6. Dean
DEAN
I t took me a long time to get used to having a routine again.
Once you have a routine like we did at that school, you’ll never want one again. I rebelled when I got out. I hated everything and everyone. It was hell in my head. Didn’t matter where my feet were anymore.
Everything we did was by a routine. Every single thing, including going to the bathroom some days. Routines like that are how they control us.
It’s just as easy to fuck with people by fucking with the routine. That was part of the genius of it, if you could call it that. Sometimes the schedule would be so rigid and repetitive that going insane would have been a relief. They’d make us stick to the schedule no matter what, with plenty of punishments for anybody who screwed it up. They beat the schedule into us. Starved it into us. Screamed it into us. Anything they could think of.
Then it would turn on a dime.
Once they had us ready to die from boredom or monotony or the pain, they’d switch everything up again. Then the fear would keep us on our toes. Didn’t make anything better. It just meant my heart would race all the time. Most nights I couldn’t fall asleep. The nightmare of the day sleeping with me at night.
When they’d change the schedule, there was almost never any point in falling asleep. They’d just wake us up again. They did that to keep us desperate and focused on when we could lay down again. They did that to drive us insane. Like they wanted a fresh start so they’d break us down until we didn’t know what was right and what was wrong.
It worked.
They wouldn’t have done it if it didn’t. Hell, they had success stories to brag about which led to all the federal money they scraped up.
God, they loved that schedule shit. It was the perfect way to control us. From the outside, nobody could argue with the schedule. We were troubled teens, so we needed boundaries and a routine we could rely on. Even when some of us tried to explain how it was—and it was never often, because parents weren’t allowed to visit more than a couple times a year, and when they left, you ended up right back where you started. We were fucked if we tried to tell them anything, and even more fucked if our parents tried to talk to anyone at the school. The police even came once and the only thing that happened is that they arrested the kid. It was like everyone was against us and we really were so fucking bad to the core, that everyone wanted to hurt us. And they could get away with it, over and over again.
That was the kind of thing everybody learned fastest. Asking for help, or even seeming like you might need it, would only get you hurt, and usually pretty badly.
It was never worth it to explain.
Looking back, that was one of the sickest things they did. They made it seem like reaching out to anybody was the most dangerous thing we could do. That habit stuck. To this day, whenever I think about talking to somebody about something that’s happening with me, I’m always making a mental list of the punishments I could get later.
And of the things they’d think about me.
I know they won’t happen. I’ve done plenty of work on convincing myself that those things are just intrusive thoughts. They’re not real anymore.
I think about them anyway, but they linger back in. That’s why I needed to find her. My head is split and and sometimes I just can’t think right. She gets it though. She was there. She knows.
I spent too long in a place where everything was controlled down to the minute and where that damn schedule would always be used against me. It’s probably not a surprise that after I got out, I didn’t want anything to do with a schedule. I didn’t want to have to be anywhere at somebody else’s beck and call. I skipped appointments and stood up what few friends I had left and fucked off for days at a time just because I could. And because it was better to be alone.
All that focus on the schedule backfired, obviously. What did that school claim it would do? Straighten us out. Make us productive citizens. Make us listen to our parents and get good grades and never cause any problems for the rest of our lives.
That’s not what it did to me. I was angry, even if half the time I couldn’t feel it. What made me most angry was somebody else deciding where I should go and when I should be there.
It took a long time to come around to the idea of having a job. Mechanics though… I’ve always found peace in that.
Found out I was good at it, too. After a couple of years of classes, I applied for a job at the garage next to my house. Spent a year working part time, then moved to full-time.
I keep to myself. I do my job.
Plus, the guys at the shop get it. It’s not like I had a heart-to-heart with them about my past. I can’t remember telling my boss, Rick, any specifics. Maybe he guessed somehow. Maybe there was something about me that gave it away.
But they let me be. They give me my space. And they treat me like anyone else: a human being.
My boss and I have an understanding too. He knows it’s better for me to pick my own hours and show up when I’m able. When the thoughts aren’t so loud that I can focus. He doesn’t box me in on a schedule or chew me out for coming in at different times depending on the day. He lets me have my way with it, and I repay him by working forty hours every week and putting in extra time when the other guys need days off or get sick. And I always get the job done on time. Even if I come in at 3 am because I can’t sleep. He’s fine with it.
With my hands in my checkered jacket pockets, and in my blue jeans which are already stained, I walk outside and lock up, ready to head to work. The air still smells fresh and dewy as I walk, and it's a bit crisp.
I walk into the shop a little after nine in the morning. It’s full of familiar noises—wrenches clanging, guys shouting from the pit under the cars, the smell of oil, tires, and grease.
Rick, a barrel-chested guy in his early fifties, and wrinkles around his eyes that show every bit of his age, nods to me as he twists a rag around greasy fingers. He’s already been in the guts of a car this morning. Knowing him, more than one. The man’s a machine when it comes to fixing cars. He could charge a lot more, but he doesn’t.
“How you doing, Dean?” he asks.
“Good. And you?” I keep it easy as I always do. Waiting for my list and ready to get lost in whatever car they give me.
“Good as I can be.”
With a quick glance in the back I can see there’s plenty to do. There almost always is.
The way people talk about Rick means he’s never had to put an ad in the paper or post on websites or anything like that. People just keep coming back. They tell other people to come to our shop. That’s the dream, really. Rick has a guaranteed job. That means I have a guaranteed job. It’s steady income and I appreciate that.
One of the other guys comes to ask Rick a question. I pick up a clipboard hanging from a nail on the wall and look over the day’s projects. I pick the one that’s next up and get started, initialing next to it so they know I’m on it.
With that I head back, grabbing my overalls and minding my own business.
My hours go by like they do every day at the shop. I run down the list of repairs and squeeze in a little old lady’s car when she doesn’t have an appointment. She came in worried as hell about it—something to do with her groceries and having to shop on a certain day. She won’t miss it. That’s the kind of nice shit I never pictured when I was at that place. Why would I bother? Now it gives me the kind of satisfaction I never thought to want.
It’s not that it makes me happy to be a good person, but it is nice. Deep down inside, I’m not sure I could ever be a good person after the things I’ve done. Those thoughts are always there. They never leave, they just bury themselves deep down inside and let me have a moment to pretend.
In the afternoon, Rick calls it quits. He gets a list going for tomorrow and tells us we’ll work on it then.
The last thing I do before I leave is strip off my coveralls and throw them in the pile with the other guys’. Rick has them washed all together. Too much oil and grease will fuck up a regular washer and dryer, so he takes care of that. I get a fresh coverall from the stack so I’ll have it tomorrow morning, say my goodbyes, and head back down the sidewalk to my house.
A simple end to a simple day. I’m all set for tomorrow. Ready for the routine.
At home I wash the day off, scrubbing the stains out of my hands. The hot water crashing down on me, washing away every thought and my mind wanders to Haley. It always does.
I got rust under my fingernails somehow. It takes a solid five minutes with a fingernail brush to get them clean.
Then, once I’ve dressed in fresh clothes, I head to the bar. This is part of the routine that I chose, too. The bar itself is cozy and clean and only a few blocks from my house. The bartenders know my name and my face. One of them has my beer waiting when I slide onto a barstool, inhaling the peanut shells and beer and burgers.
My friend takes the stool next to me, accepts a beer from the bartender, and nudges me with his elbow.
“Good day at work?”
“Good as it could be. You?” I answer like Rick does.
“Hell of a day, I’ll tell you what.”
He does tell me what. Michael tells me about some mix-up with a copy machine and somebody trying to order pizza from the appliance repair place he works at. As he talks, more of the regulars show up. We give each other shit for having boring jobs and take turns commenting on the game. I nurse the same beer the entire night. I’ve done it for years although I always order bottle after bottle. I just give it to someone else.
I like a buzz now and then, but I mostly come to the bar for the company and I don’t trust not being in control. The guys aren’t afraid to touch my shoulder or look me in the eye. That was the simplest thing they took from us at school. Couldn’t look. Couldn’t touch. Still feels like I’m getting away with something when it happens now.
They all do it now. Easy and comfortable like. With every touch I’m reminded and my hands stay on the bottle of beer. Picking at the label.
Picking. Picking. Picking. Sometimes I hear them, sometimes it changes to a loud ringing and the screams. All the screaming.
My phone vibrates in my pocket while I’m leaving money at my spot on the bar. Michael snags my elbow and tells me one more quick story, then lets me go.
The walk goes quicker on the way home.
I don’t bother looking at my phone until I’m behind the wheel of my car. I already know what’s going to be on the screen.
Sure enough, when I pull out my phone, the instructions are there waiting for me.
Reminder: Ridgemore. 3 am.
I start the car and let my mind go blank. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to remember anything—not even who I am.
The man I find in Ridgemore is the man that watched me piss. The one who used to constantly watch. He had a baton on his waist. I’m not sure whether his hands on that baton hit me the most. He’s not ready for me. He doesn’t hear me coming. Nobody does.
Nobody hears him when he starts to squeal, either. I hit him over the head with an old baseball bat I found in the dumpster a few months back so many times that it stops looking like a human head at all—just a mess.
By then, he’s not making any sound.
By then, he’s very still.
But I keep going. It only seems fair. It barely even feels real. The blood being hot as it splashes, the lights behind the trees from the cars on the street… none of it truly registers. In my head, I’m him, beating the shit out of me when I was only a fucking kid.
Lots of people have ideas about right and wrong. Most would say that killing is wrong. But how could they think that when they did all that shit to us? And they were allowed to. No one ever got in trouble when the truth finally came out. They just got to go home. So right and wrong, when it comes to what other people think… well it doesn’t really register for me.
I learned from that school that what people say isn’t what they mean.
I learned that nothing matters except making sure everyone gets their punishment.