Twelve
OREN
As I knew it would, my life of solitude gets even more miserable once my family has more ammunition to use as reasons I’m such a disappointment.
Since the moment we got home after they pulled me from the parking lot, there hasn’t been a moment without someone making a stab at me. Though it’s all rather predictable.
Frankie’s attacks are all self-centered. I don’t deserve to hang with the team; he does. They should see that I’m a loser. I work in a coffee shop, for fuck’s sake.
Dane is more belligerent. Adak’s hand wasn’t exactly intimate, it was on my back. But that was enough for him to turn on me as soon as we stepped into the house and sneer, “Now you’re fucking gay too?”
There’s a part of me that desperately wanted to yell back—I was never not gay! But I do what I always do. I don’t respond. It infuriates him more because he has this complex that he should be answered when he’s spoken to me. So I ignore him entirely.
For the most part, it remains my older brothers bashing me with whatever they can while I stand there, looking at neither of them, ignoring it as best I can. Haze hovers for a minute, looking sick and distressed. Eventually, he stomps off down the hall and I hear his door slam.
This is my fault, of course. He’s sickened by me. Disgusted. I’ve led a hidden life when I should have shared it with them.
Which makes me internally roll my eyes.
Frankie alternates between the injustice of me making friends with the team over him and slander at my now outed sexuality. When he can’t get me riled with either topic, he combines the two, accusing me of sucking them all off. That’s obviously the reason they like me.
I’m a slut. That’s it.
Still, I don’t respond.
Dane lists all the ways I’ve failed as a son, a brother, and a human being.
Being gay is just the newest offense. This I actually pay attention to because it’s the most insight into why he hates me I’ve ever gotten and it’s all…
superficial. I don’t look like them. I don’t act like them.
I don’t work like them. (I suppose Frankie is just honorarily mentioned as working.) I don’t talk like them.
When my father starts in, it’s quiet, which is more terrifying than my brothers crowding around me, yelling. “Give me your phone,” he says.
My heart stops and I forget how to breathe for just a second. Somehow, I manage to say, “No.”
Silence falls in the house. “Yes. Give me your phone. Unlock it and hand it over.”
I shake my head, backing myself against the wall like a caged, beaten animal. “No. It’s mine.”
He stares at me as Dane hisses how disrespectful I am. Minutes of tense, charged silence pass before my father says, “Room.”
There are worse places to be. I slip by them and disappear into my room. As soon as the door shuts, I breathe a sigh of relief. That is, until I hear the door lock from the outside.
“He can piss his bed like the toddler he is,” Dane says.
“You’re staying in there until you hand over your phone,” my father says.
“I have work tomorrow,” I say, lamely. “You’ve always said that when people are counting on you, you need to follow through.”
There’s a moment of silence before he says, “Frankie will take you there and home.”
I don’t argue. I don’t say anything at all.
This is how the next three days go. I don’t dare take out my phone for fear that someone will rush in when I have it unlocked and I’ll be too startled to lock it before they grab it from me.
I text Adak once at two in the morning when I’m sure everyone is asleep, just to tell him I’m all right, I miss him, and everything’s fine.
It’s not fine.
Three days after the parking lot incident that set off my brothers and father, I’m feeling frazzled and ready to burst into tears. I’m basically a prisoner. Held hostage. After Shelton had a confrontation with Frankie two days ago, he has refused to allow Frankie entrance into the shop.
When my father comes in for coffee, I won’t leave the back room.
There’s a standoff in my house and I know I’m not winning. I’m ready to break but I’m so scared of breaking that I barely feel anything at all.
I wish Adak was here.
He’s in Chicago today and has a game this evening. I texted him a few times today, but I could tell that he was worried and I wasn’t sure I was doing a good job convincing him I was fine. My act wasn’t at all convincing in person. Shelton and Greta were ready to call the police.
But the thought doesn’t comfort me. The only thing I remember when I think of the police is when I was nineteen and ran away to Huntley’s house, trying to break free of my father’s hold. He showed up with a police escort and forced me home.
The thing is, as a corrections officer for three decades, he has a lot of friends and connections. And ass his black sheep son, no one will believe anything I say.
“We can sneak you out the back door,” Greta says, eyeing Frankie through the window where he’s waiting for me outside.
I shake my head. I know he’ll track me down. He’ll chase me. He’ll probably catch me and it wouldn’t end up pretty.
“I can smuggle you away,” Shelton offers.
“I’m just going to go home,” I say. “But thanks.”
They don’t argue or stop me as I leave the coffee shop.
“You’re not supposed to make me wait,” Frankie says when I step outside. As usual, I don’t respond. “It’s rude and inconsiderate. I have things to do. Dad expects dinner at a certain time.”
I don’t care. I don’t care about anything right now. My fear is that they’re going to keep me away from Adak. And they’re going to succeed. The little glimpses of happiness, of being important to someone, only lasted a couple short weeks.
They’re going to take that from me. For no other reason than they can.
Tears sting my eyes and I hold my breath every other inhale for three seconds to clear the feeling. I used to say that I wouldn’t let them break me. But I was na?ve with that mantra. They’ve already succeeded.
The sick feeling in my gut only increases when I see my father’s truck in the driveway when we get home. He’s standing inside the door, his face looking red today.
“Give me your phone,” he says, as he has at least a hundred times over the last seventy-two hours.
I just shake my head and ignore him as I try to slip past him to my room before he can tell me to go. But this time, things change. My father grabs my arm, his fingers digging into my muscles.
“Unlock your fucking phone and give it to me. Now,” he says.
“No!” I shout and yank my arm away. Surprised when I manage to loosen his hold. In fact, I think we’re all surprised. “I bought my phone. I pay the phone bill. It’s my phone. I’m an adult and I don’t have to give it to you!”
“While you’re under my roof?—”
“I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE!” I scream. “BUT YOU WON’T LET ME LEAVE.
” He’s unlocked a dam now and tears start flooding down my cheeks.
I can’t stop the words as they spill out of me.
“I don’t know what I ever did to make you hate me, but rest assured that I hate you back just as much.
I hate it here. I hate you. You don’t control me. ”
I flinch when my father steps forward and reaches for me again.
He grabs my wrist and shakes me a little, his face red and blotchy as he hisses angrily.
“You ungrateful, disobedient, asshole. You will do as I say or you’re never leaving your room again.
Give me your fucking phone. Let me see what you’ve been up to. ”
He’s still shaking me, and my brain rattles in my head. I scream as loudly as I can as I try to jerk myself free again.
My feet leave the ground and then he’s dragging me down the hall. He literally throws me into my room and slams the door shut. Yet again, I hear the lock.
For a minute, I catch my breath on the floor. Then I’m on my feet, screaming once more. I hit the door, over and over and over again, demanding that they can’t keep me in here. I grab the wooden chair that’s always been in my room and hit it on the door as hard as I can.
The vibration of the hit ricochets through my body and makes my teeth hurt. I hit the door again with a loud screech. Between slamming it on the door, I hear Haze’s voice. “What’s going on? What did you do?”
I can’t hear anything further as the chair finally splinters and falls apart. There are dents in the door, but that fucker is still in one piece. My dresser is right next to the door, so I shove it in front and then turn around, spinning in a wild circle.
There’s a single window in my room. It’s small, right above my bed.
But not too small for me. Taking a breath, I roughly wipe the tears from my eyes. I’ve never tried to fit through it before, but I’m confident I can.
I scream again as I open the window, making sure they can’t hear anything. Just for good measure, I grab the book that’s on my bedside table and throw it as hard as I can at the door. It hits with a slap and then falls with a thunk.
Another scream to cover me shoving the screen out. For a second, I stand on the middle of my bed and stare at the window. Then I turn, yank the drawer from my nightstand out, and hurl it at the door. The lamp follows. Then the entire nightstand.
I’m satisfied when it does damage to the drywall, having missed the door.
Before I lose my courage, I scramble through the window and drop painfully to the ground. I stay right where I am without moving. My window faces the garage and I have a clear line of sight to Dane’s shed.
But I know they’re inside. Did they hear me?
When no one follows and I hear nothing else, I get to my feet and run behind the garage toward the neighbor’s yard. Once I’m through their backyard, I move to the sidewalk. I’m far enough that they can’t see that part of the sidewalk since the garage blocks the view.