25
Damian Walsh had never wanted to live in Butt Fuck, Indiana.
He’d been happy living with his mom in Tacoma until he got kicked out of school.
He hadn’t started the fight that got him expelled, but he’d finished it by putting the other kid in the hospital with a fractured eye socket.
His mom had totally overreacted, deemed him “out of control” and “dangerous.” She didn’t feel safe or comfortable with her own son anymore.
So he was shipped off to live with his dad in a small town near the Michigan border.
His dad, Ron, was not happy to see him. “You may have controlled and manipulated your mother, but things are going to be different around here.”
They weren’t different—not for long, anyway.
After getting his sixteen-year-old son a busboy job at his golf club, Ron soon got bored with his disciplinarian act.
The curfew slipped away, and most of the chores were ignored.
His dad was busy with his various investments and scams, juggling it all with a gambling habit and a few girlfriends.
Damian was towing the line anyway. His grades were decent.
He showed up at work on time. And when he charmed his boss at the golf club into promoting him to waiter, Ron was proud.
“These are the people you need to know,” his dad told him. “They’re the people who run this town.”
Damian bit back a smirk. He didn’t care who ran this ass-backward town.
His dad may have been impressed by a bunch of mediocre rubes-done-good with their car dealerships, their farm equipment auction houses, or their Arby’s franchises, but Damian wasn’t.
He was meant for more. He had plans. Still, he played along and kissed their asses to make his life easier.
It didn’t take him long to figure out how to skim their credit cards.
The good ol’ boys were too arrogant to check their statements, their wives too tipsy from lunchtime martinis to remember if they’d ordered a designer scarf or a pair of gloves afterward.
Cybersecurity was lax then. And he was careful with the purchases he made with the stolen numbers, never buying anything that would cause alarm.
Most of it he resold, put the money into his “escape” fund.
As soon as high school was over, he’d move to France or Italy or Greece.
Somewhere with sunshine and beaches and sophisticated people.
He already looked the part. With the stolen credit cards, he ordered himself stylish clothes, designer sunglasses, and trendy sneakers.
He was tall and good-looking, but his elevated style made him stand out.
Damian liked foreign films, and he’d read all the Jason Bourne novels.
Most of the guys in town thought he was stuck-up, or weird, or gay.
They were jealous of his acquired class, his curated sophistication.
Damian didn’t care. He wasn’t there to make friends. The town was just a pit stop.
He had his choice of girls, though. They were so easy to charm and manipulate.
They brought him home-cooked food and expensive gifts; they did his homework for him and helped him cheat on tests.
And yet, no matter the time spent nor the level of intimacy they reached, he never got emotionally attached to any of them.
Sometimes, Damian wondered about his lack of feelings.
He felt no connection to his dad and only a nostalgic fondness for his mother.
Was he even capable of love? He read a book about sociopaths and wondered, briefly, if he was one.
But eventually he concluded that he was an exemplary human trapped in a mediocre world and any actions or behaviors that elevated him out of the mire were justified.
When he stole money or cheated on a test, it was a means to an end.
If he felt no empathy or compassion for the people around him, it was because they were small-minded losers.
His senior year, he went to a fast-food place with a guy who caddied at the golf club. The girl behind the counter was pretty, even in her unflattering uniform, but she was aloof, bordering on rude.
“Hey, Samantha,” he said, reading the badge sewn on her brown tunic. “I haven’t seen you here before. Are you new?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you want to add fries to make it a combo meal?”
“Lez,” his buddy whispered, as if Damian was bruised by the rejection.
He wasn’t. He was intrigued. He went back to the chicken restaurant alone the next evening.
The girl was there, but she either didn’t remember him or pretended not to.
He tried to be friendly, tried to flirt with her, but she was brusque and efficient.
It took him three weeks (twelve chicken burgers, fifteen sides of fries, and twenty Cokes) to crack through her armor.
Eventually, he learned that they were the same age, she was about to graduate from the high school across town, and that her parents were divorced.
She hadn’t seen her dad in years, her mom was a toxic narcissist, and her little sister, Lyric, was the only person she cared about.
He also learned that her name wasn’t Sam.
“It came with the uniform,” she explained. “My name’s Bianca.”
“I like it.” He grinned at her. “I’m Damian.”
“I know,” she said, spraying the counter with a bleach solution. “The fry cook goes to your school and has a huge crush on you.”
“Oh my God!” the fry cook shrieked from the kitchen, and hurried into the back room.
“Do you want to go to prom with me, Bianca?” It just came out. He hadn’t planned it.
“No thanks.”
He was shocked. And stung. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to celebrate graduating from an institution that taught me nothing but to embrace mediocrity. And I’m not interested in school-sponsored, forced fun. It’s Americana bullshit.”
If he had to pick a moment, that was when he fell in love with her.
It happened fast from there. They began to spend all their free time together when they weren’t at school or working.
The feelings Damian had thought he was incapable of bubbled out of him like lava.
He was fiercely, ferociously in love with Bianca.
He was lit up, inspired, and so cheerful that his dad asked if he was on drugs.
This was the true stuff of life, not money, clothes, not even adventure.
Suddenly, all the love songs made sense.
The sappy romantic movies his mom watched on the sofa with a box of tissues had nailed it.
On prom night, they took his dad’s car to a farmer’s field half an hour from town.
They climbed through the barbed wire fence, smoked a joint, then lay on their backs in the prickly grass, talking about their future.
There were no games with Bianca, no playing indifferent or hard to get.
They wanted to be together forever. It wasn’t even a question.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said. “I’ve got enough money to get us to Greece. It’s cheap to live there. I’ll get a job at a bar or something.”
“I can’t leave.”
“You hate this town.” He rolled onto his side, looked at her perfect profile. “Your dad’s not around. Your mom doesn’t give a shit about you.”
“My mother is poison. If I leave, she’ll destroy my sister.”
“Lyric will be fine,” he tried, but he knew how much Bianca loved that kid.
She was just seven, a cute little thing with a smattering of freckles and a homespun haircut.
He rolled onto his back, disappointment seeping through the marijuana haze.
“You can’t sacrifice your own life for your sister,” he muttered.
“If you want to go traveling, go.” She turned toward him. “I’m not going to make you choose. I’m not going to stand in the way of your dreams.”
It made him love her even more. “I’ll wait for you,” he said.
And he did. For almost eleven years, he stood by her, kept his promise. And then a shocking tragedy, an unthinkable nightmare, changed the course of their lives. As horrific as it had been, there had been a silver lining.
It finally set Damian free.