Quoth the Raven - 2. Chapter 2

In the morning, Tommy got up at nine for a shower, because he smelled like sex and sweat from last night. He didn’t know what time Toni had gotten home, but she was laying in bed on her phone when he stopped by to look.

“What’d you do last night?” he asked his sister, walking through her room and picking things up to look at for less than a second before putting them back down. She shrugged from her bed.

“Movies, pedis.”

“Bull-fucking-shit. What else?”

“Well, I’m not telling you with that attitude. What’d you do?”

Tommy looked at Toni. “What?” he asked. His sister shrugged again, slowly.

“I was gonna talk to you but you were out. So, don’t patronize me, hypocrite.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Alright, fine. What’d you need?”

“Last night? Nothing, I was just gonna tell you something, but I don’t want to anymore.”

Tommy laughed, though it wasn’t of humor, and came over to sit on her bed, his hair wet and dripping because he never did like using towels. “What was it?”

Toni watched her brother, skeptically, for a minute before breaking into a smile and getting up onto her knees on her bed to pull up her shirt. On her right hip, was a fresh tattoo, circled in red irritation and shiny with moisturizer. Tommy was struck.

“Toni, what the fuck?”

Toni’s mouth fell open and she dropped her shirt. “What?”

“You got a fucking tattoo, what the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Hey, you got one and you were younger than me! Don’t be an ass!”

“Well mine was fucking good! What the hell is that?”

“It’s a fucking heart; you got a fucking pinup girl!”

Tommy climbed off of Toni’s bed. “Ugh, I can’t believe you. Jesus fucking christ, Toni, really?” He looked at her, looked at her stomach of where the tattoo was covered. “That thing’s permanent!”

“I know, Tommy, I’m not dumb. Get out of my room, go to work,” the girl said frustratingly, and Tommy didn’t need to be told twice. He left out of his sister’s room downstairs, where he grabbed his left over BLT and left walking to work, because Dustin was out catching the food banks.

At work as a mechanic’s apprentice, Tommy welded together some split metal for a cover that Rusty, his boss and mentor, needed. And, as much as it would probably bother or annoy Toni, he wasn’t thinking about her and her tattoo at all. Behind his mask with sparks flying, he was thinking of the things that the Raven had said.

“His friend drank too much, ate too much, fell asleep at his feet. Wanted help but didn’t receive, not by James Parker; he stood and watched the vomit slip through their teeth. Didn’t call for help, didn’t call for help until their body never felt.”

What did that even mean? And that was only the first part. It was the second that could turn heads.

“James had a friend ask for help, but not the help of surviving, for the help of depriving.”

No matter his hatred for James, Tommy could best assume that it wasn’t murder. Or, a planned murder. Had James helped someone die? “Drank too much, ate too much, fell asleep at his feet”. Maybe whoever had… died, had eaten pills. The coward’s way out. Maybe they had OD’d and asked James not to call 911. If that was the case, then it was an assisted suicide.

Who was it, though? Who had died? The school would have let all of the kids know about a death, but Tommy hadn’t heard anything.

He was sick of these riddle-type things. That stupid raven-

Something clattered overhead in the metal shop, shocking Tommy out of his thoughts and into looking up, where he saw a little black bird knocking itself into some tools on a hanging rack. Tommy took off his welding mask to see without the darkened shade, though only quick enough to see a wrench falling towards him. He dropped the welding rod to catch the tool but the rod rolled and a sudden burst of burning pain seized his whole left arm, making him cry out loudly in pain.

“I don’t need a doctor,” Tommy said, glaring down at his arm that Rusty washed under cold water. But, he did. The pain was an electric shock that traveled up his arm and down his spine with each brush of the water, his skin becoming hypersensitive to the burn that marred his flesh. It was a second degree burn, he could tell. The flesh was swollen and bright pink verging on white. Tommy seethed through his gritted teeth and leaned over the sink, groaning from his throat. Rusty looked at him.

“It doesn’t matter if you have the money or not, you need to go to the hospital. You need to get it looked at,” he said, holding Tommy’s arm underneath the water, keeping the burn under some level of temperature to keep the pain down. It helped, but the pressure of the water over the burn gave a different type of pain, and Tommy wiped his clammy forehead with his other hand in agitation.

“I’m not going, just call someone for some medicine of something- ah, fuck.” Tommy kicked the ground, looking at Rusty when he didn’t move to do anything. “Go fucking call someone,” he said, urgently, as the pain made him want to claw his arm off. Rusty sighed through his nose and let go of Tommy’s arm, turning and leaving him get the office’s phone. Tommy swallowed and closed his eyes.

“He feeds the lies and eats the truths-”

“To go to sleep and never wake, to jump the cliff with no mistake-”

“Leave me alone,” Tommy muttered, as the raven’s previous stories of James swirled in his throbbing head, echoing over each other like a crowd.

“Takes to the shop with a sleight of hand-”

“Dreams of toys the gender of boys-”

Tommy breathed in and out, the wound sending chills over his body into a cold sweat that made him feel like he were high on a bad trip. “Shut up.”

“Cross a line through the F-”

“Echoes in the night like a woman-”

“Fuck, shut up,” James seethed, opening his eyes to see the mirror but seeing more than his reflection, in a way that made his heart skip. White hands rested on his shoulders, with too long of black nails that raked against his shirt.

“Parker,” the raven whispered into his ear, though its shape was hidden behind his own form, “Wishes to long for his father, but all thoughts of kindness are empty.”

Tommy stared at the reflection, his own being pale and clammy. “...What does that mean,” he asked, despite himself. The hands slowly dragged across his shoulders to his neck, cupping and feeling the skin with a cold aura that soaked through his epidermis. One stopped there, but the other moved up to his face, resting against his cheek.

“His father is lost to him, both in body and in mind.”

“Tell me something else,” James said, again without realizing, as if he were in a trance. He felt like he was in one, because the pain in his arm had subsided to a numb feeling.

The raven caressed his cheek, its long nails scraping against his flesh with such delicacy that it was like sketching on paper. “James Parker is out now, about and searching, for what… you’ll see. If you go now, beneath the tree...”

“What tree?”

“Quoth the-”

“Wait, wait-”

“Raven.”

“Tommy,” Rusty said, making Tommy look at him from the sink and mirror. Tommy looked back, but the hands were gone; the raven was gone. He pressed his lips together and looked at Rusty again, who came in with a sack and an expression. “Are you okay? You look like-”

“’m fine. ...What is it?”

“I called Pratt downtown, said he had some stuff for you. Go ahead and pull your arm out so we can dry it off.”

Tommy took his arm out from the water and Rusty dried it with a clean mechanic’s rag, bringing all of the seething, burning, electrifying pain right back. Tommy cursed, and moaned and groaned under his breath as the rag came into contact with the burn that would probably take weeks to heal.

“God-fucking-dammit, Rusty!”

“You’re doing alright, now hold on.” Rusty put the rag away and reached into the sack to get a tube of cream and some pills. “You’re lucky it’s not a third degree or we’d both be in trouble.” The thought of that didn’t mind Tommy; he had experienced a third degree burn before, and he didn’t want to ever again. Charred black, dead flesh, surrounding a white, pussy wound that he had to get scraped regularly at the doctor’s office by a sponge. No, he didn’t want to experience that again. But, having this burn made him hate getting hurt again at all.

Rusty had Tommy take the pills while he himself applied the ointment to the wound, before applying gauze and a wrap. “I called your mom,” Rusty said, “She’s coming to pick you up.”

“No she’s not,” Tommy mumbled, slipping by Rusty to take a seat on the toilet to rest. “I’ll call a friend to pick me up, don’t make my mom come.”

“Why not? You need to go home-”

“Yeah, but not Mom, alright? She’s busy enough as it fucking is. I’ll call a friend or something.”

Rusty watched Tommy for a minute before shaking his head and leaving him alone. Tommy took the time to just rest by himself and try to work through the pain of the wound. What a shitty day.

“Beneath the tree.”

What was James doing? Where?

Tommy, after a few minutes, pulled his phone out of his pocket to call for a ride, but changed his mind, though he really shouldn’t have. He got up from the toilet and left the bathroom to Rusty, whom took a phone call in the office. The teen got his attention and pointed off.

“I called my friend, he’s here,” he said. Rusty nodded and spoke into the phone, and Tommy turned to leave out of the shop through the open draw doors. He started walking, anywhere, down the street with a throbbing arm from the heat of the summer outdoors that warmed up the burn. He walked a while, almost getting his phone out to make a real call now, yet noticing a bird in the sky and pausing.

The raven. It cawed and flapped its wings, flying ahead. Tommy sucked up the pain and the drowsiness of whatever medicine Rusty had given him, and followed after it.

It flew the only thing in the whole blue sky- just a black bird flapping its wings in the middle of summer. The only raven that Tommy had seen in the whole town. Ever.

He followed it, the heat of the outdoors stinging his wound and making his arm seize in pain and a hot directness of a searing heat, making his forehead bead with sweat and his head throb with an oncoming migraine.

The bird led him to the park, the same park that he had been to the night before with Madison. When he thought that he’d lost the bird due to his ill body, he just barely caught a glimpse of it disappearing into the branches and leaves of a tree that stood near a dirt racing track for school track-meets. Though, as Tommy approached the tree, it was more than evident that there was no one there. No James.

“What the fuck..,” he muttered to himself, because he had walked all this way in the heat for nothing. It felt like his head was swirling. “You lied,” he said, though he didn’t really mean to. There was the sound of flapping in the tree, and then he heard grass rustling and looked down at the ground, where, at the base of the tree’s roots, were white hands sticking out of the grass and dirt and cupping handfulls of brown glass shards, from a broken beer bottle. The shards fell from between the Raven’s trembling fingers, into the grass below, in a way that was almost mesmerizing. Then, it closed its hands around the shards, the glass crunching in the white palms and making black blood leak from them.

It brought one finger up, pointing its long black nail into a direction that, when Tommy looked, was the park bathroom. It was like something else overcame Tommy, because he turned and started walking off to the white painted brick restroom, of which he and his friends had had their fair share of vandalizing during their days.

He walked up to the bathroom, stepping onto the cement flooring and in front of the “men’s” blue door, that the city unlocked for the summer. But when Tommy tried pushing the door open, it didn’t budge.

Inside, he could barely hear the despicable sound of crying that made a part of his brain want to laugh. It sounded like a girl but it was a boy’s voice. He knew because he knew what James’s crying sounded like.

From inside, he could hear something like, “I waited for you,” like it were a phone call, because there wasn’t anything else to follow it. Until James spoke again with, “You said you’d come see me”.

He was probably cutting himself. Where, Tommy didn’t know, because there weren’t any cuts or scars on the noirette’s arms or torso when his shirt had been stripped at school.

He was a cutter, as the raven had led Tommy to understand. Self conscious about his weight and cutting himself like it’d make him thinner. What an idiot. What an undeniably despicable idiot, who somehow managed to have everyone fooled. He was just as much of a lie as what he led people to believe. His smiles and laughter, Tommy knew they were fake, how did no one else?

And was that all that the raven led Tommy here for? To know that James cuts himself with broken beer glass from the park? Was that really it?

“You fucking bitch,” he laughed, lowly, bitterly- sparingly, with a shaking of his head. All this way for a pointless thing like that? He wanted something else. He wanted something that would make James rot in hell. He laughed again and leaned against the door with his shoulder.

What a pointless thing. And to add to the disappointment, he couldn’t even see James’s face. He could only hear him crying over the phone to someone like a pussy. Though, who was it?

“...late night escapades with Connor, the only who could make James a runner.”

The twenty something year old James had been fucking? Tommy laughed to himself again, closing his eyes and breathing heavily at the throbbing in his wounded arm that hung at his side. Of course it is; there are only so many fags in the world, why not recycle them.

There was some nagging feeling in the back of Tommy’s head, but he didn’t open his eyes to figure out what it was. Didn’t try. He put his hand on the bathroom door and pushed against it again, but it was firmly shut and didn’t make a single sound. Aside from James crying inside.

Who was he talking to? Who else had seen his hidden, true self? Had they seen it first, before Tommy? Had Tommy been late to his own party?

He was starting to get delusional from the pain and the outside heat, and the nagging feeling just got heavier. What the hell was it?

He didn’t bother. He put more weight against the door.

Was James cutting himself inside? Hiding from the public eye? Where, where did he hide the scars? His thighs? Shins? Feet? Where did he hide them?

The door didn’t budge.

He pushed harder and opened his eyes, but when he did, he didn’t see the outdoor scenery. It was a bedroom, and though it wasn’t his own, he did recognize it. It was Stuart’s, and by the flat, hard feeling underneath him, he was laying on the floor.

He had passed out. When, he didn’t know, because the bedroom was darkened by the night sky that showed through Stuart’s bedroom window.

Tommy sat up on the blankets that he had been laying on and got out his phone for light, the dim screen letting him see somewhat, the form of Stuart laying on his own bed. Asleep or not was the question, because he could only see his friend’s back.

“Stuart,” he said while putting his phone down, and he could hear the creak of his friend’s mattress as the teen rolled over.

“Hm?” Stuart sounded.

“What happened?”

“Oh, I saw you tripping at the park so I brought you here. You fell asleep fast.”

Tommy didn’t remember that, but why would he? He’d been under the influence- from Rusty or the raven, he didn’t know.

“What’d you do to your arm?” Stuart asked. Tommy breathed.

“Burnt it at work. What are you doing just laying there awake? Weird much?”

Stuart chuckled. “Dude, check out this girl I’m sexting.” There was a flash of light and a thunk against Tommy’s side. He felt around until he found Stuart’s phone and decided to look at it. There was a girl, but Tommy knew that she wasn’t their age. He threw the phone back.

“You’re under investigation, knock it off.”

“Hey, she hit me up first. Name’s Ida, or something.”

The name hit Tommy, but he couldn’t exactly place it. He lay silent for a second, trying to place the name to the face of the girl on Stuart’s phone, and it eventually hit him when he came back to James’s green eyes.

Ida Parker, James’s younger sister. Tommy didn’t know much about her, just that she and James didn’t get a long at all. Or rather, she was a kid bitch.

“I’m gonna get some medicine,” Tommy said, to no reply from his friend, because Stuart was right back on his phone. The brunette got up from the floor and left the dark room to find the bathroom, knowing where it and every other room of the house was from being a town native; and being Stuart’s friend for an uncomfortable amount of years.

He made his way to the bathroom and flicked the light on, squinting and putting a hand over his eyes at the burning sensation of the lights against his sleepy eyes.

He started pulling open drawers and rummaging through them, through hair brushes and toothpaste, and razors. When he didn’t see any medicine there, he scavenged the rest of the room, but to no avail. There just wasn’t any kind of medicine.

He huffed and left the bathroom, shutting the light back off, and then going back to Stuart’s room. “Where’s your pain medicine,” he asked, a little loud from his agitation.

“My mom’s Romanian, we don’t have medicine,” Stuart said with a humor in his voice. Tommy walked over to sit on the bed beside him, his friend nudging him briefly in an attempt to push him off and out of his space.

“What about your fucking dad.”

“Come on, you know my mom. ‘Can’t even ask something before she’s on you. Probably more Romanian shit.”

“Well man, I need some fucking medicine. Now,” Tommy said sternly, stiffly, looking at his friend’s face, lit up from his phone screen. Stuart looked at him like he was going to say something dumb, but then he sighed and locked his phone.

“Alright, come on, I’ll drive you to the store.”

“Thanks.”

“Man, Evelyn should have picked you up, her dad has all kinds of opiods and shit.”

“I know. Come on, let’s just go. I’m fucking dying.”

Stuart waited for Tommy to get up before climbing out of his bed and walking Tommy out of the room and house to his dad’s car, because his dad was crazy enough to trust him with it.

They both got in and Stuart started driving Tommy to the nearest dollar store.

“Hey,” Tommy said, making his friend look at him. “Go by the park, just drive by it.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

Stuart listened to his friend and drove down the park’s road, and Tommy looked out of the window at the bathroom, of which he could see a light turned on through a window at the top of the sidewall.

Was James really still in there?

Not only that, but was the car parked nearby Connor’s?

Stuart drove by the park to turn down a road and continue for the store. On the drive, he asked Tommy how he’d gotten the burn, really wanting to know the details because of the color that was started to peer through the bandages.

“Dropped my welding rod.”

Stuart laughed. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“’Heard your sister got a tat.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Tommy asked, giving Stuart a sideways glance that his friend knew all too well. Stuart rolled his eyes and scoffed under his breath.

“I’m not gonna fuck your fucking sister, alright? Jesus.”

“You’re fucking all the other kids in school- even with the cops up your ass.”

“Hey! Give me some fucking common respect, man, you make me out like some sort of fucking pervert, when you’re the one fucking three chicks a fucking day!”

“For god’s sake, shut the fuck up- at least they have fucking tits,” Tommy muttered, though it didn’t stop Stuart from hitting him angrily in his upper arm, making his wounded muscles hurt. He brought his arm up and hit his friend in return, with the same force that Stuart had used. They had gotten into fist fights of actual hatred and bitter annoyance twice before, and from the way Stuart looked away from the road at Tommy, they were probably going to end up again.

Stuart looked at Tommy briefly before looking at the road again, as if to make sure there were no cars sharing the pavement, and then turned his full attention to Tommy again to punch him, his fist connecting right with Tommy’s cheek and officially turning on the fight switch.

“You fucking-” Tommy shifted in his seat to grab Stuart by the shirt collar and sock him in the nose, something that made the car swerve, yet the two were too preoccupied. Stuart let go of the wheel to grab Tommy by the neck and that, was when the car lost it. The Hyundai tore off of the road as the teens wrestled each other and slid right into a ditch, though by some grace, that was all. It didn’t tumble or roll upside down, it simply sat nose first into the ditch, meaning that it wouldn’t come out without some sort of manual labor.

Tommy thrust Stuart against the driver’s door and seethed at him through an irritated eye and red cheek. Stuart had a bloody nose that dripped right into a split lip, and his shirt was stretched and rung out. “Fuck you,” he said through a bitterly angry expression that Stuart mirrored.

“Fuck you, you motherfucker. Tommy this, Tommy that- you piece of fucking-” Stuart lost himself again and lashed out to start striking Tommy again, who brought his hands up to fight his friend off.

“-get the fucking-”

“What?” Stuart asked bitterly, pausing when he saw that Tommy looked like he was actually trying to say something.

“Let’s get the car out of the fucking ditch,” Tommy said, shoving Stuart’s fists away. Stuart snorted blood up through his nose and turned away from Tommy to start climbing out of the car, leaving the door open in his angry frustration and spitting out the blood into the grass of the ditch. Tommy got out of his side too, and tripped on the steepness of the ditch, catching himself on a handful of sharp, dead grass.

“Fuck!” Stuart exclaimed loudly, looking up at the road. He started cursing and kicking the side of the car, and Tommy watched him while wiping at some blood on his shirt.

“Calm down.”

Stuart looked over the hood of the car at his friend. “Calm- Fucking calm down? Who the fuck are we gonna call to help us tow this shit out of here? It’s the fucking middle of the night!”

“We’ll fucking push it!” Tommy stared at his friend incredulously before shaking his head with a curse and climbing over the car to Tommy’s side. “I’m gonna put it in reverse and we’re just gonna push it.”

Stuart gave a humorless laugh. “Yeah, push it all the way up there?”

“We’re gonna have to try, now aren’t we?” Tommy looked at his friend before stepping around him and leaning into the car to set it in reverse. Then the two started pushing it, though it took a solid two minutes for it to budge from the angle. They were already panting out of breath.

“Keep pushing,” Tommy grunted, and they managed to roll it back a few more paces until a sudden bird caw made them both jump, and the car scooted back towards them. Stuart looked around before finding the bird and glaring.

“Fucking crow.”

Tommy followed his gaze to see the raven, perched on a branch and watching them, with its red eyes. More specifically, watching Tommy. “It’s a raven,” he said and went back to pushing the car. Stuart looked at him.

“What?”

“Nothing, just push.”

Stuart shook his head again and the two started pushing.

It took thirty minutes to get the car back up the hill. Once they did, Stuart attacked Tommy again with the rest of his pent up anger and they fell tumbling into the ditch with dead grass stabbing and poking them, and sharp sandburs sticking in their clothes and arms. The pain in Tommy’s arm had turned so unbearable that he wanted to scratch the wound off, but that was virtually impossible, but it had become so wet with blood and other fluids that the bandages were just tossed away after he and Stuart’s tussle. Which left Tommy laying in the ditch clutching his arm, dirt and grass sticking to the wound and an itching burn traveling up to his shoulder. Stuart stood beside him, fresh blood pouring from his nose as he watched his friend writhe.

“You fucking-” Tommy couldn’t even speak. He gave out loud cries of anguish and kicked at his friend when Stuart decided to help him up, because Stuart had actually been the one to start up the pain in the first place. He’d climbed on top of Tommy and held his arms down with his knees to punch him, and it was that pressure that made the wound open up again.

“I’m fucking sorry, alright?” Stuart spoke through a stuffed up nose full of congested blood, but Tommy was in too much of pain to care. He fought Stuart as his friend pulled him up to his feet and helped/made him climb back up the ditch to the car.

Once they got inside, Stuart had to drive longer to a Walgreen’s because the dollar store was closed, and they went to the bathroom to start washing the wound off, and to clean up. Stuart bought the stuff; gauze, medical tape, a burn cream suggested by the cashier, of whom had no clue what was going on.

The burn was yellow and bleeding, and Tommy almost knocked Stuart out when his friend started plucking the grass off that was stuck. Then, once it was as clean as they could get it, they went out to the car to start bandaging it up again, but Stuart had to go back inside for pain medicine.

When it was all done and over with, Stuart drove Tommy back to his house and helped him back to his bedroom so that he could chill out on his makeshift bed; the floor. Tommy passed out like a bird in a box, but when he woke up to his phone ringing, he felt like he hadn’t slept at all.

Dustin calling at seven in the morning, waking up both Tommy and Stuart, the latter groaning and rolling in bed to catch more Z’s because he also wasn’t in the mood to get up, with his beaten up face.

Tommy answered the phone but was too tired to say anything and even fell asleep again, his phone slipping in his fingers. It took Dustin saying his name a few times to make him acknowledge her.

“Where are you?” his mom asked, sounding awake and ready for whatever the day held. Tommy just wanted to sleep. He felt like he got hit by a truck, his body felt like it was made of a ton of bricks, and it was Sunday for gods sake.

“Tommy,” she said again when he dozed off, “Hello?”

“Stuart’s,” Tommy finally replied.

“Rusty said you got hurt and you didn’t come home, and you’re at Stuart’s? Tommy, what’s wrong with you? Get home right now. You hear me?”

“Mm.”

“Tommy William, get your ass home right fucking now.”

“It’s Sunday,” Tommy uttered, trying to rub the sleepiness from his eyes because she sounded like she meant it. Though, she couldn’t possibly do anything to “correct” him. “Why?”

“Because you were gone all fucking day hopped on Pratt’s opiods, Rusty told me,” Dustin said slowly, each word cutting through glass with a bitterness of seething. “Get. Home.” With that, his mother hung up first. Tommy put his phone down and tried to go back to sleep for a few more minutes, but he knew that he should probably get up before Stuart’s mom did.

“Stu, get up,” he said, pushing himself to sit up despite further sleep gnawing at him. Stuart rose a hand to wave him off and Tommy sucked his teeth. “Drive me home, man, Dustin’s pissed.”

“Drive yourself.”

“Fucking get up.” Tommy sat up himself, though his body felt like he could barely do it. He sat there for a second, waiting for Stuart to get up too, and made his friend help him up when he was out of bed. The two left the bedroom down a short staircase and went out to the car, that had sand burrs laced in the tires from when they went down the ditch. Birds were just staring to wake up and chirp on account of how early it was- how early Dustin had woken Tommy up to force home. There was dried blood inside the car too, from their fighting.

Stuart drove Tommy home, sniffing through his stuffed up nose of crusty blood and clearing his throat. The only sounds in the silent car, because the whole town was just as silent. It was Sunday, so everyone who cared was getting dressed and ready for church. Or making Sunday breakfast. Or sleeping in.

No one was outside but Tommy and Stuart and the chirping birds.

And James. James Parker, who walked along the side of the road on a chilly summer morning, who watched the car go by as he continued walking passed. Not a smile or a wave. He watched Tommy’s face go by, not offering him the slightest tell tale sign that he was happy. Why would he be, seeing Tommy? Though, it did kind of piss Tommy off.

Stuart dropped Tommy off and as soon as he walked through the front door, Dustin was in his face. Like she’d been waiting on the other side of the door for him, but was more likely going to grab something from her car. Or the newspaper. Or whatever. She wasn’t happy seeing her kid’s face on the other side of the door, though.

“Where the fuck were you?” she asked, her lips pulled tight and her jaw clenched. Looked like she was gonna have an aneurysm.

“Stuart’s,” Tommy unintentionally slurred. He was exhausted.

“No, where were you? You and Stuart together all day? No, what did you do?”

“Nothing.” He didn’t really know what she was getting at, and he didn’t like how confused he probably looked. “I didn’t do any drugs, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh my god, I have the greatest fucking son, he didn’t do any drugs for once. Did you torch the fucking shop?”

Tommy only grew more confused. “...What? Rusty’s?”

“Mel’s shop, did you torch it? I swear to God, Tommy, if you go to fucking jail-”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Someone set Mel’s shop on fire last night and everyone thinks it’s you,” Toni sounded from the stairs, and Tommy glanced over to see her standing in her pajamas, watching the two. He looked back at Dustin.

“I didn’t go anywhere near there,” he said. “I left Rusty’s and Stuart took me to his place.”

“And you were there all night? Bullshit,” Dustin spat. The look on her face was of such disappointment and disgust that Tommy got tired of being to blame. He flung his bandaged arm up to show it to his mother.

“Stuart took me to get some fucking pain meds for this shit and we got into a fight- we were stuck getting his car out of a ditch for half an hour and we passed out when we got back to his fucking house. Rusty hopped me too much to do it before, and I was too fucking exhausted to later. I didn’t set that fucking place on fire,” he said, bitterness flowing in his voice. “I didn’t fucking do it.”

Dustin’s face didn’t soften, but she did turn away from her son to walk passed Toni upstairs, where it could best be assumed that she was going to her bedroom. Once the sound of a door closing sounded in the quiet house, Toni slowly came downstairs to walk over to her brother. She looked up at him with big round eyes.

“...You need to stop getting hurt,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’s always worried about you.”

“Tch. Like-”

“She is, Tommy. And so am I. I mean, jesus, look in the mirror! You look like someone tried to kill you. ...Just be careful.”

Tommy wanted to tell his sister off, but she looked like she were really concerned, and he didn’t want to make the sensitive kid cry. He just pat her head and pushed her away. “Okay, I’ll be good. I’m not a real fucking bad guy.”

Toni smiled and it looked like she was gonna cry anyway. “...I’m gonna go...” Whatever she was gonna say she was gonna do, she just turned and headed upstairs too, to her own room. To cry, most likely. Tommy puffed and stood around for a while before deciding that he owed Dustin an apology. As much as he deserved one in return. He went up to Dustin’s room and opened the door to go inside when he decided that standing outside her door wasn’t gonna do anything.

Though her back was to him, he could hear his mother crying; laying in bed with the blanket up to her ears. She always tucked her feet into the blanket and covered her ears. She’d always tuck them in like that when they were kids, too.

“...Mom,” Tommy said, standing at the doorway. He waited for a reply, but she didn’t give one. She just sniffled and curled up further beneath the blanket. His eyes strayed away from her cocoon to the rest of the room, where there were approaching bills hanging on a tack board. He looked at Dustin again before leaving the room to Toni’s, where he opened the door to catch her teary eyed, sitting on her bed and hugging her legs to her chest. She looked at him and decided to slip off of the bed to go over and hug her brother, who put an arm around her and walked her into Dustin’s room. When they were inside, Tommy walked over to the bed and climbed onto it beside his mother, and Toni climbed in on the other side of him. She hugged him and started crying, putting two different kinds in both ears. Toni’s soft sobs, and Dustin’s quiet sniffling.