** Wash **

He had just gotten back from the public library – skin slightly damp from the first drizzle of Fall. Tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter and stared down at the well worn paperback he had been sent to retrieve. Shook his head at the smell he couldn’t help but scoff at, smiling because he knew it was her favorite. "A living book," she called it. Pictured her fanning the pages and breathing in the smell of unknown time and place.

A shadow loomed just outside the front window, pulling the corner of his eye. He looked – frowned. Hesitated.

It moved again.

What the… he moved – hand wrapping around the brass knob, arm tugging against the stick of moisture and aged wood. The door popped –

"Oh – " the boy was startled – "hey man…"

His body relaxed on impulse before stiffening against reality. The kid wasn’t supposed to be here.

"Hey…" the worry in his voice betrayed the simplicity of the word. "What’s up?"

It’d been a while – a month, maybe – since he’d seen that face. Or what that faced used to be – before it had melted away with the striking of flint, the heat of burning paper, and the blunt end of a needle. He knew he’d gotten picked up again – heard he’d been bailed – but the details were kept secret. The details were always kept secret. Until they weren’t secret, anymore.

"Nothing man, you know – I was just around…"

The kid’s voice was heavier, body lighter, and he couldn’t help but notice the way his shirt draped across his chest, hung loosely around areas where muscle should have been – used to be -, gathered in a mound and half tucked into the waistband of his jeans. Jeans that were now held up by the jutting out of hip bones. Jeans that had started out blue and, somewhere in the span of details, had turned brown and rust colored but for a few black patches where rain had marked its territory.

"Yeah?" he played along – "where were you?"

The kid shrugged – his eyes fixated on an overgrowth of crabgrass. Kicked his toe into the tangled mess and found something interesting to stare at while they were down there.

"I was just heading back to Norco – maybe. On the bus…" his voice broke and he took in a breath, straightened up, his glance moving to the neighbor’s old house. 

"I was thirsty-" he said, defeated – his eyes squinting against a hidden sun.

He had talked to her brother the day before – the stoic voice on the line asking questions he didn’t know how to answer. Said his cousin had called. Asked him for a ride somewhere. That he was trying to make it so that he could get back into another rehab. Her brother didn’t know what to do. Hadn’t known what to do since that time he found his cousin curled up beneath a pile of trash bags just outside the liquor store up the street. They were both twenty, back then.

The kid sniffed – kicked at the grass and shoved his blackened hands into a tight hold around his body – his eyes still fixated on the neighbor’s.

The stiffness in his body broke against the memory and he felt the weight of it in his shoulders. God dammit, kid.

"Hold on, man. I’ll grab you some water."

They sat on the bricks out front for a time in a mixture of silence and un-choreographed confessions. He did most of the listening. Wasn’t sure what it was about him that never failed to provide a safe place for what would soon be his own cousin to unload. Maybe it was his own experience with the shit – people on the shit – people he loved that had always loved the shit more. Maybe not. Maybe it was just because he kept quiet and let the kid talk. Maybe he was the only person that ever did.

But the kid always talked. People liked to say he didn’t – but he knew better. He listened. When the kid told him about RPD showing up at his parent’s house – he listened. About how he slept on the floor of the holding cell that first night because the thin mattress had been soaked with piss – he listened. And then when the boy’s father, the fire captain, came to pick him up after having bailed him out – that the two drove through the next few towns in silence, as they had every time before. And about how his parents couldn’t be in the same room together, anymore. That his mom was done with him. That somewhere along the lines she had started to hate his father because he wasn’t. And then when it got to be too heavy again – he listened while the kid walked him through the next few days. Of sleeping on the kitchen floor of some crash house. And then on the hill in the park downtown – the one where that young cop got shot last year, the brother of some girl his cousin had cheered with back in high school. The kid talked, he knew. People just never shut up long enough to listen.

"You know what’s crazy, though," he said – smoking a gifted cigarette – "when you haven’t eaten in a few days-" he paused, flicked ash that hadn’t yet had the time to form, "it’s like your brain just stops working."

"Yeah?" he asked, chancing a glance at the kid’s distant eyes.

"Yeah. It just… shuts down…. I always forget that happens. And then I always remember."

He wasn’t a kid. Not really. Not anymore. At twenty-five, you’re not supposed to be.

"So… I might have a job," he says, his face lighting up for the first time.

"Oh yeah?" he’s curious.

‘Yeah, well – I was downtown and I ran into one of the guys I went to college with – we played soccer together – and now he’s coaching over at the high school," his voice is lighter, animated, "he said he’d put in for me to be the assistant coach. I’m supposed to go fill out an application tomorrow. I’m just waiting for my dad to call me back."

"Your dad?"

"Yeah. I told him. He said he’s got to talk to my mom. See if I can stay there."

He loved seeing him like this – that spark people always talk about making its way back into the kid’s paper-thin face. Wanted to keep it a little longer. Knew better.

"What about rehab?"

Gone.

"Yeah. If they say no -" he hesitates, takes a drag. Finds the ground.

"My mom said she doesn’t have faith in me, anymore. When it comes to rehab."

And though it wasn’t a question, he hated himself for not having an answer. Hated himself for knowing already what would come of tomorrow. The kid could play. Could have played, even still. Everybody knew it. Knew what he had thrown away. But no high school would hire a meth addict. He’d lose it – all over again.

And then what? What comes next when you’re twenty-five and your mother doesn’t believe and your father saves lives but can’t save yours. When knowing what it is you’ve lost for yourself is the one thing you were ever really good at – and that now even a lesser version of that self you used to be is greater still than the shit you’ve curled up in just trying to keep warm. Where does a kid go from here when he can’t even bring himself to look up?

God fucking dammit, Brian. He breathes in nicotine and fans away non-existent smoke, hoping to pass off the tears that have escaped as a nuisance of the act in itself. Looks away.


"Well – I’ve got to head out. Need to find a few more cans," he says, standing up. "Thanks for the water, man. And the smoke."

"Yeah. What do you need cans for?"

The kid shrugs. Tries to pass it off like no big deal.

"I need like, a dollar for the bus. To get back to Norco. In case they say yes."

"Oh," he mumbles. Stands. Flicks away his filter.

And he knows he shouldn’t. He always knows he shouldn’t. But he does.

"Hey man – just get in the truck. I won’t drop you off at the house, but I’ll take you to Norco."

Fuck it. Maybe it’s selfish. Maybe the whole thing is just for him. He loves the kid – him with his baggy shirt and filth infested jeans and a face that still lights up over some game that he could have kept playing. And she loves the kid – her with her love of old book smells and classic literature – her face glowing, eyes closed as she fans the pages beneath her nose. And it’s tomorrow. And what it might bring. And it’s not knowing when it is he’ll get to see those faces again after tomorrow. So fuck him for wanting to see them a little bit longer, he thinks.

In the kitchen, he grips the granite counter top and turns his knuckles white. Leans over to catch his breath. Fuck me – he whispers, wiping away more tears.

Grabs for his keys.