“You think you know who your friends are and then they pull something like this? With your girlfriend? That’s such bullshit. You’ve been through enough with Stephen, Jasper shooting off his mouth is the last thing you need.”
How can I be so sure that Liam is fine, despite what I hear from the naysayers?
Because he was an absolute angel when he found out about Stephen. He snuck over and scaled the wall to my room that night. Then he held me while I cried my heart out. The next day, he cut class with me and drove me down to the city so I could place Stephen’s North Shore hat at the base of the Bean in memoriam. Liam could not have been more loving or attentive or thoughtful, none of which would have been possible if he were all, I don’t know, tripped out or whatever.
Right now, Liam’s particularly agitated and has yet to sit down. He paces around his bedroom while we talk. I keep gesturing for him to come sit beside me, but he’s too keyed up.
“Could Jasper be any more of a hypocrite?” he says.
“I made that exact point,” I reply. I feel like a coach watching a boxing match, anxious to towel and water Liam, to patch up his cuts the second the round is over. I pat the spot on the bed next to me, encouraging him to join me. He ignores my invitation.
“This kid was sneaking 40s into the movies when we were in junior high! He was drinking in eighth grade! He’s, like, a waste of a human being. He’s a garbage person.”
“That’s a bit harsh,” I say, shifting positions. I don’t want to defend Jasper but don’t want to excoriate him in that manner, either. Had he not invited me to his party back in October, I might have never connected with Liam. And for both of us, that night was a game-changer.
“Pfft, if you knew half the stunts that kid’s pulled, you wouldn’t be saying anything nice,” he replies. “Case in point? Baby Jesus. Each year, he thinks it’s hilarious to swipe every single Christ child out of every single manger on display at the holidays. They talk about him on the news—they call him the Grinch. He has hundreds of them in his closet. Hundreds. You know, he vandalized the stop signs, too.”
About a month ago, every sign within a two-mile radius had been altered in the night. Some read Don’t Stop, Can’t Stop; some Stop, Collaborate, and Listen. There were a few Don’t Stop Believin’s, a handful of Stop, Hammer-Times, and the one that made me laugh out loud was Stop Defacing Signs. My dad went mad; he made me ride around with him to find all of them, like a vandalism Easter egg hunt. Said they were the best thing he’d seen in this country so far.
“Those were funny,” I admit.
“Seriously?” Liam says, looking a tad disgusted.
“What? Clever is clever. Dad got a huge kick out of them.” Then I clarify, “Still, yes, he’s a juvenile delinquent, which makes his accusations even more vile.”
“Thank you,” he replies, mollified. I reach out for him and he takes my hand, finally allowing himself a seat. I lean into him but he doesn’t lean back.
I muse, “What did he mean by saying the conversation wasn’t over?”
Liam pushes his fingers through his hair. “Who knows with that one? Given his track record, probably nothing. He’s all talk.”
*
Jasper is not all talk.
He spoke with Liam’s parents. Squealed on him is more like it. Suffice it to say, the conversation did not go well...for Liam.
Thanks to Jasper’s interfering, Liam’s lost his car, cell phone, and computer privileges. He’s essentially under house arrest, permitted to leave for school and student government meetings, where his mother picks him up and drops him off. The only time I can see him is at school.
The whole thing is so awful.
If these Draconian measures weren’t bad enough, I’m in a world of trouble, too.
We’d just sat down to dinner—wings again, Dad’s become a tremendous fan of buffalo chicken wings, largely because he can’t get enough of anything served with ranch dressing—when there was a knock at our front door.
The sound was less of a knock and more the noise of someone trying to break the damn thing down with bare hands. Warhol immediately hid, hero that he’s not, but Dad marched into the foyer, armed with a broomstick and false bravado.
“What are you planning to do, Angus? Housekeep them into submission?” my mum asked, chasing behind him.
“Stay back, Fi,” he warned. Without a peek through the spyhole, he swung the door open, expecting to come face to face with some variety of criminal, but instead found a bony woman in equestrian gear and a man who looked less like a thug and more like the president of a real estate investment trust.
Liam’s parents.
“We need to talk about your daughter,” said Liam’s dad, forcing his way past my father and into our foyer. His dad is built like a former college athlete who’s now stuck riding a desk all day long, so he brushed past my dad without any difficulty.
Everything about Liam’s dad is the antithesis of mine—where Mr. Avery’s hair is short and neatly barbered, my dad’s is chin-length and perpetually swept up in a man-bun. Mr. Avery is tall and solidly muscular, while my dad trends pasty with an odd confluence of flabby pectorals and skinny limbs. Where Mr. Avery seems to live in a blue pinstripe business suit, forever looking like he’s just stepped out of a board meeting, my dad favors long jumpers, paint-splattered track pants, and flip-flops, perhaps more like the man who might ask Mr. Avery for a quarter on the street outside his office in the Loop.
Mr. Avery was pleasant the couple of times I’ve been around him, but I realized that was for appearance’s sake. The real measure of a man is how he treats others when no one’s looking. He’s been perpetually cruel to Liam, physically, when he was younger, and now, verbally. In eighth grade, Liam had to fib and say he’d fallen to explain the wrist his father broke when Liam accidentally smashed his mother’s Waterford vase while roughhousing with Jasper. Jasper’s folks sent over five new ones to replace the one that broke, but it didn’t matter.
I suspect that Liam has had a harder time dealing with the mental aspect—with physical, the wounds heal eventually. If Liam brings home an A, his dad will grill him on why it wasn’t an A+. When Liam made the varsity team as a sophomore, his dad was all over him about why he wasn’t a starting player. No matter how good Liam is and has been, it’s never enough for his father.
Our two dads stood there for a moment, sizing one another up. Liam’s father looked like a rogue bull elephant, ready to begin stomping at any moment. Dad had his chest all puffed up, trying to be tough, but ultimately failing and defaulting to being British instead.
“Name’s Angus Chastain, and you are?” Dad asked. He reached out to shake Mr. Avery’s hand, but he was still holding the broomstick. Mr. Avery wasn’t interested in taking the eventually empty hand Dad proffered.
“We’re Liam’s parents. We’re here to talk about her.” Mr. Avery glowered at me, his emphasis on the word her, like the word was particularly bitter in his mouth.