Being Wrong | ?

Part 1

The woman rolled her eyes. "How about because it's shit parenting, you know?"

Azza laughed. "Oh, fuck off. Yeah, sure, that too."

Charlie's dad didn't respond, just grabbed Charlie's wrist in a firm grip and hauled him up. Charlie managed to grab his walkman and narrowly avoided hitting his head on the edge of the table, and then he was being marched through the crowded house and out the front door. As soon as they were outside, Charlie's dad snatched the walkman from Charlie's hand and threw it hard against the side of the house.

Something lurched deep in Charlie's gut at the sound of plastic cracking and he twisted out of his dad's grip. The second his fingers had closed around his walkman again his dad pulled him up and dragged him towards the car. He opened the car door on the passenger side, shoved Charlie in, slammed the door and then stomped around to the other side to get in.

"You're so fucking useless," Charlie's dad grumbled as he jammed the key in the ignition. "Why do I even keep feeding you? You're like a retarded puppy that keeps peeing on the carpet. If I had half a brain I'd just fucking get rid of you, right?"

Charlie ran his fingers along the new crack running down the front of his walkman. Was it just the plastic casing that was damaged, or was it finally broken for real? It hadn't been new when he got it and after a few years of love the purple paint was worn away around the corners and buttons. It was hard to imagine it being anything but indestructible, though. He'd dropped it in a pool once and it can worked as well as ever once it had dried out.

Charlie's dad strummed an agitated rhythm on the steering wheel as he turned onto the highway. There wasn't much traffic around this time of night.

Charlie's gaze cut to the speedometer. "You're going too fast."

"Who gives a shit," Charlie's dad mumbled. The speed crept up.

"The police," Charlie pointed out. "And I do. And you should. You're not even wearing your seatbelt."

For a second Charlie thought he'd gotten through to his dad as he took his eyes off the road and shifted around, but then his dad pressed the button to release Charlie's own seatbelt.

"Don't!" Charlie shouted and quickly buckled himself back in. "You shouldn't be driving. You're too high."

"Oh, you don't want to be in this car with me right now?" The pointer on the speedometer crept lower as the car began to slow, to the proper speed limit and then below it. "I think we can arrange that, huh?"

"Dad..."

"I'm sick of your shit." The car slowed to a stop on the side of the highway and Charlie's dad pressed the release on Charlie's seatbelt again. "Get out. You can walk home."

Charlie looked around helplessly. He had no idea where there were in relation to home, but he knew it was too far to walk. His dad would have known it too if he was sober.

Charlie's dad leant over him and opened the passenger side door. "Get out." When Charlie didn't move, his dad gave him a firm shove.

Charlie fell into darkness on the side of the road, hitting the ground shoulder first. The long sleeves of his hoodie protected him somewhat, but the area already felt bruised when he pressed his hand against it. Before he could get to his feet, the door slammed shut behind him and the car sped away.

It was a long moment before Charlie got to his feet, then only a few seconds before he had to sit again. He felt distant from the aches in his body, drowned so deep that even fear didn't truly reach him. Part of him wanted to walk into the bush that surrounded the highway, to keep walking until he no longer could, to simply disappear. The thought of slowly dying alone in the bush didn't scare him like it should have.