In my house in Boones Mill, I set it on my lap to try a Mumford and Sons song I’d heard the other day. A couple of lines from “Sweet Child O’ Mine” came out instead. I slammed my hand on the strings.
“Fucking stop. Leave her alone.”
I read a little, trying to stay awake and get back on a normal schedule. By four in the afternoon, I was stretched out on the little couch in my living room, watching Die Hard on a local channel. The movie was interrupted by commercials every three minutes and the swearing was dubbed over.
Bruce Willis, barefoot and bloody, stormed into a room. “Yippie kai yay, mother-flipper.”
My eyes drooped. My thoughts broke apart. Sleep dragged me away from the noise of the movie…
The chain-link fence at the rear yard of Webster High School made a distinctive noise when a body was shoved against it. A scraping, metal-against-metal song. Most days I remembered to come around the front of the school, but I was running late today. The gap in the fence was close to the little house I shared with Doris. I squeezed through.
Toby Carmichael was waiting.
He gave me a rough shove and the fence gave a rattling twang as I bounced off it, the hard wire diamonds stabbing my shoulder blades.
“Why don’t you go to the special-ed school with all the other losers?” Toby said. “Everyone knows you’re r-r-retarded.”
The three friends he brought along cheered and laughed, egging him on.
Toby shoved me again. “Say something, Wee-Wee-Whelan.”
Don’t say anything, I told myself. Don’t give him ammo.
I was a freshman with a slight, undernourished body. Toby was a husky junior, fed on a steady diet of buffalo wings and bacon cheeseburgers at Mill’s Place, where all the kids hung out after school.
All the kids except me.
His shove bounced me against the fence and it sang its song, like a metallic cricket rubbing its legs together. I fucking hated that sound.
“I said, say something.”
Toby lunged at me again and I dodged, my hands balled into fists. “F-F-Fuck off.”
All four guys stopped, stared, and then erupted into laughter, mimicking me. “Fuh-Fuh-Fuck off.”
Toby gripped me by the collar of my second-hand windbreaker jacket. “If I see you looking at Tina Halloran one more time, I’m going to break your stupid fuh-fuh-fucking face.”
I struggled to remember who Tina Halloran was. She must’ve been the pretty girl who smiled at me while I was putting my stuff away in my locker yesterday. A short moment of sun in a perpetually gray sky.
“Hi, Jim,” she’d said, wagging the tips of her fingers at me in a little wave.
I’d never talked to her. Of course not. I never spoke, not in class and certainly not in a crowded hallway full of students. Never to pretty girls with friendly smiles. Someone must’ve put her up to it. Maybe Toby…
“She doesn’t want anything to do with a retard like you,” he bellowed, bringing me back to the present. “You got me?”
Rage burned hot in me. Rage at the unfairness, the taunting, the goddamn stutter that caused me so much misery. My hands balled into fists and I drove one into Toby’s stomach.
He gasped, sucking in air, but didn’t let go of my jacket. His eyes widened with murderous anger. “You are so dead.”
Hit me, I thought. Fucking hit me. Beat the stutter out of me for good.
Toby’s left fist connected with my jaw and pain exploded across my mouth. I staggered back, reeling, and crashed to the ground.
He jabbed his finger at me. “That’s your only warning. Next time, I smash your teeth out. Not that you need them.”
The guys left with a few more sneering comments. I slowly got to my feet. Rubbing my aching jaw, I gathered my backpack and the notebooks that had fallen out. I spit out a wad of blood and watched it splatter to the ground. I imagined it was my stutter, finally ejected from my mouth, bloody and dead. It was gone now. Gone for good. I inhaled like Mrs. Marren taught me. Exhale. Inhale, exhale, then let the words fall out…
“M-M-My n-n-n-name’s Jim…”
Fuck.
I would have spat a curse, but that would have tripped on the way out too. I hurled my backpack at the chain-link fence and stared at the ground, breathing heavily. Slowly, I dragged dirt over the splotch of blood with my worn-out Chucks. Tried to bury it forever…
I woke up in a dark house with a fading, phantom ache in my jaw.
“Fucking pathetic,” I said.
That stutter was buried now, even if only in a shallow grave, and no one had to know how bad it had once been. Those days were gone. Hours upon hours piled up between then and now like bricks. I’d keep piling them up until the memories were only a bad dream and nothing more. I’d wipe them clean away, the way Thea’s mind wiped away her every waking moment.
Jesus, stop making everything about her.
I threw on my leather jacket and headed into town, prepared to erase my memory the old-fashioned way—by getting wasted.
In Boones Mill’s tiny downtown, I found a bar called Haven. Small, dark, and with a tiny stage, where a guy plucked out a song on his guitar. A flyer on the table said local acts were welcome. A fleeting image of me on the stage with my guitar came and went.
I nearly laughed out loud.
I ordered a beer from the waitress and listened to the guy warble out a country song to a bored audience of ten people. The waitress came back before I was halfway done with the beer.
“Ready for another?”
“Uh, sure.”
She leaned a hand on my table and smiled. Pretty. Her dark hair was in a ponytail and a tight black T-shirt strained over the curves of her breasts.
“Haven’t seen you here before and I’ve seen everybody.” She cocked a hip. “I’m Laura.”
“Jim.”
“New in town, Jim?”
I nodded.
“I thought so.” Laura’s smile turned private as she leaned closer. “Need someone to show you around? I make a pretty good welcome wagon.”
What she was offering was clear. No reason I shouldn’t take her up on it, except that Boones Mill was a hell of a lot smaller than Richmond. I didn’t take women home regularly, but when I did, it was for one and only one night. With minimal verbal interaction.
I don’t care if you stutter, Thea whispered in my ear. I just want you to keep talking to me.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m good.”
She pouted. “You sure? This town is so small and—”
“I’ll take that beer.” I raised my bottle.
Embarrassment flitted over her face, which she quickly covered with a scowl. “Sure thing.”
She stomped off, and I watched her go, her ass looking perfect in her tight jeans, and inwardly cursed at myself. Small town or not, it was a while since I’d had company.
And what the hell was I doing thinking about Thea Hughes? Her memory was fucked. She wasn’t capable of anything, not even friendship.
Her brain is broken. Leave her alone.
But she wouldn’t leave me alone.
Laura plunked a new beer on my table and walked away. In my pathetic imagination, Thea sat next to me, listening to the music, swaying in her seat.
“Music is life,” she said, her hand slipping into mine. Her blue eyes bright with recognition and light.