oxygen_4_losers (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} oxygen_losers) wrote,@ 2007-05-31 08:47:00 |
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Title: Eyes Like The Summer (9/?)
Author: oxygen_losers
Rating: R for language and subject matter.
Author's Note: Oh my God, here it is. Finally. Months of writer's clock undone. I'm so sorry for the wait.
Summary: It was terrifying how completely he could disappear from my life if he wanted to and for the first time I stopped to think about it and oh my God, maybe it was deliberate.
Chapter Nine
I didn’t see him for four days after that and by that point, I was frantic.
The first day, sure, I could understand. He was upset, he was freaked out, and when I woke up and Pete wasn’t curled up next to me on my bed and the window wasn’t even open, I could kind of justify it, at least.
And I spent the day by myself, which I hadn’t done in...it had only been a few weeks, I guess, but I hadn’t anticipated how lonely it would be, going back to that. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to Pete and his laugh and hands and the way he’d watch me like I mattered.
By the second morning, I was starting to worry because oh my God, what if something happened to him? And here’s where paranoia kicks in hard because if there’s something I’m good at, it’s that, and in my head there were all these improbable scenarios that somehow all made sense and were somehow all my fault.
Pete had run away, oh my God, he was heading down to...to...I don’t know, Mexico, somewhere where he’d never have to think about this again, never have to think about me again and he was going to get himself killed down there or maybe involved with drugs–
But no, that didn’t make sense–Mexico was too far and Pete didn’t have a passport and plus, he liked air conditioning way too much.
Maybe he’d killed himself, maybe me being a completely insensitive bastard had undone him and he was dead now and I’d never be able to apologize because he’d, fuck, pulled a Plath and gassed himself. That seemed like a Pete way to go, obscure and showy and maybe a little rooted in idolatry.
Except Pete lived on my street and there would have been ambulances, and so far I hadn’t heard anything besides the neighbourhood kids playing baseball on the street, holding on desperately to those last fleeting summer afternoons.
And I decided to look for him, which would have worked fantastically had he ever shown me exactly where he lived or introduced me to his parents or hell, even given me a phone number.
It was terrifying how completely he could disappear from my life if he wanted to and for the first time I stopped to think about it and oh my God, maybe it was deliberate.
I called Andy and he hadn’t seen him in a week, but he’d let me know if he did, and Joe had run into a boy he’d mistaken for Pete in the grocery store yesterday, but when he’d called for him the kid had taken off and shit, maybe that really was him.
So he was hiding from all of us, not just me. That made me feel a little better, a little less like it was all my fault, but the fact remained that Pete was missing and I was alone for the first time in a while, so maybe that was fueling my little panic attack, but I was scared for him, really actually scared for him.
I went to bed alone and woke up the morning of Day Three with tears on my cheeks.
They were dry by the time I stumbled downstairs but my mother...she knew. She always knew and I had no idea how, but she set a plate of blueberry pancakes down in front of me, touched my hand and said, “He’ll be alright.”
I wanted to believe her, I really did. And maybe more than that, I really did want Pete to be alright. Irrationally–and I know it was absurd, I know–I wanted it to never have happened. I wanted to turn the clock back eight years and make Pete okay, fix his smile so it sat right on his face, smooth away the dark circles bruised under those sad eyes.
But that kind of wanting, that kind of wishing, that thinking in maybes was what had lost me Pete in the first place.
I had to find him.
I almost made it. I was almost out the door when my mother, slumped over at the kitchen table, looking more tired than she had in years said, “Patrick,” in the kind of voice you just don’t ignore.
I didn’t answer and she didn’t look up and it was a Moment if we’d ever had once, cinematic and vague, with her saying quietly, slowly, “Sometimes it’s better this way,” and what did that mean, really? I was grateful for Mojo hoisting his enormous paws onto the table to finish off my breakfast because incongruity made everything a little more concrete.
“You knew.”
She didn’t say anything and I only waited half a minute before I left, with Mojo trailing hopefully behind me and I made it to the corner and sat down before I let it actually hit me.
They all knew. Every person who’d lived on this street eight years, everyone old enough to remember, they knew what had happened to Pete. They remembered the headlines and the reporters, they’d been the people in the forests with the dogs and the walking sticks calling for a scared, lost little boy they knew they had practically no chance of finding. They’d been the people who kept a porch light on for a boy they’d never met. They’d been the people who kept their children in after dark, terrified that it would happen again.
And they’d been the ones watching the newscasts when he’d been found, they’d been the ones watching him as the bruises faded and he tried to slip back into suburban life unnoticed. They’d been the ones whispering across fences and coffee tables about him, they’d been the ones warning their children to be gentle with him, be sensitive, but children didn’t understand anything except ‘different’ and no wonder Pete was the way he was.
No wonder he was hiding now.
I couldn’t imagine what that was like for him–nine years old, scared half to death and trying his hardest to be normal, God, just to forget what had happened to him, forget that he wasn’t like everyone else, not anymore. And they’d never allowed him to forget, not really, because I knew how suburbia worked and it was so obvious, so fucking obvious that something was wrong.
And maybe I’d never noticed because Pete had done just the opposite of what everyone expected him to do–the opposite, actually, of what I would have expected a kidnapping victim to do. He didn’t hide–well, except in trees, but that didn’t count–and he wasn’t demure, wasn’t shy. Instead, he’d become loud and obnoxious and bright and too colourful to be real, except I’d only noted that in retrospect. A weird survival tactic, maybe, but one that had worked for him so far. One that had worked so well, in fact, that I hadn’t even noticed that it was a tactic.
Goddamn.
`````````````````````
My first words to Andy that evening–I’d spent the day wandering up and down the neighbourhood streets with Mojo–were, “I’m an idiot,” and bless him, he didn’t say anything, just sort of pulled me close to his chest and let me curl up against his shoulder.
It had begun to rain and I must have looked pathetic, all soaked to the skin and red-eyed, but Andy didn’t comment, just sent Joe for a towel and a bathrobe while Mojo sniffed Remus politely and Romulus wriggled excitedly at the both of them.
I declined the offer of a telephone–my mother would have just told me to come home, and that wasn’t really an option right now–but I did dry myself off and put on the bathrobe and let Joe take my soaking-wet clothes.
We didn’t really speak until I was on the couch holding a cup of tea with Andy next to me and Joe across from us on the floor. I was trying to figure out how to say what was in my head, which had never been easy for me, and it came out, “Everyone else knew. Fucking everyone.” Which, really. A little vague and a little bitter, but that was all I had.
“Yes,” Andy said quietly and Joe just wove his fingers together, staring down at those rather than looking up at me. “It would be hard for them not to. It’s a small neighbourhood.”
“It’s not fair,” I mumbled into the rim of my teacup. “It’s not...God, how could he ever have gotten over it with everyone watching him? Do they–“ my fingers clenched on the cup. “Do they even know what they did?”
“I don’t think so.” Joe still wasn’t looking at me, but he was talking and that was something, at least. Except this, this wasn’t the Joe I was used to, loud and brash and swearing every other word and maybe I was imagining it, but he actually sort of looked...what was that? Shame? “His parents should have moved him out of here years ago. He should have had a chance to start over.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.” Joe scrubbed a frustrated hand through his hair and smiled wryly. “No, they never gave him that chance. They didn’t know how to handle him.” He looked up and his eyes were dead serious, steady and furious and not for the first time, I wondered what Joe’s involvement had been. “They just paid the hospital bills and dumped him on a fucking therapist–“ here he nodded at Andy, who frowned, “–and tried to go about their fucking daily lives like nothing had happened.”
“He hasn’t introduced you to his parents, has he?” Andy asked softly, and I shook my head. “Nothing ever quite went back to normal after Pete came home. It’s typical, a family like that throwing money at a problem and assuming it fixed.”
“Assholes,” Joe spat and this was too much passion for an innocent bystander–I’d never seen him like this, never, he was normally so good-natured, but he was tense all through his shoulders and glaring somewhere around my kneecaps. “They didn’t...they didn’t even want to see him.” His laugh was bitter and nasty, humourless and Andy made a move like he was going to stop him, but Joe barreled on before he had a chance. “Their son had been fucking missing and you know what his dad asked me? He asked me if I could clean Pete up a little, please, seeing him like that would only upset his wife. And I did, you know, I was what, a year out of med school and only there because we couldn’t get a hold of the doctor on call that night and you know how I found Pete, after the police brought him into his room? He was hiding in the goddamn bathtub with the curtains pulled, all curled up in a little ball and shaking.
“He wouldn’t say a word to me, just shook and wouldn’t look at me and he was so bruised, so bloody, all malnourished and torn up and his fucking parents asked me to clean him up before they’d even look at him.” He drove a fist down into the soft piling of the carpet, hard, and snapped, “How fucked-up is that? They’re supposed to love him and take care of him and they wouldn’t even see him. They left him alone in the hospital the night after he’d escaped from a fucking pedophile.”
“Not alone,” Andy said quietly, and that didn’t seem to placate Joe at all.
“I wasn’t a goddamn substitute. He cried every time I touched him.”
“But you stayed with him,” I mumbled.
“It wasn’t enough.” Joe shoved himself to his feet and was gone–I could hear the front door slam and the crunch of gravel on the driveway as he pulled out and Andy sighed.
“He’ll be back. He just needs some time.” He touched my shoulder lightly and smiled–weak and weary, yes, but a smile, and he must have known how much I didn’t want to go home because he offered me the cordless phone and said, “Why don’t you call your mother and ask if you can stay the night? We’ll all go look for Pete tomorrow.”
I called and the conversation was strained, awkward, and she must have wanted me home but there wasn’t anything she was going to deny me, not now. Not after this morning. Andy set me up in the guest room–“Pete’s room,” he said fondly as we were turning down the bed–and I tried to sleep.
Mojo padded into the room sometime around eleven o’ clock and I was still awake at twelve-fifteen when Joe came back with whispered apologies to Andy. I could hear them talking in the room next to mine for a good hour, just gentle mumbling through the walls and I needed to sleep. I knew I needed to sleep.
But the rain had stopped and wherever Pete was, he was alone, and it was two in the morning and I couldn’t stay.
Mojo was dead asleep, didn’t even move as I tiptoed past him in borrowed pajamas and still-damp sneakers. Romulus squirmed when I opened the door to the laundry room and dressed as quickly and quietly as I could and Remus watched me steadily as I borrowed a flashlight and crept out the front door.
There was one place yet I hadn’t thought to look and sure, it would have been smarter to go during the day. Safer. But the thought of Pete all alone and cold and wet and miserable–that image wouldn’t let me close my eyes and I had to find him.
I’m coming.
Author: oxygen_losers
Rating: R for language and subject matter.
Author's Note: Oh my God, here it is. Finally. Months of writer's clock undone. I'm so sorry for the wait.
Summary: It was terrifying how completely he could disappear from my life if he wanted to and for the first time I stopped to think about it and oh my God, maybe it was deliberate.
Chapter Nine
I didn’t see him for four days after that and by that point, I was frantic.
The first day, sure, I could understand. He was upset, he was freaked out, and when I woke up and Pete wasn’t curled up next to me on my bed and the window wasn’t even open, I could kind of justify it, at least.
And I spent the day by myself, which I hadn’t done in...it had only been a few weeks, I guess, but I hadn’t anticipated how lonely it would be, going back to that. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to Pete and his laugh and hands and the way he’d watch me like I mattered.
By the second morning, I was starting to worry because oh my God, what if something happened to him? And here’s where paranoia kicks in hard because if there’s something I’m good at, it’s that, and in my head there were all these improbable scenarios that somehow all made sense and were somehow all my fault.
Pete had run away, oh my God, he was heading down to...to...I don’t know, Mexico, somewhere where he’d never have to think about this again, never have to think about me again and he was going to get himself killed down there or maybe involved with drugs–
But no, that didn’t make sense–Mexico was too far and Pete didn’t have a passport and plus, he liked air conditioning way too much.
Maybe he’d killed himself, maybe me being a completely insensitive bastard had undone him and he was dead now and I’d never be able to apologize because he’d, fuck, pulled a Plath and gassed himself. That seemed like a Pete way to go, obscure and showy and maybe a little rooted in idolatry.
Except Pete lived on my street and there would have been ambulances, and so far I hadn’t heard anything besides the neighbourhood kids playing baseball on the street, holding on desperately to those last fleeting summer afternoons.
And I decided to look for him, which would have worked fantastically had he ever shown me exactly where he lived or introduced me to his parents or hell, even given me a phone number.
It was terrifying how completely he could disappear from my life if he wanted to and for the first time I stopped to think about it and oh my God, maybe it was deliberate.
I called Andy and he hadn’t seen him in a week, but he’d let me know if he did, and Joe had run into a boy he’d mistaken for Pete in the grocery store yesterday, but when he’d called for him the kid had taken off and shit, maybe that really was him.
So he was hiding from all of us, not just me. That made me feel a little better, a little less like it was all my fault, but the fact remained that Pete was missing and I was alone for the first time in a while, so maybe that was fueling my little panic attack, but I was scared for him, really actually scared for him.
I went to bed alone and woke up the morning of Day Three with tears on my cheeks.
They were dry by the time I stumbled downstairs but my mother...she knew. She always knew and I had no idea how, but she set a plate of blueberry pancakes down in front of me, touched my hand and said, “He’ll be alright.”
I wanted to believe her, I really did. And maybe more than that, I really did want Pete to be alright. Irrationally–and I know it was absurd, I know–I wanted it to never have happened. I wanted to turn the clock back eight years and make Pete okay, fix his smile so it sat right on his face, smooth away the dark circles bruised under those sad eyes.
But that kind of wanting, that kind of wishing, that thinking in maybes was what had lost me Pete in the first place.
I had to find him.
I almost made it. I was almost out the door when my mother, slumped over at the kitchen table, looking more tired than she had in years said, “Patrick,” in the kind of voice you just don’t ignore.
I didn’t answer and she didn’t look up and it was a Moment if we’d ever had once, cinematic and vague, with her saying quietly, slowly, “Sometimes it’s better this way,” and what did that mean, really? I was grateful for Mojo hoisting his enormous paws onto the table to finish off my breakfast because incongruity made everything a little more concrete.
“You knew.”
She didn’t say anything and I only waited half a minute before I left, with Mojo trailing hopefully behind me and I made it to the corner and sat down before I let it actually hit me.
They all knew. Every person who’d lived on this street eight years, everyone old enough to remember, they knew what had happened to Pete. They remembered the headlines and the reporters, they’d been the people in the forests with the dogs and the walking sticks calling for a scared, lost little boy they knew they had practically no chance of finding. They’d been the people who kept a porch light on for a boy they’d never met. They’d been the people who kept their children in after dark, terrified that it would happen again.
And they’d been the ones watching the newscasts when he’d been found, they’d been the ones watching him as the bruises faded and he tried to slip back into suburban life unnoticed. They’d been the ones whispering across fences and coffee tables about him, they’d been the ones warning their children to be gentle with him, be sensitive, but children didn’t understand anything except ‘different’ and no wonder Pete was the way he was.
No wonder he was hiding now.
I couldn’t imagine what that was like for him–nine years old, scared half to death and trying his hardest to be normal, God, just to forget what had happened to him, forget that he wasn’t like everyone else, not anymore. And they’d never allowed him to forget, not really, because I knew how suburbia worked and it was so obvious, so fucking obvious that something was wrong.
And maybe I’d never noticed because Pete had done just the opposite of what everyone expected him to do–the opposite, actually, of what I would have expected a kidnapping victim to do. He didn’t hide–well, except in trees, but that didn’t count–and he wasn’t demure, wasn’t shy. Instead, he’d become loud and obnoxious and bright and too colourful to be real, except I’d only noted that in retrospect. A weird survival tactic, maybe, but one that had worked for him so far. One that had worked so well, in fact, that I hadn’t even noticed that it was a tactic.
Goddamn.
`````````````````````
My first words to Andy that evening–I’d spent the day wandering up and down the neighbourhood streets with Mojo–were, “I’m an idiot,” and bless him, he didn’t say anything, just sort of pulled me close to his chest and let me curl up against his shoulder.
It had begun to rain and I must have looked pathetic, all soaked to the skin and red-eyed, but Andy didn’t comment, just sent Joe for a towel and a bathrobe while Mojo sniffed Remus politely and Romulus wriggled excitedly at the both of them.
I declined the offer of a telephone–my mother would have just told me to come home, and that wasn’t really an option right now–but I did dry myself off and put on the bathrobe and let Joe take my soaking-wet clothes.
We didn’t really speak until I was on the couch holding a cup of tea with Andy next to me and Joe across from us on the floor. I was trying to figure out how to say what was in my head, which had never been easy for me, and it came out, “Everyone else knew. Fucking everyone.” Which, really. A little vague and a little bitter, but that was all I had.
“Yes,” Andy said quietly and Joe just wove his fingers together, staring down at those rather than looking up at me. “It would be hard for them not to. It’s a small neighbourhood.”
“It’s not fair,” I mumbled into the rim of my teacup. “It’s not...God, how could he ever have gotten over it with everyone watching him? Do they–“ my fingers clenched on the cup. “Do they even know what they did?”
“I don’t think so.” Joe still wasn’t looking at me, but he was talking and that was something, at least. Except this, this wasn’t the Joe I was used to, loud and brash and swearing every other word and maybe I was imagining it, but he actually sort of looked...what was that? Shame? “His parents should have moved him out of here years ago. He should have had a chance to start over.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.” Joe scrubbed a frustrated hand through his hair and smiled wryly. “No, they never gave him that chance. They didn’t know how to handle him.” He looked up and his eyes were dead serious, steady and furious and not for the first time, I wondered what Joe’s involvement had been. “They just paid the hospital bills and dumped him on a fucking therapist–“ here he nodded at Andy, who frowned, “–and tried to go about their fucking daily lives like nothing had happened.”
“He hasn’t introduced you to his parents, has he?” Andy asked softly, and I shook my head. “Nothing ever quite went back to normal after Pete came home. It’s typical, a family like that throwing money at a problem and assuming it fixed.”
“Assholes,” Joe spat and this was too much passion for an innocent bystander–I’d never seen him like this, never, he was normally so good-natured, but he was tense all through his shoulders and glaring somewhere around my kneecaps. “They didn’t...they didn’t even want to see him.” His laugh was bitter and nasty, humourless and Andy made a move like he was going to stop him, but Joe barreled on before he had a chance. “Their son had been fucking missing and you know what his dad asked me? He asked me if I could clean Pete up a little, please, seeing him like that would only upset his wife. And I did, you know, I was what, a year out of med school and only there because we couldn’t get a hold of the doctor on call that night and you know how I found Pete, after the police brought him into his room? He was hiding in the goddamn bathtub with the curtains pulled, all curled up in a little ball and shaking.
“He wouldn’t say a word to me, just shook and wouldn’t look at me and he was so bruised, so bloody, all malnourished and torn up and his fucking parents asked me to clean him up before they’d even look at him.” He drove a fist down into the soft piling of the carpet, hard, and snapped, “How fucked-up is that? They’re supposed to love him and take care of him and they wouldn’t even see him. They left him alone in the hospital the night after he’d escaped from a fucking pedophile.”
“Not alone,” Andy said quietly, and that didn’t seem to placate Joe at all.
“I wasn’t a goddamn substitute. He cried every time I touched him.”
“But you stayed with him,” I mumbled.
“It wasn’t enough.” Joe shoved himself to his feet and was gone–I could hear the front door slam and the crunch of gravel on the driveway as he pulled out and Andy sighed.
“He’ll be back. He just needs some time.” He touched my shoulder lightly and smiled–weak and weary, yes, but a smile, and he must have known how much I didn’t want to go home because he offered me the cordless phone and said, “Why don’t you call your mother and ask if you can stay the night? We’ll all go look for Pete tomorrow.”
I called and the conversation was strained, awkward, and she must have wanted me home but there wasn’t anything she was going to deny me, not now. Not after this morning. Andy set me up in the guest room–“Pete’s room,” he said fondly as we were turning down the bed–and I tried to sleep.
Mojo padded into the room sometime around eleven o’ clock and I was still awake at twelve-fifteen when Joe came back with whispered apologies to Andy. I could hear them talking in the room next to mine for a good hour, just gentle mumbling through the walls and I needed to sleep. I knew I needed to sleep.
But the rain had stopped and wherever Pete was, he was alone, and it was two in the morning and I couldn’t stay.
Mojo was dead asleep, didn’t even move as I tiptoed past him in borrowed pajamas and still-damp sneakers. Romulus squirmed when I opened the door to the laundry room and dressed as quickly and quietly as I could and Remus watched me steadily as I borrowed a flashlight and crept out the front door.
There was one place yet I hadn’t thought to look and sure, it would have been smarter to go during the day. Safer. But the thought of Pete all alone and cold and wet and miserable–that image wouldn’t let me close my eyes and I had to find him.
I’m coming.
