Clay fell down and didn’t get up. Just put his hands up, saying, “I won’t fight you.”

The second guy blinked at him, like he was trying to do fractions in his head. Then he realized his friends were moving away, and I wasn’t.

He left with the rest of them.

Clay stood up, and I handed him his bag. We walked through the doors. Once we were on the other side and down the hall a ways, Clay stopped and glared at me.

“I suppose you think that makes us friends now?”

I will never forget it. A busted lip, blood dripping on his new shirt. And he was pissed off at me.

I couldn’t help it. My lips twitched up, and it felt like a bit in my mouth, in a good way, like something was taking hold, steering the smile onto my face. Sticking it there. Nailing it in place. Something you couldn’t even think about. Something full and inflating—filling up the empty places and under it, a laugh.

I worked really hard not to laugh. I didn’t want him to think I was laughing at him.

He had that look in his eyes. Like he knew he was being stupid but was still too fired-up-proud to care. Like it was at war in him. A battle for his expression.

“Well, yeah?” I made it a question. Trying not to laugh. Because I liked this kid. Skinny and on the short side, and absolutely disregarding that fact in the face of those bullies, not backing down, even if he wouldn’t fight.

How the hell do you not want to be that guy’s friend?

He glared at me, but the smile was sliding in, and the laughter, too. And that’s when we became friends.

To almost everyone else, Clay is practically invisible. He’s still a little short, but he slouches so it’s hard to tell how much. He’s rail thin with shaggy hair, and he’s got this narrow face. It makes him look younger than he is.

But he’s dead-loyal and smart. Like I said, he’s one of those weird ones that you can tell has a future, and yet he somehow doesn’t count in the here and now. Like someone just randomly decides this. And he has to wear that until he graduates. Apart from Nico and Spud, he’s the only one I hang out with at school. And since he doesn’t count, it doesn’t affect my reputation in a single solitary way that I have a real friend. People think I’m psycho. That’s fine with me.

When it gets near enough to dinnertime, I usually head home, from Clay’s house or from work. Because you don’t want to get home after my father, or he’ll notice you: ice-blue eyes tracking as you walk in, his thick, mortuary-pale fists clenched.

During the day he sleeps but is gone by the time school gets out, heading to meet his buddies. They’ll go work out at a run-down gym that looks like a prison yard moved indoors and is filled with meaty juice-heads just like him.

He spends the rest of his time at the strip joint out near the airport. And I can’t catalog his activities there, except I know he runs book on any fights or games going on and loans money to people stupid or desperate enough to take it. And of course sells drugs, which is how he got collared last time.

He gets the girls to bring free drinks and give free dances, his sorry racket enough to make him sugar daddy for life to the spent girls who work there.

But he’s a low-level crook, ousted when it gets to the most lucrative time—night—having to hand over all but a small percent of the take to the next guy. All of which means when he heads home he’s been drinking, is pissed off, and you do not want him to notice you.

So that’s how it all started. Like any other day, I was walking home from Clay’s, heading deep into crap land. Trying to ignore the screaming little kids. Trying not to think.

Which is pretty easy, actually, when you’re walking into the repetitive nothing of government housing: all redbrick and flaking paint, and iron railings corralling concrete porch steps.

A long, nothing walk, long because Lincoln Green is kind of big, the whole thing dumped off this five-lane drag. The central road into Lincoln Green, named after a civil rights leader, naturally, spirals around these semi-circular pods, each facing the road with the single-level duplex units ringing the two-level townhouse units in the middle—which is where we live. I guess the single levels are on the perimeter so that their view won’t get blocked. Because everyone loves to stare at traffic or a concrete drainage ditch deep enough to float a ski boat if there was ever enough rain.

Yeah, swift thinking. It gets better. Each little semicircular pod u-bends toward the street and each other, arcing around a pathetic patch of grass and dirt. Like the patch is this luxury that deserves spotlighting. Like the curve is beautiful. It’s supposed to feel all spacious:
You’re not trapped at all, see? You’ve got this
patch.
Choked with weeds and sun-bleached toys, but it’s there.

Behind the buildings is a little access road with parking spaces—so there’s this double rainbow of crap: scrub yard, old AC units, laundry, cars, salvaged grills, sofas and plastic lawn chairs, busted window screens, cinder blocks, and people. Everywhere.

The best part of the crap-rainbows design is it actually amplifies noise. Late-night fights, people screaming on their porches, girls shrieking and pulling hair, kids crying, men and women throwing down—you can hear it all.

Which is how I heard the thrum of the car engine, even over the screaming kids.

The car pulled up behind me, the crunch of tires on gravel announcing the slither to the edge. I moved onto the scrub and waited for it to prowl by.

“Hey! Jason!”

I turned and saw Michael Springfield shouting out the window of his vintage Mustang.

You wouldn’t normally find guys like Michael or cars like that within one hundred yards of public housing. Prom King Jock—sandy hair flopping into dark eyes, like a movie star. Girls thought so, too, but Cyndra was his steady girlfriend.

She wasn’t the obvious choice for the job, until you looked at her. She wasn’t a cheerleader, she wasn’t going to be in the homecoming court, she wouldn’t give a damn about painting banners or shaking pom-poms. There was an edge to her, beautiful and cold, like a dagger made of ice.

She sat in the passenger seat, watching me with emerald eyes and a scythe-curved smile. The fingers of one hand toyed with the large diamond stud in her ear.