Fade to Black (10 page)
Authors: Alex Flinn
She’s staring, but it’s all coming out of me now, and I keep going and going like that bunny on the TV commercial.
“No one outside my family even touches me anymore, no one hugs me. You tell yourself you can’t get sick from touching me, but you won’t. One of the things they always tell terminals like me is, Be normal. Live for today. Seems like a pretty obvious concept, since I have no tomorrow. But the problem is, I have no today, either. People like you won’t let me be normal. It makes you feel good to feel sorry for me. You can tell yourself you’re not like Clinton, but you are.”
Jennifer’s standing there, her cheeks turning red like I slapped her. I guess I did. I start to say something else, I don’t know what. Something else stupid, probably. She turns and walks out, still holding the books she brought me.
I am Freddy Krueger
.
Tuesday, 3:01 p.m., Bernard Eutsey’s office
“Mr. Eutsey will be with you in a moment,” the receptionist says. “He’s on a conference call.”
“Thank you.” Mom looks at her hands.
We’ve been sitting in the lawyer’s office for fifteen minutes now, not saying anything. Mom doesn’t look at me. She hates me. I have a pencil in my hand. I want to bite it. I can’t really explain about pencil biting. It’s just something I did till lately, when my friends started making fag jokes about it. It’s not that it tastes good or anything like that. It’s just that sometimes, I feel like I … have to. But I’ve given that up. I don’t do that anymore. So instead I jab my arm with the lead.
It hurts. But you know how, when something hurts, making something
else
hurt gets your mind off it? That’s what I’m doing now.
“This would be a good time to tell me where you were yesterday,” Mom says.
“I can’t.”
Jab. Jab. Jab
.
“Oh, Clinton.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mom called Dad last night. I heard her on the phone, leaving a message on his answering machine. This morning, when I asked whether he called back, she shook her head. I heard her calling again after that.
Part of the reason I don’t want to tell Mom I was out calling Dad yesterday is, I don’t know if he’d even remember it. It’s sort of embarrassing to say that, but there it is.
“Mr. Eutsey will see you now.” The receptionist leads us into a fancy conference room with a big table. We take our seats. Then Mr. Eutsey comes in.
“Adele, how nice to see you,” he says. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better, Bernard.” There’s a tremor in my mother’s voice, and I look at her.
“Well, let’s see if I can help you out.”
Mr. Eutsey is the biggest black guy I’ve ever seen, maybe six-five, with a voice like James Earl Jones, who played Darth Vader in the
Star Wars
movies. If I saw him coming at me on the football field, I’d hide behind the Gatorade. Mom knows him ’cause she works for a judge. This must be the lawyer Dad was so afraid of. I can see why this guy could be scary. He’s scaring me.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” he booms.
“You’ve probably read about it in the paper,” Mom says.
“Of course. But I was interested in hearing Clinton’s story. For example, where he was when all this happened. The best thing we can do is establish an alibi.”
“I was home,” I tell him, and Mom raises an eyebrow. I bet she thinks that since I lied so easy, I could lie about other things. “In bed,” I add.
Jab, Jab, Jab
.
“Unfortunately,” Mom adds, “I was asleep then. But I believe my son when he says he didn’t do it.”
Mr. Eutsey shrugs. “If mamas’ believing won cases, not one of my clients would ever go to jail.” He tents his fingers in front of his big face and looks over them at me. I wonder how many of his clients
are
in jail. “Clinton, this is a very serious charge.”
“I know. But I didn’t do it. I never touched the little fag. I mean, I’d never do that.” I stop. Mom is giving me a hard look.
“That’s not a word we use around here, boy,” Mr. Eutsey says.
It takes me a second to realize he means
fag
. I feel my whole body getting hot and almost sweating. I mean, I know that to some people, that word is bad. But my friends use it all the time, even with people you don’t think are actually gay. I hadn’t even realized I’d said it.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“I apologize, Bernard.” That’s Mom. “Sometimes my son doesn’t think.”
“Not thinking can get you in trouble.” He looks at me. “As I was saying, it’s a serious charge. Because the boy is HIV-positive, this may be treated as a hate crime under Florida law. That means tougher penalties if you’re convicted. It means jail.”
“But I’m not like that. I don’t hate him.” But even as I say it, I’m wondering if I
am
like that. Because if I wasn’t in trouble for what happened to Crusan, I know I wouldn’t
mind
that it had happened. I might even have laughed about it.
“And, of course,” Mr. Eutsey continues, “if the boy takes a turn for the worse, there could be other charges as well.”
Other charges?
I remember what that Jennifer girl said about Crusan dying. Could I get charged with murder? I look down at my arm. It’s red, and I can see blood through the pieces of skin. I don’t even feel it.
“I was calling my dad yesterday,” I blurt. I’m looking at Mom. “I went to a pay phone because I didn’t want Mom to know. I call him Monday mornings to make sure he makes it to work on time. He … drinks weekends.”
“Oh, Clinton,” Mom says. But I can see by the look on her face she’s not mad at me. She’s sort of feeling sorry for me—which is worse.
“Excellent,” Mr. Eutsey says. “Where was the call made?”
“Gas-n-Sip on East Main. They’re open early.”
“That puts you right near the crime scene.” Mr. Eutsey frowns.
“But I wasn’t there when it happened. I rode my bike down East Main; I saw that retard girl. But Crusan wasn’t there when I passed by.”
Mr. Eutsey is dialing. He speaks into the intercom.
“Sandra, can you call the Gas-n-Sip on East Main. Tell them we’re looking for some surveillance tape from yesterday around six a.m.… Yes, thank you.” He looks at me. “The footage is stamped with the date and time. If we can get it, we may be able to establish that Clinton was elsewhere at the time of the assault.”
“But if it wasn’t the exact time, wouldn’t that show that he was near the crime scene when it happened?” That’s my mother. “That could hurt more than help.”
“We need to take one thing at a time.” Mr. Eutsey looks at Mom. When she nods, he says, “And, of course, your ex-husband would be able to corroborate the length of the phone call.”
“If he remembers. I’ve called him five times since this happened because I suspected Clinton’s absence might have something to do with him. He hasn’t returned my calls. My ex-husband was once a respected businessman. But sometimes Jim would go on a bender and not come around for a week. When that happened, his family, his children, were meaningless.”
I remember my dad’s angry, crazy voice on the phone yesterday. My mother reaches across the table to pat my hand. I grab hers.
I can’t believe she called him five times already, and he hasn’t called back.
“Mr. Eutsey?” the voice on the intercom says. “I spoke with Mr. Allen at Gas-n-Sip. They said the tape would have been erased. They only keep them twenty-four hours.”
My arm is throbbing, and I feel tears clogging up my head. I screwed up, screwed up big-time. Mom squeezes my hand hard, and the only thing in the whole world that feels good is having her believe in me again. Which sucks, because I know I may kill it by telling the rest of the story. About the rock. I don’t want to.
“Okay, minor setback,” Eutsey says. “There will be other things we can do if charges are filed—subpoena the phone records to show the call to your ex-husband, for one.”
If charges are filed. Subpoena. I see my life stretching before me like one long hell of reading in the cafeteria. Or worse, jail. I almost envy Crusan. Mom squeezes my hand again. She believes me. She said she believes me. I squeeze back, hard. Even though I know it will kill everything, I say, “There’s something else I need to tell you.”
Tuesday, 6:00 p.m., Bickell residence
Mac and cheese
for dinner
.
I like
to say
macncheese
macncheese
.
Kids at school say
,
Macncheese
.
Mama says
,
Macaroni and cheese
.
“Makes
me happy,”
I say
to Mama
.
“What does?”
she says
.
“Macncheese.”
I point
.
Mama smiles
.
She gives
me some
.
I taste
orange
lumps
on my tongue
.
“Makes
me sad,”
I say
to Mama
.
“What?”
“Get
get confused.”
“About what?”
Mama looks
worried
.
“School
.
Girls talk
.
Can’t
remember.”
“Remember
what?”
“Names
.
All the names.”
“That’s okay
.
You can ask
again.”
I think
.
“And another.”
“What?”
“Not sure
.
Clinton
Clinton
Clinton
Didn’t see
see him
Breakawindow.”
“You mean
with the rock?”
“No
.
Other
.
Baseball bat.”
The words
are hard
to know
.
“I don’t
not
sure.”
Mama
doesn’t answer
.
“Sorry
,
Mama.”
Tuesday, 7:00 p.m., Memorial Hospital
Mom walks in with two cops.
It’s seven o’clock, four hours since Jennifer came and I told her off. She hasn’t been back. Big surprise. I know she must have been in this area. She probably even had a break, but she hasn’t stopped by. I need to face the fact that she isn’t going to. I screwed up with her. I remember the story she told me about her dad. That’s not the kind of story you tell everyone. She reached out to me, and I slapped her down.
“Alex, I’m Officer Reed, and this is Officer Bauer. We’re here to talk about what happened yesterday.” He’s sort of squat and, when he talks, he doesn’t look right at me or get too close.
Are you scared of me, little police officer?
“I told the doctor I didn’t feel well enough,” I say instead.
“Your mother said it was all right.” Officer Bauer steps closer and looks at my dinner tray, chicken breast with no skin, mixed veggies, mashed potatoes, pudding, and milk and says, “Looks like they have you on normal food anyway.”
I grimace. “If you can call this normal food.” But HIV does weird things to your sense of taste, so I left picky eating behind months ago.
Reed speaks again. “It will just be a few questions. We’re investigating the crime against you.”
Yeah, I got that.
“I didn’t really see the guy, not well enough to ID him.” I feel a twinge when I say it. I saw the guy well enough to identify him as
not
Clinton Cole. He was thinner and had darker hair. I saw him well enough to know I’d never seen him before. Pinedale’s a small school, maybe four or five hundred students. I know all that.
But it’s so much easier to let it be Clinton Cole. A victimless crime, really, because Clinton’s guilty of a bunch of other crap. This will get him off the street, not to mention off
me
.
Officer Bauer’s talking again. The other officer still hangs back, like he doesn’t want to get too close. “Sometimes if you talk about what happened, details come back to you that maybe you’d forgotten before. Sort of like people who remember witnessing a crime by seeing it reenacted on
America’s Most Wanted.”
Or maybe they’re just making stuff up
.
From across the room, the other cop says, “Why don’t you tell us what happened, son, what you remember?”
Why don’t you come closer, and I’ll tell you
.
But Officer Bauer says, “We’re trying to help you, son.”
“Alex…” Mom says. “Just tell what you know.”
So I tell them. I tell them about driving, about seeing Daria and the baseball bat and about how the glass didn’t start flying right away, that the window was just cracked, but then it shattered on the second or third blow of the bat. “So I crawled onto the floorboard. That’s why I didn’t see much.” I tell them about how I drove away even though I was a little worried about hitting a dog or something because I couldn’t see. I tell them things that don’t matter at all, things that are just in my head for no reason. I tell them everything, everything except the physical description of the guy who attacked me, the face in the mirror. That, I don’t tell them.
“That’s it,” I say.
Officer Bauer looks disappointed. He says, “Your attacker, you didn’t see his face at all?”
