Scar Patterson
Being greeted by my mother passed out on the couch with an empty bottle of alcohol clutched tightly in her hands was something I should have anticipated the second I stepped into the house, especially since it was the third time it happened this month. I sputtered a string of profanities under my breath before throwing my backpack to the floor and rushing to her side to assess the damage. I hovered over her mouth and wasn't the least bit surprised to hear that her breathing had slowed tremendously. I scooped my hands under my mother's fragile body, and called out, “Amy!”
Only seconds after my call, I heard Amy's heavy steps descend the staircase until she was at my side, shaking her head in disbelief at the sight of our unconscious mother. “Are you serious? Again?”
I hoisted our mother up from her sprawled-out position and carefully laid her on the floor. Brushing the stray strands of brown hair away from her pale face, I rested the heel of my hands on her sternum and covered it with my other hand. “Get the towel,” I told Amy. On command, she ran into the kitchen and turned on the faucet, placing a kitchen towel under the running water.
I looked over to Jamie who was still standing in the doorway with his eyes wide in pure shock. “Call 911. Tell them that my mom has had too much to drink,” I instructed. His eyes lingered on my mother for a while before he fumbled for his cell phone to follow through on my request.
Amy ran back into the living room with the wet towel in hand. As I began to do chest compressions on our mother, Amy placed the wet towel onto her forehead to cool her down. Amy and I had done this enough times to know she would be alright, but we always had doubts every time.
Mom's body convulsed as she began to spurt out the induced alcohol, coughing as she did so. Quickly turning her onto her side, I smoothed out her hair. “Help is on the way,” I told her, even though I highly doubted that she understood in such a state. Amy sighed in relief and plopped down on the floor, burying her head in her hands. Turning to face her, I said, “I'm taking a shower, and then I'm out of here. Stay with Mom to make sure she's alright.”
She lifted her head, her full lips twisting into a slight pout. “Why do I always have to stay with her? Why can't you stay?”
My eyes burned deep into her pale gray ones. “It's not like you have anything better to do besides down a whole load of ice cream. Seriously, the ice cream can't last a day in this house with you around,” I retorted which succeeded in making Amy’s mouth fall open.
“It's not my fault,” she snapped back.
“How? How is it not your fault?”
“I don't want to be this way,” she admitted as the tears welled in her eyes, “but ever since—”
“Since what?” I questioned with a deadly glare, daring her to spit it out. “Since Dad died? Don't you fucking blame Dad for your weight gain. You're a fat pig because you want to be, not because of him.” Amy fell silent, gazing back at me with watery eyes. She wanted to cry, but she was holding back the tears in an attempt to show me that she wasn't affected by my words, but I knew she was. She had nerve to blame our father for her problems.
Standing to my full height and sending her a disapproving huff, I moved toward the foot of the stairs and allowed Jamie to trail behind. We hadn’t even gotten to my bedroom yet when the questions began to pour out of his mouth. “Is this like a normal thing? I swear, she was dead like two seconds ago and you weren't even bothered by it. Is she even okay?”
Sighing, I ran a hand through my messy hair and made my way into my room. “Yes, she's okay. They'll pump the alcohol out of her system, and she'll be good.”
He folded his arms against his lean chest and let his eyes roam around the room before flicking them back to me. “And what about your sister? What the hell was that?”
I padded across the room to my dresser and tugged out a white t-shirt from inside. I scratched the back of my head in search for an explanation that wouldn't seem so heartless, but I came up short. “Nothing,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Nothing?” Jamie repeated as he took a daring step closer to me. “You made her feel worthless. Why would you do something like that? I knew you were a jerk, but I didn’t think you were that much of an ass!”
I turned around to face him with my jaw clenched tight. “Why is this any of your business?”
A puzzled look quickly took over his facial expression. “Because you don’t treat your sister, or anyone for that matter, like that. Do you have any idea how damaging that can be to her self-esteem?”
I instantly regretted my decision to bring him to my house. “That’s her problem, not mine.”
Jamie blinked in astonishment. “Look, I have a sister, too. We hated each other for a long time, but we’ve learned to put our differences aside for the better of our relationship because we knew that if something happened to one of us, then the other wouldn’t be able to live. Treat your sister with respect because you never know what can happen to her. Then you’ll truly hate yourself for being so mean to her.”
It was weird seeing him like this. From the very little time that I had known him, he always seemed to have a silly response for everything and those responses were usually inappropriate. In this moment, however, his demeanor had grown serious.
“Why did you hate your sister?” I asked, wanting to know the reason behind Jamie’s sudden change in mood.
It seemed as though he wasn't expecting my question because he blinked, furrowed his brows, and glanced down at the carpet. After a few brief moments of silence, I decided he wasn't going to make an effort to explain, so I slid my current shirt up over my head and tossed it to the floor, exposing my bare chest, and then wrapped my new shirt around my arm. Jamie broke away from his trance-like state once his eyes landed on me. The corner of his lips twitched into the faintest of smirks. He must've been having plenty of fun in his mind, and it grossed me out to even think about what he could possibly be thinking about.
“I'm gonna shower,” I told him as I headed to the adjoining bathroom, “and don't do anything weird.”
He scoffed. “Why would I do something weird?”
“Just don't, okay?” I disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door behind me, making sure to lock it before stripping away the rest of my clothing and stepping into the shower. As I let the warm water pelt on my skin, I felt my mind slip back to the day it all happened. The day my life changed for the worst.
It was a rainy Tuesday, and it wasn't the good kind of rain either. It was that sticky, wet, blinding rain that accompanied dark skies and sometimes fog. It was the treacherous kind of rain, the rain that had no mercy for anyone. Dad was driving us home from baseball practice. The forecast called for a little rain, but I practically begged Dad to take me, anyway. Halfway through practice, we got rained on; therefore, practice was cancelled.
He shouldn't have been driving, now that I thought about it. I had turned on the radio and even though we had very weak signal, I was able to hear a lady say that there was horrible traffic on the main highway due to the rain; she reported several car accidents that had already occurred. Dad had said the best way to get home was to take the back road that cut through the forest. I believed him, of course, because he never gave me a reason not to.
He was the best dad, ever. I knew that everyone said that about their dads, but I truly believed my dad rose above the rest. He could do anything. If Mom was too tired to cook, he would, sometimes even better. If Amy was crying about how a girl stole her crayons, he would buy her the most expensive box of crayons and have her name imprinted on the labels. If I was struggling with homework, he would make me understand better than any teacher could. And for that, I loved him a lot. Not only was he a father, he was a friend. He was my friend.
We were traveling down a winding road in the middle of the forest when it happened. I didn't remember how it happened, or why it had to happen to us, but I remembered the car spinning for hours on end, and I remembered us treading through the trees and jolting uncontrollably. The sudden impact had made Dad unknowingly hit the gas harder, and the further into the woods we went.
The car finally came to a stop after hitting a tall sturdy tree, flipping the car over completely. Everything went black after that, but the next thing I remembered was that I was in the hospital, hooked up to some stupid machine. The nurses greeted me with fake smiles and told me how lucky I was, but they wouldn't tell me where Dad was. I had asked countless times, but they insisted that I get some rest.
I found out eventually, though. Apparently, I was deemed lucky because I had survived a deadly crash that no one could have survived, not even my dad. It was funny, though, because after I heard the news of Dad’s death, I didn’t feel so lucky.
I'd like to think that I was mostly affected by his untimely death, considering that I had been the one to insist that we go to practice. I had been the one to turn on the radio to hear about the traffic. If it hadn't been for me, we wouldn't have been on that winding road. If it hadn’t been for me, Dad would still be here.
Mom and Amy were devastated too, so much so that Amy turned to eating, and Mom turned to the bottle for comfort. Dad was a central part of our lives and with his loss, we all had to find different ways to cope.
When I was finished with my shower, I stepped out of the glass case and wrapped my towel around my waist. I caught sight of the sink mirror and saw that my eyes were bloodshot red from the tears that had unknowingly escaped during my shower. If that wasn’t bad enough, then it also seemed that I would have a hard time trying to get rid of my runny nose. I didn't want Jamie to know that I had been crying, or to know that I even cry at all. Certainly, he would use it to his advantage in order to blackmail me once again, and I couldn't have that happen.
Finally managing to pull myself together, I walked out of the bathroom. Jamie was sitting on the edge of my bed and rubbing his hands against his thighs while simultaneously looking around my room. As soon as he realized I was standing right in front of him, a grin curved his lips. “You kill me with that, Scar.”
My brows knitted together in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“You're wearing nothing but a towel, and in case you didn't notice, I'm kind of gay.”
My eyes went wide and I took several steps back. “Whoa dude, I didn't mean to, like,” I stammered, not knowing what to say in a case like this, “you know.” I rushed to tug my new shirt over my head and began to walk back into the bathroom to change my pants.
“Hey, you can still change in front of me,” I heard him call out. “I mean, it's not like I haven't seen a dick before. FYI, I have one.”
I tried to hide my disgust at his statement as I strolled back into the bedroom, now fully-clothed, but I failed. “Can you stop being so gay? Like I don’t have a problem with gays, or anything, but it’s kinda gross when you keep flaunting your gayness in my face.”
He raised a brow. “Yeah, and I don’t have a problem with self-centered straight guys, either. If you want me to stop flaunting my gayness, then you should stop flaunting your straightness in my face.” His words were followed by yet another creepy smile that always managed to make me nervous and uncomfortable.
Rolling my eyes at him, I didn’t bother to entertain him with a response; instead, I walked into my closet to finish getting ready. Silence filled the room shortly after that with nothing but the sound of my whirring air conditioner to keep us company. I had expected the silence to endure for a little while longer, but Jamie surprised me when he asked, “You play piano?” I had to peer out of the closet to see why he had suddenly felt the need to ask; he was standing beside my dresser, studying a framed photograph that I was all too familiar with.
I pressed my lips together in a thin line. “I did,” I answered, short.
He didn’t get the hint, because he followed up with another question. “What made you stop?” He was looking at me with such genuine curiosity, but I couldn't bring myself to tell him about what actually happened. I couldn’t tell him that I buried that part of my life when my dad died. I couldn’t dive into such an emotional part of my past with him present. But when Jamie realized I wasn't going to respond, he said, “It looks like you really enjoyed it.”
I gave him a blank stare. “Look, we don't want to be late for the carnival,” I said, changing the subject completely. “When you finally decide to stop being creepy, meet me downstairs.” Without waiting for a response, I stepped back into the closet and slammed the door shut behind me.
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