Chapter 23 An Unwanted Caller
AN UNWANTED CALLER
KNOX
After months of being tortured by the worst possible scenarios—an almost vehicular manslaughter charge, a failing literature grade, and nearly being demoted to the Mustangs’ resident benchwarmer—life has finally given me a fucking break.
In fact, I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but life seems perfect.
Spending the night with Staten made me realize that careless hookups and bored exchanges belong in the past. For the first time in forever, I felt seen.
Admired. Wanted on a molecular level that extends past the impressiveness of my physique.
It wasn’t just a one-and-done kind of thing; it was a goddamn gateway drug into a world where I didn’t have to tie my worth to how many conquests ruffled my sheets.
I never expected Staten to trust me like that. I was so afraid of breaking her, you know? I break a lot of things.
I can’t get her out of my head—not a new development, I’m aware. I find myself counting the seconds when I get to see her again. I find my mind running counterpoint to my percussive heart, both yearning for the only person who has the ability to erase my past and rewrite my future.
Staten, believe it or not, has shown me that there’s more to life than shiny trophies and mending bridges with a shit-for-brains father who doesn’t deserve a second of my time anymore.
She’s shown me kindness when I wasn’t deserving of it, and I’m going to return that favor no matter how long or how many grandiose romantic gestures it takes.
Speaking of Staten, I’m just about to call her as I lop out of my last class of the day, fighting the three-p.m. traffic of newly awakened night owls and exhausted early birds. A particularly frenzied student nearly pancakes my body when I step too far into the main path without looking both ways.
My brain is always the consistency of soup after Normative Ethics. Ugh, soup sounds so good right now—or, you know, anything with more than two-hundred calories. Since I’ve started bulking, those little granola bars that the on-campus vending machines dispense only satiate my appetite for so long.
Dark clouds sulk in the sky, casting a greater net of pre-rain humidity over MU’s grounds, just waiting for the right lull in the chaotically busy afternoon to baptize the parched loam.
Stomach achingly empty, phone in hand, I’m about to suggest a late lunch date with my girl before my father’s caller ID flashes across the screen, pinching off the line of electricity that sparks up my neural pathways.
My neck grows hot, and there’s a tingling in my fingers that isn’t due to hypoglycemia.
Why would my dad be calling me right now?
What could he possibly want? I don’t have the patience nor the interest to deal with whatever he wants to complain about.
My father never calls me unless he has some unwarranted criticism to spew.
I contemplate not answering. I contemplate pretending like this problem of mine doesn’t exist, but I blame it on my lack of critical thinking courtesy of the aforementioned soup brain when I pick up his call anyways.
“Dad?” My throat strangles the single word, and there’s a taste of bile on my tongue that can’t be rinsed.
My father’s sharp tone—pulled from the pit of his barrel chest—is spiked with condescension. “Knox, I’ve been keeping track of your grades, and I have to say that I’m glad you’re finally taking this whole college thing seriously.”
Only he could turn a compliment into an insult.
I don’t have it in me to play nice. He engineered this ambush over the goddamn phone. He knew that a single call from him would ruin my entire day.
Indignation curls under my ribs, and I’ve become so conditioned in overusing my anger that I scrape my molars against each other in an effort to swallow a barb.
“Why are you calling me?” I ask, my thoughts going faster than the mechanical shutter on a vintage camera.
“I can’t check in on my son every now and then?” he replies, switching tactics and playing the victim.
“You haven’t checked in on me at all. Not when I got into that car crash, not when I started hockey practice, not even to just, I don’t know, reconnect and actually try to be involved in my life. All I’ve heard from you is radio silence, and maybe it’s best if we keep it that way.”
The Mulligans are a well-known family in Maple Grove.
Benefactors of the poor, local celebrities, well-respected donors—all hiding under this good-guy guise of cultivated perfection that couldn’t be more fake.
The curtains are drawn to the outside world.
What they hide is so much worse—shadows rigged to the dark corners of a failing house, moving like silk in water over the vaulted walls.
A creature that’s universally feared by the general population.
A boogeyman of sorts; a child’s worst fear that gorges itself on the lies and the envy and the greed that runs rampant amongst the mounds of bloodstained cash stuffed beneath rickety floorboards.
He drags an irritated breath through his teeth. “Stop being so dramatic. I called you to congratulate you, and this is how you treat me?”
“You called me because you want something,” I retaliate, my belly a swamp of acid, and my hand clenching around my device so tightly that I wouldn’t be surprised if I broke it.
“I don’t want anything from you, son. I thought I was doing you a service by calling before I show up to your next hockey game.”
Hold up…what? My dad has only attended a token game in the past, and it was to serve himself, not to support me. I begged him on the phone to come to more, and he refused. Even when he had time off. This has to be some twisted joke.
I know my father better than he’d ever like to admit. The only reason he’d take an interest in seeing me play is because he wants to take credit for shaping me into the man I’ve become. A son with NHL-stardom is something to brag about, especially in a hockey-run state like Minnesota.
“Why do you even care?” I snap, clashing tongues with a man that I have no authority over, trying to extricate myself from a gamble I had no say in.
A collage of terrible childhood memories dive-bombs me right in the middle of the quad, and I can still hear the echoes of my dad’s yells.
They’re similar to the blood-curdling howl that an animal releases just before it succumbs to death.
“This attitude of yours is unacceptable. You should be grateful for all the leniency your mother and I have shown you—all the bills we’ve paid for you to afford this lifestyle.
We’ve stuck by you through all your mistakes.
I want to make sure that you’re on a better track now.
I want to make sure that my money isn’t being wasted on fruitless practices.
” He speaks to me like it’s his birthright—like he’s organized a betting pool on which one of us will cave first.
I want to cuss him out. I want to block his number. I want to stand up for myself…but Richard Mulligan is a force that I can’t oppose. He’s the one pulling the strings, and a masterless puppet doesn’t have any place on a stage.
Before I can stand my ground, my father slowly unstitches my amicability with an indifferent seam ripper. “Friday. I expect your performance to be flawless. I won’t be associated with a talentless lowlife.”
And with that, he hangs up the call, leaving me speechless and on the verge of hitting the nearest trash can to redirect all the rage that has me second-guessing (ironically) the ethics of murder.
I hate him. I hate him so fucking much. He’s not my dad. He’s never been a dad to me. I’m just some prize swine to him. If I didn’t rely on him for money, I would’ve broken contact a long time ago.
Phone still grasped in my hand, I open Staten’s and my text thread, trying to swallow the sour flavor of a conversation gone wrong.
ME
You wanna get out of here?
STATEN
I have one more class today.
ME
Play hooky with me? Please?
STATEN
…
STATEN
Meet me at the quad.
During the entirety of the ten-minute walk I have to endure, my father’s abrasive words sting worse than rug burn, and I keep replaying his empty threats over and over again—which does absolutely nothing for the oppressive heat that blights my body.
I’m so done with his bullshit. I’m so done questioning my worth based on some unfounded rubric that he’s created because of his own insecurities.
With the campus less crowded, I make it to the quad in record time, half of said time spent in some pathway hypnosis where I have no recollection of ever putting one foot in front of the other.
Staten, distracted by her phone, looks up at me as I approach, her lips curved upwards in a parabola of a smile.
“Hey, what did you wanna do? Buy some movie tickets and jump between showings? I hear the popcorn refills are unlimited at the new theater downtown.”
I don’t hear what she says, and it’s not because I’m choosing to ignore her.
It feels like I’m standing under the cover of a waterfall, the frequency of its habitual crash on talus plugging my eardrums and softening the harsh edge of the world.
I don’t even try to pantomime my best expression of impassiveness.
I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her to my chest as I weigh the cons of ruining our afternoon by prioritizing my own problems. I breathe in the lavender scent of her perfume—the kind that makes me forget my own name—and it acts like a nonlethal precaution against the containment breach of my emotions.
“Whoa, hey. Is everything okay?” she whispers, returning the desperation of my embrace, her tone shrouded in a decent helping of worry.
I shake my head. Good ol’ Richard Bartholomew Mulligan has taken a stick to the angry wasp nest inside of my gut for no other reason than to cure his boredom.
“My dad called,” I say numbly.
Staten pulls back to properly look at me. “What did that piece of shit want?”
“He’s coming to my next game.” My nostrils flare, my muscles lock in a permanent state of contraction, and those six little words slam into my chest like the knee-buckling recoil of a firearm.
“What? Why?”
“Probably so he can brag about me to all his evil, money-hungry, morally ambiguous friends.”
I’d rather wipe my ass with a cheese grater than become the topic of his pretentious dinner parties. I can’t believe there was a time when I worked so hard for his approval—when I thought it was worth something.
Being around Staten and seeing how she interacts with her own mother—it’s made me realize that sometimes it’s necessary to cut out what’s rotten. Years of verbal abuse from the one person who promised to love me. Years of doubting my own abilities because it’s what I was conditioned to do.
Despite my father’s efforts to make me a star, secretly, deep down, I know he’s been rooting for my fall from grace. Why wouldn’t he? He’s the man of the house—if he doesn’t have any competition, it’ll make him seem more competent. Impossible, by the way.
A frown crumples Staten’s mouth. “What are we going to do?”
My mind may be listing creative ways to inflict torture upon my sperm donor, but I don’t miss the Freudian slip of her tongue.
“We?”
“Duh. I’m not going to let you deal with Satan alone,” she explains, grabbing my hand and rubbing the mountain range of my knuckles with her thumb. “We’re a team.”
I’ve never been a part of a team before. Well, I have, but not in the emotional, pour-all-of-our-feelings-out sense. Staten is the rock that I never even realized I needed. As much space as my dad occupies in my head, Staten takes up double.
I nuzzle my nose against her forehead, forgetting that we’re still contractually obligated to uphold this whole fake dating scheme for the greater MU population. Nothing has ever been fake with Staten, though.
Fuck, she’s the antiseptic to a shallow cut, providing a sting so delicious that pain is something to be readily accepted than premeditatedly shunned.
“God, what would I do without you?”
The question is rhetorical, of course. I’d probably still be a sex-obsessed, futureless degenerate if I wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. I don’t know, it just seems on brand for me.
“I hope I never have to find out,” she banters.
As much as I want to smile, I can’t get that whole interaction with my father out of my head, and the burden of being the perfect son—one I still carry despite not wanting to perpetuate this toxic masculinity—weighs me down like slow-drying cement.
There’s a little boy deep down, not disclosed to his dad’s acerbic hate and a firm believer of his parodic affection, who still reveres him because of a blood-born connection.
An idea pops into my head—an idea that has the possibility to bring me peace. “Uh, I know you just agreed to tutor me until I got my Lit grade back up, but what if I wanted to shoot for an A?”
I’m already sitting in the B range, so it shouldn’t be too hard, right? Not to mention that I’ve brought my participation grade all the way up. Those extra points are sure to help me.
“Knox Mulligan wants an A?” A smile blossoms on Staten’s face as she looks up at me.
“It’s doable, right? I mean, we only have the cumulative exam left. If I just study my ass off, I might be able to jump a whole grade letter.”
“Is this secretly an excuse to keep me as your tutor?” she teases.
“You are my good luck charm. Plus, I’d love to see the look on my dad’s face when he finally realizes what I’m capable of.”
My father has always gone out of his way to make me feel diminutive—a lab rat poked and prodded through a cage for the mere purpose of draining its desire to live. No tests for the greater good of humanity, no behavioral studies, just…pure, black-hearted cruelty.
He makes the small victories even smaller. I scored one goal in youth hockey when I was ten? He mentions how my other teammate scored three. I got a B+ on my history test in sophomore year of high school? He brings up how my sister always gets straight A’s.
I’m so fucking tired.
Staten’s hand upgrades from my palm to the side of my face, and she inadvertently soothes the fiery sting of tears cropping up behind my eyes. I blink to keep them hidden.
“You’re capable of so much, Knox. I hope you know that,” she tells me, her voice slightly hushed, as if she’s finally decided to let me in on one of her many secret truths that she hoards just for herself. Somewhere in the catacombs of her ribs, nearest to her heart.
I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear it.