Starship For Rent, page 2
Judy slipped back out the door as Tyler approached my bedside. He extended the food my way. “You don’t need to say anything. You’re always talking about Miyaki’s in team chat. I figured if anything might help ease some of the gut-ache, it would be greasy rice balls and sugary soda.”
I took the warm bag and slid out the fragrant white cartons stacked inside. The smell was almost enough to kick-start my appetite. Almost.
“I’m not really that hungry,” I said, shifting the cartons to my table. “But I definitely appreciate the sentiment.”
“No problem,” Tyler replied, placing the drink carrier beside the boxes. “I figured the odds you would eat something were forty-sixty. But hey, you’ll get hungry sometime tonight and this has gotta beat hospital grub, right?” He dropped onto the barebones recliner at my bedside. “I would have picked you up something from the gift shop, but I didn’t think a teddy bear or flowers and balloons would make you feel any better.” His levity faded into a serious and sad grimaced. “We both know nothing will be alright for you for a while. And it’ll never be like it was before.”
I stared at him in surprise. “Did you come here to cheer me up, or rub it in?” I asked, too weary to put much energy into the question.
“I came here to tell you that I know what you’re going through,” he replied. “You know I transferred here from Pennsylvania, but you don’t know why.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued. “I had a younger brother. James. But he liked to be called Jumbo. Don’t ask me why. He was just a fun-loving little man. Always had a smile on his face. Always joking around with everyone. Mom swore he would grow up to be a comedian. But he never had the chance.”
Tyler had never mentioned anything about a younger brother before. “What happened?”
“He was eight years old. Mom stopped at a grocery store to pick up a couple of things. He stayed in the car to play Candy Crush. Couple of guys in the parking lot got into an argument. Next thing you know, they’re shooting at one another.” He paused, tears rolling. “He got caught in the crossfire. Made it to the hospital, lived another twelve hours before he couldn’t do it anymore.”
I stared at him, eyes moist again. “Damn, Tyler. I’m sorry.”
He wiped his eyes with a sleeve. “Yeah. I’m not here looking for your pity. Just like I know you don’t want mine. I’m just saying I have a small idea of what you’re going through. We’ve got a lot more in common than our love for League of Legends.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess we do. There is one major difference though.”
“What’s that?”
“I know your parents are divorced, but you still have your mom, and you can call your dad. They’re still there for you whenever you need them. They’re still a support system for you, financially if nothing else. Plus, you aren’t looking forward to a conversation with Child Protective Services about where you’re going to live for the next six months.” I paused, shaking my head. “This is all so messed up.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, giving me a comforting squeeze. “I hear you, man. Damn, I hadn’t even thought about that. Are you sure you can’t just stay at home on your own? I’m sure your folks had money saved and life insurance. Maybe—“
“No. I already talked to a cop about it. He said the laws are the laws, so no chance. I expect someone from CPS to show up any second now.”
“The cops came to talk to you already? It’s only been a few hours. That’s kind of cold, don’t you think?”
“Nah. Officer Duncan was kind enough. He told me the guy who hit us took off on foot. He asked me for a description.”
“Are you serious? The guy murdered your parents and ran away?”
I trembled at Tyler’s choice of words. “It was an accident, not murder.”
“How do you know? If the guy was high or drunk or running from someone or something like a robbery, that’s vehicular homicide. Why else would he run away?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t argue his point. Consequently, I also found it more difficult to continue blaming myself. Maybe I had distracted Dad, but the guy in the Escalade shouldn’t have blown the light. It hit me now that he didn’t even slow down. At the very least, he should have hit the brakes before the impact. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“You haven’t had much time to think about anything. I bet you’ve been reliving the accident in your head over and over again, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“I didn’t see Jumbo die, but I still conjured up the scene in my brain and replayed it a thousand times, trying to logic some way that I could have been there to stop it. It’s a normal response.”
“Nothing feels normal right now. How am I still in one piece, barely injured, and they’re both gone?”
“I wish I had answers for you,” Tyler replied. “But I guarantee your folks would have gladly traded their lives for you to come out of that accident unharmed if they’d had the choice.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I know that’s true.” I leaned back in the bed, finally starting to calm down a little. Again, I knew it wouldn’t last, but I didn’t want to lose the moment. I even gathered enough of an appetite to reach for the bag from Miyaki’s.
“There you go,” Tyler said. “Your parents would want you to survive. To live. To go on.”
“Don’t even think about warbling Celine Dione at me,” I said, opening the chopstick package and pulling them apart. I flipped the lid of the first box, my stomach growling at the sight of the rice balls. On one hand, my hunger seemed like a betrayal to my folks. On the other, Tyler was right. Mom and Dad wouldn’t want me to fall apart without them.
I devoured the rice balls in no time before taking a long pull on the cola to wash them down. Tyler and I got to talking about simpler things. Fortnite and Liz Dern’s legs. Judy checked on us a couple of times. The first time, her expression softened when she saw me confiding in Tyler. I kept waiting for someone from CPS, but it was getting late enough that I guessed they were planning to drop by in the morning.
“You know,” Tyler said as his soda cup gurgled empty. He mashed it flat before stuffing the crushed container in the bag with my second container of rice balls. “I’ve been thinking.”
“The look on your face suggests you’ve been doing more than thinking,” I said. “I would suggest plotting as a more appropriate word.”
“An hour hanging out with me, and you can already read my mind,” he replied. “Pretty impressive.”
“Do I even want to ask?”
“What do you think about a quick field trip? Help you take your mind off things for a few hours?”
“I think you’re crazy,” I replied. “I can’t go anywhere. I don’t want to go anywhere. My parents were killed six hours ago. I can barely keep my mind off that, and I definitely can’t wrap my mind around how much bureaucracy I’ll need to cut through in the next forty-eight hours. I’m the only one who can make arrangements for them, handle insurance, and all that crap.”
Tyler waved off my concerns. “Are you kidding? I know we’re more like gamer friends and study mates than actual friend friends, but from what you’ve told me about your folks, I can’t believe they wouldn’t have made arrangements if anything happened to them before your adulthood was official. Your dad was in administration, right? A paper pusher.”
“I don’t appreciate you calling him that,” I growled.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean it in a negative way. Point being, they wouldn’t leave their son to have to handle all that red tape. I guarantee it. Someone other than you can figure all that out. And my idea speaks directly to your second point. Or maybe it was your first point. You can barely get your mind off the accident. I get it. I really do. It’s the reason I’m here. I’m suggesting a short break, away from the heaviness of your life. Eight hours. If today taught you anything, it should be that life is precious and short, so live it while you can.”
“And what about you?” I asked, putting my excuses on him. “No one expects me to be at school in the morning. And I have no parents waiting up for me to come home. But you do.”
“I already told my mother I probably wouldn’t be back tonight. She knows I can take care of myself, and she’s cool with it.”
“You don’t have a very good mother, do you?”
I said it without thinking, and flinched, waiting for him to yell at me. He laughed instead. “She’s…it was never the same after Jumbo died. It was like she didn’t want kids anymore once he was gone. She cares, but in a different way. She’s not bad. Just hurt deep to her core.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Look man, I know you’re raw. I won’t use anything you say against you.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Back to the question at hand. Do you want to break out of here, or do you want to sit there in that dress with your ass hanging out, drowning in your misery?”
I still should have refused on principle. Sneaking out of the hospital hours after losing my last anchors to reality was ludicrous. Except the thought of waiting around for Child Protective Services to swoop in and scoop me up didn’t offer much of an incentive to stay. A temporary distraction sounded way better, however reckless indulging the whim might be.
"Like what?" I asked. "It's almost ten o’clock on a Wednesday night. What's even open now besides Wal-Mart and truck stops?"
Tyler smiled, sensing that he was breaking through. Like a shark smelling blood, he went in for the kill. “I've got the perfect spot to lift your spirits. You ever hear of VR Awesome?"
I nodded, the simple mention of the place lifting my spirits. “Hell yeah, I’ve heard of VR Awesome. I’ve read every online article about it that I could find. I’ve seen the TikToks taken inside the one in California. It looks amazing.”
“It looks awesome,” he corrected with a beaming grin. “And it’s open until two in the morning for adult play. I can get us to Des Moines in an hour and a half. That leaves us two hours to enjoy all the wonders the place has to offer, and we’ll still be back here before your CPS agent even wakes up. And, if you do need to handle all the legal stuff yourself, you’ll still be back to do that.”
I nearly jumped at the chance to say yes before reality settled back in. “It sounds fun,” I said, losing my excitement. “There’s only one problem. The same problem I’m already having. Adult play means twenty-one and over, and neither one of us is twenty-one.”
“Oh, ye of little faith! It just so happens that another member of the Stinking Badgers works the late shift there. All we have to do is get in touch with her. I’m sure she’ll let us in.”
“You mean All-red?” I asked, using her gamer handle.
“Yup.”
“I didn’t know she lived in Des Moines.”
“That’s because you don’t stick around for the small talk after practice.”
“She told me she’s our age. How can she work the late shift at VR Awesome?”
Tyler really started cracking up now. “She tells everyone that. Her real name is Alyssa Danson. She’s a twenty-one-year-old college dropout. Lives in Des Moines with a roommate and a cat.”
“How do you know all that?” I asked, bewildered by his info dump.
His laughter faded, his face reddening. “I may have cyber-stalked her a little.”
“How do you stalk someone a little? Don’t tell me you doxxed her.”
“I won’t tell you that,” he answered, falling silent.
“That’s not cool,” I said, the buzz totally killed.
“No,” he admitted. “I felt guilty after I did it. That’s why I never said anything to anyone.”
“You should tell her you did it.”
“I agree. And I will. As soon as we get there. It’s an apology that should be made in person, I think.”
“Did you see what she looks like?” I asked. “So you’ll know her when you see her?”
“I found her alternate X account. Her avatar’s cuter, in my opinion. She’s old.” He laughed again, the wild energy creeping back into the room. “Does that mean we’re doing this?”
I opened my mouth to say yes, but something else came out.
CHAPTER 3
“I don’t know,” I waffled, affirmation failing to reach my lips.
As appealing as ditching the hospital and taking off to play the most advanced virtual reality video games in the world sounded, this field trip couldn't erase my problems indefinitely. It couldn’t erase my pain either. Only dull it for a while. And regardless of whether my parents had a lawyer to handle things or not, I still had to figure out where I was going to live or if I could be emancipated or whatever other legal nonsense loomed on the horizon.
Was it so terrible that I couldn't force myself to care about those obligations the same way I cared about disappearing into an adventure? I should stay put, be the mature one working out essential logistics. That was the responsible thing, after all. The adult thing. This morning, I still had six more months before anyone expected me to be fully an adult. Surely, I could be a kid for eight more hours. It was so damn tempting. Yet…
“Come on, where's your sense of adventure?” Tyler asked. “I promise, no one will know you stepped outside, much less suspect a covert rescue mission to Des Moines."
“Right now this hospital room represents the eye of the ongoing storm surrounding me. Out there...” I jabbed my finger toward the dismal night. "...waits a metric ton of crap I'm nowhere near ready to process. Besides, nurses are big on checking on patients every couple of hours. What’s gonna happen when they find me gone?"
Tyler dismissed my rebuttal with an impatient huff. “I already talked to Judy. Since you’re just here waiting for CPS to come scoop you up in the morning, she put a Do Not Disturb note on your medical record for tonight. His expression softened marginally. "Look, I get this is crappy timing, and you gotta handle fallout nobody our age should ever have to face. But staying trapped in this soul-sucking box all night while everything outside gets decided for you makes it infinitely crappier. Am I wrong or am I right?"
As bad as taking off might appear, it did beat sticking my head in the sand for a few more hours of denial. I couldn't avoid this forever no matter how fiercely that yearning rooted itself in my psyche. Wasn’t it better to grab fleeting snatches of pseudo-independence while the choice remained mine? Before some clipboard-toting crusader redefined my entire existence.
“I see it on your face,” Tyler said, getting excited again. “You know I’m right. We’re doing this, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I finally agreed with a grin.
"Cool. Then we're golden!" Tyler reached for my hand, hauling me off the bed in a single breathless motion. He practically dragged me toward the exterior wall before I wrested my fingers free.
"What gives?" I stumbled sideways, catching myself with a hand against the wall. “I may not have any broken bones or stitches, but I think you just opened up some of my cuts.” I could feel their unwelcome sting under the bandages.
He paused. “Right. Sorry. I got a little over-excited. Nice butt though.” He laughed as I grabbed at the back of my gown, jerking the gaping opening back together. “Wait here. You can’t jailbreak mooning everybody.” He grabbed the door latch and vanished from my room like a tornado swept back up into the sky.
An overwhelming loneliness slammed into me the moment the door latched closed. My brain immediately tried returning me to the accident. Hoping there was one last rice ball from Miyaki’s I could shove in my face as a distraction, I scrambled for the second box still sitting on my bedside table. The minute I picked it up, the empty weight reminded me that Tyler had finished them off.
Disheartened, I moved to the window, looking out and down at the front of the hospital six floors below. The sight of an incoming ambulance sent a wave of panic through me. What was I going to do in the morning when they came for me and I lost all control of my future?
I retreated to the bed where I sat down and started to hyperventilate. Enough of that crap. Grabbing up my empty soda cup, I sucked on the straw, pulling up the last bit of almost melted ice as I forced myself to focus on the taste of it instead of my anxiety.
It saved me for the few minutes that passed before Tyler returned. The door swung open, clothes flying at me before he came into view. I caught the sweatshirt, but fumbled the sweatpants.
“These aren’t mine,” I said, bending down to pick them up off the floor as Tyler entered.
“Nope. They’re mine. They’ll be big on you, but we can stop at Wal-Mart on the way to Des Moines. I do have your boxers and Vans though. I had to sneak them out of the nurse’s station. That was fun.” He held up the sneakers. He had stuffed my underwear into one of them, socks in the other. “Get dressed so we can get out of here.” He put the sneakers on the bed beside me.
“Do you mind turning around?” I asked.
He laughed as he spun away from me. “You’re such an uptight geek, Noah-san.”
“So are you. You’re just better at pretending you aren’t.”
“Unlike you, I’m not a virgin.”
“Uh-huh.” I untied the gown at the back of my neck and tossed it on the bed.
“Seriously, I’m not.”
“Only virgins feel the need to try to convince their friends they aren’t virgins,” I shot back, pulling on my boxers and putting on the sweats. Of course, they were too big, but at least they had a string so I could cinch them tight on my waist. The sweatshirt was big too, and smelled. “What are these, your gym clothes?”
“Yeah. I washed them a couple of weeks ago.”
“Maybe I’m better off with my ass hanging out.”
“Are you under wraps yet?”
“Just about. Do we have an exit strategy?” I asked as he turned around, chuckling at how his clothes fit me. I scowled back at him. I couldn’t help that I was thin as a rail. I ate more than my parents had always thought I had places to put all of it. I just never seemed to gain any mass; I just kept growing vertically.
