Tweaked (14 page)

Thursday evening I get my paycheck. Six more weeks and I can afford to buy back my guitar. On Friday I have no homework after school and enough time before work to make my daily trek to the pawnshop. My guitar has been moved again. Not only that, it's plugged into an amplifier. I lift it from the guitar stand.

“Someone was playing it,” I comment out loud.

The clerk is sorting through a pile of old coins. “Yup, I got an offer.”

My stomach drops.

“Don't worry. As you can see, it's still here. I told him I'd think about it.”

There is still hope, but I doubt there is very much. “What was the offer?”

The clerk wipes his hands on a dirty rag. “I'm not sure how that's your business. But I'll tell you anyway. He offered me one grand.”

“But that's what you said you're asking the last time I was in.”

“That's what I told you I wanted. I told him my original price, fifteen hundred.”

For whatever reason I seem to be getting special consideration. Maybe the guy is more human than his business makes him seem. “I got paid today. It's still going to be a few weeks, but I'm saving everything. Will you hang on to it for me, even if he comes back at that price?”

“Like I told you before, I'm a business, not a charity. I'll decide when and if he comes back.”

He swipes the separated piles of coins from the counter into boxes while I play one of the songs we've been rehearsing on my bass. I'm about to set it down when the door opens and a guy, probably in his mid-twenties, enters the store. He carries a stereo amplifier. The cords drag behind him and the plug bounces across the floor as he crosses the room. After setting the amplifier on the counter next to the clerk's boxes he mutters, “How much?” His hair is long but thin with a yellow waxy patch of skin showing through the top.

The clerk makes a point of moving the coins out of his reach. As he does, his customer glances behind and around him. There is no mistaking the paranoid darting eyes of an addict.

“Where did you get it?”

The addict shrugs as he runs a hand beneath his nose. He has trouble coming up with an immediate answer. Finally he says, “I got all the equipment I need. I got a new one. I don't need this one anymore.”

It's a decent amplifier, not a piece of junk, probably around five hundred dollars new.

“Does it work?” The clerk wiggles the cords, testing for obvious loose connections.

“Like a charm. It's brand new. Worth at least three hundred.”

The clerk glances quickly at him when he quotes the price but says nothing as he turns it over. He's studying the small silver plate stamped with a serial number. Something else catches his eye. He flips the piece of equipment upright again. “Sorry, I can't take it.”

“Okay, one hundred. But you know it's worth more than that.”

“Look, buddy, it's not worth anything to me. It's engraved with the name of a school. It's stolen property, and I'm not buying it.”

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, the thin man doesn't reply right away but paces before the counter. He's clearly agitated. I doubt it's at the prospect of dropping the price further, but more likely because he might not be shooting up within the next fifteen minutes like he'd anticipated when he'd walked through the door.
His pace quickens. My skin jumps when he turns suddenly and slams his fist on the counter. “Are you calling me a thief?”

Appearing unperturbed, the clerk leans forward. “I'm not calling you anything—yet. I said this piece of equipment belongs to the school engraved on the back. See this: WSS Music Department. I don't know how you got it, and I frankly don't care. But I'm not giving you money unless you can produce a document with that same name on it. Now get out of here.”

The man lifts his palms in the air in a gesture of submission. “All right, all right. You win. I'll take fifty, no less.” It's an effort for him to slow down and try to sound reasonable. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead.

“You'll take nothing, like I said. Now get out of here.” The clerk begins moving the coin boxes to shelves, indicating the conversation is over.

The addict remains planted where he is, unsure of what to do, wanting that fix. He walks to the door without the amplifier, then back to the counter again. “Okay, yeah, I got it from the Dumpster behind the school. I don't know why they'd throw out a perfectly good amp, but they did. Twenty bucks and it's yours. Come on, twenty bucks, that's nothing to you. I need it for my mother. She's sick. She can't stop coughing. She's on welfare because of a bad hip that won't let her work.”

“Get going, buddy—now—or I'll have to have you removed.” The clerk picks up the phone in a threat to call the police.

I don't move. I'm not sure how I can help or why I should care—but it doesn't seem right to walk off and leave anyone alone with a nutjob like that. I flick the switch on the amplifier off; the sound cracks in the air.

The addict turns. For the first time, his eyes fall on me.

“Take it,” the clerk orders, pushing the amplifier toward him. “Try the flea market.”

The addict looks me over. He then turns back to the counter, picks up the amplifier and leaves. Once the door has closed behind him I move to set my bass back on the guitar stand where I'd found it. It dawns on me that I'm holding it like a weapon. When had I raised it, ready to swing if he'd become violent? I place it on the stand and turn to leave.

“Where do you work?” The clerk sets the last box of coins on the shelf behind him.

“Barnes Hardware.”

“Huh, you're in retail too. Ever run into customers like that?”

I shrug. “There's the odd difficult one, yeah. But we don't see any like that.”

After opening a drawer beneath the shelf, he pulls out a stack of tickets, shuffles through them and
removes one. “You said you got paid today. How much was your paycheck?”

“Two hundred and fifty dollars. Like I told you, I'll have the money in six more weeks.”

He leans forward, propping his elbows on the counter, still holding the ticket. “Is the money from your paycheck in the bank?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Why?”

“I'll take two hundred dollars for that guitar. If you pay me now, you can take it with you.”

I don't know what to say.

“Well, take it or leave it. I'm not going to give you a better price. That's what I gave your brother.”

“You paid my brother two hundred—for my P-bass?”

“What was I supposed to do? He took my first offer. He grabbed the cash and didn't even wait for the ticket. Should I have said ‘Hang on, I'd like to give you more'?”

“Of course not.” I dig my bank card from out of my pocket.

Once he has put my card through and debited my account, he hands it back to me. “Good, there you go, it's all yours. Thanks for your business. Now, take your guitar and keep it in a safe place.”

The next week passes quickly. I am rarely home during the day. I'm either at school or work, and since I got my P-bass back, The Pogos practice every night. Most nights I don't get home until one or two o'clock in the morning. I often find Dad asleep in the chair in front of the
TV
. Even in sleep, his face doesn't relax. Chase never leaves his mind. He may show up in his dreams as some strange creature he can't get away from or maybe some weird situation he's stuck in, but it will still be Chase. Rather than wake him up, I throw a blanket over him, turn off the
TV
and switch off the lights.

On a Saturday morning in mid-July, Detective Keppler sits at our kitchen table and tells Dad that he's frustrated. Mom is not around. Aunt Gail has insisted on taking her to have her hair done. She told Mom that even if she didn't care what she looked like, we do. When that didn't convince her, she told her she was taking her anyhow.

Detective Keppler is confident that they'll get Chase eventually. He's just frustrated that it's taking so long. In the meantime, he's been taking some heat from Richard Cross's family, who don't understand how it can be so difficult to bring in a drug addict. How could an entire police force be given the slip by a high school dropout with scrambled brains? He doesn't actually say this. He's much kinder, but in fact I know that's what Richard Cross's family means.

“They don't understand how these guys work. Chase has probably been in one place since he ran. I doubt that he's moved very much. We've been out day and night asking questions, but none of the regulars on the streets have seen him, and he hasn't used any of the shelters or accessed community services. So far, he's left nothing for us to trace.”

All I know is that I wouldn't want to be in the detective's position, going back and forth between two families, one dealing with a murder in the family, the other dying a slow death.

He is certain that Chase will surface when he gets desperate enough, like when he began calling Mom from the drug store. It's just a matter of when that will be.

It turns out to be the following day. It's a Sunday, and I am working alone at the hardware store. Ralph has
taken the entire day off, leaving me in charge like he's been training me to do, and Jade is visiting her aunt in Seattle for a few days. It's a warm sunny day and business has been slow since I opened at noon. People would rather be out in the sun than inside, unclogging their drains.

It's around three o'clock when I hear the jingle of the bell attached to the door. I am moving boxes in the storeroom. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I walk through the doorway to the front of the store. At first I think I am seeing things. A ghost is coming toward the counter. It's running toward me: a skeleton covered in jaundiced skin. Quick and spastic, it has started talking before I realize it's my brother. Still, I can't stop staring at this weird and jerky marionette. There are deep hollows where his cheeks used to be and his arms—dangling from the sleeves of his T-shirt—are freakishly thin. A ripe odor makes me take a step back when he comes up close.

“Gordie, I need money. Five hundred.” As he speaks, his eyes sweep the store in a paranoid way.

“Chase?” I recognize him, yet I can't take my eyes from him. He is missing more teeth, and the sores on his face are infected. So are the tracks on his arms. I don't respond to what he says immediately, because I am trying to comprehend how it can be that this—this withered human standing before me—is why my
mother is ready for a mental hospital. He is the reason my father is selling the house. He is the cause of all the arguing and cruel words that have passed between us. Everything my parents owned, everything I had saved for, everything we had been, has been sucked into the wasted vortex that is Chase.

“They're going to kill me if I don't get it.”

“Who's going to kill you?”

“Ratchet and DC.” Chase turns and glances over his shoulder toward the street.

I follow his gaze. Through the window I spot the black Passat parked next to the curb, right in front of the store. Ratchet leans lazily against the car, waiting.

As soon as I see the car, the strange feeling that his appearance is a nightmare lifts and my adrenaline kicks in. “You idiot!” I reach over and grab the neck of his filthy T-shirt. “What did you bring them here for?” I barely touch him, but he loses his balance and falls back into a shelf of belt sanders.

“I didn't. They drove me here. They said they knew where I could get the money.”

I gape at Chase and his hollow stare. Acid creeps up from my stomach, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. I press the palms of my hands hard against the counter. “I already gave you all my money, you freak. Or have you smoked that memory away with everything else?”

Chase starts toward the cash register. “Come on, there's got to be a lot of cash in here. Open it. You must have at least five hundred. I'll pay you back.”

“You'll pay me back? Get away from there. That's not my money.”

It all happens so fast that I have to think quickly. It crosses my mind that I could give him the money and then call Detective Keppler, but I've already played that part and it was a total bust. He can't be trusted even for a matter of seconds, and what if he does take off and the cops lose the Passat when they take after them? It's bad enough to lose my own money. I can't risk Ralph's, not to mention my job and everything that goes along with it.

I also consider tackling him and pinning him down while I call the police. But Ratchet and DC are watching. If they see me make a move toward Chase or the phone, they'll come busting in.

I can come up with only one solution. I walk toward the front door at my regular pace so as not to alarm Ratchet. I turn the dead bolt. Ratchet looks up.

“What are you doing?” Chase's eyes skitter between me and the door.

“I'm giving you a choice. They won't kill you if they can't get their hands on you.”

“Is there another way out?” He looks in the direction of the doorway to the storeroom, the one I had come through.

I close that door and lock it with my key. “Yeah, but it's not through here. Listen to me. This is what I'm going to do. Ratchet and DC can't get in. I'm going to call the police, and I'm going to keep the front door locked until they get here. You sit down and just wait. It's the only way. They're going to get you sooner or later. You'll have to go to jail, but if you go back out on the street—if you go out to Ratchet without the money now—you said yourself that you're as good as dead.”

As I speak, Chase's eyes grow wide. I should have known that he was tweaking. Every muscle twitches and his eyes quiver as he tries to process what I have said. I don't know what he hears, but I immediately realize that I shouldn't have told him my plan. I already know well enough there is no reasoning with a drug addict, especially one that's been pumped for four or five days and now wants nothing more in the world than that next hit. Trapped and knowing it, he reacts with the same animal instincts he's been running on since he'd first taken off.