Even Thistles Bloom, page 7
He averted his gaze. Was this why his father stalked them from a distance instead of getting close? Could he not bear to see the reflections of his own failures? Or did he simply not care about Todd and Adam? How else could he enjoy being free of them? Todd felt more guilty about his dying marigold than his father did about his struggling sons.
“Forget them,” Adam said, gesturing to the wall. Next to his alien-eyed picture of their father’s family was a newer portrait. This time, Adam had pierced their eyes with pins.
Todd leaned against his pillow, carrying all the weight his father wasn’t. Adam eyed him, then strode to their closet and pulled out an old box.
“You think this thing still works?” He held out an old video game console, a relic from one of their mother’s past boyfriends. Todd had been sorry to see him go, but his start-up hadn’t proved as profitable as his mother had hoped.
“Come on,” Adam said. “Let’s try it out.”
Todd would have preferred to sulk, but he appreciated Adam’s trying to cheer him up. He followed his brother to the basement TV. Their mother was AWOL, but they wrestled the wires by themselves and hooked up the console.
They’d perfected the art of throttling each other with animated avatars. With every virtual blow Todd landed, the real-life wound his father had dealt healed a little more. Soon they were laughing, enjoying a night of innocent fun like normal kids with a normal childhood. Todd could almost imagine his mother calling down the stairs to say dinner was ready, and they’d better finish their homework before they played anymore.
Todd landed a fatal blow. “Yes!” He raised his arms in victory.
Adam shoved him. “I’ll get you next round.” His phone buzzed. He broke into a grin and jumped to his feet. “We have a Halloween party to crash.”
Reality crushed Todd’s victory. Couldn’t they just pretend to be normal for one night?
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Yes, you are,” Adam countered. “This is more than a party. It’s damage control.”
Todd stood. “You still want to deal? Can’t we just…I don’t know, slow down?”
“Slow down? No. We can’t slow down. I want out of this hell, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but—”
“You think Dad has a college fund for us?”
“No, but—”
“Mom doesn’t give two shits about us. Nobody does.” Adam’s eyes softened. “It’s us against the world, bro.”
Todd ran his thumb along his stubby fingers. Adam was right. Their father wouldn’t help them. School wouldn’t help them. They’d be lucky if their mother didn’t sell their organs. They were on their own, but at least they had each other’s backs.
Todd nodded at his brother. “Let’s go.”
Todd groaned as consciousness teased him. He felt as though his body were wobbling within a giant bowl of gelatin. Everything was numb, yet everything hurt.
“This isn’t a good idea.” The voice had a familiar feminine tone, but Todd couldn’t place it.
“Relax, I’m almost done,” another girl said. I know who that is. It’s… His brain overheated trying to identify the speaker. Something scratched his arm. What the hell?
He cracked his eyes open, regretted it, and squeezed them shut again. Someone giggled. Todd prepared himself for daylight’s cruel bite before opening his eyes.
Minh smirked beside him, pen in hand.
“Wha?” Todd’s sluggish tongue couldn’t finish the word. He didn’t remember coming to school. He hadn’t planned to, not after last night. At the party, he’d drunk and smoked and slept with a girl whose name he didn’t recall. She’d grimaced at his short fingers. That, he remembered. Whiskey shots had soothed his hurt feelings, so when she’d failed to find a more attractive partner, he’d eagerly accepted her offer to “make it up to him.”
That was all he remembered.
“How…?” He sleepwalked sometimes. Had the alcohol triggered an episode? He and Adam drove to school, because anyone with a car drove, but they lived within walking distance.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Minh said.
“Do you need the nurse?” Cathryn’s face filled with concern. “You look…green.”
“I’m fine,” Todd said, closing his eyes. This wasn’t his first hangover, and school wasn’t the strangest place he’d woken up in after a sleepwalking episode. When he was eleven, he’d awakened in an igloo the neighborhood kids had constructed.
Cathryn didn’t look like she believed him, but Oliver approached before she could reply.
“And what do we have here, artists?”
“Cathryn thought we should expand beyond the bounds of traditional media, and Todd volunteered himself as a—what did you call it, Cat? A biological canvas?” Minh gestured to Todd’s arm.
Dread slowed Todd’s head-turn, and when his eyes found his arm, his brain didn’t believe them. A fire-breathing bunny now graced his forearm, complete with a rainbow tutu.
“Right on.” Oliver nodded at Cathryn. “That’s the spirit.” He moved to another table, and Cathryn’s eyes widened.
“That was not my idea.”
“I didn’t think it was,” Todd said. He’d be more upset if Minh weren’t such a talented artist. That bunny could defeat a battalion of super soldiers. “This isn’t permanent, is it?”
“Relax, it’s just pen.” Minh waved a dismissive hand as the bell rang.
Todd stood, struggling to keep his feet. He staggered to the nearest drinking fountain and guzzled water for several minutes. Once sated, he started for home, but his legs carried him in the opposite direction.
He knew it was a mistake the instant he crossed the threshold into economics. His classmates stared. Even Mr. Patel, who usually waved latecomers to their seats without stopping his lecture, opened his mouth in stunned silence. Todd still wore his nicest party clothes, but he must look as hungover as he felt. He probably smelled like it too.
“Doesn’t the dress code require tattoos be covered?” someone in front asked.
“It’s not a tattoo,” Todd said before Mr. Patel could answer. “It’s just Minh’s prank.”
“Minh? As in my sister Minh?” Beth shot out of her chair like a pouncing cat, uncharacteristic intensity contrasting her usually dry tone. “What were you doing with my sister?”
Todd held up his hands. “We have art together. I fell asleep, and she doodled.” He realized, belatedly, that he was humiliating himself, but the honors crowd already considered him a deadbeat. Impressing them had never been Todd’s goal. He’d wanted to impress Claire, but even if the meth lab rumors hadn’t turned her off, this incident would.
“Todd Easdon to the office, please,” the static-filled intercom commanded. “Todd Easdon to the office.”
Mr. Patel waved him away as if he were brushing crumbs off his suit coat. Todd stumbled to the office, wondering what other trouble he’d caused himself while sleepwalking. The school secretary didn’t bother looking up from her computer before waving him into the school counselor’s office.
Mrs. Moore greeted him with a curt nod, but her face shifted to uncertainty as she scanned his rumpled appearance.
“Todd,” she said. “Do you feel safe at home?”
“What? Oh.” He grimaced, recognizing the expression teachers used when they thought they might need to report abuse or neglect. Todd and Adam learned early that rumpled clothes and lack of showers led to questions, and the last thing they wanted was Principal Evans meeting their mother. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
The kindness melted off her face. “Good.” She dropped a file in front of him with a thump. “You’re failing your classes. Time to drop honors.” She handed him a half-sheet of paper. “Here is your new schedule.”
Someone knocked before Todd could process her words. Principal Evans stuck his head inside.
“May I borrow Todd for a moment, Mrs. Moore?”
Mrs. Moore waved Todd out, as if grateful to be rid of his stench. Todd followed the principal into his office and slouched into an open chair. What now?
“Todd, I’d like you to stay in the honors classes.”
“Huh?” Todd was too stunned to form a complete sentence. He must still be asleep. That was it. He was still at the party, passed out next to that girl.
“Good party last night?”
“Yeah,” Todd said, struggling to follow the dreamworld’s conversational whiplash.
“Worth the hangover? You feel fulfilled, appreciated, and respected?”
“Huh?” Todd couldn’t keep up with the principal’s words. Was the party worth the hangover? Of course. Wasn’t it?
Todd considered that, grateful the principal didn’t seem to expect much from him this morning. At the party, he’d pushed aside all thoughts of being “decent.” After weeks of striving to earn a smile from Claire, a prettier girl had slept with him, but he’d woken up sick and…he couldn’t identify the feeling, but it certainly wasn’t “fulfilled, appreciated, and respected.”
“You feel empty, don’t you?” Principal Evans watched him with knowing eyes.
Todd started picking the dirt from beneath his fingernails. Empty was exactly how he felt, how he’d felt ever since Claire dumped him, ever since he’d helped Adam see Saafi’s hair. Partying had been like funneling water into a bucket with holes in it.
“You’re capable of more than hangovers, Todd.” There was that tone again. That fatherly tone Todd so loathed.
“What do you know?”
“I know you signed yourself up for the honors track. I’m guessing you did it for a reason.”
“I did it for a girl.” Todd’s tone was so bitter the words were brittle.
Principal Evans nodded, as if he hadn’t expected that answer but was willing to roll with it. “I take it she doesn’t find hungover, racist ex-jocks attractive?”
This was the first time the new principal had alluded to last year’s drinking fountain incident, but his tone lacked accusation. He spoke as if relaying the facts, as if he were saying Todd was a seventeen-year-old guy of stocky build.
“You could be someone people admire,” Principal Evans said.
“You have a redemption quota?”
The principal refused to match Todd’s aggressive tone. “I offer all my students a second chance, including your brother, but you are the one I think will take me up on it.” His voice dropped to a near whisper. “Don’t waste your life being a coward, Todd. Figure out what you want, and fight for it.”
One word—coward—echoed in Todd’s skull, dragging him back to last year when Claire dumped him. “You’re a coward, Todd…I hope you learn to sleep at night.” He hadn’t. Maybe he never would.
Todd sprang to his feet, fists clenched. “You don’t know shit about me, and I don’t give a shit about your second chances.”
“Then why are you crying?”
Todd wiped his cheeks. He hadn’t realized his eyes were leaking. “I’m hungover.”
Principal Evans stood and stepped toward him, but he stopped short of putting his arm around Todd. Good. Todd would have clocked him.
“I’ll tell you what. Stay in the honors courses. If you want to be a professional drunk, it won’t kill you to flunk, but I think you’ll rise to the challenge. You may have joined for a girl, but you’ll stay for yourself.”
Todd averted his gaze. No one had ever voiced such confidence in him. No one had ever suggested he might succeed where Adam had failed.
“Am I excused?”
Principal Evans nodded. “Go home, shower, and decide who you want to be when you’re eighty.”
Todd didn’t think about anything more than trudging home. He pinched himself. It hurt. He pinched himself again with similar results. For good measure, he raked his nails against his skin until he bled. It hurt. He must be awake.
He let the shower rinse off the blood, spilled booze, and Minh’s penned tattoo, but the water couldn’t wash away his conversation with the principal. A conversation he hadn’t dreamt.
Adam snored from his bed, confirming they’d made it home last night. Todd dropped into his own bed, but his mind wouldn’t let him sleep. What kind of person do I want to be when I’m eighty? He’d never even considered life after high school, much less his elder years.
Todd wasn’t naïve enough to believe they’d become infamous drug dealers or gang lords or whatever Adam had in mind. With his current trajectory, Todd would become Old Man Caesar. He considered this outcome. The guy grew good weed and spent all day smoking it. He didn’t have to work or bother anyone. Sounded relaxing, especially compared to the constant activity in teenage life.
Caesar also lived in a dilapidated shack on a gravel road to nowhere. Alone. If teenagers didn’t pester him for pot, he could die, and no one would realize it until archeologists dug up the site a hundred years later.
Is that the life I want? Todd’s eyes strayed to the family photos his brother had mangled. He didn’t want to become his father. Whether he died young on the streets or lived to be a crazy old pothead, he would never become a man who abandoned his sons. Do I even want kids?
Todd swung his legs over the edge of the bed and squinted at the photos. His father looked happier than Todd ever saw him, especially in the second photo where the kids were older. He held Shanice’s hand, his white fingers intertwining with her brown ones.
Todd had kissed his fair share of girls, but holding hands implied a level of emotional commitment he’d never permitted. If he’d learned anything from his mother, it was that sex was cheap, but love required trust.
A scene popped into his mind—an older couple holding hands and wandering through the grocery store. They’d been married so long they didn’t need to talk, but they spoke anyway because they enjoyed hearing each other’s voices. The idea stirred up foreign feelings in Todd, a desire that grew stronger the more he pondered it. He wanted a relationship that lasted longer than one night, with a girl whose name he remembered. He wanted to stay with the same woman so long his hand felt empty without hers. Nothing could be further from his current life, nothing less attainable.
Todd gazed at his stubby fingers. Would he ever find a girl willing to hold his left hand? How many heroic stories would he invent before he found someone who accepted him?
Claire wouldn’t care about my fingers. He knew that like he knew plants needed water, but Claire hated him.
Todd glanced at his backpack, which he’d left behind in his sleepwalk to school. Mrs. Moore hadn’t officially kicked him out of the honors track. Was it too late to earn Claire’s trust? What was the alternative? Becoming everything Mrs. Moore thought he’d become.
No. He wouldn’t settle for the life everyone expected for him.
Todd grabbed his backpack and tiptoed out of their bedroom to avoid waking Adam. He settled himself on the living room floor and opened his economics book. The terms in bold may as well have been a foreign language. Graphs splattered the pages like hieroglyphics. Every paragraph was heavy with words too big for a normal human to pronounce. His other textbooks proved equally inaccessible.
The hours ticked by. Todd rubbed his bleary eyes, but it did nothing to make the text more decipherable. His stomach rumbled. Was it too early for lunch?
His mother pushed through the front door, tripped, and cursed. She shot Todd a glare.
“Adam, I told you not to leave your shit everywhere.”
“I’m Todd, Mom. Shouldn’t our own mother be able to tell us apart?” Usually, she could at least accomplish that level of parenting.
“Well, you can’t blame me.” She gestured toward his books. “It’s not like you’ve ever been the brainiac.”
True. Adam was the criminal mastermind; Todd, the lackey. Even with school, Adam never studied because he never had to study. Socializing came easier to Adam, too. They were supposedly identical, but Todd suspected his brother had stolen all the good genes in the womb and left him with scraps.
Todd’s expression must have reflected his thoughts, because his mother’s face softened. She tottered over the carpet in her high heels and crouched in front of him. Todd recoiled from her outstretched hand, but she merely patted his cheek.
“You know I love you, right?”
No. “Yeah.”
She smiled as if he were a baby she were trying to make giggle. “Take my advice and focus on these muscles”—she poked Todd’s biceps—“instead of this one.” She patted him on the head and stood. “You’re a man. You’ll make an easy living if you can lift heavy things. Be grateful. Women need brains.” She puffed out her chest as if alluding to her “creative” entrepreneurship. “I have a lunch date. Clean up before I get back.”
She flounced out the door, leaving Todd in a storm of emotion. Were he in calm waters, he would have been offended by her implying manual labor wasn’t hard work, but a tidal wave of shame swallowed him. What if she was right? He’d never been as smart as Adam, and Adam had left the honors classes. He’d have dropped out entirely if school weren’t his primary networking locale.
Todd swallowed a lump. Even if he dropped the honors track, he’d still fail. Not only was he an idiot, he was a coward. Even Principal Evans had noticed Claire wasn’t attracted to “hungover, racist ex-jocks.” His own father didn’t think him worthwhile. Why should Claire? Why should any girl?
Todd’s chest constricted until he couldn’t breathe. He left his books to rot by the sofa, crashed through the back door, and ran, legs pumping out his feelings. His feet crunched over fallen leaves until he entered the greenhouse’s humid microclimate. He breathed deeply, but the earthy smell didn’t comfort him like it usually did.
Todd collapsed where he’d slept the other night. Only after Fifi started licking his cheeks did he realize he was crying. Great. I can’t even be the tough guy.
He brushed away Fifi’s attention, petting her before looking around. Noah leaned against a plant stand, watching him. Seeing he’d been noticed, he plopped next to Todd. His jaw wiggled from side to side, as if he were composing his next words carefully.
