Nothing to Lose (2 page)

People are looking at us, and the cop’s friend nudges him. “Hey, you’re holding up the works.”

The cop looks at her, then the crowd. Then at me.

“Sorry, kid. You go ahead.”

“No problem.”

I turn toward the game controls. I make myself move slow. Behind me I hear the cop say, “He just looked so familiar.” I throw the switch, and all around me mechanical moles start popping up. Every station is filled, and they’re whacking, whacking, filling my ears and my brain with the noise, obliterating every feeling but loneliness and every thought but one:
I shouldn’t have come back to Miami.

An hour later I find my friend Cricket working at the double Ferris wheel.

“I can’t stay here,” I say.

“Cops buggin’ you?” Cricket gets harassed by cops all the time. He says he’s twenty but looks younger. “What I do is I keep a copy of my birth certificate with me at all times. Just makes life easier.”

He leans to get it under the switch for the ride—a crumpled, Xerox-copied sheet of gray paper that identifies him as Jason Dietz, born twenty years ago in Kansas.

“That’s your real birth certificate, Jason?”

He shrugs.

“It’s not just the age thing with me,” I whisper. “I ran away. There could be people looking for me.”

Cricket folds the paper back up. “No one looks for teenaged runaways. You’re a low priority. We’ve got our own little foster-care system here at the carnival. They give you a bunk to sleep in and all the corn dogs you can handle. Long as you’re not obvious about it, no one much cares.”

He goes back to what he’s doing. I head for my joint, though my break’s not over. It’s getting later. The crowds are getting heavier, which makes it easier to hide. But tonight, here, it’s just more people who might know me. I feel lost in a sea of eyes. Cricket doesn’t get it. Being underage and a runaway still isn’t the whole story, a story I maybe need to stay and tell. I bump into a woman, and she glares at me. I duck my head and move on.

When I return, the cop from earlier is there again, playing. I hang back. I remember what he said:
Guilty as sin. Why didn’t she leave the guy? A gold digger.

They don’t know the whole story.

From the outside, the house looked okay. That didn’t always mean anything.

Tristan let out a low whistle. “I still can’t believe you freakin’ live here, Daye. You so lucked out.”

“It’s just a house,” I said.

“My gramma’s place in Little Gables, where she lets us crash on the couches where the cats don’t sleep—that’s a house. This is a mansion. A compound. An estate. A—”

“Look, it’s a house, Tris.” Tristan’s muffler was bad, and I wanted to get inside before the truck’s idling motor woke someone. “And it’s two
A.M
.”

“That’s class. Bum rides off me, then don’t even—”

“Thank you.” I opened the door, then shut it as fast as I could without slamming. I forgot to wave good-bye until his pickup had sputtered into darkness. I turned the key, hearing the ocean behind the house.

It wasn’t Tris’s fault. We’d been tight since sixth grade, when my mother finally gave in and let me play football. We were lots alike—both our moms worked as paralegals, and we’d lived on the edge of a school district where everyone else had a trust fund. Neither of us had fathers—not even dads-on-weekends like most guys. Mine ditched when I was two. Tris said his could be “anyone at South Miami High the same year as my mom.” Other guys’ dads embarrassed themselves, screaming in joy or agony at our football games. Tris and I, we didn’t have to worry about that.

But lately I only saw Tris at school and at practice. Tris thought it was because I’d moved to a better neighborhood and bailed on him. I never corrected that. I also never told him why I had to rush home after practice. Sometimes, when he said I was lucky, I wondered if he was really that clueless.

I didn’t turn on the light inside. My eyes got used to the darkness.

As soon as they did, I’d look for the runner. That was what Mom called the piece of embroidered fabric on the hallway table. It was always the first thing I noticed when I came in. In my situation, you learned to look for signals.

Since Mom married Walker, she’d been working on her embroidery, day after day, week after week, trapped in the house like that queen in the fairy tale she used to read me—the queen who spun straw into gold. She’d done that runner about a year ago, and since then it had been draped there—a Christmas gift for Walker, but it was a frequent target on his pissed-off days too.

“I’ll rip it,” he’d threatened the week before. “Then I’ll rip you.”

But that night it was safe on the table. Check. Somehow, I knew if Walker ever really ripped that runner, it would mean trouble.

I took off my shoes and walked on careful feet. Through the living room, neat too. Neater than neat. When my mother wasn’t embroidering, she cleaned like her life depended on whether there was dust in the corners of the gleaming tile floors. And maybe it did.

Dining room—check. Kitchen—check. Library, sitting room, study—all fine. Even the fireplace poker in the study was arranged at the perfect angle.

I began to breathe.

It was always there, when I was home, but especially when I wasn’t. The thought:
What was happening? What was he doing to her?
When I was at school or at football practice or partying with my friends. Any time I started having fun, I wondered.

And I’d had fun that night, the first I’d had in a while. I deserved it. Tris had dragged me to this party at Alex Ramos’s house, a senior party, but we got in because, rumor had it, we were going to make varsity next year. I even hooked up with Vanessa, a cheerleader whose double-Ds were a sort of goal line for every guy on the J.V. team. I’d scored a first down, removed her bra and almost her shirt, in the porch swing in Alex’s yard. I could have gotten more yardage, but the whole time I was thinking:
What is Walker doing to her?

I finished my inspection and crept up the dark stairs.

My door never creaked when it opened. I’d made sure of that. I stripped off my clothes and got into bed in the dark. I didn’t even brush my teeth, though the smell of my breath—stale beer—grossed me out.

The night was quiet, quieter still after the lights and music of the party. And I was alone, more alone than even in the crowds at school. I lay thinking about Vanessa. She’d told me to call her. I’d agreed, though I knew I was lying, which made me a shit on top of everything else.

Then I realized I wasn’t alone.

I felt the presence and braced myself. Cowered, really. Cowered like the coward I was, wondering what I’d done to wake Walker. Wondering what he’d do about it.

“Hi.” It wasn’t Walker.

“Mom … you’ll wake him.”

She sat on my bed and reached for the light switch. “He’s not home. He had his dinner and went back to the office.”

How had I missed that? The absence of Walker’s black Mercedes was an obvious all-clear.

“When’s he due back?”

Her glance darted toward the window, and she didn’t answer. I noticed the way her long, white nightgown hung on her. When had she gotten so thin? But her skin was tanned, her hair streaked blond like the other rich lawyers’ wives. She didn’t hang with them or do whatever it was they did. Tennis, maybe. Or volunteer work. Not her. Her tan came from sitting on the balcony, sewing, waiting for Walker to come home.

Still, she looked good. She was young for a mom, and if you didn’t know her, you’d think she was happy.

But I knew her.

“How was practice today?” she asked.

“Great. I’ll probably make varsity next year.”

“That’s fantastic.” But she looked distracted, like she hadn’t heard me.

“I didn’t save you dinner,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“I would have, if I could, but—”

“You could have.”

“Walker thinks if you miss dinner, you shouldn’t get it saved.”

“And what Walker says, goes.”

“That’s right. He’s your father … as close to a father as you’ve had anyway, and—”

“That’s not very close.”

“Michael, please.”

I looked away. Mom had made all kinds of promises about Walker. A real family, everything perfect like a television sitcom. Maybe he’d even adopt me. And, of course, hot and cold running money. The money was the only part that worked out. I’d known the rest was a lie anyway. Even when they were dating, she’d come home with bruised arms or start wearing a scarf around her neck in ninety-degree heat. And there were his phone calls at three in the morning. I remembered those, too.

“You should leave him,” I said.

She laughed. “You think it’s easy because you don’t remember how it was, living paycheck to paycheck, never sure if we’d make rent.”

I did remember. Once there was a paper on our door, signed by the sheriff, threatening to put us out on the street. A few days later she’d gotten the job as Walker’s secretary. A week after that they’d had their first date.

“I remember we were safe,” I said.

She winced, like
I
was the one hitting her. She buried her head in her hands, starting the same old guilt trip. Usually it would have worked, but something about that night kept me going, made me say, “He’s doing it more and more.”

“That’s not true.”

“You think I don’t notice, but I do.” I pulled up the sleeve of her robe, revealing a mottled collection of bruises on her arms, some new, some gone purple and gold. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

She still didn’t look at me. Everything was silent except the insistent sound of Biscayne Bay behind us.

Then, from the other side of the house, the garage door rumbling up. Walker’s motor.

Mom snapped off the light. She stood.

“At least think about it,” I said.

She walked toward the door. It wasn’t until she got there that she finally spoke.

“Michael?” Barely a whisper.

“What?”

“He says he’ll kill us both if I leave.”

Downstairs the garage door rumbled down.

Back at my trailer, I fumble under the mattress for the photo. It used to be in my wallet, which is why I have it even though I left home in a hurry. When I’m lonely, I look at it.

Like now. It’s one of those photo-booth pictures, maybe even from the fair. In the picture I’m about twelve, wearing this so-cool-you-want-to-smack-me expression, which, after a year with the carnival, I now know is universal to all twelve-year-old suckheads everywhere. Mom looks happy. We’re pre-Walker.

I’ve looked at it so many times that now, when I think of my mother, I can only see how she looked in the photo. I wonder if she ever really existed. Maybe I wish she didn’t.

I stare at it a second longer before shoving it under my mattress. Eleven other guys sleep in this trailer, and there’s not much you can do to keep stuff from getting gone through.

I wish I had a photo of Kirstie, too. But it’s okay. I remember her. Kirstie was a carny too, one I loved last year, maybe still love. She was the one who started me on the road I’m on now. If I can find her, maybe she’ll help me figure out where I’m going.

Once in driver’s ed we saw this movie about hydroplaning. That’s when the road’s wet and the water picks up your car and makes it skid. The movie said the reason hydroplaning causes accidents is people fight it. It’s instinct to try not to skid.

But what you really need to do is the opposite. Accept it. You want to be safe, just keep your hands on the wheel and turn into the skid.

I was in a skid those weeks before I left—with Walker, my mom, my friends. And if I fought it, I’d crash and burn.

I fought it.

Monday, after I talked to Mom, I went to Coach Lowery’s office to tell him I couldn’t play football.