Leave the Pieces - 10. Pieces

Survive or don’t. Watch even the strongest foundation crumble out from underneath your feet, but keep moving. Sooner or later you’ll catch up to the rest of the world, or the world will catch up to you. Don’t bother to stop; to sort out the pieces. They’ll weigh you down; all that was taken, everything you can’t get back. Just survive. Survive walking away.

But you can’t walk away. You can move on, but never walk away. Too much mud on the shoes. Heavy. Just like Luis. I wanted to grab him underneath the arms, drag him out. Leave the pieces, Luis, I’ll pick them up for you later.

He had so many pieces. They measured eight years. I only had questions. His questions. His answers. And he gave me bits and pieces, and they were suddenly as much mine as they were his because I felt it.

Fear. He knew what that was, and had understood how easily cruelty could be hidden behind a smile. It changed him, and the boy I knew had been gone long before I ever entertained the thought of it.

Call me Artie. I remember Luis’s fear, my own, from the night he was taken away. It had a taste. To remember made my mouth go dry. I still saw the monster, the thief, that Brooks was to me. He’d never come close enough to me to be anything more than a spook. Luis had a very different reality.

Brooks--Artie--was a liar. He thought he was clever. He thought that Luis was special. I couldn’t see the compliment there, only felt the cold chill roll down my spine when Luis used the word. Special.

But this monster--Luis’s monster--he was the deceiving kind. He didn’t look the way I remembered him, the way I wanted to see him. He had an expensive haircut and a too-friendly smile. Frighteningly approachable. But Luis hadn’t approached him, so he had to use other methods to gain a trust he never fully received from my childhood best friend.

The house he took Luis to was bigger than what his father had been able to afford. There were toys and games, unopened, as if they’d been waiting there for a while. Luis wanted to go home. He couldn’t remember how many days or weeks passed that he said it, that he wanted to go home. Brooks told him that he’d take him home soon. He just wanted to spend a little time with him first. Liar. He said that he was good friends with Luis’s mom, that she’d want him to have fun with Artie. Luis didn’t tell him that his mom was dead. He asked to call her. Not yet. Soon. Liar.

For a long time doors and windows were locked. Every one of them. He checked when Brooks was on the phone. According to Luis, that was a lot of the time–work. While Luis was left to rooms filled with things that would have spoiled any other child. Brooks didn’t like it when Luis looked out the windows. Luis had tested the patience one too many times one day and found himself locked in an empty room for over three days. He’d been starving and had exhausted himself screaming by the time he was let out. Are you ready to listen? Brooks’ smile grew more disgusting every time he used it. That smile was a lie.

That was when it had been good on the scale of things.

Pieces. I was getting the answers to questions I didn’t feel I had the right to ask before, and only because Luis had literally handed them to me. I didn’t like these questions. I didn’t like the answers. I could feel myself choking with every word before I sat and I waited. Listened. I was so cold I restarted the Bronco and turned on the heat. Luis turned it down not long after.

Luis wasn’t used to not wearing hats. Said he felt exposed when he didn’t, but didn’t like the feel of them any more at the same time. He’d gone places with Brooks. He’d held his hand, never talked to strangers. He wasn’t to say a word to anyone. Behave and you can call your mom a little later.

Liar.

Luis didn’t talk when he wore his hat. He looked at people, waited. He told a boy at restaurant once, that’s not my dad. He’d waited for someone to understand. No one did. He didn’t want to make Artie angry. He didn’t want to be locked in the room again. He didn’t like being hungry, and he didn’t like being alone.

But his opinion on that changed immensely as soon as Artie started sharing the twin-sized bed that had been given to Luis. You’re special. I just want to show you how much I love you.

Liar.

Falling asleep scared Luis. Staying awake was worse, and then one night Artie’s love hurt. It hurt in ways that Luis didn’t understand. Crying offended Brooks. When Luis cried, Artie got angry. He wanted Luis to love him, too. Luis learned very fast not to cry.

Luis told me these things, his words made it all true, said in such a detached manner it was as if he believed it had happened to someone else. I couldn’t understand how he could be this way. How he could hide it. As much as I tried, I couldn’t do it. I could hardly see the questions written on the page anymore. When I made out what came next I felt sick. Too sick.

“I can’t ask you that.” Not those questions. It was too harsh. Too wrong. I didn’t need him to tell me the answer for me to know it. Everyone should know it.

Luis was silent for a very long moment, and finally said, “Just read it.”

I felt horrified. Almost too horrified to be disgusted anymore. Almost. I didn’t want to read it, even if it meant he’d ask someone else. Oddly enough, I felt possessive over the trust he’d decided to put in me. I didn’t want anyone else to hear his answers. I didn’t want anyone else to hear any of this, as if keeping it with me, letting him tell just me, would make it better somehow. No less true, but maybe better. Maybe if I carried it for a while, no one else would have to. An odd notion over how I wanted to help him, maybe, but at the time, I think...

I sniffled, unable to stop it and brought a hand to my wet face. Luis finally looked in my direction. He hadn’t wanted to since we’d started. Aghast at my reaction, maybe even a little disgusted himself, he snatched the paper from between my fingers and left the Bronco, slamming the door on the way.

***

I was feeling defensive. After changing, attempting to find some sort of comfort in my room, in familiar things, I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to defend myself. I walked down the hall three times, trying to figure out how long Luis had been in the shower. It had been a while now. It wasn’t like him. Maybe he was trying to avoid me. Maybe he was trying to wash away all of those things he pretended not to feel.

How dare he be angry at me for feeling it. How dare him for not.

Taking a deep breath, I recognized irrationality when I saw it, when I was the source of it, and I went back to my room. I lay in the dark, trying not to think about Arthur Brooks’ face, trying not to imagine what it looked like when it smiled. It. Him. Whatever. This was a man who was no longer human to me. Maybe he’d never been at all. The next time I saw his face I wanted him to be dead. I wanted Luis to be happy about it.

I heard a door open and close, then another. I was up in a heartbeat. I opened Luis’s door, turned on the light. He looked more than a little put out when he looked up from his bed.

“Go to bed, Jesse,” he said, his tone clipped.

After that? Not likely.

“It’s not your fault,” I stated, hearing an almost overdramatic conviction in my own voice. “I won’t ask you those questions because it’s not your fault.” Didn’t he get that?

Luis rolled his eyes. “They’re just questions. Practice. No big deal.”

“You want me to say it, like... like I’m accusing you!”

Luis suddenly stood, looking so outraged that I took a step back. “How the fuck do you think they’re going to make it sound?” he demanded before he caught himself, lowered his voice for the sake of the rest of the sleeping house. “If I stand up to Brooks... how do you think it’s going to come out on his side?” He was shaking. I could see it, and I wanted to go catch him, still him. He sat again before I could give it a second thought and shook his head. “Just forget about it, alright? I shouldn’t have asked for your help.”

His mood told me to back off. Part of me wanted to, but deep down I knew that if he wanted me out this time he’d have to remove me physically. Not that I had any doubts he would. “Everyone will know the truth--they know it even if you don’t do this,” I insisted. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Luis was silent for a long time, and I was surprised to find a slow amusement creeping into his face. “I did a lot of things,” he said quietly. “You don’t know anything about what I did or didn’t do.”

Maybe not. And that hurt me, maybe as much as knowing what I did know hurt. “You can tell me.” I knew I wasn’t being what he needed me to be. Indifferent. Pitiless. But I wanted him to know I meant it. I wanted him to know that I couldn’t be those things. What I felt went beyond pity. That one emotion, the last thing he wanted, was impossible to avoid, but more than that I was outraged on his behalf. I was outraged at him for thinking for even a moment that he could be responsible for anything that had happened to him.

I watched a strange combination of emotions pass over Luis’s face in a matter of seconds, sadness, to shame, and finally anger as he gritted his teeth and snapped at me. “I don’t want to tell you anything. I just want you to read the fucking questions.” He glanced towards his dresser, to where he’d left that stupid piece of paper. He wasn’t asking me for favors anymore, he was issuing a challenge as if it were the only way he could cope with his current situation. Never run from the dogs. I wasn’t planning to bite him, and it hurt that he’d placed me in that category. But then Luis was hurting, too, even if he was too stubborn to admit it.

I wasn’t going to leave him while he was ready to let go of this. I was going to let him tell me, even if the only way to hear it was to read a script. He narrowed his eyes at me when I went for his notes. I hope it was more than wishful thinking on my part when I read more relief than frustration in that expression.

It was a difficult thing for me to understand, his guilt. In all of this, sometimes I felt that Luis was the only one who was truly innocent. It was hard not to think back and not wonder how different things could have been if our parents had just paid a little more attention, or if I’d been capable of not distorting certain details, or if Brooks’ mother had simply drowned him at birth. When I looked for it I could find fault with almost anyone. Anyone but Luis Yenka. Hearing his views on the matter, as much as he told me, I couldn’t help but feel the world tipping sideways.

He’d missed so much, been held back in ways that were unforgivable, and yet he’d had to grow up so much faster than the rest of us. Grown until he was stunted from it.

They moved a lot. To hear him speak of it, it was easy to have the impression that time had moved terribly quickly, disappeared somewhere along with his childhood. Maybe it was because for him, everything, every day, had felt like so much of the same. When change came he hardly noticed it. Same nightmare, different place.

He’d been moved around so much that he couldn’t remember all the places he’d been to. Early on, Brooks had become paranoid. According to Luis, his job had allowed it, had allowed him to hide. The only thing consistent was a phone call he made once a week to Uncle Tom. Luis never met him. He was to remain silent at all times when Tom was on the phone. It wasn’t difficult for him, to remain so silent. He spent most of the days staying out of Artie’s way and the nights doing his best not to upset the man who’d become the only thing he knew. For a while, he even believed that something about his situation was right. If it wasn’t, surely someone would have pulled him out of it by now.

But even acceptance of a fate he had no control over couldn’t leave him without wondering about his past. More of it slipped away from him every day, but when he came across other children he envied them. He’d asked if he could go to school once and paid for it in ways he refused to mention, even with the questions he’d deemed necessary for me to read. He only said that Artie made up for it later, their compromise being that Luis could have more freedom. He’d never had much interest in it before, but for the first time--years. He’d been shocked by that realization. For the first time in years, he watched the news. He found it depressing, only became curious any time another missing boy’s face appeared. Artie would change the channel. Those boys belonged somewhere. Maybe Luis did, too.

He started reading books, and for a time became obsessed with anything and everything on the science and history channels. He’d answer questions on game shows before the contestants, and he even felt a sense of pride when Artie would boast about raising such a smart boy. Feed the devil’s ego. Artie liked to take credit for everything Luis did well. Luis never objected, things always seemed happier when this happened. While he’d felt so alone, so isolated, the man responsible for doing it to him had become his only friend in the world, and before he knew it, he was all Luis understood or knew. There was no such thing as change, and when the opportunity for it presented itself, it was the furthest thought from Luis’s mind. He no longer eyed strangers, and on more than one occasion as Artie moved through store aisles to do their shopping Luis would wander off on his own. The first thing he ever pocketed was a small pocket knife. He didn’t know why, only that after Artie found it on him he regretted it for a long time after.

Luis hated growing. For a boy who’d turned into such a tall young man, it was hell on earth. The day Artie told him he liked him small, Luis began to worry. He couldn’t pinpoint why at the time, nor did he have a reason for the worry that crept up on him when he noticed that Artie wanted to love him less often. As warped as his sense of reality had become, deep down part of him knew that he should feel relieved. But instead the reality evoked fear, and the boy who hated going hungry stopped eating so much, in hopes of slowing down the inevitable. “If I hadn’t done it on my own, it would’ve happened, anyway,” he said.

Something went wrong with Artie’s job not long after he stopped making calls to Tom. Luis believed that the man who’d been at the other end of the phone so often was gone. Dead or elsewhere, he’d never cared to know, and Artie never volunteered information. But the way they lived....

There were no more hotels to sneak into, or rooms full of games. They’d sleep in a car a few weeks here or there, once in one that didn’t belong to them. Artie got angry a lot over this period, and sleeping in a shelter every now and then, a public place, was always a relief. Except for when they got robbed and Brooks blamed it on Luis. Suddenly, Luis was allowed to steal whatever he wanted, whatever Artie told him to.

They picked up cash here and there, started moving again. Luis liked it better that way. He liked not knowing what would happen next, a break in an eight-year routine. He didn’t like guns. He held them all the time, but never had bullets. He’d check. Artie would laugh at him. They were careful. They trusted each other, the monster and his creation.

There were more questions to ask, more things to hear, but I’d lowered the page out of a notebook to watch Luis some time ago. He’d grown silent, his tired eyes distant. He’d had enough, and I was feeling exhausted, wanting to leave behind what I was beginning to consider the ugliest night of my life.

“Your gun wasn’t loaded when those people got shot.” I wasn’t asking a question, but stating a fact that I wanted him to feel proud of.

Luis shrugged, but was silent for so long that I wasn’t sure he even heard me until he finally said, “I didn’t have one that night. I was supposed to be watching for trouble.” He closed his eyes, looking pained. It was hard not to go to him, touch him, comfort him. He’d never accept that.

“Luis, what happened to them...”

“I set off the alarm. It was my fault.”

My brows drew together. “What?”

He looked at me then, and I wondered how anyone’s eyes could be so red without any tears. “I broke the glass. I saw the alarm on the door and I broke it.”

“You meant to?”

“Artie didn’t know. He just freaked out and started shooting.”

“But why...?”

“I told you I have to testify,” Luis snapped, as if I were supposed to understand more than what he was telling me. “The police were supposed to show up before anyone got hurt--but they didn’t stop him. They can’t stop him from doing it again, either. It has to be me--it was always me.”

Little feet covered in sandals. A teenager who used to be just like those kids on the merry-go-round ate a snow cone and watched them play from the bench he shared with an older companion. They’d been to the playground three days in a row now. Artie was in no hurry to leave. Luis couldn’t wait to finish up with the three small stores Artie had his eye on so they could skip town. He didn’t want to spend any more lunches here, on this playground.

There was a boy with dark hair, crooked glasses. He was alone too much of the time. Artie always looked so serene watching that one. He never spoke of the past, not to Luis, but he was frighteningly calm when he said Luis had been just like him once. So beautiful. Special.

The anger over it had hit Luis hard and fast. For a while now, he’d felt disregarded. That bad feeling could have easily been mistaken for jealousy. Sometimes he still thought it was, and that alone made him sick. But more, it seemed unjust, and suddenly the way that Artie became angry every time he caught Luis watching a girl wasn’t only unfair, it was wrong. Artie was wrong, and that kid on the playground ... Luis knew then that he could never be allowed to know the man sitting next to him.

Looking at Artie, he smiled in the way he knew the man liked best. Dirty smile. The thought of whiskers touching his face, hands touching his body made Luis’s skin crawl. Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go somewhere else, I want you to show me how much you love me. Liar. He’d learned from Artie how to do that. He hated it and prided himself on it at the same time. He wasn’t that boy anymore. He was something else. But the boy was weak and scared. Luis was never going to be that boy again; the last that he’d ever let Arthur Brooks put his hands on.

Survive or don’t. Luis wanted to survive it so no one else would have to. If anyone could, it would be him. He’d survive walking away. But when it came to Luis Yenka, there was something I needed to realize. There was no such thing as leaving behind the pieces of what he used to be. Not for him, anyway. That boy he wanted so much not to be was the heavy mud on his shoes, a memory that would cut so deep that Luis would feel him with every step he ever took. And there was nothing I could do about it.