“Let go of me!” I snarl, wanting to kick and bite and punch and hurt.
“Bear,” he says, his voice grumbling in my ear. “Bear.”
“I’m not like you!” I say, still struggling to get away. “I’m not like that!”
“I know, Bear. I know.” His breath is hot against my cold skin. “Don’t you think I know that? I shouldn’t have let it happen. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I stop fighting him, feeling all the anger fall out of me like someone flipped a switch. “Why are you here?” I moan. “Why did you come back?”
He grabs me by the chin, forcing me to stare into his eyes. “It has nothing to do with what happened between us. As far as I am concerned, that was a mistake. We never should have kissed.”
3.
Where Bear Looks
to the Past
OKAY, time out! Seriously. This is getting way out of hand. And no complaining, either! The way you’ll hear it from him will probably make me sound like a fag. Well, I’m not, so you can get that out of your head right now. Besides, I’m the one telling the story, and I’m going to tell it my own way. You’ll just have to deal with it. And besides, this whole thing would make a lot more sense if I could go back a little bit to tell you what led up to this moment. Maybe it’ll make sense to me too as to why I am standing outside of the Seashack: Gifts and Curios, clutching my best friend’s brother in the rain. Shit like this isn’t supposed to happen to me.
I’ve got too much to deal with already.
THERE I stood, my mind reeling, hearing those words play over and over again in my head:
i know this is going to be hard for yu to read
i have to leave
tom sez that ty can’t go
i am going to leave him here with yu
please don’t try looking for me
mom
I thought it was some kind of joke. I mean, it had to be, right? Nobody does that to their kids. I reread the letter, all the while thinking any minute now, someone was going to jump out and say, “Ha ha, Bear! Ha ha on you!” I read through the letter a second time, then a third, and a fourth, but the words never changed. It became impossible to read it the fifth time, and I didn’t understand why until I saw my hand holding the letter was shaking so violently that the words were illegible.
“Mom?” I croaked out, stumbling into the small living room. The tattered thrift-store couch where she would normally be at that time of night was empty. I turned and walked down the short hallway into her room. I threw open the door and slapped the light on. No one was there. Neither was any of the shit she kept in her room. I pulled open her chest of drawers, one by one, finding them all empty until I got to the last. In the last there was a framed picture of me and the Kid that Otter had given to my mom as a birthday present. It showed us walking up the beach when Ty was three, me holding onto his hand, him pointing toward something on the ground. It was the only picture she had of us, and she left it.
I clutched the wall, feeling bile tickle the back of my throat. This can’t be happening. This is not happening. I wanted to sink into the darkness that was threatening the corners of my vision. It would have been so much easier to just curl into a ball in the corner rather than face what was really going on. It would be so much easier just to….
I felt something poking into my stomach, and I opened my eyes to see that I’d slumped to my knees, my head pressing against the wall. I still held the picture in my hand, and its corner was jutting up against my stomach. Anger tore through me, and I slammed the picture into the wall, feeling it shatter around my hands. Glass bit into my skin, cutting my palm. This pissed me off even more. The remains of the frame crashed to the ground, followed by little droplets of blood. I looked stupidly down at the picture, watching first my face go red then the Kid’s, blood roses blooming across the captured memory.
Ty. Shit.
I got up quickly and ran to the room we share. His bed was pressed up against the right side of the room and hadn’t been touched. He wasn’t there. I stopped for a moment and tried to think of where the hell my mom was supposed to leave him today while she went to work. I didn’t think he was with our neighbor, Mrs. Paquinn, because she normally came over to our apartment to watch him as Ty liked to play in our room. I figured it was the best place to start and was heading to the front door when my cell phone vibrated in my pocket.
I reached into my pocket, using my cut hand and not realizing it until I felt a piece of glass press into my skin further. I pulled out my phone quickly and saw that it was Anna. “Anna, I can’t talk right now,” I said when I answered. “I have to find Ty. She’s gone. She’s gone.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. “The Kid is here with me. Your mom dropped him after I got home from work and begged me to watch him. She said you were going to come pick him up when you got off. Wait… Bear, what do you mean she’s gone? Did something happen to your mom?”
“Ty’s with you?” I said hoarsely.
“Yes, he’s sleeping on the couch. Bear, what’s wrong? Why do you sound like that? Is everything okay?”
“No,” I said and began to cry.
I TRIED to drive over to Anna’s house as quickly as I could and would have gotten there sooner had I not pulled over every two seconds or so to alternate between throwing up and having to punch something. By the time I got to my girlfriend’s house, I was so worked up again that I couldn’t see straight. I clutched the letter in my good hand and made my way to the door, trying not to destroy Mrs. Grant’s flowers that lined the front walkway. Someone must have heard me coming because the porch light flashed on and the front door opened. Anna rushed out to me, throwing her arms around my neck. I hugged her back, breaking yet again, knowing I was getting blood on her but not caring. I thought she kept saying, “What happened, what happened?” but I couldn’t answer her just then. So she held me, rocking me back and forth, whispering nothings into my ear, until it was all out of me, and I couldn’t give anymore.