The Kindness of Strangers (48 page)

The fish tanks still held water, but the fish were gone. Had someone taken them away and now they swam somewhere else? Or had they died and been flushed down the toilet? “Toilet” was a tricky word: t-o-i, not t-o-y. He hoped the fish were dead. He hated them, too, and the way they’d watched with their cold, unblinking eyes. U-n-b-l-i-n-k-i-n-g.

The room felt too quiet. Q-u-i-e-t. Even without music and people, there’d always been the sound of the tanks gurgling. G-u-r-g—
Stop it
. Now the tanks stood still, a thin layer of scum across the top of the water.

Jordan stepped into the room, blinking hard to get rid of the words he saw floating in the air. This time he didn’t want them. He needed to be
here
instead. The furniture was moved, and the wall closet was open, its shelves empty. Words like “forensics” and “evidence” nudged him, letting him know they were there if he needed something else to look at.

He didn’t know he was going to yell. He just did. A deep, growling yell that started in his toes and scraped his throat. He ran and body-slammed one of the aquariums, heaving it over. A nasty algae smell filled the room. Jordan stomped through the murky puddle, then jumped on top of the white couch and wiped his feet all over it, kicking it, trying to rip the cushions. He stepped on the back, and the couch toppled over, flinging him to the floor with a thud that took his breath away and ended the yell abruptly. But he got up, head spinning, and kicked down the statue of the naked boy on the coffee table.

When he kicked it, the boy broke in half instead of shattering. Jordan picked up the boy’s lower half and, holding his base and feet, ran down the hall toward the kitchen, shredding the velvet wallpaper with the jagged edges of the statue’s severed torso.

In the kitchen he used the boy to smash the door of the microwave and to chip and crack the tiled counters. He battered at the tile until the boy finally crumbled in his hands.

Jordan had cut his left hand, torn open that little crook of his thumb. He squeezed the wound and let blood drop all over the white chips and dust of the statue boy. Then he smeared his blood all over the refrigerator before opening it and breaking all the old, half-empty condiment bottles on the floor.

He ran down the hall and flung open the door to his parents’ bedroom. He stomped on their bed, leaving ketchup and mustard footprints. He suddenly thought, What was he doing? Was he crazy? He was as crazy as his stupid, psycho mother. He hated her.

He froze. The entire room shrank. He couldn’t believe he’d even
thought
that.

He fled the room as though Danny’s “monsters” were after him, then ran to the second floor, his footsteps echoing in the silent house. He went to his old room and slammed the door behind him. His room was neat and tidy, like he’d left it, except his bed was stripped bare. When Reece had taken him to see his lawyer, Rhonda, Jordan had been surprised to see his superhero sheets on a list of evidence.

He sat on the stripped bed, panting, freaked out by what he’d let into his head. His heart refused to return to its normal pace, and his stomach burned. He pressed a hand over his chest and looked around his room, trying to catch his breath.

A chip in the plaster wall caught his attention. The sight slowed his pulse as if someone had sat on his chest. He stood and went to the chipped place.

He pictured his cat’s red collar hooked on the nail. Raja’s long black body hanging limp, white belly showing. Golden eyes in that frozen expression of surprise. Those inner lids halfway closed. The cat had been dead before his mom hung him up.

Jordan hadn’t seen it coming. He knew he was in trouble that day. He knew from the silence in the car all the way home from that school conference. He’d expected the worst, but somehow the worst hadn’t included this. That was before he learned that things could always be worse than what he imagined and that it was better to leave room in his head for things he hadn’t thought of.

Coming into the house that day, he’d been ready for anything. He thought bones might be broken. But he thought they’d be
his
. Raja greeted them at the door, and his mother had picked up the cat by the scruff of the neck and carried him to her bedroom.

She’d
done that. Not his dad.

Jordan remembered chasing after her. Screaming. “No! What are you doing? Leave him alone!” His father had grabbed him and hauled him upstairs. Jordan remembered kicking and punching. He’d seen the bruises he’d given his father later when . . . That didn’t matter. What mattered was, his crying mother had brought Raja—dead Raja—up to his room.

His mother had killed his cat.

She’d still held the needle and syringe in one hand as she set the cat in Jordan’s lap. She was crying so much it was hard to understand her as she told him she was sorry, that she hadn’t wanted to do this, that this hurt her as much as it hurt him. She kept petting the cat in Jordan’s lap, stroking the cat’s fur as she said that Jordan had to understand, they were different, that their family wasn’t like other families, that other people wouldn’t accept or tolerate them, that Jordan “needed to grasp” how urgent this was, how
grave
.

Grave. He’d never heard the word “grave” used that way. He’d only heard it as a noun, like when they visited his grandma’s grave. When it was a vocabulary word later that year, he learned it meant serious or life-threatening. He’d sat in class and pictured his mother handing him his dead cat. He got the word wrong on the test on purpose. He did it for Raja. It was the only word he ever missed. He couldn’t use it without picturing that day.

His mother had killed his cat. She’d hammered in a nail and hung Raja up on Jordan’s bedroom wall as a reminder to him. Raja stayed there for three days, until someone took him down while Jordan was at school. He never knew what they did with the cat’s body. Looking back, he figured Raja had been taken down because Sarah was coming to cook.

He touched the chip in the wall, leaving bloody fingerprints from his cut hand. He hated his mother for this. Hated her.

“Stop it!” he wailed. He had to stop thinking that. He pulled a piece of plaster from the wall and ground it into the gash in his hand until his eyes ran with tears.

T
he doorbell rang, and Jordan jerked awake. At first he thought he was having his usual nightmare. Then he realized that his dream had been good—he’d been living like a pioneer in Sarah’s bean tepee, a small, safe place where only bugs bothered him—and he truly was in his old house.

The doorbell rang again.

What was real? What had happened? The sky outside was the dark blue of dusk, and Jordan couldn’t get his mind to focus. Why was he here?

He half expected his mom’s voice on the intercom telling him to come downstairs. But the doorbell rang again, three times in a row, before a silence fell.

No,
he told himself.
They’re gone. You’re safe with the Ladens. Everything is okay.

Then he remembered that he’d left the Ladens. And why. It wasn’t a dream. He really had done that stupid, disgusting thing. Nate hated him.

A banging started downstairs. It sounded like someone pounding on the patio doors. Jordan stood up. His injured hand throbbed, and his neck felt stiff and sore.

He opened his door, tiptoed down the stairs, and peeked into the living room, but whoever had been pounding was gone. Maybe the police were back. How long had he slept?

He slipped into the hallway but froze at the sound of the back door opening. Feet crackled on broken glass.

“Jordan?” a voice called. It was Nate. “Jordan? Are you here?”

Jordan hunched his shoulders and hugged his chest, wishing he could shrink. His face burned hot. Not Nate. He couldn’t look at Nate. What should he do? Run? Hide?

The kitchen light went on. He heard Nate say something to himself. He tried to picture the wrecked kitchen through Nate’s eyes. He didn’t move as Nate came into the hallway and fumbled for another switch. “Jordan? Come on, I know you’re here,” he said as he groped the wall like a blind man. He found the switch.

Nate jumped when he saw Jordan there, so close to him.

The two boys stared at each other, but Jordan couldn’t look Nate in the face. He couldn’t stand for Nate to look at him. Jordan dropped his gaze to the floor and wished it would open and swallow him up. He was disgusting.

Nate cleared his throat. “Look, Jordan, I’m sorry. I think I was rude to you, and I didn’t mean to be. I—”

“Why did you come here?” Jordan tried to sound mad. “Changed your mind, didn’t you?”

He hated Nate’s wounded expression. Like Jordan had shot him or something.

“Jordan.” Nate stood there with his mouth open, like one of those stupid fish.

Jordan kicked the wall, hard. Pain ripped through his toes and up his shin.

Nate took a step toward him but stopped. “Why do you want to be here? How can you even stand to be in this place?”

Jordan kicked the wall again, twice, three times more, before sinking down to sit on the bottom step of the stairs.

Nate said, “What happened . . . It was . . . Y-you didn’t mean anything by it.”

Jordan punched the wall this time, heat flashing through his hand. He
had
meant something by it. He’d meant a
lot
by it. And it was all wrong.

Nate’s face was red. “I mean, I know what you thought and I . . . I’m sorry. We just . . .”

Jordan stared at Nate’s feet and watched them take three steps closer. He wondered how long Nate would wait if he just sat there. What if he never moved or talked again? If only there were a way to undo what he’d done. Unlike those other things, he’d started this himself. He’d actually
touched
Nate, he’d tried to—He put his hands over his face, hardly able to stand it, seeing himself flee the room, flee the house, run someplace where he’d never have to look at Nate again.

“Nobody knows what happened, Jordan. They just think we argued, okay? Nobody knows but my mom . . . and, okay, Dr. Bryn.”

Jordan groaned and pressed his fingers against his eyelids until he saw sparks. Sarah. Sarah would think he was some awful freak. She’d kick him out. She wouldn’t let Danny be friends with him. He’d have no one.

“My mom didn’t tell the police the details. I was there. Seriously, nobody else knows.”

Jordan kept his hands on his face. Through his fingers Jordan saw Nate lean against the wall near him. “Look, man, you just . . . startled me, okay? But when I think back to our conversation . . . I mean, Jordan, give yourself a break. I wasn’t putting it together in my head, you know? I set you up, and then I freaked out. We . . . we misunderstood each other. Those people messed with you, Jordan. It makes sense that you didn’t . . . that you didn’t get what I was talking about. It’s okay. Really.”

No, it
wasn’t.
Jordan couldn’t believe that Nate would even sit here talking to him.

“Come on. Let’s go back.”

Jordan shook his head.

Nate sighed. “Jordan, don’t you see it’s only going to get easier?”

Jordan dropped his hands and looked up. “But it’s
not
easier! It’s worse! The . . . the . . .” He couldn’t even say it. The thing last night made him want to claw off his own face. “I can’t do anything right. Danny hates me—”

“That’s bullshit. Are you still worried about that disk? He’s been working his ass off trying to find you. He
cried
when he found out you ran away.”

Jordan felt all his blood run into his toes. “He . . . he doesn’t know what hap—”

“I told you, he just thinks we argued. But leave Danny out of it for now. You left because of what happened between you and me. Right?”

Jordan nodded at the floor, seeing himself reaching for Nate again.
Stupid. Disgusting.

“Then what’s the problem? I’m telling you it’s okay. It’s over. It’s forgotten.”

Jordan remembered Nate jerking away from him, and his eyes watered. He felt the convulsion in his chest. On top of everything else, now he was going to cry. Shit. Why couldn’t he just curl up and die somewhere? “I just . . . I just wanted . . .”

“I know.” Nate cleared his throat again. “And it’s okay. You should come home.”

Jordan’s stomach rolled over. “This is my home.”

“No it’s not. Not anymore. Your home is with us.”

“For now,” Jordan said. But inside he knew he wanted it to be true.
Stop it,
he thought, pinching the dirty gash in his hand, making it bleed again.

“For now.” Nate frowned at Jordan’s hand. “Or whatever, okay?”

Nate looked past Jordan toward the party room, and his eyes widened. He walked over to the archway and turned on the light. “Holy shit. I thought the kitchen was bad.” He whistled, then turned to look at Jordan. “Nice work.”

Jordan lifted one shoulder, wanting to smile.

Nate opened a door in the hallway and stared at the washer and dryer. “Well, well, well, what have we here?” He lifted a huge plastic detergent jug off the shelf. He opened the lid and poured the bright blue fluid on the carpet. Jordan’s stomach lifted like he was flying down a roller coaster. Nate looked at Jordan and said, “Oops. Sorry.” Then he spun in a circle, letting the detergent splash the wall.