D Gillespie - The Toy Thief

That one, the worst of his offenses, got him suspended for a full week. I wish I could say it was his last, but that moment began a slow, spiraling landslide. In time, it even started to change me. Once I had seen that the world didn’t exactly end when you got in trouble, I started loosening up a bit myself.

As for Patrick, I hear that his classmates started calling him Snag, short for Snaggletooth.

Memphis woke me up the next day, the same way he always did back in those days. He’d start by scooting up next to me, about six inches away from my face. Then he’d start purring. Depending on how late I’d pushed it with Cokes and movies the night before, this first salvo wouldn’t do much of anything, forcing him to move on to phase two. His next step usually consisted of gently tapping on my chin with his soft feet. Occasionally, just out of sheer annoyance, this would get the job done.

But the night before had been brutal and mostly sleepless. Even with my fitful dreams, I still wasn’t ready to get up, especially now that the light was pouring through the windows and my bed seemed safe and real once more. So Memphis moved to his final solution. With a careful, quiet step, he crawled onto my chest and began slowly inching his way up to my face. I think he was solely responsible for my recurring dreams of being crushed to death in a dozen different ways, be it by car, train, or elevator. In slow, incremental steps, the fat cat inched closer until he was covering my face and my mouth was full of fur.

“Get off me!”

He mewed loudly, jumped to the edge of the bed, and watched me. I remember lying there – half under the covers, letting my eyes adjust to the dawn before casting them up at the ceiling. Had my room ever looked so alien, so not my own? I turned to the side, saw the picture from the night before lying on the edge of the bed, and hesitated to reach for it. What if I saw it, the eyes gleaming, the mouth hissing? In a weird way, I was glad for the past week of childish denial. Andy had truly done me a favor when he smashed that tape. I could have just gone back to pretending that it never happened at all.

But that picture.

If there was so much as a thread of evidence in that frame, I’d never sleep soundly again. With a shaking hand, I snatched it up and raised it to my eyes.

Nothing.

Just my room. Dark around the edges. The flash turning everything a washed-out white. I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as my heart stopped threatening to crack my ribs. Then Memphis mewed.

“You saw it, didn’t you?”

He mewed again.

“I wish you could talk. Then maybe I’d know if I was crazy or not.”

The light on the aquarium was out, but I could have been sleepwalking.

“No,” I said aloud. “Just… no.”

I reached back for my bear, who was still sitting on the pillow. Then I ventured into the kitchen to silence the hungry cat prowling after me.

I didn’t see Andy leave that morning, but I do distinctly remember when he finally returned. There was a knock on the door, and Dad had to button his pants before answering it.

“The hell is that?” he said as I met him in the hallway, watching from a distance. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but I saw enough to know within seconds just what was going on. Blue suit, black belt weighted down with a gun, cuffs, and all other sorts of toys. Nodding heads. My father bringing a hand to his brow in frustration. And all at once, I knew. Without hearing a single word, I knew.

I darted down the hall, into my room, and straight for the window, which faced the road. There it was, a patrol car parked on the curb. It was hard to tell in the warm, early morning sun, but I could see there was someone in the back, someone who looked, even through the glare, to be young. The cop escorted my dad down the yard before opening the door to let my brother out.

Andy.

Arrested.

Jesus.

All the shine had been rubbed away from my brother years before, but this. This was entering the big time. Thirteen years old and already being picked up by the cops. Even at nine, I knew where this was headed.

There was an exchange between the three of them, not heated or angry, just resigned. My dad’s posture, firm but tired, exasperated, and embarrassed. The cop, good-natured, understanding, and clearly certain that this wouldn’t be the last time. And then Andy, sallow, sullen, and absolutely uncaring. Dad shook the cop’s hand and motioned for Andy to do the same, which he did with as little effort as possible. Then, with a giant hand across Andy’s bony shoulder, Dad guided him back inside. I met them there, my eyes as big as teacups, watching every moment, but not daring to say a word. Dad gently closed the door behind Andy and locked it. He never locked it.

“Anything you want to say?” he asked, turning back to Andy.

My brother shrugged.

“Go to your room. Get all the cords for your games, your stereo, your cable box. Bring them to me.”

“Fine.”

“We’ll be talking about this later. Now…” He paused, probably thinking about exactly what he wanted to say. “You don’t want me to talk about it now. Think about what you want to say. I expect some kind of explanation.”

Andy didn’t have much to say about that. As I watched from around the corner, he gathered up the cords in question and laid them in the hallway like a coil of poisonous snakes. I waited until Andy’s door was tightly closed before I dared to walk out and survey the scene.

I know I’m a pill. I mean, I always have been. I’ll bet my mom was too, even if my father was never able to truly admit it. But it’s moments like that one that show a part of me I’m not entirely proud to admit exists. Me, hiding, watching from afar, tiptoeing around the situation like a scared little mouse. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I talk a good game, and I can even walk a pretty good one. I want people to think I’m tough, and I’ll show them if they make me.

But Andy.

Andy was cut from something altogether different. He was part stone, something cold and hard and nearly impossible to break. I could see it in his eyes then. To me, the cops were figures of almost mythic proportion, the very sight of which made me weak in the knees. To Andy, they weren’t shit. They couldn’t hurt him, not really, and so he shrugged them off. As clear as I can tell, that attitude came from my dad – a man who had the benefit of two parents, each of them picking up the slack for the other. As an adult, that coldness had melted into something mellow, a healthy dose of ‘fuck it’ that made him likable, fun to be around. But for Andy, raised by a single, somewhat bumbling father, it coalesced, hardened. I’m not saying that my dad was necessarily to blame for Andy’s fall from grace, but he played a part to be sure. So did I. He didn’t kill our mother after all. That was all me.

Anyway, when the coast was clear, I sneaked into the living room, where Dad had already flopped back into his chair. He had a beer in hand – early for a Saturday, but I think even back then that I understood it. The talk with Andy, whenever it happened, was going to be rough, and he needed to prepare. I sat down on the couch without a word and kicked my feet. Nothing to see. Bored girl, watching baseball with her dad. I sighed. When that wasn’t enough, I sighed louder.

“You okay?” he said finally, looking over at me.

“Ye-ah. I guess,” I said in a worried tone.

“Go ahead,” he said, taking a sip.

“What?”

“Just get it over with. I know you saw everything. What do you want to know?”

I considered playing coy a bit longer, but there wasn’t much point. Dad knew me too well to pretend.