He couldn’t get over me knowing these people. My long-lost fosters. I wanted to say, Tommy, go pack your shit, walk out of that garage and never look back. But he was all over this family. I couldn’t burst his bubble. I said I would come over sometime with Dori and we’d take him and the McCobbs out to Applebee’s or something, my treat. Which is insane. No idea why I said that. I wouldn’t have minded to see those kids, Haillie especially, to see how she was holding up in that FUBAR family. But the main reason probably was me wanting to eat as much as I could in front of them. I’d stuff my face, two burgers. Some form of weird revenge.
I had to warn him, though, before he went on his way. About Mr. McCobb’s enterprises. All fine and good on the Wate-O-Way, I said, but don’t even think about putting your own money into that. Oh, Tommy. It turned out he already had.
45
The rest of that winter is hazy, like there’s a cloud lying over me and tenth grade. All I can say for sure is that my home was with Dori, more and more. I kept my clothes over there and my meds. Having my night sweats in sheets that would not be Mattie Kate’s secret to keep. I was trying to dial down the oxy but not too regular about it, with Dori’s little add-ons throwing me off schedule. She couldn’t help herself, just a caring person. She sang to Vester while she fed him, little kid songs like Twinkle Star. The care nurses came three mornings a week on rotation, and Dori passed me off as a cousin instead of a live-in boyfriend. Still worried about DSS. But it wasn’t the nurses’ job to keep tabs on us. They warned her to keep his pills and patches locked up in a safe place, probably thinking she was older, not a seventeen-year-old in charge of the man’s narcotics. Just another case of everybody trying to do the jobs they’re given.
Christmas came and went, with Dori of course loving the presents I gave her, and Angus making a good show of not sulking over the ones I didn’t. After all, Angus was the one that swore to Christmas being no big deal. So I kept telling myself. That house was returning to its natural state. I was nothing more over there than a brief disturbance of the peace.
I missed her though, Angus. The easiness of her. I mean, sex is great and everything, as anybody will tell you. But there’s much to be said also for lying around with a person on beanbags, firing popcorn penalties at each other for offside fart violations.
I had my driver’s license, but no place to go. If I went to school from Dori’s, she’d go with me to bring back the car, and pick me up later. Marooned on our island. My guy friends of recent years were my teammates, and after the knee injury I fell off their map. That’s high school for you, a bevy of people unfit for adult life encounters in any form. And my old standbys the Peggots were in disarray. So my whole life was Dori now, idling while she microwaved stuff to feed Vester or patted him down with a washrag. Other than that, she napped. I slid into my old lonely ways, drawing again in my notebooks, not superhero kid nonsense but things I saw while out and about. I did a three-panel cartoon of Walgreens Spy Girl passing secrets encoded in anus diagrams to undercover agent Galoshes, so. Whole different category of nonsense.
I was in Ms. Annie’s art class again, if I bothered to go to school, but my former success had been largely crush-motivated. The repeat of last year was a letdown. Seeing her explain these amazing things of contrast and proportion the first time around was like watching a magical genius. Second time, she was just a teacher. She still thought I had talent but probably was all the more disappointed in me for zoning out. Fine. Special for Dori was all I needed to be.
Other than the useful parts like driver’s ed leading automatically to the license, school faded from importance as is natural for a boy becoming a man. Civics, I actually cannot tell you what those are. Math I got to take from Mr. Cleveland that had his deal with Coach, football players got a grade that kept us eligible. I had to do the harder English, which was a time suck, reading books. Some of them though, I finished without meaning to. That Holden guy held my interest. Hating school, going to the city to chase whores and watch rich people’s nonsense, and then you come to find out, all he wants in his heart is to stand at the edge of a field catching little boys before they go over the cliff like he did. I could see that. I mean, see it, I drew it, with those white cliffs on the Kentucky border where Miss Barks took me that time. I’ve not ever seen rye growing, so I made him the catcher in the tobacco. Likewise the Charles Dickens one, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.
The main event of that winter was Demon’s big stupid adventure. The plan itself, what little there was of it, came from Angus putting it to me as a dare. Of the put-up or shut-up kind. I was spending enough evenings at Coach’s to convince all parties that I still lived there. He was watching my limp, making noises about surgery, and I was doing my best impressions of a drug-free once-and-future tight end. Angus and I one evening were up in our den watching some nature planet show on the amazing leopard seal. I was in one of my moods. This being really the only major thing I’d wanted out of life, and I was never going to get any closer to the damn ocean than a damn Japanese-made TV. I said words to that effect. And I still remember her big gray ocean eyes, looking at me like, What is wrong with you? If Angus wanted to do something, she fucking did it. So maybe it was spite or pride. I told her: Fine, you know what? I’m going.
I started talking it up to Dori, which was just cruel. Of course she’d want to go, the beach would amaze her because everything amazed her. It wasn’t so long ago she’d been this whole fun, popular girl at school, before her dad and his five-hour doctor drives ate her life. Now she was hard pressed to talk her neighbor into watching Vester so the two of us could go out parking. But she saw how bad I wanted it, and begged me to go without her. Take pictures, she said. This was before camera phones were in everybody’s pockets. I borrowed a Polaroid from Angus.
Without Dori I would need transportation. Fast Forward wouldn’t have been first choice, but he had wheels, and was generally up for adventure if the booze was adequate. On the phone he said he was covered up at the farm, tied up with his horses, which I’d been told were not his horses, but kept that to myself. I asked him to think about it. He said maybe. Next I brought it up to Maggot, knowing he’d be game for anything that got him out of the house. June was two inches from kicking him out, setting certain conditions he was not able to live with. She was pretty tolerant of his grooming, so it had to be more than that, and I didn’t ask. Even a minor weed incident could really blow up over there, she was on some drug warpath ever since World War Kent, to the extent of Maggot coming over to Dori’s just to roll a reefer.
In less than a minute, Emmy found out from Maggot and announced she was coming too. Which then got Fast Forward on board. I was never sure about the chicken or the egg on that one, but understood we were getting into some kind of love-hate triangle with June Peggot involved, which is not a geometry problem you want to be in. But damn. All that mattered to me was the ocean. I was going to Virginia Beach, Virginia. A town we chose solely for its name, having no idea where we would rest our heads after planting our asses on its grass. Or hopefully, sand. We had no money, no game plan, not enough supplies to get us five miles down the road, let alone the five hundred it was. Fast Forward had connections in a city he said was on the way, somebody that could hook him up with easy cash, and that was enough for four people high on youth and extreme inexperience.