The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 39. Chapter 39

I stood there looking at the gun for a long time.

Of course it wasn't loaded. Rex wouldn't put away a loaded shotgun in the shed.

That would be crazy, I thought.

It didn't occur to me how crazy what I had just attempted to do was, of course, or what my next actions might be.

What I did next was this: I put the shotgun back in its red felt case and replaced it on the shelf. Then I turned off the lantern, left the shed, closed the door, and walked quietly back into the house.

Not knowing what else to do, I went to my bedroom, got in bed and went to sleep.

* * * * *

Monday was cold, wet, and windy. It didn't happen often in San Antonio, but when it rained, the dense Texas clay wouldn't absorb more than about half an inch of water. The rest would just sit there on top of the ground until it ran off into the muddy gutters and swept across the streets in sheets. Every dip in the road would flood, and any cars or school buses unfortunate enough to encounter such a dip would find themselves stranded until a tow-truck arrived.

The wind was intense, howling across the flatlands like a bitter wave of icy razors, cutting through jackets and coats and sweaters without a care, slicing into your skin until you were chilled to the bone.

That's why I was glad I didn't have to wait for the bus. I stayed nice and warm in the garage with my school books and my trophy until I saw Linda pulling up to the curb. She had already picked up Taine, who was in the passenger seat chatting to her animatedly, with many uncharacteristically broad gestures. I ran down the driveway and jumped in the back seat, teeth chattering a bit as the wind hit me like a hammer on the way down.

"Good morning," I said, hugging them both from the backs of their seats.

"Good morning, Rick," said Linda. "Taine was just telling me about your Maxwell family pow-wow yesterday. I'm glad things went smoothly."

I had to chuckle as she pulled the car back onto the street and headed for school.

"You told her it went smoothly?" I asked Taine.

"Could have been worse," Taine replied. "Could have been a lot worse. But listen, Ricky, Blaine wants to take us camping this weekend, over to Big Bend. He wants to leave right after school Friday. Can you come with us?"

Taine sounded excited and happier than I had heard him sound in a long time.

"I'll ask Rex and Tynah," I replied, "but I don't think they'd have a problem with it. That sounds fun!"

I was glad that I had tried to shoot myself last night rather than cutting my wrists. Bandages would be obvious, and would really sour his mood.

I didn't want anyone to know what I had done last night, and wasn't about to tell them. It certainly wouldn't have been the first time, nor would it be the last.

Since I was about eleven years old, there had been what I thought of as a "self-destruct mechanism" built into my head. Whenever emotions became too extreme -- and whether they were good emotions or bad ones didn't really seem to have much to do with it -- I immediately began thinking of suicide.

I could come down from an emotional high like it was a water-slide, instantaneously plunged into a black, suicidal pool of depression, and if the emotions were bad to start with, it would be even worse.

Some mornings I would wake up and, for no reason whatsoever, decide that I would rather kill myself than get out of bed.

Sometimes I would even go into the bathroom, take out a double-edged razor blade, and hold it over my wrist, making cutting motions in the air over the soft, thin skin of my inner arm.

Sometimes I would do more than make motions.

My arms were already criss-crossed with scars at the age of fifteen. There would be more. Once I even cut deeply enough that thick, red blood spurted from the wound, and I watched in horror as it pumped out in time with my heartbeat onto the gleaming white porcelain of the bathroom sink.

The sight of my life quickly pumping away snapped me out of it that time, and I immediately grabbed a first-aid kit and tended to myself before jumping on the bus to my middle school.

In retrospect, it was interesting that no one at that school had ever asked about the bandages, as it happened more than once.

I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised at that, since no one in my elementary school had ever asked about my numerous cuts and bruises, or at least asked in a way that couldn't easily be deflected by telling them I had fallen down or walked into a door.

Years later, when people did ask about the scars, I would blame them on my biological mother.

This would begin in my twenties, when I had just started to deal with the abuse I had suffered, and -- as young people often do when the true horror of their memories return -- I used my memories to bludgeon other people, to shock them enough to keep them away.

I also dealt with the abuse for a long time before actually dealing with why I thought about suicide almost constantly for most of my life.

I'm not sure anyone ever believed the story I told, that she had tied me down to a chair and cut me with a razor, but I would come to understand that the lie was actually also the truth, at least metaphorically. Abuse can leave scars other than just physical ones, and the scar in my mind -- the "self-destruct mechanism" -- was actually the reason for the scars on my arms. I suppose that may have been the reason for my including in my stories the detail that this fictional incident had occurred when I was eleven, because that was the age that the mechanism was born.

But I was oblivious to all of these things that morning in October, 1981. All I knew was that I had gotten "carried away again," as I liked to think of it, during the night, and I didn't want anyone to know about it. I was just ready to move on with my day.

I was actually in a pretty good mood that morning. The prospect of going camping with my Babes and his brother sounded really fun, and tomorrow would be tryouts for the play, and rehearsals would start on the following Monday after we got back from our camping trip.

It was going to be a great week, I thought as Linda pulled into the Polk High School parking lot.

I didn't waste any time being grateful for being alive, or rueful about what I had tried to do. In fact, I didn't really think about last night's misadventures one way or the other. I kissed Taine and Linda with a smile before getting out of the car and heading for the schoolhouse doors.

What I did, at the bottom of it all, was just put it away, like I had put the shotgun back on the shelf inside Rex's shed. I knew that it would be there again when I wanted to revisit it, but I didn't know when or where that mechanism would kick in and make me want to go there again.

I just knew that it would.

* * * * *

I went to Mr. McRory's class and proudly set my Humorous Interp trophy in an empty space on the table, between Raymond Steadman's Dramatic trophy and the team sweepstakes prize. Mr. McRory caught me standing there admiring it and came over to stand behind me.

"I expect a lot more of these from you this year," he said, placing a hand on my shoulder and giving it an encouraging squeeze. "You've got a lot of talent, Rick, and I hope you'll be at tryouts for the play tomorrow afternoon."

"Natch!" I said, and hurried off to Mrs. Colby's English class. Taine was already there, finishing up some homework on sentence diagramming which we'd been assigned to complete over the weekend.

I had done mine that morning over breakfast, and it had a bit of egg on the top corner, which caused my teacher to arch an eyebrow as I placed it on her desk.

"Including snacks with your homework will not get you extra points, Mr. Spivey," drawled Mrs. Colby in a pretend-stern tone.

I smiled, winking at Taine as I took my seat.

* * * * *

My schedule had shifted around a bit for the start of the second grading period, so I strolled down the hall and snuck around the side of the school for a cigarette before Mr. Salcedo's history class. When I got to a safe alcove, I found Nathan Schulman and Terry Garnett already there.

Nathan was a born troublemaker, the son of a local Episcopalian minister, and was every bit the hellion which one might expect from a Texas pastor's offspring. He was tall and lean, with longish, light brown hair which curled out at the neck, beady blue-grey eyes, and a puckish smile which he frequently used on teachers to charm his way out of detention.

He dressed like a cowboy, wearing checkered shirts with mother-of-pearl button snaps and tight faded jeans which flared out at the cuffs to accommodate his weathered brown boots. The boots came to a wicked point, being what we called "cockroach-killers", the idea being that the toes were so sharp that they could reach a roach in any corner.

Nathan's laconic manner was belied by those beady little eyes, which could go from lazy to dangerous with lightning speed. He was a bad-ass, and enjoyed scaring people as much he enjoyed breaking rules.

Terry was just the opposite. He was thin but soft, and gave the appearance of someone whose body was just waiting for its hormones to settle down so that it could go about the business of achieving middle-aged obesity.

He had a round, moon-like baby face, with owlish round wire-frame glasses and unruly dark-brown hair which waved and curled on his head like a stormy ocean. He was a social nobody, and followed Nathan around like a puppy dog, trying his best to please his cruel master so that maybe, just once in his high school career, he could feel a shred of accomplishment.

Nathan treated Terry like shit, and often loudly reminded him that "I only keep you around for laughs."

Nathan nodded at me warily, perhaps wondering what I was doing in his little smoking alcove, while Terry fidgeted with his too-large dungarees and looked away, too shy and awkward to speak to anyone but Nathan.

I pulled out a cigarette and lit one, causing Nathan's eyebrow to lift in curiosity and a bit of surprise. When he saw that I inhaled without coughing, he stuck out his bottom lip and nodded, the universal code for "not bad!"

"I didn't know you smoked," he said.

"I just started not long ago," I replied. "You're Nathan, right? And Terry?"

Nathan didn't say anything, leaning against the wall of the school with one knee bent and the heel of his boot resting against the bricks. He sure did expend a lot of energy trying to look cool, and it was working. On me, at least.

He tilted his head as he caught me staring at the seemingly enormous bulge in his crotch, and I decided to play it off by complimenting him on his belt buckle, a large silver skull and crossbones. Cowboy-types, or "Kickers," as we called them in a less judgmental contraction of "Shitkickers," always had great belt buckles at Polk High.

Nathan tossed his cigarette at Terry's feet and began fiddling with the buckle, sliding the skull off to reveal a three-inch knife blade attached to its side.

"Wow," I said. "That's really cool. Is it sharp?"

"Stick out your hand," he said.

Foolishly, I did so, extending my arm toward him with the palm of my hand toward the ground. He took my hand and flipped it over, exposing my wrist and drawing Terry's undivided attention, as well as my own.

And that was how, less than twelve hours after putting an unloaded shotgun in my mouth and pulling the trigger, I managed to get my wrist slashed anyway.