The Fifth Circle (16 page)

“Are you still there?”

“Yeah. Look Claire, you know how hard it is for me to get anything done. I’ll apply to Lindenwood. It’s a good school,” I said.

“It’s not about going to a good school
,” Claire shouted. “It’s about getting away and having a real life. Alex, do you know what I did during my first semester here? Nothing. I sat in my room, did my work, and talked to no one. When I wasn’t studying, I slept. Then the nightmares came. I tried to take a whole bottle of my roommate’s Prozac right before finals because I couldn’t face going back home.”

“Oh, Claire. Why?”

“Why do you think? Alex, I’ve been in counseling for two years. You need to do the same. It’ll be difficult to face everything if you’re still living in that house. You need to…”

Breathing heavily, I
disconnected the call. When the phone vibrated in my hand, I dropped it to the floor. I sat down at the edge of my bed and waited for my heart to stop pounding in my ears. My whole body shivered from head to toe as I leaned over to pick up my phone. Sean was at work, but I sent him a text and prayed he’d call me back when he went on break.

Claire
was such a bitch. Why did she have to bring up a bunch of crap that had nothing to do with my current situation? I just wanted her to tell me she was proud of me, maybe give me some advice for next year—advice I didn’t have to act on right away. Instead she pushed me headfirst into a pool of unwanted memories.

Closing my eyes, I could
feel the room spinning around me. Flashes of light danced behind my eyelids, and with each spot of light, a new memory insinuated itself into my throbbing head: groping hands in the dark; pressure and pain and the sensation of not being able to breathe; blood-stained panties; Claire’s pale face when she returned from her first trip alone with Daddy. And what all these memories added up to was my fucked-up existence and the fact that I had nothing worth living for.

My stomach churned. I flew from my bedroom and down the hallway. Slamming the bath
room door behind me, I fell to the floor in front of the toilet and emptied the contents of my stomach. I heaved and choked until nothing was left, until snot dripped from my nose, until tears fell from my eyes.

“Alex? Are you
okay, honey?” The sound of my mother’s voice helped me focus on something other than my roiling stomach. Weak with exhaustion, I leaned against the wall and tried to work up the strength to speak.

“I’m fine. Just ate something bad,” I lied.

“Well, call me if you need me,” she said. I could hear her footsteps moving down the hallway.

Call her if I needed her? Why the hell would I do tha
t? She’d never helped me before. I’d needed her for years, but she never listened… never wanted to hear. She’d tuned me out. All those years, I hated my father and prayed my mother would finally open her eyes to see what she refused to see. And now, I hated her too. I hated him. Most of all I hated me.

I curled up on the bathroom rug and let the rage wash over me. Each wave of fury crashed over me and brought me to a new crescendo of anger. I thought about rev
enge. One phone call, and I could ruin my father. I could turn him in. Claire might back me up. But, that would bring about an endless round of court dates and I’d have to testify…

Maybe I could just
tell my mom and my aunt. Then I remembered: no one believed Claire, and she was the sensible one. If no one believed her, they wouldn’t believe me. It would just stir up a bunch of crap I wasn’t ready to face.

I could tamper with my dad’s truck… maybe do something to cause him to have an accident. But, what if my tampering caused someone else to get hurt? Or, I could…

My eyes flickered shut as apathy settled over me like a blanket, stifling the flames of my wrath. I would do nothing. Just like my teachers did. Just like my mom. Just like my aunt. I would do nothing because that’s what I always did. I was an accessory to the destruction of my own life.

Chapter
16- Sean

Thy living feet dost move along through Hell

(Canto XVI, line 33)

I didn’t want to go to work
Saturday afternoon. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have gone. So much could have been avoided if I’d just trusted my own instincts and stayed at home on the computer. I tried to call in sick, but Jake forced me to come to work. He regretted it later.

“Hey, this is Sean,” I said, trying to sound congested. I coughed into the phone. “I’m sick, dude. I can’t come in.”

“Bullshit,” Jake replied. I could just imagine the smirk on his face. “I told you the last time: the next time you call in sick, you’re fired. So, either get your ass in here, or start looking for another job.

“Fine. Whatever. But, I’ll probably cough all over everyone’s pizzas and get all the customers sick and …”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take,” he said.

“Asswipe,” I muttered, tossing my phone onto my bed. Maybe a customer would come to pick up an order and see me coughing… then they would get sick and sue the shit out of
Saint Ed’s Pizza. Then, I remembered I wasn’t really sick. Sometimes I got so wrapped up in my own lies, I began to believe them.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I sat in my truck for a couple of minutes. I didn’t want to walk in there too early. I wouldn’t give those bastards one single second of my time unless I was on the clock. If I clocked in a couple minutes early, I wouldn’t get paid for it because the crooks rounded up to the nearest hour.
Sons of bitches.

For the first hour of my shift, I concentrated on looking sick, acting sick, and basically doing as little as possible so Jake would feel bad for making me come in. I coughed half-heartedly on the prep table and he scowled at me.

“Take out the trash, then get a mop and clean up in here. I don’t want you near the food,” he snapped.

Oh, great. I hated taking
out the trash and I hated mopping. After I emptied all the trash cans into a larger one, I wheeled it outside. I wasted as much time as I could even though it was uncomfortably cold outside. When my hands were numb from the bitter temperatures, I rolled the trash can back inside.

“Since when does it take fifteen minutes to empty the trash?” Jake stood with his arms crossed in front of him. I wanted to smack the smart-ass glower off his face. “Get a mop and get busy.”

I filled up a bucket of hot water and poured a crap-load of soap into it. I dipped the mop into the bucket, removed it without wringing it out, and flung the mop onto the floor with a splat. When Jake came back into the storeroom, he slipped on the water and fell on his ass. I laughed.

“What the
hell? Did you just dump the bucket on the floor? Are you too stupid to wring out the mop?” he shouted, struggling to his feet.

My anger had given away to giddy laughter and I was bent over double in an attempt to catch my breath. Jake had a wet spot on his ass and that made me laugh even harder. When his face
turned red with rage, I laughed harder still.

“You’re fired. Get out,” he shouted
.

Those were the magic words that made my laughter subside. I let the mop fall to the floor. “You can’t fire me just for laughing
at your stupid ass for falling.”

“There’s a lot of shit I can fire you for,
” he said.              

It started in my cheeks
—the warm, boiling sensation of fury—and spread throughout my body. My limbs felt heavy, but detached—as if they weren’t my own. My arms flew out in front of me and my legs moved involuntarily. I didn’t realize what had happened until I saw Jake on the ground.

“You fucking psycho,” he yelled.
Our co-workers flooded into the back room. Witnesses. I should have stopped, but I couldn’t. The monster was unleashed and he hungered for vengeance.

I lifted Jake by his shirt and pushed him against the shelves, causing a stack of
empty pizza boxes to tumble to the ground. I released my hold on his shirt and punched him. His hand flew up to his face, and blood coursed through his fingers. The red evidence of my infallibility emboldened me and I launched another attack. I punched him in the stomach and was rewarded by his quick intake of breath.

Before I could punch him again, another ex-football playing co-worker
named Mark grabbed my arms and pinned them behind my back. I twisted away and kicked him, startling him enough to make him lose his footing. He crashed into a metal cabinet that held cleaning supplies. The contents rattled inside. I ran up to the front with Jake right on my heels. He leapt the counter and blocked my path to the door. A two-liter bottle of soda was sitting out on the counter top. I grabbed it and hurled it at him. He ducked, and the bottle bounced off the metal frame of the door and busted open, spilling its sticky contents all over the floor.

“Jess, call the cops,”
Mark bellowed right before he tackled me to the ground. His knees dug into my back, and this time I couldn’t squirm away.

Jess scampered to
the phone to make the 911 call. Everyone was against me, it seemed. No one ever took up for me. Only Alex. I started to cry when I thought of my plans for us. Now, I wouldn’t have a job. I’d never be able to support her.

“Stop bawling, you pussy,” Mark said, twisting my arms behind me. I yelped in pain.

After a few minutes of brutal arm twisting, I heard sirens in the distance. Jake smirked as the cops put the cuffs on me. I was pleased to see Jake was still bleeding. A customer gaped at me as the officer manhandled me through the door and out into the cold night air. I heard Jessica’s apology to the customer as the cop dragged me toward his car.

Time became meaningless as I waited to be processed into the city jail.
Several different officers interrogated me. I was photographed, fingerprinted, and booked. I sat inside a cell with a bunch of other people—the underbelly of society, it seemed. At last, I was able to make my phone call home.

“Mom.” I began crying the moment I heard her voice. I turned my back so the police officer wouldn’t see my tears, but I knew he could hear my blubbering. “I’m in jail.” I quickly gave her a sanitized version of what had happened… how I’d been victimized, then arrested.

“You can’t get me out. I’m on a twenty-four hour hold,” I explained. I could hear her sobbing on the other end of the phone. “I’m waiting to be charged. Probably assault. You’ll have to call
a lawyer tomorrow. I’m sorry.”

It was Saturday night. Could she even get in touch with a lawyer on the weekend, or would I be stuck in jail until Monday? Right now, Monday seemed like a lifetime away.

When I returned to the large, community-sized cell, I staked out a spot on a bench and curled up to go to sleep. Although I could hear the murmuring of a dozen conversations, I drifted off to sleep effortlessly. It was the first time I’d slept in days, and when I awoke, my twenty-four-hour hold was over. It was the wee hours of Monday morning and I was being moved to the Saint Edmunds County Correctional Facility.

***

“I promise I’ll pay you back,” I said as my mother and the bail-bondsman led me outside into the cold early morning air. I inhaled the scent of the fresh snow beginning to fall.

“We’ll worry about that later,” she said, glancing around as
if she were afraid she’d see someone she knew.

“I can give you the name of a good lawyer,” the bondsman said, sticking out his meaty hand to shake my mother’s. “He’s a good guy…works on a lot of assault cases.” A snowflake glistened on his balding head. I watched it melt while he rummaged in his wallet to pluck out a dog-eared business card.

“Thanks. I’ll give him a call first thing tomorrow,” my mother said. “Let’s go, Sean.”

Her car was parked a couple of blocks away
. I followed her, wondering if I would be grounded, or if she would even try to punish me. After all, I was eighteen. I was an adult now—an adult who had to call his mommy to get him out of jail.

“Did you get my truck?” I asked.

“How would I be able to do that, Sean? I can’t drive two cars at once. Besides, it wasn’t a priority at the time. We’ll swing by Saint Ed’s Pizza and get it on the way home,” she said.

“Thanks,” I muttered. I hoped the guys from work didn’t mess with
it. I leaned forward in the seat, mentally urging my mom to drive faster. I needed to get to my truck. My phone was there. I needed to call Alex. Better yet, I needed to
see
her. 

The parking lot was empty when we pulled up to
Saint Ed’s Pizza—my truck sat out front. Thank God. The sons of bitches could have towed it—hell, I expected them to—but they didn’t. Probably because they knew they were in the wrong.

I peeled out of the lot,
afraid one of my former coworkers might show up and say shit to me. With shaking hands, I called Alex before I even cleared the parking lot.
Please let her not be in school
, I prayed.

“Sean,
oh my God, are you okay?” she burst out on the first ring. It felt so good to be needed.