My Kind of Crazy (14 page)

As we're walking out of the classroom single file, Mr. Vaughn pats me on the back. “Hey, thinkin' good thoughts for you, Hank.”

“Excuse me?”

“I'm glad to see you changed your mind.”

I am thoroughly confused. “Changed my mind about what?”

Before I can thank him or ask him what he means, he gives me a thumbs-up and pushes ahead of the class to lead everyone outside.

This day just keeps getting more and more surreal.

• • •

I sludge through the rest of the afternoon and show up ten minutes late for work, which sets O'Callaghan off on a rant. Tonight he has me checking the shelves for dented cans. He wants me to pull them all toward the front and angle them so unsuspecting customers buy them and he can unload the damaged stock. Apparently, people are scared of dented cans because they can, in rare cases, have contents with botulism. But O'Callaghan is more concerned about lost profits than spreading a potentially fatal bacterial illness. The only thing that gets me through my shift is hoping that Peyton will be waiting for me when I get home.

Except she isn't.

Dad's watching the tail end of a ball game that's in extra innings when I walk in. He's wearing his lucky Red Sox shirt and a pair of blue Christmas boxers, which Monica bought him last year, with a big snowman's face that has a strategically placed carrot nose. Definitely a change from his interview outfit the other morning.

“Hey, Dad,” I say, but he's too engrossed in the game to respond. My stomach growls with hunger, as it did nonstop during the last miserable hour of my shift, and I head into the kitchen to quest for food. I grab the last Stouffer's frozen dinner out of the otherwise empty freezer and throw it in the microwave.

There's a commotion in the crowd, and Dad yells at the TV, “Son of a bitch! That guy was safe!” He's on his feet. “This umpire is a piece of work. He don't know his ass from his elbow.”

“Who's playing?”

“Sox and Angels. It's neck and neck at the bottom of the eleventh goddamn inning.”

“Wow.” I lean against the doorjamb, watching the end of the game with him while my food cooks. The Sox win and that puts Dad in a great mood. I take advantage of it and ask him, “I haven't seen you to ask. How'd that interview go the other day?”

“It didn't. Christ, everyone working there was half my age. A bunch of college pukes. They said I didn't have enough experience to be manager of a goddamned drugstore. Can you believe that? Because I'd never worked a friggin' register. It ain't exactly rocket science to ring up toilet paper and shampoo. You should know.” I knew he'd have to get a jab in there somewhere, but I let it roll off me. He reaches for his beer. For once, there isn't a mountain of spent cans in front of him. He must be scaling back now that he's out of work. At least when Dad's drunk, I know what to expect from him.

“So you didn't get it, then?”

His eyes remain riveted to the TV. “I don't know. They said they'd call if they're interested.”

“Well, once school ends, I'll be able to pick up more shifts at Shop 'n Save, so that'll be good,” I tell him.

It's really starting to sink in that once I graduate, Shop 'n Save will pretty much be all I have. Wake up, go to work, face dented cans out, mop up spills, and ring up harried housewives with screaming toddlers on their hips. Go home. Sleep. Rinse. Repeat. Graduation is less than a month away, and the thought is depressing as hell.

Dad finally turns to me and says, “Looks like we're back to microwave dinners for a while, huh? I never thought I'd miss Monica's cooking, but you knew it was time to eat when the smoke alarm went off.” He laughs but I know that he's lonely without her. If he hadn't been such an asshole and brought it on himself, I'd almost feel sorry for him.

“Have you talked to her?”

“Nah. I think I screwed that one up pretty good.” He shakes his head and chuckles. “She could be such a pain in the ass, but I miss having her around.”

He isn't the only one.

“I think she was good for you, Dad,” I say. “You should call her.”

“I don't know that there's anything I could say that she wants to hear.” He winces slightly and I can tell he's been thinking about it. I offer a little encouragement, hoping that he does call her. She's good for him.

“You never know until you try.”

“Maybe.” He turns back to the TV.

The microwave beeps, and I pull out my steaming plastic tray of semi-edible food, grab a fork, and head upstairs. After I finish eating, I lie on my bed and read the comic Peyton bought for me for the millionth time, but I'm distracted.

My thoughts keep drifting to what Nick said in class, about how she's always talking about me. I wonder if that's true. Honestly, I'm kind of relieved that whatever was going on between them is over. I can't really be pissed at Nick for liking Peyton, then going after Amanda, because it's not any different than what I've done, just the other way around.

I'm glad that Amanda didn't pick me. Because the truth is, I'm okay with no one knowing what I did.
Especially
Amanda Carlisle. From the get-go, that stupid promposal was a half-baked idea that went from bad to worse, and I was a coward. I started a frickin' fire, and I ran away. I didn't even try to warn her or call for help or even attempt to put it out. I was more worried that I'd get in trouble and prove I was the screwup Dad thinks I am. My actions weren't romantic or heroic, and I'm certainly no Prince Charming. It's down-right embarrassing.

I shut off my light sometime around midnight, and I toss and turn trying to fall asleep. My room is cold and I can't seem to find a comfortable position. Eventually, I drift off into a light sleep.

Around 3:00 a.m., I startle awake at a sound at my window, only to find there really are such things as monsters.

The pebbles hit my window hard enough to wake me but not enough to actually break the glass. I can make out someone standing in the shadows, and although I can't make out her face in the moonlight, I instantly recognize it's Peyton. She's dressed all wrong for how chilly it's been at night lately, wearing an oversize T-shirt and our school gym sweats, and rubbing her bare arms for warmth. She seems frantic. Something is wrong.

I jump out of bed and take the stairs two at a time, but I am ill prepared for what I find when I open the door. It's Peyton all right, but her hair is short, cut off at all sorts of crazy angles with long wisps sticking out here and there. Even in the low light, I can see the fresh, angry bruises on her left arm where someone grabbed hold and held on with force. The collar of her shirt is torn, and her left cheek is swollen and red. Her lower lip is split and covered in dried blood. She looks as if she will completely fall apart if I touch her.

“Holy
shit
, who did this to you?”

My mind runs with the possibilities. Because whoever could do a thing like this to another human being…

She steps toward me and folds herself into me, wrapping her arms around my neck. She holds on to me, shivering.

She lets out heaving sobs, gasping to catch her breath in between like she's about to hyperventilate, and I try to calm her down. I don't want to wake up Dad and have to answer a million questions. Not right now. I wrap my arm around her shoulders and lead her up to my bedroom in the darkness, stepping quietly and carefully to avoid the squeaky floorboards.

Once she's in my room, the rawness of seeing what's been done to her takes my breath away. She curls up fetal on my bed, crying and covering her eyes with her balled fists. I stand there frozen. I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do.

I watch her body quake and convulse with each round of fresh sobs, and I worry that Dad will hear. I make a little
shhhh
noise, which she must take as me trying to comfort her because she reaches for me. She leans on me and I wrap my arm around her so she can cry on my shoulder. Slowly I can feel her start to relax and eventually her crying subsides.

She seems calmer now, so I turn off the light and lie down on the bed next to her. She angles into me and puts her head on my chest. Her hair tickles my nose, and I try to push the spiky bits away, but they spring back into place. Stroking her hair seems to soothe her though.

“I'm sorry. I just…” she whispers and then her chest heaves with gasps. Snot pours out of her nose as new tears stream down her face, dampening my T-shirt.

When her breaths begin to normalize again and she stops shaking, I ask her quietly, “What happened?”

She shakes her head. “I can't talk about it.”

I try to reposition myself since my arm, which is pinned beneath her head, is starting to fall asleep. “Hold up. You show up at my house in the middle of the night half dressed, your hair all hacked off, hysterically crying, and you won't tell me what happened?”

She sniffles and wipes at her nose. “No.”

“But—”

“Please, Hank. Please just be here for me.” She locks gazes with me in the dark. “You'll only hate me. I don't want you to hate me.”

“Why would I hate you?”

“Because I know you. You'll feel responsible. But I brought this on myself.”

I sit up. “Well, now you have to tell me what's going on.”

She shakes her head and runs her fingers self-consciously over her hair. “I can't take it if you're mad at me, Hank.”

I try to reason with her. “Listen to me. I'm not going to be mad at you, Peyton. Christ, are you kidding me? I need to know what happened. Who did this to you? Please. Tell me.”

She's shaking like a leaf, her eyes wild. “I stole some money from my mother, okay? I found it in a jar in the back of a closet, and I figured she'd never notice it was gone. Or she'd think she was so fucked up one night that she forgot she spent it. But she found out. So I tried to cover my tracks and told her that Pete must have taken it.”

Peyton shudders. “My mom confronted him, and he told her I'm a liar. Then she went completely ballistic, accusing me of trying to break them up. Yeah, I lied, but she always takes the word of some deadbeat loser over mine. She's never there for me.”

Her lip starts to tremble so I take her hand, not really knowing what else to do except listen.

She says, “Of course, she's high, completely wasted, which is nothing new. They both are. So I go to my room to get away from them, and the next thing I know, she's in there, pulling down my records and smashing them, tearing my posters, calling me a whore and a thief, telling me I ruined her life and that she wishes I was never born.” She shakes her head. The tears are flowing again.

I squeeze her hand, and she keeps talking. “So I tell her that makes two of us, and then she starts grabbing me, shaking me, slapping me, and I can't get her to stop.”

My stomach twists. It's hard for me to even compute how her mother could do something like that to her, and how terrified Peyton must have been while it was happening.

She reaches for her hair again and looks at me with red-rimmed eyes, trembling as she says, “The next thing I know, she's got these scissors, and she pins me down and starts hacking off my hair. I just wanted her to stab me with the fucking scissors and put an end to it all.”

“We have to tell somebody,” I say, and she completely flips out.

“
No!
Please…you can't say anything. It'll only make it worse. Just…I can't go back there. I didn't know where else to go.”

She starts crying again. I wrap my arms around her and pull her to me, rocking her back and forth like my mom used to when I was a little kid. Peyton buries her face in my shoulder.

“I'm glad you came,” I whisper into her hair.

She looks up at me. “So you don't hate me?”

“Jesus, why would I hate you, Peyton? How could you even think that? Your mother and Pete should go to jail for what they did to you. Nobody deserves to be treated that way, no matter what.” I'm so enraged and sickened I could put my hand through a goddamn wall.

And that's when I put the pieces together in my head. The comic. Of course. It's not like she had $275 sitting around.

I feel the blood drain from my face. “That's how you bought me that comic, isn't it?”

She turns from me, her voice quivering. “I wanted you to be happy, Hank. I wanted you to know how much you mean to me, and I wanted you to like me back.”

My heart shatters like a piece of frickin' glass. The skin on her neck is so pale and white that it's practically translucent in the pale light from my window. I can even make out the blue highways of her veins. I fight the urge to trace them with my fingers.

Instead, I touch her hair. I run my hand gingerly over the jagged strands, and slowly she turns back to me. I lightly stroke her reddened cheek with the side of my hand and then run my fingertips down her arm to the purpling bruise.

I move my fingers across her leg and up her other arm, then trace her collarbone, moving up her neck to touch her lips. She closes her eyes and I wonder if she wants me to stop. And then I'm thinking that I probably
should
stop because it feels wrong to touch her when she's come here like this.

I pull back, and she opens her eyes. She must read my hesitation because the next thing I know she inches forward, closing the gap between us and pressing her lips gently against mine. I can taste the dried blood, but I'm not exactly complaining. She kisses me softly at first, then with more urgency. Her hands reach up to cup both sides of my face. She slides her tongue between my lips and teases my mouth open, and then she lies back on my bed and pulls me down beside her.

She looks right into my eyes, like she can see through to my soul, and says, “I love you, Hank.”

The words ripple through me like waves. I can
feel
that love, and it's amazing. From the way my heart is racing, how much I want to protect her and how everything makes more sense whenever she's with me, I must love her too. I don't know. I've never felt this way before. She's looking at me, waiting for me to say it back, and I want to, but I'm scared.

The truth is, I'm absolutely terrified of what will happen if I do. And I'm just as terrified of what might happen if I don't. I don't want to blow this or make her think I'm trying to take advantage of her in a vulnerable moment. I really care about her. In fact, I think I'm falling in love with her.

How could I have missed all the cues, the signs that she felt this way about me? I've been so caught up in my own crap that I've been completely oblivious to the way I feel about her.

The circumstances that bound me to Peyton when we first met are irrelevant now, and I could have easily cut ties, but I didn't want to. And then there was that annoying, twisty feeling in my gut when she and Nick were into each other and I thought I might lose her.

She turns on her side and laces her fingers through mine. I look at her in the moonlight, taking in how beautiful she actually is. Despite her hacked hair, bruised body, and broken spirit, she is absolutely radiant, and I know I can never let anyone hurt her again. I feel so connected to her, and I want her to feel safe with me. I want her to know that I'd do anything to make her happy. That the minute she walked into my world it became a brighter place and I don't ever want to stop feeling this way.

So I say it back.