‘What did you do to him? What did you do to him? LANDON!’
There were more words, the sound of a slap – an open palm against bare skin, more screams, and I heard them all but they didn’t register because there was a buzzing in my ears and my blood swishing and my heart pounding. She was crying. ‘Oh, God. God. Don’t. No. No-no-no-no-no!’ Screaming. ‘NO! NO-NO-NO!’ Crying. ‘Landon …’ I yanked harder, pulling the bed with me, all the way to the door, my feet bracing against the floor, my legs straining. The bed ran into the dresser, wedged against the wall. I couldn’t feel my hands.
I couldn’t hear her any more. I couldn’t hear her. The rag in my mouth finally worked free. ‘Mom! MOM!’ I screamed. ‘DON’T TOUCH HER! MOM!’ My wrists were on fire. Why wasn’t I strong enough to break these stupid f**king plastic bands? I screamed until I was hoarse and kept screaming.
Gunshot.
I stopped breathing. My limbs shook. My chest quaked. I couldn’t hear anything beyond my heartbeat. My blood. My thick swallows. My useless sobs. ‘Mom … Mommy …’
I puked. Passed out. The sun came up. My wrists and arms were covered in blood. The zip-ties on my wrists were covered in blood. It was all brown, dried, itchy.
I called for my mother, but I’d screamed too much. A rasp came from my throat, nothing more. Useless. I was useless. Fucking, f**king, f**king useless.
You’re the man of the house while I’m gone. Take care of your mother.
‘Do you want me to leave?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
25
Landon
The number of people in my graduating class was forty-three.
That number could have easily been forty-two. I’d been one of the projected dropouts since the first day of high school. Before that, probably. In this town, there was no such thing as a fresh start; we carried our histories year to year like lists of impairments pinned to our shirts. The only reason I crossed that gym floor in a cap and gown was the man in the third row of the bleachers, sitting next to my father.
My classmates and I filed through the side door as our band – minus the senior members – played the processional. Seated in a matching cluster of royal blue, we fidgeted as Mrs Ingram, our esteemed principal, assured us of our bright and shiny futures. I knew she was full of shit, and so were her optimistic claims. I stared at the two vertical lines set between her eyes, permanent from decades of hostile glares at unacceptable students. Those lines made her graduation-speech grin look sinister.
Many of my brainwashed classmates – those who’d scored near-perfect grades since learning to print their names – thought they’d skip off to college in the fall and perform just as well, just as easily. Delusional dumbasses. My eighth-grade prep-school courses were more challenging than almost anything demanded of us here. Getting into a good school wasn’t winning the lottery. It was winning the right to work your ass off for the next four years.
As valedictorian, Pearl gave the expected speech about opportunities and choices and making the world a better place – she actually used that phrase: make the world a better place. As one of the ‘top ten per cent’ of our class – four people – she’d earned automatic admittance into the state university of her choice, while I’d scraped up a probationary admittance to the same campus she chose. I liked Pearl more than I liked the majority of people sitting around me, and I had no doubt that she knew how to work hard. I just hoped she wasn’t betting on improving the world.
On the second page of the commencement programme, my name was listed at the bottom of the first column. My last name was the alphabetical midpoint of my class – student number twenty-two of forty-three. The placement was fitting. As far as almost everyone here was concerned, I was average. Mediocre. Not exceptional, but not a total fail, though some – like Principal Ingram, believed that remained to be seen.
When my name was called, I crossed the worn oak floor in front of the band, staring over my principal’s shoulder at the giant fish – our renowned mascot – depicted in painstaking detail on the far wall. In mascot form, its expression was supposed to look aggressive, intent on winning, but it seriously just looked like a stupid, pissed-off fish.
I’d been determined to cross the stage staring down the bitch who’d made my life hell for almost four years. To show her she hadn’t broken me, whether or not that was true.
Then, above the obligatory applause and crowd noise, I heard Cole’s screamo roar of, ‘LANDOOON,’ Carlie’s chirpy squeal and Caleb’s piercing whistle.
‘He’s f**king practised that all week, dude,’ Cole told me this morning when Caleb demonstrated his new earsplitting skill less than five minutes after the Hellers arrived. ‘The only reason Mom hasn’t gagged him is ’cause he’s a little kid. If it was me, I’d be toast.’
My principal’s reign over me was done. After this moment, she couldn’t touch me.
I reached for the rolled diploma with one hand and shook her cold hand with the other, as we’d been instructed to do. I stared into the camera, ignoring the photographer’s appeal to smile. One blinding flash later, I dropped her hand, walking away without ever making eye contact.
She no longer mattered.
As I dropped back into the metal folding seat between Brittney Loper and PK Miller, I took one furtive glance at my classmates. Out of the forty-three of us, thirty-one would be leaving for college in three months. Some would try out for baseball or track or cheerleading and find they weren’t even good enough for some shit college’s second string. Some imagined themselves in student government on campuses where they’d arrive as one of thousands of nobodies. They’d be one of hundreds of freshmen during rush week, desperate for a defined peer group.