Todd Strasser - Blood on my hands

But if they think it was a sex assault, why are they looking for me?

I head for the checkout, but as I’m paying, I notice the black-and-white monitor in the corner, where the walls meet the ceiling. And there I am on the screen with my new black spiky hair. I quickly look away, but not before a cold chill envelops me. I don’t know why the sight of me on the security monitor should freak me out more than the photo on the front of the newspaper, but it does. It’s like the picture in the newspaper was then and the monitor is now, so they have a record of me in disguise on video. Suddenly I just want to get out of there as fast as my feet can take me.

Back on the sidewalk, I have one more stop to make-the hardware store-but walking through town is nerve-racking. Every time I pass a person, every time someone glances in my direction, I wonder if he or she can see through my disguise. With every step, I have to fight the urge to bolt.

Inside the hardware store, I select some small brass-colored key rings and take them up to the register, once again aware of the video camera mounted in the corner. I’m so busy trying to position myself so that the camera doesn’t see my face that I don’t focus on the person at the cash register until it’s my turn to pay.

We’re practically eye to eye. Oh my God! She’s a punk with hot pink streaks in her dirty blonde hair and tattoos and piercings. We stare at each other for a moment. Soundview isn’t exactly a mecca for punks. Is she wondering why she’s never seen me around before? Does she know why I’m buying those small key rings? She calculates the price and I feverishly dig into my pockets for the money. The change slips through my shaking fingers and clatters on the counter.

“Oh, sorry!” I blurt.

She cocks her head curiously and stares as she picks up the coins she needs. “New around here?”

“Uh…” I slide the rest of the change into my shaking hand, trying to think of an answer. “No. I mean, yes!”

She frowns. Terrified that I’ve blown it, I shove the change into my pocket and turn to go. I’m just pushing through the door when she calls, “Hey, stop!”

Katherine might have been right about one thing: maybe three years is a long time to date someone. I was almost always happy with Slade, but that doesn’t mean it was always easy. Sometimes he grew glum, withdrawn, and depressed; a few times it was so deep that it scared me. A couple of times I suggested he speak to Dr. Ploumis, the school psychologist, or find a psychologist outside school to speak to, but he always said he’d think about it, which was his way of saying no.

Once when I pressed him about why he wouldn’t seek help, he said his father wouldn’t understand. I said that was silly. This was the twenty-first century. Everyone understood that sometimes you needed help and that was what psychologists were for. Look at how many kids we knew who were on some kind of medication. But Slade would insist that his father was too old-school for that. You manned up and toughed it out. Shrinks were for wimps and the only medication a man needed came in an amber bottle with a black-and-white label.

One night last spring, just before Slade went away for National Guard training, he got really, really low. A bunch of us were at Dog Beach, a small strip of rock and sand squeezed between two fancy beach clubs. It was a place where people could look for sea glass or bring their dogs for a swim. At one end of the beach, a long, tall metal pier stretched into the Sound. The pier was high enough that sometimes guys would climb through the metal crosshatched supports until they were over the water, and smoke or drink out there just for a change of view.

On this night I’d been talking to some girls when I realized I hadn’t seen Slade for a while. It wasn’t like him to vanish without telling me, and I began to feel anxious. I looked around and noticed the silhouette of a figure perched in the crosshatching under the pier. I knew at once that it had to be Slade, but I couldn’t imagine what he was doing out there. I thought of walking to the water’s edge and calling to him, but something told me he didn’t want everyone’s attention.

Instead, I climbed up into the supports and started to make my way under the pier. It wasn’t easy. The way the supports were staggered, you needed pretty long arms to get from one to the next, and being under five feet tall, I had to take a few leaps of faith. But I didn’t think twice. Going all the way out there by himself was unlike Slade. I knew something was wrong.

He heard me when I was about a dozen feet away. I saw his head turn and knew he was looking, even though in the dark under the pier, I couldn’t see his face. I paused, planting my feet in the V of the supports, and waited for him to say something.

It was a while before he said, “What are you doing here, Shrimp?”

“What are you doing here?” I replied.

He looked away, at the water. It was a cloudy, dark night with only a pale outline of a quarter moon appearing from and disappearing behind the clouds. I climbed closer, but the way the supports were set up, there wasn’t room for me to sit beside him. I had to stop about three feet away. Just out of reach.

“Slade?” I said softly. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to go,” he said without looking at me, his voice breathy, almost breaking. He was talking about the National Guard.

“Let’s go back to the beach,” I said.

He didn’t react.

“Slade?”

“Why do I have to do all these things just because my father wants me to? You know they’re sending Guard units overseas? Every week guardsmen are getting killed? And for what?”

“Maybe you won’t get sent.”

“Oh, great. And then I get to look forward to spending the rest of my life working in drywall. Whoop-de-do!”

I was surprised to hear him put into words what I’d sensed he’d been feeling for a long time. “You don’t have to.”

I heard him exhale slowly, and then he tilted his head down. “It’ll kill him. I mean, first my mom. Then that stupid second marriage. Then my brother moving to Boston and my sister moving to Florida. And what about Alyssa?”

Slade’s mom had died of breast cancer when he was five. A failed second marriage had left Mr. Lamont with joint custody of Alyssa. Since then, Mr. Lamont had resigned himself to single fatherhood, and many lonely nights in front of the TV in the company of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Sometimes it worried me that Slade seemed to be following in his father’s footsteps. The solitary drinking and solemn, silent moods during which he didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything.

“It’s your life, Slade,” I said. “If you don’t want to work with him-”

“Might as well,” he muttered, cutting me off. “Don’t know what else to do… unless it’s to just end it all.”

“Slade!” I hated when he talked like that. “Please, let’s go back.”

But he didn’t answer. Below us, small waves splashed against the rocks and pilings. I knew he was upset about leaving me, because that was how I was feeling about seeing him go. The longest we’d ever been apart was maybe four or five days.

“I love you,” I said. “We’ll talk every day, I promise.”

He looked away into the dark. “I have news for you, Cal. We won’t talk every day. I read the regulations. For the first two months of basic training, you’re allowed just one phone call-to your parents.”

That took me by surprise. “Two months isn’t that long. You won’t believe how fast it’ll go.” It was strange. He’d just turned nineteen and I was still a month from turning seventeen, yet there were times when I felt like I had to fill in for his mother. In my own dark moments, I sometimes wondered if it would always be this way. Would I have to struggle to get him out of these moods for the rest of my life?