Keith

IT RAINED ALL DAY SATURDAY. NOT LIKE A DRIZZLE. MORE LIKE a downpour. I couldn’t see two feet out the trailer windows, and it was cold enough that I thought about turning on the heat. Why not? Laurel was paying for it. But it seemed like a wimp thing to do. It was barely October.

I wasn’t having a good day. One of the things about living in the trailer was that I couldn’t hear myself think when it rained hard like that. Seriously. It was like somebody was firing rivets into my brain. Then there was the small matter of Marcus saying he was going to report me to DSS. So, had he done it yet? It’d been, like, twenty-four hours and nothing had happened, but I still worried that some social worker was going to show up at my door any second and drag me to a group home. Or even worse, to some foster home with smiley foster parents who’d be paid to be nice to me. I tried calling Jen to see if she could come over or vice versa, but she wasn’t picking up. She had caller ID, right? Why wasn’t she answering? I didn’t like to think about her being with someone else. Maybe this day had her down, too. Those inside scars of hers. Maybe she just didn’t want to see anyone.

It got so bad that I dug out this cassette tape my mother made for me while I was in the hospital. The counselor helped her make it, and it was supposed to help me relax. On the tape, my mother first talked about how much she loved me and how I should be strong and that kind of thing. Then she went into this bit about feeling my feet relax, my legs, and on up. First, I dug it out because I needed something to help me relax. But then I knew I really wanted to play it just to hear her voice. Big mistake. I could hardly take it, listening to her “I love yous” and all that. I hadn’t said those words to her in a century or two. I could be such an asshole.

So, I spent the whole day like that—lying around the tin can with the rain shooting like bullets against the roof, feeling sorry for myself, missing my mother. Around seven, just after it got dark, I heard some car doors slam out front. I was on my bed, and I looked out my window. It was nearly impossible to see anything because of the dark and the rain, but then someone opened a car door, and in the light from inside I saw there were three—three—cop cars out there. I knew in my gut they weren’t there about my mother. I knew they were there to drag me somewhere I didn’t want to go.

For a split second, I couldn’t move. Then I heard them on the stairs coming up to the deck, so I took off down the hall to my mother’s room, where the trailer had another exterior door. That door was always locked and for a good reason: there was nothing on the other side of it. No deck. No stairs. Just an eight-foot drop to the ground.

My hands shook while I unlocked the door, and I didn’t even think before I jumped. I landed hard on my left ankle. Maybe busted it, but I didn’t care. I started running away through the darkness and the rain. I heard some shouts from the trailer and saw some flashlights bobbing around. I just kept running.

I gimped the three miles to Marcus’s tower, freezing in my sweatshirt and bare feet, going through the yards of vacant houses in case the cops were looking for me. I saw maybe two cars on the road the whole time. I was the only person desperate enough to be out in that weather.

The tower was dark when I got there, and the damn front door was locked. I walked around the back to check the sliding glass doors, but they were locked, too. I sat down on the steps of the deck. I was soaked through, ice cold, and my ankle felt like it was twice its normal size. I sat there for hours. I could die here, I thought, shivering. Hypothermia could get me. I didn’t really give a shit at that point. I kept hearing my mother’s voice: now your calves are warm and relaxed. The same damn sentence played in my mind, over and over again, and I knew I was really on the verge of losing it.

So when the lights suddenly popped on in the tower behind me, I was nearly too stiff and cold and crazy to get to my feet. But I managed to stand up. I hobbled across the deck and knocked on the sliding glass door. After a second, the deck lights came on, and the door slid open.

“Keith!” Marcus looked totally shocked at the sight of me.

I couldn’t move. My teeth chattered and my arms felt like they were made out of concrete.

Marcus grabbed me. Pulled me inside. Put his arms around me like he could warm me up that way, and even though I was probably an inch taller than him, I lowered my head to his shoulder like I was a little kid, too tired to fight anymore.

“It’s all right.” Marcus rubbed my arms—gently—through my soggy sweatshirt. “It’s gonna be all right, okay? Keith? Don’t worry, buddy,” he said. “We’ll work it out.”