6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Silas
M y head jerks in her direction. I know she catches at least a glimpse of my shock—hell, my disappointment— before I manage to pull myself together and batten down the hatches on any unchecked emotions. It doesn’t seem to have slowed her down any, that’s for sure. Now that she’s on such a roll and all.
“Silas is here… He’s with me,” she says. “And he can’t go back to Trenton. It’s not right that—”
“ Silas is with you? ” Richard asks incredulously.
“His uncle beat him up the other night,” Jackie continues, undeterred, ignoring the interruption completely. “And I’m sure that wasn’t the only time. And maybe Silas got into some trouble in the past, but what if it’s because he’s just reacting or trying to deal with stuff that’s going on in his life at home? Because I know Silas is not the problem. And it’s not fair that he’s the one who has to go live in a detention center—because his abusive guardians suddenly don’t want to deal with him anymore.”
What in the hell ? She needs to shut up. Now .
“His uncle hit him?”
“He didn’t just hit him! He totally beat him up. When he was already passed out,” she shoots back, full of confidence now. Over-brimming with righteousness. “I saw a text from one of his friends about it. And I saw the bruises, Richard… They’re horrible.”
“Oh, Lord,” Richard says. “You should have told me. How long has—”
“You read my texts? ” I cut him off, laying into Jackie because I am so pissed right now I can’t hold it in anymore. I can’t believe she read my fucking texts !
“I didn’t mean to.” She looks anguished and a little shocked. Like she’s just now remembering I’m sitting right next to her. “You were outside, and you left your phone on the seat and I looked at it when it buzzed and when I saw what the message said…”
“You picked it up and read my personal texts? ”
“How long has Silas been with you, Jackie?” Richard interrupts.
I can’t take it anymore. I lean across the seat: up close to the mic, but also right up in Jackie’s personal space.
“By all fucking means,” I bite out, “Feel free to keep talking about my personal life amongst yourselves. Like I’m not right. Fucking. Here.”
I don’t even care that Jackie flinches, because it feels like she just took a huge chunk out of my pride and swallowed it whole without even taking the time to chew.
I fall back in my seat, clutching at my bangs.
“Silas…” Richard switches rapid-fire-quick to his soothing therapist voice. “I’m sorry, son. I should have asked if—”
“You know what?” I shoot back. “Save it. I’m heading outside for a smoke. Trenton is fine. I’ll be up and ready to go tomorrow morning.”
Trenton is not fine. And neither am I: I’ll lose my shit if I have to listen to any more of their back-and-forth “let’s talk about Silas and his entire life behind his back, but right in front of him” bullshit.
“Silas, wait!” Jackie leans across the seat and clutches at my arm with her porcelain doll fingers.
Just the motion of reaching for the door handle is enough for me to shake her off. She reaches for me again, but I’m already halfway out, and I don’t look back when I slam the door behind me. I don’t care if it’s an apology she wants to give me or an offer to go live with Kendall fucking Jenner: I can’t take anymore of their conversation. And I think right about now would be a perfect time to light my last cigarette.
You know, final straw and all that.
They talk for a long time. Over twenty minutes. And I’m long done my cigarette when Jackie emerges from around the front of the camper, looking weary of me as she approaches.
Good. I hope she stays that way.
“I’m really sorry if that conversation made you uncomfortable,” she says.
I roll my eyes. This girl… She manages to sound like a seasoned counselor, even though she’s probably only ever seen one on tv. But what person under thirty talks like that in real life?
Wait. Scratch that: her adoptive father is some kind of high-profile kid shrink. So I guess it does make perfect sense.
“Richard wants to talk to you alone for a minute,” she tells me. Like we’re ten years old again and being called in one-by-one to be reamed out by our parents.
Only, yeah, our parents are dead.
I glare at her for a full ten seconds before grabbing the phone out of her outstretched hand. She gives me what I’m assuming is meant to be an apologetic and reassuring smile all rolled in to one. In return, I give her the finger as I push past her and head around to the other side of the camper. It’s not exactly private, but at least it’s not right fucking next to her.
And because apparently my day hasn’t already been filled with enough wonderful surprises, Richard hits me with another one, and isn’t my life just a grab-bag of unexpected twists and turns?
He proposes an ultimatum. More specifically, he presents me with a motion clearly hand-crafted by Jackie and then polished and buffed and refined by him.
Instead of going to Trenton while social services treasure hunts for my shiny new foster family (i.e. over-crowded, depressing-as-hell group home), Richard will work out a deal with them for me to stay on the road with Jackie for the next ten weeks. On the condition that I promise to be on my best behavior: stay out of trouble, stay away from liquor and any other illegal substances, and check in via FaceTime with Richard every night at ten to prove that I am, in fact, where I am supposed to be .
And yeah: it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that they’ve got me over a barrel, here. Of course I’m going to take whatever option I’m given over Trenton. But it doesn’t make it suck any less.
And if I’m being honest, it’s possible this idea wasn’t all Jackie’s, because Richard did try to reach out to me several times over the years. Well, reach out to my aunt: offering counseling for me—at least three times over the first year after my parents’ death, and then any time he’d heard through his friends in the system or whatever, that I’d been hauled in or got in trouble. I wasn’t supposed to know, but my aunt sucks at discretion. And by that, I mean she sucks at keeping her voice down to anything below a low screech.
I overheard a bunch of the conversations she was ironically so insistent be kept from me. I heard her berate poor ol’ Dr. Richard for butting his head in where it didn’t belong, and “he has some nerve” and “just because he has a wall full of fancy diplomas doesn’t make him better than her” and “what Silas needs is a good kick in the rear, and to learn to deal with the consequences of his delinquent behavior - not some love-in with a therapist who will try to justify the fact that he’s just a bad kid .”
Of course, I’m paraphrasing here. But you get the idea. It seems Richard’s savior complex as it relates to Jackie, for whatever crazy reason, also extends to me. So it isn’t a long-shot to assume he’s still all hot-and-bothered over the idea of troubleshooting and fixing me somehow, just as much as his adoptive daughter is.
In other words, I’m being tag-teamed here.
But of course, I take the deal. And of course, I promise to obey his rules. And of course, I’m just as full of shit now as I’ve always been, because there’s no way I’ll abide by even half of his carefully outlined rules. And I don’t feel one bit bad about it because:
1) He shouldn’t have started butting his head into my business to begin with and
2) If he’s even half the qualified shrink everyone says he is, then he should already have figured out I’m not going to pay attention to rules he has no way of enforcing .
He drones on for another five minutes, then just when I think we’re finally about to wrap things up, he sucker punches me. Again.
“Look, Silas… About what Jackie said earlier, about your uncle…”
I grip the phone so hard I’m surprised I don’t crush it. I can’t believe he’s really going to full-circle back to this again. Because hearing him and Jackie hashing out the details behind my “horrible bruises” wasn’t bad enough the first time around.
“Is this true?” he asks in his low, oh-so-soothing voice. “Has he been hitting you?”
“No.” I bite out, jaw clenched and seething, because Jackie had no right . She had no right to read my texts, and sure as hell no right to go blabbing her mouth and smearing my personal life across her network of do-gooders. “It was a mis-understanding.”
“A mis-understanding on Jackie’s behalf?” Another pause. “Or do you mean there was a misunderstanding between you and your uncle?”
“Both,” I say.
“I see…”
Which is a lie. He doesn’t. If he did, he would see that I do not. Want to. Go there.
He’s quiet for a bit, like he’s carefully thinking about how to phrase his next sentence. Which, yeah, he better be. And Jackie should, too. They could both stand to learn how to think before they open their damn mouths about something that is not theirs to talk about.
“I’d really like to chat a bit more about that with you.” And then he clarifies: “Not right now, of course.”
Like this makes any of it more palatable.
“But sometime over the next few days, when you have some quiet time alone to talk. I’d like us to have a conversation, if that’s alright… Not to be prying or to judge or anything like that. But just a conversation.”
Why is it they can’t see that asking to talk about my relationship with my uncle is prying? It is judging. Because just the fact that Richard knows our interactions may have become physical at times means he’s made a judgment that action needs to be taken. Conversations need to be had. Feelings need to be analyzed. All of that is prying.
“Does that sound like a plan?” he prods again. Making it worse by pretending I have some kind of say over the matter. He’s the one cutting me a deal to stay out of Trenton, therefore he’s the one calling the shots.
I decide to test my theory: “No. I’d really rather not talk about it.”
Loaded silence…
And then: “Alright son, I can respect that. I’ll give you some time, then. But at some point, we do need to have a conversation. As I said, just to talk… Even if it’s not about your uncle.”
Yup: the talk is non-negotiable.
What’s negotiable is how we’ll label the talk. So, we will call it “a non-specific conversation”, but then half-way into it, Richard will find a connection or some way to transition in to a discussion about my relationship with my aunt and uncle.
It’s the same conversation, only re-labeled and re-formulated.
“Sure. Whatever.”
“Great. Well, I’ll let you go, then… Remember what we talked about. Stay out of trouble, and respect Jacquelyn. No funny business, alright?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Don’t make me regret sticking my neck out for you. I’m pulling some strings for you, Silas. Make me proud.”
Thankfully, he can’t see my spectacular eye roll.
“I will. Thank you.”
“Take care, Silas. Don’t forget: ten o’clock this evening. You need to check in.”
“Got it.”
And I hang up. Then I let my head fall back against the side of the camper with a hollow thud!
I need a few shots of Fireball right now. A few shots of anything . Because this really. Truly. Blows.
And lucky me, this is only Day One.
I have to walk around to the other side of the camper where Jackie’s been waiting in order to get into my seat. I brush right past her and climb straight in, effectively cutting her off mid-question by slamming the passenger door behind me. Of course, a couple seconds later she climbs in to the driver’s seat, and I’m trapped with her for the foreseeable future. Literally and figuratively.
“Are you okay?” she tries again.
I turn and give her a look that clearly indicates how not okay I am right now. And how stupid she is for even asking. This new Jackie is resilient as hell though, and unfortunately for me, isn’t easily intimidated.
It takes her a couple of tries, but she eventually shifts into drive and we’re back on the road. The silence between us becomes almost a tangible thing that shapes and moulds to the space inside the cab; thick and heavy and oppressive. Eventually, Jackie leans over and presses a button on her phone, and a second later the cheery music starts up again… and so do the thoughts of lunging my body out of a moving vehicle. Because surely, whatever injuries I sustained would still be better than being submitted to this upbeat musical vomit for hours on end.
Jackie doesn’t tap her fingers or do that shoulder grooving thing she was doing earlier, though. I can tell she’s doing some serious thinking—which can only mean bad things for me.
Sure enough, two (overly upbeat) songs in, she suddenly turns down the music.
“Look, I know you’re mad at me right now. And you want to shut me out or whatever, and that’s fine. I just need you to know that you don’t deserve to be treated that way—how your aunt and uncle treated you. Just because you’ve done some stupid things or got into trouble or whatever, it doesn’t make it okay. It doesn’t give them the right to kick you out or… or beat you up while you’re passed out. Or while you’re wide awake or… at all .”
I still don’t look at her.
“Thanks for the insight,” I scoff, “but think I’ll take a pass on the Dr. Phil car-pool edition.”
She lets out a frustrated sigh. “Silas, please… Can you stop being sarcastic for just one second? I just want—”
I lean forward and turn the music up to drown out the rest of whatever she’s going to say.
Desperate measures, I know.
She lets out another sigh, but at least she takes the hint. I take out my own phone after that and scroll through texts, only I’m not really taking anything in. My mind is all over the place. I’m so absorbed in my thoughts that I don’t realize we’ve veered off the highway again until we’re slowing right down, pulling into a parking lot. I look up to see a huge Walmart sign.
Jackie glances at me. “I just have a couple things I need to pick up,” she says.
I nod and put my phone in the cup holder, then lean back and close my eyes. I don’t want her to think there’s any chance I’m going in with her. Also, I’m tired as hell. Clearly, because I fall asleep almost as soon as her door slams shut.
Next thing I know, I wake with a start with no idea how long I’ve been out. I’m not used to falling asleep so easily. Not when I’m sober. I forgot how good it feels. How easy it can be.
Jackie is pushing a full cart toward the camper and the wheels make a loud clacking sound against the pavement; obviously the noise that woke me up.
She did more than just “pick up a couple of things”: the cart is overflowing. And is that… is that a pillow and comforter set ?
I open the door and peer round at the cart, where Jackie is standing in front of the main door to the camper.
“What’s that for?” I motion with my chin to the oversized see-through bag, even though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer.
“It’s for you. You’ll need bedding to sleep on for the next few weeks,” she answers casually, ignoring the accusation I know most be creeping into my eyes now. “We can store it underneath the bench during the day. ”
She unlocks the door and steps inside, lugging the bedding with her, which I’m now noticing is covered in gold cursive lettering, with the words “ sweet dreams ” sprawled all over.
Oh, the irony…
I hop out, slamming the door, and look up at her. She’s already stashing the comforter and pillow under the long sofa.
She calls over her shoulder: “Can you hand me the rest of the stuff?”
I don’t move. “What in the hell, Jackie?”
“You’re going to need a few basic things. You can’t just—”
“For chrissake. I didn’t ask you to buy me stuff!”
She ignores me and finishes: “… wear the same clothes for ten weeks. And you need bedding.”
And then, before I have a chance to object again, she straightens and points down at the cart. “Can you pass me those bags?”
I do pick up one of the bags, but only to rifle through its contents. I hold up one of the packages.
“Seriously?”
She bought me fucking underwear ?
She just shrugs. “I tried to think of everything. I don’t want to have to stop again tomorrow for more stuff. ”
She reaches her hand out for the bag, but I ignore her. She still doesn’t get it.
“I’m not letting you buy me shit.”
“Well then, we’re all good,” she says, all smug grin and sparkly eyes. “Caus I didn’t buy any shit.” She tilts her head thoughtfully. “I did get an extra bag of toilet paper, which I guess is for shit… but definitely no actual shit.” She gives me another perky smile. “See? Crisis averted.”
She’s a real freakin’ riot.
A woman walks up to the car parked beside ours, a toddler balanced in one arm and a couple of bags in the other. She slows when she sees the shocking yellow truck, wincing almost like she finds it offensive.
You and me both, sweetheart .
“Look, mommy!” her kid yells, pointing with his chubby little finger. “Yummy!!! Yummy yummy yummy!”
I’m assuming he’s referring to the cookies painted on the camper beside the order window. Only it looks like he’s pointing at the underwear in my hand.
“Dat yummy!”
Jackie stifles a grin and I bite back a curse as I go back to sifting through the contents of the cart.
“Jesus. How much did you spend on this shit?”
The woman cranes her neck to glare at me.
“I told you already,” Jackie says calmly. “I didn’t buy any—”
“How much?” I repeat, cutting her off before she starts up with the wise-cracks again.
Jackie reaches down and keeps unloading stuff. “Seventy-two dol—”
“What the fuck , Jackie!” my palm slams against the handle of the cart.
“Do you mind?” The woman throws me another disapproving glower over her shoulder as she struggles to strap her kid into his car seat.
Pretty sure it’s obvious that I do, in fact, mind. A lot.
Jackie apologizes to her, like she’s the one who’s making a scene and cussing a blue streak. But I don’t feel one bit bad: she is the reason I’m losing my shit.
Once the lady has pushed the passenger door closed and hustled around to the driver’s seat, Jackie turns her attention back to me.
“The bus ticket would have cost me more,” she says matter-of-factly. She’s got me there. And that’s the problem: I feel like she’s laid a trap, and I’m fully ensnared. I’m officially her charity case and in her debt. Actually, if we’re being really technical here, I’m in her care, too. My ego might as well lay down and take a nice extended nap, because it’s clear he won’t be getting air time anytime soon.
“Come on , Silas!” she calls impatiently. “The lobster festival starts at six. I need to check in and get set up! Can you toss me the rest of the stuff already, so we can get going?”
I lift my head, suddenly confused.
“A lobster festival?” My voice actually cracks on the word ‘lobster.’ “I thought you said you sold cookies and lemonade and crap?”
“Just cookies and lemonade.” She clarifies, “No crap.”
I exhale loudly. She’s too much. All of this… it’s too much to process in the span of just a few hours. Especially since for some reason, I feel more tired since that power-nap—like my body was reminded how good it feels to rest and now I crave it more than anything else.
I start passing the bags up to her. I shove them at her, actually. But she doesn’t even flinch. It doesn’t wipe that shit-eating grin off her face, either.
Probably because we both know she won this round.