Todd Strasser - Blood on my hands

Mia picked me up and we went to the kegger, parking in the dark lot beside the baseball field. “I’m glad you’re doing this,” she said. “I mean, I’m glad we’re doing this. You won’t be sorry you came. We’ll have fun.”

The truth was I was starting to believe her and was looking forward to the party. It had to be better than spending another night at home. We walked into the woods, following voices and glimmers of red cigarette embers. There were probably forty or fifty people there. It was dark and they were mostly just silhouettes, but almost instantly I saw a group of girls. Brianna and Zelda, being tall, stood out. And their presence meant the others no doubt included Katherine and Jodie.

I stopped, turned to Mia, and whispered, “I thought you said she wasn’t going to be here.”

“I-I didn’t think she would,” Mia stammered.

I rolled my eyes. “Has anyone ever told you that you are the most unconvincing liar ever?”

She grinned sheepishly. “Okay, I didn’t want you to stay away because of her. I want you to stand up to her with me.”

At that point it no longer mattered. Thanks to peer mediation, I’d be not only standing up to Katherine, but face-to-face with her the following Monday.

Not that we really stood up to her at the kegger anyway. We just didn’t cross paths. After a while, Mia went off, but by then I was hanging out with other kids. She was right. I did have fun… until later, when Dakota came up and said Katherine was missing.

Standing near the motel-room door, I feel my entire body go rigid. The air leaves my lungs and I can’t seem to find a new breath. I feel a chill all over, then pins and needles, then cold sweat. What are they talking about? What’s going on? I don’t understand. They’ve made a mistake. Slade isn’t the one they want. It’s me they want.

“Yes,” Slade answers to the police chief’s question about his rights, but he’s not looking at Chief Jenkins. He’s looking at me, his skin pale, his hands shaking as he buckles his pants.

He pulls on a shirt, but before he can even begin buttoning it, the uniformed officer spins him around and applies handcuffs to his wrists, then takes him by the arm and starts to lead him toward the door. But I can’t let him go. It makes no sense. It’s all wrong! “Wait!” I cry, blocking their path and sliding my arms around Slade’s waist and pressing my cheek against his bare chest. “You’re wrong! He had nothing to do with it!”

“Let go of him, Callie,” Chief Jenkins says calmly.

“No!” The cry that leaves my throat comes from the deepest depths of my soul. They can’t arrest Slade! It’s a mistake! I won’t let them! I look up at him, imploring him. “Please! They’re wrong! Slade, tell them!”

But with his hands cuffed behind him and my arms around him, Slade doesn’t move or speak. For a moment, everything is still. Then Chief Jenkins gently says, “Let go, Callie.”

I’m still looking up at Slade. Tears have begun to roll down his cheeks.

And that’s when I know it’s true.

THERE WAS A boy who lived with his mother and father and older brother and sister. They were a happy family until one day when his mother was too tired to get out of bed. And then everything began to change. No one spoke about it in front of the boy, but the mood in the house became tense and sad, and his father’s and older brother’s and sister’s faces were always grim. His mother went to the hospital and his sister cried when she made the boy his breakfast and packed him off to school the way his mother used to do.

And the boy felt sad.

His mother came home a few weeks later and soon lost all her hair and took to wearing scarves and hats. She started making his breakfasts again, but often by dinnertime, she was too exhausted to cook. At first there were still moments when she was happy and full of energy, but gradually they were outweighed by days when she was exhausted and the house was gloomy and quiet.

It went on that way for a while, and then one day his mother went back to the hospital. A few days later the boy’s father took him to the hospital and the boy saw sad faces on the nurses and doctors when he went down the hall, holding his father’s hand. The boy and his father went into a room and there was his mother in bed, only she looked more like a grandmother and was now wrinkled and pale and thin. She held his hand and cried and the boy knew something very bad was happening.

Then the boy’s father walked with him back to the car and it was the first time the boy had ever seen his father cry. And the boy felt very, very sad.

At the funeral, with many crying people, the boy watched his mother’s casket go into the ground, but it was hard to believe that she was really inside it.

For a while the boy lived in his house without a mother, and his father and sister and brother tried to do the things his mother had done, but of course, they could not do any of them as well. And then a new woman started to come around, and after a while, the boy was introduced to her children, and then one day there was a big party and the woman and her children moved in with them.

At first things seemed better again. His father was happier. The new woman wasn’t the same as the boy’s mother, but by then the boy understood that his mother wasn’t coming back. So he tried to pretend that the woman would be his new mother and he tried to get along with his new brothers and sisters. Then the new woman had a baby and suddenly the boy had a half sister named Alyssa.

A few years passed and then his father wasn’t happy anymore and there was yelling and fighting-things the boy had never heard at home before.

And then the new woman and her children left, and while things at home once again became melancholy and quiet, at least it was peaceful. The boy and his sister and brother grew older and made friends and spent more time outside the family. The boy never stopped feeling sad, but slowly he built a wall against the memories and tried to stay on the other side of the wall as much as he could. Sometimes he would think of his mother, and an invisible door would open unexpectedly and he would be pulled back through it and into the gloom, but after a while, he could always go back through the door to the other side.

Then the boy met a girl and everything changed. For the first time since his mother had died, he truly believed that he might be able to stay on the good side of the wall forever. And even when the invisible door opened, as it still did now and then, he found that thanks to her, he could usually grab the doorframe and pull himself back out.

By then his brother and sister had moved on, leaving him with Alyssa and his father, whose life was drywall, and the EMS squad, and the television, and a bottle. Deep down the boy had always known that drywall and the EMS squad would be his life, too. That his father was depending on him. That he was the tape and mud that held the gypsum boards of his father’s life together. That without him it would all collapse in a heap.

And the boy believed he had no choice in this matter. His deepest, greatest fear was that if Lamont Drywall and the EMS squad ended, his father would end, too. He had already experienced the loss of one parent and could not bear the thought of going through that again. Besides, now he had Callie, and as long as he had her, things would be okay.

Then high school ended and it was time for him to serve in the armed forces, just as every Lamont had since the First World War. And this, too, he had always known he would do, regardless of whether he believed in it. But he had a secret, a bad knee he’d carefully exercised to keep strong but had started to neglect, hoping that it would grow weaker and eventually get him sent home.