Playing Tyler (14 page)

“Samantha, Tyler? That's great,” he says with a grin.

Mom rustles around in the trunk with the bags.

I say, “Forget Samantha, what are you doing here?”

“Your mom called me” – he walks into the kitchen and puts the bags down on the counter – “she's worried about you dropping out. She asked me to meet her for coffee so we could talk about your options going forward.”

Are his cheeks red? Are they fucking red? “Coffee?”

He lowers his voice. “I've been your mentor for two years, Tyler, I've been telling her for just about as long that I'm here for her, too. She's concerned about your future. Thinks she's failing you as a mother. It's a good thing that she's starting to reach out, starting to talk to someone about what's eating at her.”

I look into the bag Rick carried in. It's full. Full of boxes of citrus fruit snacks. Brandon's favorite. I hate them. She hates them. We have a cabinet full of them already. Waiting for him to get better. Waiting for him to come home.

“This is the first time she's called you?” I ask as Mom walks through the door. She looks tired. She drops the bags in the front hall and goes back out to the car to grab some more.

“Yes, but I hope it's not the last. Does she have any friends, Ty, anyone she talks to?” I shake my head no. “She's frightened and depressed and feels like she's all alone. I'm glad she's finally reaching out.”

“Yeah” – I hear the hope in his voice. If Mom could get better, if she could smile, like really smile again – “me, too.”

We walk outside together, to help Mom carry in the rest of the bags.

 

CHAPTER 15

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12

ANI

I shouldn't be doing this, should I? Still, my homework is done and that paper for Spanish isn't due until Monday so I can stop by… right? No. Probably looks too desperate. We've been talking every day but he has the sim to fly and homework to do so maybe I should just get off the bus here and turn around and go back to campus.

He doesn't strike me as particularly studious, though. Watching as the gray bus wheels along route ten, my heart jumps up just a little as I pull the string.

The bus stop isn't far from his house, and the walk down the tree-lined street is pleasant. Smells of burning leaves and the noise from an army of leaf blowers greet me as I go. The air is slightly damp, like it's threatening rain, and I find his house, walk up the broken concrete path to the door. This is fine, I'm almost certain that Mr Anderson can check my email, and it's not like I've been hiding my communication with Tyler. I didn't set up a Hushmail account or anything. If he hasn't said anything about it yet, then it must be OK. I haven't been feeding Tyler any code, haven't been helping with the sim. I'm not really brave enough to
talk
to Mr Anderson about it or anything, but maybe as long as I don't help Tyler with the sim then our relationship falls into a sort of Haranco
don't ask, don't tell
policy. Maybe. Probably.

I take a deep breath and tell myself that everything will be fine. I can't come all the way out here and not ring the doorbell. I ring the bell and wait.

There's no answer. OK, this is bad, is this bad? My fingers move over the button again, feeling its chalky texture and pausing, waiting.

He opens the door and his face with those high cheekbones and bronzed skin registers shock. Oh, no, what does that mean? But then the look of surprise fades into the shy smile that I can't seem to stop thinking about. “Ani.” His smile widens as he checks out my outfit. I hope he likes it: I borrowed Christy's really tight jeans and went to Victoria's this afternoon to get one of those push-ups that dig into your shoulders so that they can lift your boobs into the stratosphere. His smile gets even wider as his eyes return to meet mine. “Wanna come in?”

“Yeah, thanks.” He moves aside and makes room for me as I go. My foot hits an old boot lying on the ground and I fall right into him. Grabbing at him to keep myself steady, he winces in pain before I'm caught by his arms. My God, those biceps. I tremble as he steadies me.

“You OK?” he asks. My heart jumps. He's so big and so cute and I can't believe that I just fell and he must think I'm a total idiot. I nod, eyes staying steady on his full, soft lips.

“Why me, Tyler? I mean, out of all the girls that you've met, why me?” I ask before I even know what I'm saying.

He looks down at my shoulder, eyes lingering there, like he's trying to find an answer hiding somewhere in the strands of my hair. “My world, Ani, it's so… dark, sometimes.” He looks me in the eyes. “And whenever you're around, you light everything up. You make everything seem less… hopeless.”

I grab him, digging my hands into the flesh of his muscled back, and kiss him.

He shuts the door.

 

Tyler

The machine. Something, a woman's voice is saying something on the answering machine. Voice turned all tinny echoing through the empty house. Don't want to hear. Don't want to know. Want to stay right here.

Ani pulls back, looks up at me with those heavy lids and that look that just screams totally sexy. “Are you gonna answer that?” she asks. Voice low, slick, hot.

Kiss her, kiss her again and again and again. Heart flying, head spinning and hands trembling, I shake my head no.

She still has her shirt on but the sleeve is halfway down her shoulder. Nice shoulder, round and tanned and firm. My head moves towards it and I kiss her shoulder, her neck, my hands roam over her body and I tug at her shirt to move it up, move it off.

She arches her back and I kiss lower, moving my hands over her tits. Damn. How do I get this bra off, anyway? I kiss them right through the shirt and she moans and I think I might literally die.

The phone rings again. This time it's my cell and it's in my pocket and sort of hurts when it rings. Ani backs away from me. Gives me a lame smile. Shit. Now I'm gonna look like a moron if I don't take the call.

Sighing, I pull the phone out. “Yeah, what is it?”

My shirt is lying next to Ani on the bed and she looks at my chest and I am so freaking hot right now this better be good.

It's Knesha from the Rehab Center. Sounds like she's talking from underneath the ocean. Can't make out a freaking word she is saying. Nothing. Just static and dribble and words that come out in a collection of sounds that don't work when they're pieced together. Shit. Check for the payment must be late. Knesha always gives me a heads up. “Knesha, I can't hear you. Call me back when you have better reception, OK?”

I shut the phone and look at Ani, SlayerGrrl, on my bed… waiting… She smiles as her eyes leave my abs and come back to my eyes… I am so going to…

The phone rings again. This time the one in the kitchen. I want to rip it right out of the damn wall and send it flying. Ani smiles. “Must be important.”

The shrill sound of the ring reverberates through the house, like a bird pecking out my brain, and each time it rings feels like a punch to teeth.

Ani hands me my shirt. “Get it, Ty. I should get going anyway.”

Shit. Not what I wanted to hear. “But you just got here.” I take my shirt, wanting to rip it to shreds but pulling it down over my shoulders instead and stomp out of the room. The kitchen isn't far down the hall but the ring sounds different in here, like it floats up into the air of the high ceilings a little more and I want to just calm down because I don't want to snap at Knesha. She has no idea that she's calling at a bad time and wouldn't call if it wasn't important shit, but is it important? I pick up the phone. “Yeah, Knesha, what's up?”

“Tyler.” Her voice is lost, floating away from me and just like that I'm not mad anymore. “I'm callin' with some bad news.”

My heart seizes, balls up in a painful clench, waiting, just waiting, for a blow that I know is coming. I can't say it. Don't want to say it. My throat closes up, spit going salty and my legs feel weak, sea-weak. Don't say it. I don't want to know. But I do. “Brandon?”

My voice. Can't believe that I could say it. It was only one word but it sounded so small, so unsteady, so painful that it is hard to believe that she heard me. But I know she did. Now the word hangs in the air between us. One word. Five heartbeats. One little boy who will just curl up and die if she says…

“He left.”

Her words hit me like a sledgehammer. Right in the stomach. She doesn't stop, either.

“He failed a drugs test this morning and just walked out.” Her words fall together like beads on a string, each one hitting the other as they go, each one hitting hard. So nice, Knesha, always smiles at me when I go to the center. She shouldn't be calling, even. A doctor usually does, calls all cold and not like Knesha, not sweet, not caring. “We don't know how he got any drugs in here, but I'm sure he'll be callin' you soon, so don't go worrying. Let me know if there is anything I can do for you, shug, OK? Even if you just need to talk.”

Numb. Just for one second I can't feel. Can't think but to say “thanks” and I hang up the phone. Hang it up and stare at it. Stare at the phone like it has some sort of code that will make any of this make sense. Any of it.

Three thousand thoughts hammer me all at once and my lungs keep catching and my heart dissolves and bubbles up and fills my whole ribcage with pain and I want to just scream and I can't. Can't do anything.

“Tyler.” Her hands touch my shoulder, softly, like an angel. “You OK? What's going on?”

I look into her dark eyes. Beautiful eyes in the delicate face and her sweet cherry lips. So beautiful. Tell her. Tell her that he's gone and you can't find him. Tell her that he's as good as dead. Tell her that he lied again and again and again and you thought that it couldn't hurt you anymore.

My legs shake. I kick them into the base of the cabinets, making the dishes next to the sink clink. Can't she tell? Can't she see? Could she help?

“Tyler?” she asks again. She takes a step closer to me.

Backing away, I take a deep breath. Put my eyes on the tile floor. Words get stuck in my throat. Too many words. Too much pain. Pain moving too fast inside my skull to be able to catch and put into words and get out through my mouth. Too hard. He lied he lied he lied.

Throat tight, breath short, I say, “I have to go.”

She doesn't leave. Why doesn't she leave? Isn't she scared? Should be scared. Instead, she takes a step closer and I feel her arms wrapping themselves around me and pulling me to her. Don't want to go. Can't. I break away.

Color leaves her face in a quick rush. Like I hurt her. I did hurt her, I guess. Shit, now I'm an asshole, too. “Do you want to talk about it?” she offers. But her face is hard now, like she already knows the answer.

I want to, I do. But I can't. “Later. I have to… can't… it's too hard…”

The hardness to her face softens a little. Her shoulders relax. “OK, well, I'm going to go, then. Call me when you can, alright?”

I nod. Look at the floor, not at her, at the floor. She comes right up to me. Wipes the tears out of my eyes with the back of her sleeve. Kisses me, slowly. For like one second I feel a little better, then she grabs her bag and walks out of the front door, closing it behind her with a gentle click.

Running, I hit the garage. Put on the gloves. Beating the punching bag hanging from the ceiling. Hitting. Hitting until my knuckles are sore and my hands ache. Hitting the weights hard with a gazillion sets of everything. Have to keep moving, have to keep hitting that bag and the weights and then the burn comes. The pain, the good pain, the burn that helps to slow down the thoughts until they make sense. The burn that echoes through me until everything comes together, everything fits in my head.

Once it comes, once things are ordered, I curl into a ball on the weight bench. Curl into a ball and wish myself dead.

 

CHAPTER 16

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16

TYLER

The pain doesn't leave. Doesn't go anywhere. Stays right up inside like it lives here. Like it's always just been part of me. Like I wouldn't be me anymore if it left.

I throw the empty bottle of Mountain Dew on the floor. I look back at the screen. Flying more, flying along more highways, more culverts. Desert stretches out as far as the three screens can show and they take me there, too. Just for a second as I'm flying over the desert, taking out bad guys, keeping the good guys safe, my life has meaning, I'm doing something important. And then I remember that it's all just a lie. One big fucking lie. I'm not doing anything for anyone. My whole life is a sham. Flying here in a fake pilot's chair watching over a fake desert and guarding fake troops. What a joke.

Hitting the volume up on the sound dock, I blast some Minor Threat. They were Dad's favorite. I close my eyes. Bite back the pain, tuck it back inside and clamp down on my racing heartbeat. Grinding my arms into the chair I try really hard to focus, to lose myself in the endless bleakness of the desert, to be somebody. The call comes for a single target. Hooking up the MTS autotrack, I quickly send over one of the Predators. A moving target. Cool. They're harder to hit. In a big city, well, big for the sim. It's a gray truck moving through a crowded street. People. Lots of people. Other cars and mud buildings built in tight around the narrow roads. Can't hit them. Not now. It's dark in the sim so I know the Predator overhead is just about impossible for anyone on the ground to see.

I open my eyes and concentrate. Pretend it's all real. Pretend that there are real people in those buildings and that the target in the truck is a terrorist who wants to kill them. A terrorist who wants to beat up on women and shoot little boys in public squares for listening to the wrong kind of music. I feel a little better. I force myself to forget the broken phones on the floor. Forget that I smashed Mom's houseline after the fifth shelter said that B wasn't there. Forget that everyone on B's Facebook list said that they didn't know where he was and that the Twittersphere was clueless. Forget that he's probably dead. Alone.