“Can’t you give him credit for the hit?”
Dad shoots Mom a look like infinite snake blades just escaped from her face, part of the evil ninjutsu of Orochimaru. I feel my phone buzz in my pocket.
“You know how much I paid for this camp?”
Our car pulls into traffic, slow going as usual. We moved to a part of the state with so many malls and restaurants there’s a light every few hundred feet so it takes forever to get anywhere. Especially with your parents.
“I told you I didn’t want to play,” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“Well you know what, you were right. That bullshit right there showed me I wasted my money.”
“That’s nice,” Mom says. “Real nice.”
“I’m not trying to be nice. I should make him get a job and pay me back for this camp.”
He slams on the brakes halfway through the next intersection.
“Okay, relax, Jay. That’s enough.”
“No. They need to learn.” The vein is threatening to burst again and I feel excited for a second, like maybe he’ll lose control of the car and kill us all in a fiery crash. “Why are you always defending them?”
“Someone has to, you ass,” Mom says and I can tell by her tone that she’s had enough of his shit today. My phone buzzes again.
“Oh, now whose language are you fucking concerned about?”
“Go to hell.”
“Oh I am. I’m going home with you.”
They talk like that a lot, maybe more than a lot, ever since I was little or since Nico was little. I think it’s been worse since we moved to Woodbridge but it’s tough to be sure. I fish out the phone from my pocket, balancing the ice pack on my wrist.
Hey. It’s Stick. It’s really Stick!
My brothers have people over and I don’t want to be here alone. You free?
He sounds desperate. Nico is watching me type so I have to shield the conversation and it’s tough to type back with one hand but Mom and Dad are now embroiled in the opening stages of Hate Fight #179 of 2015, if I’m counting right. And I lost count in May.
Yes. I should be home soon.
Dad presses hard on the gas and weaves through traffic without braking.
“Slow down, Jay!”
He slams his foot against the brakes, slamming us all against our seatbelts.
“You’re such an ass,” Mom says.
Awesome. I would leave but they’ll burn down the house without me.
Haha, I say.
Also I stole some of their beer and I may be a little drunk.
Lolol awesome, I say because it’s tough to type with one hand and I’m too excited to form actual sentences. The pain in my wrist presses up through my arm.
“Mom, Matty’s texting about beer.”
“Shut up, loser,” I say and reach out to slap him but the spasm from my wrist is so staggering it stops me mid-motion. The ice pack flies across the seat to the floor.
“Mateo Luis, don’t speak to your brother like that.” Mom turns around to face me. “Jayson, do you see how swollen that is?”
“It’s fine,” I lie and snatch the pack from beneath Nico’s feet, elbowing him hard in the gut. We have a weird age difference—we’re not close enough to be into the same stuff, it’s like a different generation of shows and video games but we’re not far enough apart that I feel some familial instinct to take care of him, I mean I would defend him to the death if he ever got into trouble, real trouble, but he mostly just annoys me.
“Jay, look at his wrist,” Mom insists.
“I’m driving,” Dad says, veering in between lanes and picking up speed again. Nico tries to slap me back and then Mom climbs fully into the backseat, arms stretched out to separate us.
“I think we should take him to a doctor.”
I look up from the phone, trying to assess how far we need to go but it all looks the same, there’s too many cars and too much wrist pain, intense enough that I would normally be crying, but I’m too pissed to give Dad the satisfaction.
“What doctor? He’s fine.”
What time can you get here? Stick texts.
“Like one of those urgent care places, there’s one by my school.”
“I am not driving down to East Brunswick in this traffic.”
I text back with one hand but spell-correct never corrects in the way that you want it to, when you really need it to.
“There’s closer ones, you know. What if it’s broken?”
“Can you move it?” Dad says, glancing in the rearview as we pass through the intersection. I don’t care about the pain and I don’t want to see a doctor and I don’t want to sit here and stare at my father’s fat face. I’m going to go see Stick. Finally.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“See,” my dad says, swerving to avoid a slowing car in our lane. “But there’s no way he’s going out drinking tonight. He’ll be too busy watching baseball. He needs to learn about playing the game instead of watching those stupid cartoons.”
“He’s not going out to drink either way. He’s fifteen.”
“Right,” Dad says.
I haven’t been to Stick’s house since his father died and he hasn’t come over to mine. There’s too much going on even when he’s home and he needs to watch out for Michaela. That’s what he told me.
Not sure. My parents are on the warpath right now.
“I’ll tell you what, I’m having a goddamn drink when we get home,” Dad says.
“You and me both,” Mom says and for a fleeting moment the tension in the car releases. We speed along a stretch of the highway with no traffic lights and Nico sinks into his seat, away from me.
Just tell your mom you’re coming to see me. She likes me, remember.
I lean back and let the ice pack slip off my wrist. The pain is more distant in my brain, almost numb. I stare at the text.
Hahahaha yes, I say.
He remembers the kiss. What we talked about before the kiss. He wants to see me again. It’s everything.
SIX
THE SWELLING ON MY WRIST ballooned after the game but Dad took a look and said I’d be fine, in his elite medical opinion. Mom wrapped it up in bandages and Dad started drinking so I snuck out the back to Stick’s house, biking one-handed and parking at the side of the garage.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Stick’s brother David is a few years older and he doesn’t work or go to school, he just hangs out in their garage all day, smoking weed. The door is open like it always is and his flabby frame is squeezed into an overstuffed recliner on one side of the empty space, glass bong on the marble table beside him.
“Ah, I’m just fucking with you, Matt, Stick’s upstairs.”
“Thanks,” I say and make a move to move past him, but he sticks out a leg to stop me.
“You gotta pay the toll,” David says, in the protracted drawl he’s perfected, too high to speak too fast, at least every time I ever see him. A bunch of his friends are spread out on old furniture on the dusty concrete and the stench of weed is overwhelming.
“Twenty bucks,” Marcus says, closer to the stairs to inside. He’s the opposite of David physically, dark-skinned and super thin and sporting a thick afro that makes his face look younger, kinder. Stick doesn’t get along with him. You can at least reason with David, but Marcus is legit crazy. I spot a guy across the room with a bushy red beard and an elongated face, staggering back and forth on bare feet.