Tweaked (10 page)

The following morning, the stunned and terrified silence I'd come home to the night before has passed. Mom is angry. She starts in on me as soon as I walk into the kitchen. By the way she talks you'd think I'd been Chase's accomplice, maybe even encouraged him to take off.

“You knew he was barely holding on. And to take him directly to those horrible men and then give him so much money! What did you think would happen? What was going through your head? Did you want him to get into trouble?”

I want to remind her that he was already in the worst kind of trouble there is and that I'd certainly played no part in that. But she is in no mood to listen to reason, so I simply say, “I was only trying to help.”

“Help! Help him get addicted again?”

Okay, that I couldn't leave alone. “Do you really think that if it was stuck under his nose he would have turned it down?”

At that moment Dad walks into the room. “Arguing is not going to help,” he snaps.

Mom glares at him before turning back to the sink. It's obvious that neither of them have slept. For that matter, neither have I. I'd drifted off once or twice only to wake up in the middle of a bad dream, soaked in sweat. Fully awake, I remembered the bad dream was all too true.

Dad is not going to work today. He's going to meet with the police and talk to Chase's lawyer. He wants to find out if there is any chance that the charge against Chase can be downgraded to manslaughter. If he's convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, the amount of time he spends in prison could be substantially less.

Mom says that if ever there was a case that should be downgraded, it's Chase's.

“From our point of view, yes, but it might be hard to convince a jury. Richard Cross did die as a result of what Chase did. He didn't take the man's money, but because he's a drug addict, to a jury it will appear that it was done during the commission of a crime.”

“But it wasn't murder,” Mom insists. “He didn't mean to do it. It was the drugs.”

“That's no excuse!” argues Dad.

Mom is silent. Dad pours a cup of coffee. He sits at the table across from where I'm moving cereal around in a bowl.

“Look, a man is dead. You're going to have to get it through your head that Chase is responsible. It doesn't matter to the man's family if Chase planned it, if he was on drugs, or if the devil himself handed him the weapon; the result is still the same to them.”

There is less than a month left of school. Jack reminds me of this as we walk down the hall toward our lockers. I groan, because it suddenly occurs to me how I've let my schoolwork slide. I've completely forgotten that I have an English essay due today and I now discover that I'm two units behind in chemistry.

Jack sighs. “But I was hoping you could explain that last one to me. I thought we'd skip Spanish and go through it. Well, that's it, I guess I'm going down with you.” He closes his locker door and threads the lock in place. “So, did Chase ever show up?”

As we walk to Spanish class I tell Jack that he hasn't, that Richard Cross has died and about the new charges.

“He died? Wow, how are you dealing with that?”

“Well, let me see: Mom blames me for Chase taking off, Dad's a wreck and can't think about anything else, and now I'm way behind in school. I guess from any angle,” I say, “not very well.”

Ms. Fraser agrees to give me an extension on the English essay, but I'm dead in chemistry. Mr. Saik gives
us a pop quiz on the last two units, and I'm pretty much clueless. Jack looks over at me. He taps his pencil against his desk, frowning like he's also screwed, and it's all my fault.

I spend the next few days holed up in the basement trying to concentrate on my homework, but it's impossible to ignore the arguing coming from upstairs. The silence is just about as unbearable. When it becomes too much to ignore, I pick up my bass and crank up my amp until the whole house reverberates just so I don't go out of my mind.

Over the next week, Chase doesn't call or show up. The police check every day to see if he's contacted us. They tell Dad they continue to check all the known drug houses, but so far he hasn't turned up.

Mom spends her days driving around the city in search of him. She doesn't tell us where she goes, but we have a good idea. Dad tells her that what she's doing is dangerous. Other than that, he doesn't try to stop her, and anyway, she ignores what he says.

She carries a photo of Chase, not a recent photo, but an older picture in which his face looks healthy and he has a full set of teeth. There is no point in telling her that no one will recognize him from that.

My history final is scheduled for the morning of June 12. After walking into the kitchen to grab a bite to eat before school, I come across Mom sitting
blurry-eyed and sobbing at the table. I've reached the point where I don't say anything—there is no point asking why today is any worse than yesterday. I pour myself a glass of juice.

“Do you know what today is?” she asks.

I shrug. “It's the twelfth.”

She is holding something, a folded piece of paper. I glance at the envelope on the table in front of her. It's an old letter from Chase. The postmark tells me it was written when he was at boy scout camp.

“It's Chase's eighteenth birthday.”

“Oh, right,” I say. I had forgotten.

“I always thought he'd be in university by now, or at least heading off. He'd have his whole life ahead of him, a career—your dad and I always thought he'd be good at business. He was so bright and personable even as a little boy. Maybe he'd get married.” She starts to cry.

“Mom,” I say, but I stop at that. There really is nothing more to be said.

She wipes her cheek with the palm of her hand. “The prosecuting lawyer and the family are applying to have Chase's case moved to adult court.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if they're successful, he'll be tried as if he were an adult, even though the incident happened when he was technically still a youth.”

She still refers to Chase cracking Richard Cross over the head with a bottle as “the incident.” Even now that the man has died.

“If he's convicted,” she continues, “he'll go to prison with men who have committed the most horrible crimes.”

She is obviously waiting for some reassurance, or at least a reaction. But what can I say? Chase too has committed the most horrible of crimes. “That would suck,” is all I can think of to say.

She looks over at me. “It would suck? That's all you can say, Gordie? Your brother is likely to go to prison where he could be beaten and abused, and that's all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say? I can't change the law. If that's the way it works, how can I change anything?”

“You could care!”

“I do care.”

“Well, you sure don't show it. You don't talk about it. You don't discuss how we're going to find him or how we're going to get him home. In fact, if it wasn't for you—if you hadn't taken Chase out that night, he'd still be here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and Richard Cross would still be dead!”

Mom glares at me before she starts to cry again. I hadn't meant to hurt her, but how can she possibly blame me? And why is it that Chase is the good guy
and I'm the rotten one? I heft my backpack over my shoulder and leave.

I totally screw up my exam. I can't concentrate; dates and battles all run together, and I can't write a sentence that makes any sense. For the first time in my life I worry about whether or not I'm going to pass a course rather than just how well I've done.

Two days later we get the news that the prosecutor has been successful. If Chase hadn't taken off he might have had a chance, but the judge rules he will be tried in adult court. Mom and Dad are devastated; not only will his sentence likely be much stiffer and he'll have to serve it in prison, but he can now be named in news reports.

Dad sits with his head in his hands after reading the story the following morning. It is the first time Chase's name has appeared in print. It's a Saturday. Within an hour the phone rings several times: Grandma, Aunt Gail, friends and neighbors, people Dad works with; a few even come by the house. They are all so solemn, like we've lost a member of the family, which I suppose, in a way, we have.

Monday morning I am sitting in physics, the only class I'm not flunking, when something brushes against my shoulder. I look down. A paper airplane has landed on my desk. Mr. Dublenko has his back to the class as he works through a problem on the whiteboard. I turn
around to see Jason Dodds and Brian Zimmerman where they sit at the back of the class, smirking. Dodds tips back on two legs of his chair. “Psycho,” he hisses.

I unfold the airplane. It is the newspaper story about Chase.

“Mr. Jessup.”

I look up. Mr. Dublenko is standing next to my desk.

“Perhaps you'd like to share your airmail with the rest of the class.”

I swear, teachers are born with an extra hinge in the back of the necks. How else could he have possibly seen that and been next to my desk so fast?

“No,” I say, “I'd rather not.” I smash the paper into a wad and stuff it in my binder. Before he has a chance to send me out of the room, I pick up my books and leave the class.

I don't really blame Mr. Dublenko. I like him, but he's one of those guys who is so absorbed in his subject that he probably reads nothing but textbooks from morning until night. I'm sure he knows nothing about Chase. What really surprises me is that Dodds or Zimmerman actually read the newspaper.

Half an hour later Ms. Larson tracks me down in the library. “I had a call from Mr. Dublenko,” she says. “Will you come down to my office? I'd like to talk.” Ms. Larson looks like a new blossom in old snow. Her dress
is crimson, a bright spot against the backdrop of old books, and she wears a silky white handkerchief around her neck.

“It was really no big deal,” I tell her. “I'll be there tomorrow. I just don't want to go back to class right now.”

She shakes her head. “It's more than that, Gordie. We need to talk. I'm afraid you didn't do very well on your last two exams.”

“Yeah, I know. All right.” I get up and walk with her to her office.

“Have a seat,” she says. She sits at her desk but pulls her chair out from behind it so she is sitting across from me.

“I'm concerned,” she begins, “because it's not like you to do so poorly. Now, I'm not trying to pry, but I understand your brother has got himself into some trouble. Do you think that might be affecting your work?”

Affecting? How about the cause of it!

“Yes,” I say, “it's a little difficult to concentrate, to say the least.”

She leans forward, laying her hand across my arm. “Would you feel comfortable talking about it?”

Her silver bracelet is cool against my skin. Again, I think how telling her about Chase would be like spitting in her face. Everything he's done and turned into
is so ugly. She is so tidy and neat. I shrug. “There's not a lot to say. I would like to know if I have any options.”

Ms. Larson straightens, but her tone doesn't change. She doesn't seem angry that I don't want to talk about it. “Of course. I've talked to your teachers. Mr. Saik is willing to give you a make-up exam and Ms. Fraser will postpone the
Hamlet
essay. My only concern is whether your circumstances will change enough to allow you to study the material. If you don't think it's likely, or that you could be ready in a week, you might have to take summer school.”

Summer school? Only losers have to repeat a course in summer school. “I'll take a shot at the exams.”

Ms. Larson says she will set them up. She then tells me to try and concentrate on my own health. Not that I should ignore the problems around me, but there are circumstances where we need to look out for ourselves first.

It is nearly eight o'clock when I head home from work two days later. The first thing I notice when I approach the house is that the side door to the garage is ajar. I stick my head inside. The garage is empty, which means my parents aren't at home. The door between the garage and house is open—the lock has been jimmied. The pocketknife Dad keeps on his workbench lies on
the garage floor. This is my first clue. Chase knows the lock is faulty and that the knife works if it is used in a certain way.

I push the door open slowly. He might still be in the house, and there is no telling what state he will be in. He's desperate; there's no question about that. Why else would he risk showing up at home with the entire city police force looking for him? The kitchen is the first room I enter, and it's a shambles, like it has been ransacked by a hungry bear. The refrigerator and the cupboard doors are all open: wrappers and scraps and peels, shrunken from hours exposed to the air, are scattered across the floor. Chase has pigged-out, probably just after Mom had left, earlier in the morning. He was coming down from a long high, tweaking, ready to crash, which would explain his desperation and his appetite.

I pass through the rest of the house in a daze. I can't even guess what is missing from Mom and Dad's room, but it has been torn apart. Mom's jewelry box has been dumped upside down on her dresser. The doors of Dad's armoire are open and the contents are strewn across the floor. I continue down the hall to the living room.

The destruction is erratic, and it would have required a huge amount of strength to shatter and overturn some of the things he did. I walk gingerly around the broken
fragments of the glass coffee table to where the stereo cabinet lays on its side. Adjacent to the fireplace, a very large bookshelf that had been bolted to the wall has been ripped off, and I wonder what he expected to find. I step over the heap of books and smashed ornaments on my way to the dining room.