Something of a Kind

chapter 20 | NOAH

Glancing in the mirror pinned to the closet, Noah turned, observing the angles of the splint. He’d nearly bit through his tongue when they reset it, his jaw still aching from grinding teeth. Once it was in, most of it went away. A dull throb and the threatening looseness of the joint remained. When he was still half in shock, keeping the arm at his side was instinctual. Without the initial agony keeping it sedentary, it had already gotten maddening.

Aly was the first thing that softened him since he had the band of labels snapped around his wrist. With her gone, the annoyance was creeping back.

He turned with a smile, the door slamming. Instead of promised coffee and Aly’s beam, Lee stood with an unseasonable faux-fur lined coat lining his misshapen frame, covered in sweat and irritation. With his gilded bolo tie fastened around the lapel of a black polo and half-rimmed wire glasses perched on projected cheekbones, he looked like someone’s hard-laboring grandfather, rather than an angry brute with primed lectures sliding across a tongue that never spoke silver.

Only rusted and charred.

Noah asked, “How is she?”

“How is she? How are you? You think you can go prancing in the forest, ignoring the words of the elders?” Lee yelled, “You allow her to affect you until you forget about your family. You forget your brain. Now, you’ve hurt yourself. It proves what I say.”

Noah chuckled blackly. “You’re worried about me getting hurt?”

In a fluid motion, his free hand gripped the hem of his shirt. As Noah lifted it to his ribs, he revealed bruised muscle. The center was a harsh violet, the warped edges stretched through phases of reds and greenish yellows, like an alien sun. Scratching the unwashed pony tail at the nape of his neck, Lee raised his pressed-in brow, thin lips crunching in a scowl. “The Gigit did this as well?”

Irritated and glaring, Noah replied, “No, you did.”

“I didn’t get you so hard,” Lee scoffed, crossing his arms and resting them on his pregnant beer belly. “Your drama… blind, filled with ignorance.”

“Yes, you did,” Noah insisted, an edge to his voice. His eyes fleeted outside, conviction building as he saw employees in hearing range. Gritting his teeth, Noah added, “You always do.”

Lee’s fingers, like grainy sausage, moved to cover his neck. It was a nervous tick, self-conscious of the moles peppering his windpipe. Noah recognized it from public speaking, when various groups would congregate to the diner, sitting around a table and staring up at him with sour expressions, expectant.

Finally, he grumbled, “A strong boy fights. It is nature, how we survive. I make you strong. But you repay me and my wife with running around with the Glass daughter. Was it not made clear to you that the Glass man was not accepted? That he has intervened, made demands, and fought to degrade us? You ignore my warnings, you ignore”

“I haven’t ignored anything.” Noah argued, swallowing the scathing comments that roused on first instinct. It was difficult not to spit in the man’s face, to threaten to teach him the strength he claimed to share like beating a kid around was a noble act of discipline. The man was no different than Tony. Their delusions were the same.

Noah found himself disgusted whenever he gaged the situation. He and Sarah, Luke and Owen, now even Aly… they were always shoved in the middle of their games. As long as he trapped in the morbid world of Ashland, it would always be the same.

No wonder Sarah tried to get out. I don’t blame her for not waiting. Even hiding, I always play in.

Spending time with a girl made him a disgrace, but how could they not see how ashamed they ought to be? How could they all be so far gone, embedded and crystalized in the dome around the town, that this was normal, acceptable, pleasing even?

The crazies think I’ve gone mad.

“Ignored nothing? Of course you have. She is not one of us; you bear no rights to her. There is a reason for the things that we do. We take care of our own, we respect our people and we respect the creature and our lifestyles. That is the way it should be. It is the way it has always been.”

“Look, you don’t know her.” Noah defended, “You don’t even know me.”

“You keep her outside of you, boy.” Lee leveled his eyes, glowering as they slid into ominous slits.

“Oh my-” Noah stopped, his voice rising to a shout. He demanded, “What are you so afraid of?”

“You are just like your mother, always think ing you know best. She listened to none of us when we tried to save her, and you know, you know where she ended up. Do you really want that for yourself? To die alone and young so far from your people?”

Everyone is losing their freaking minds.

Noah shook his head, disbelieving. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You are just like her, always thinking you know better than everyone else, like you’re the only person that matters. It is selfish, unacceptable. You insist on making her mistakes? Then you will die as she died, and your sister will do the same. I try to help you break this cycle, yet you disobey. I pay you, I feed you, you’ve got your own bedroom, you live rent free of age in my house. You act like I’ve given you nothing? You run off with an outsider, and you’ll be in a motel when you go, just like my sister. We’ll get the news, and my wife will be so sick, you will kill her or her foolish heart. We don’t want this for you and you don’t want what we have.”

He gripped the counter, his head spin ning. He didn’t know what to spit out first and instant thoughts were muddled. Did he miss something? Did Lee kill Mary-Agnes, was he being figurative? Was he delusional, thinking Noah was becoming Maria or somehow associated Noah as her son, instead of his own, because of Lee’s opinion to mutual disgrace? He was losing his hold, the grip that contained it, that kept him from prolonging the interactions. Unable to think straight, he spit out everything in his head as it came, barely understandable in his own ears.

“Whose mistakes? Yours? I’m trying to break the cycle of angry drunks that beat their children, you sorry.… Ugh! Do you know how sick you are, in the head? Dying? DyYou! You’re going to have a heart attack or liver failure, and your wife is going to keel over from her damn diabetes. Sarah and I are going to get out of here, away from this sickness. She’s going to have a better life. I am going to have a better life. Aly is the best thing, the cleanest thing, the most right thing in my entire liferight now. I honestly don’t care who or what she is to you. And I don’t know whose mother you’re talking about, but unless you’ve murdered Mom since I’ve been out, she’s still kicking and breathing, last time I checked. And nothing? We’re dirt poor, always have been. I work for what I have, so I really don’t see how you can act like you’re presenting the Taj Mahal with a gold ticket. You’re damn right I don’t want what you have.”

Lee’s eyes grew wide, his feat of anger slowly fading, rather than igniting with each spitting word. Noah expected to be on the floor, through the wall at this point. He already decided he wouldn’t put up with it. Not here, not now, in this public place. He didn’t belong to the Locklears then. He owed them nothing, especially not to bury their sins, replacing the mask. What was best for him and his sister was the priority, and he’d live by it until the day of graduation. If Lee wanted him to fight back, it’s what he’d receive.

I’m not going to beat the sorry drunk to the ground like he’d do to me, but I don’t want to be Owen. I don’t want to sit there and take it like encouragement. This doesn’t have to be me. The cycles stop here.

Instead, the old man leaned against the door. “You cannot pretend you don’t know,.” Lee said, getting louder, demanding. “You haven’t called me Father since you were a boy. I heard Tony today, his words. I didn’t want you to be like your father’s family, yet you gravitate to his people instead of ours. You stay on his couch, you do your car with him. You will not speak to us, only disrespecting. You wish to be like the outsider boy who killed her… his loins do not make that child your father. You must see you are not like him. You have no piece of him, you and Sarahgirl both. You’re like her, a fighting spirit. You cannot fall as she did…”

“This stops right now – whatever this is.” Noah demanded, his voice low and dangerous.

“You still play your games, but I know you know.” Lee continued, sounding confused and staring at the floors. His brow was wrinkled, his voice distant. He didn’t make eye contact. “You must know.”

“Get out!” Noah shouted, pointing at the door.

“What did you say to me, boy?” Lee grumbled, alarmed and aghast. He squinted, as though he was trying to read Noah.

He’s never seen these pieces of me.

“Get. Out,” Noah warned, his hand balling into a fist as he stepped forward.

Rustled, Lee offered a look of death through his shock, disappearing between the door.

Feeling nauseated, confusing complexities of betrayal and incredulity rushed through his veins. A headache was rousing, too intense for anger. He covered his face, leaning against the wall. With muffled murmurs from beyond the door piercing his skull, a steady throb bleeding from his head to his arm, he wished he claimed a full dose of painkillers, rather than the hesitant half accepted from an addict’s maybe-son.

Glancing up as the voices raised, he looked into Aly’s eyes, the blue rimmed with tears. Her lips parted, the lower trembling. Coffee ran down her knuckles, dripping to the ground.

What is this?

Something was incredibly wrong.

Nothing is okay. Nothing’s right at all.