I woke up hungover and with a bitter acid taste in my mouth. For five days in a row.
It reminded me of the day after Win died. I was low from spell side effects and then I drank half a bottle of vodka and tore down the treehouse in the backyard. I was lucky I didn’t break my neck, crying and drinking and ripping rotting boards out of the branches, tearing up the skin on my hands, but it was hard to feel lucky about anything when the unluckiest thing in the world had happened.
See, I remembered that horrible last night. The alcohol only dims so much. In the morning everything’s crystal clear again.
After the hekamist told me about Ari’s memory spell and I kissed Kay, I stopped going to the hardware store. Stopped going anywhere, really, except the living room, kitchen, and bathroom. It was too much trouble to climb the stairs to my room. Besides, there would be another terrible movie on TV or someone to kill in a video game or beer to steal from the fridge instead.
My mom tried to cajole me into doing something, but she was easy to ignore. She’d bring me a hamburger or sit on the couch next to me or shout at me from the doorway. Boring.
“Here’s some corn on the cob,” she said one night, or day, I wasn’t quite sure. She placed a plate on the coffee table next to my bare feet. “You should eat something other than chips.”
I pushed the pate away with my heel.
“This Howard Hughes act is getting old, Markos. Eat.”
“I’m not eating anything you bring me.”
She drew back. “Why not?”
“What if you put a ‘get happy’ spell in the butter?”
She went white; it felt . . . not good, but satisfying.
“When you stole that money from me,” she said, shards of glass in each word, “I let you off easy. I regret that. You’ve been through a lot, but we are not discussing that money or what it’s for or who it’s for. Ever.”
“Like I give a damn.” I pulled the smelly fleece blanket over my head to block out the rest of whatever it was she’d come to say.
Then my brothers descended on me, oldest to youngest. Brian came in his uniform and lectured on “manning up” and “letting go.” Dev tried to joke with me, going after my fat ass sitting doing nothing, then my wussy feelings getting in the way of life, then the unlikelihood of my ugly face getting a girl even if I did manage to find the shower—and then he stopped, because I threw a stone coaster into the wall next to his head.
When Cal finally came to see me, I was tired of it. I didn’t give him a chance to try to cajole me out of my chair. Knowing Cal, his tactic would probably be smiling and tripping over something for a laugh. That was Cal—probably the most easygoing of us. Never held a grudge. Didn’t deserve my black mood.
I mean, when we were kids, after our dad died, he went through a period where he scared the shit out of me—jumping off the garage roof onto his skateboard, stealing stuff from the hardware store, trying to impress Brian and Dev’s friends by drinking until he puked—but by the time he was in high school and I was in junior high, he’d mellowed. Become a real Waters brother like the rest of them.
And he’d been hanging out with Kay. He’d gone to the carnival with her. She thought they were dating. Just the thought of her stirred a sick feeling in my gut that I quieted with half a can of beer.
Cal looked as shitty as I felt, skin clammy and eyes unfocused. He swayed in the doorway to the living room.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
He coughed into his arm, a rattling, wet noise.
“Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
“Cold,” he said.
“Go take a nap.”
“Supposed to talk to you. Because you’re so sad.”
I threw my half-full can of beer down. It spilled onto the carpet. “I kissed your girlfriend. You gonna do something about it?”
Cal shrugged. “She’s not my girlfriend. Haven’t even seen her in a week.”
I hated how easy it was for him to say that. Like it was obvious. Of course she wasn’t his girlfriend. Of course it didn’t matter. I wanted to not care, too.
But wanting to not care is just another kind of caring.
“Tell me what’s going on. We’ll figure it out,” Cal said, wiping his nose on his sweatshirt.
Maybe some other guy—maybe Brian or Dev—would’ve taken him up on the offer. Talked it out. Analyzed the problem. Cried. Felt better. Maybe that would’ve helped a normal brother feel less alone. Maybe I would’ve done it, too, if they had bothered to try to reach out to me at any point in the past two months, and if I hadn’t been so committed to living on this couch and being pissed at the world.