He runs a hand through his brown hair and points to 5A, so I turn around and rummage through the shelves before grabbing a pack of fourteen and ringing it up. I look at him but he's already staring at me so I quickly look away and at the screen.
"That'll be fifteen dollars." I say. He grabs his wallet (a cheap leather one with frayed edges) and pulls out a twenty, handing it to me. I go to make change before he tells me to keep it and I quietly thank him, getting his receipt. I pause. Do I or do I not do this? Does this make my life cliché? I say to heck with it in my head and scribble my number on the back of his receipt before handing it to him. He glances at it and smiles.
"You're not one to call first?"
I shake my head.
"That's okay," he says, then holds up the bag. "Thanks for the drum sticks." And he turns on his heel, the muscles in his back constricting beneath the fabric of clothing that gave me an idea of what lie under the shirt. I swallowed around the lump in my throat and sat on the stool behind the counter, flipping through the magazine to my left. On the front cover is a man with a hook as a hand and the caption reads How I Lost My Hand. I wonder if there were books for people who went mentally insane. My book would be called How I Went Insane or something funny like How I Lost My Marbles. Either way, I would sell out fast. Maybe me and Vincent (Vincent and I) can finally get a nicer apartment, with central air, and no leaking faucet. Maybe I can pay for Vincent's secret marriage. We can move to a state that allows it and he can get married. I let out a breath and wonder what my life would be like six years from now. Would I be alive? Would I be okay? I have a faint memory of going to the beach with my family, sand getting in unspeakable places, my father burning the burgers on the grill, my sister getting sunburned and my mother telling my brothers to stop poking the jellyfish. My mother always told me I was a quiet person when it came to having My Days, in which were categorized as my insane instances. The last time we went to the beach, I was fifteen, and I had been digging my toes into the sand while I sat on the beach towel next to my mom. And she said to me, Tyler, honey, don't you want to go swimming? I replied, okay, and went into the water. When we went home, I was spaced out at the top of the stairs and I heard my mother tell my father she had a suspicion I was depressed. My father laughed, Tyler? Depressed? He's fine, Kels. Our little boy is strong.
My father had been terribly wrong. I was not strong, I never was strong, I was trying to seem okay but I had never been. It wasn't something that progressed into a big hairball in my throat that didn't let me speak, it was a type of thick sadness that arose from the minute I came out of my mothers womb. From her genitals (YUCK!), with guts and stuff all over me. Most babies cry when they come out, and I'm not sure if people truly know why, but my father told me I didn't cry. I was stoic, and blankfaced. I didn't even gurgle or laugh. How sad had I been entering this cruel world that I didn't cry because I expected this to come. I was just an infant, what was I to know? A lot, apparently, because I had predicted from my first inhale of human land that this place was not right for me. Outside, with open space, was not where I belonged, no. Where I belonged was an enclosed space, wooden walls, a nailed edge, a cotton bed. I belonged six feet beneath the ground. I beonged deceased amongst many in a cemetery. I had been angry with my mother for quite a while, for her giving me a life I didn't want. She meant no harm. She wanted a son. A happy, lively son. But I couldn't be that for her. No matter how hard I attempted, I just couldn't. Sleepless nights, monotone mornings, verbose evenings and inconsiderate cravings at 1am for pain. This wasn't living, this was dying. I was blinking slowly and exhaling my troubles, causing global warming with my breath of fire. It was long basketball practices and questions of how it went at dinner, inquirements I had no answers to because it was too easy, it was common sense. Ball and net, get the ball into the net. So simple, yet the weight on my shoulders proved otherwise. It was a web, and basketball was the center. I was the spider. If I didn't get sleep, I wouldn't be able to play basketball, and if I didn't play basketball, I wouldn't get that scholarship, and if I didn't get that scholarship, my parents would be disappointed, and if my parents were disappointed, I would lose more sleep. It was a cycle. A seed becoming a large tree in the middle of my stomach, inconveniently placed to grow into my throat. It wasn't until my sister blurted out at the dinnertable, do you even like basketball? That I promptly bursted into tears, snot cascading into my mouth grossly, tears coloring my cheeks with clear liquid. And I said no, and my father put his fork down and my mother excused herself from the table and I was convinced my father would beat me. He had never hit me before, but I was more than certain this was the last straw for him. Instead, I looked up to sad eyes, and an even sadder is this why you drove your bike to the bridge at four in the morning? You were going to kill yourself instead of talking to us about this?
Before I could respond with an indignant, no way, Pops, my mother returned and hugged me tightly, sniffling. She kissed my cheek and leaned back, hands on my shoulders: you're going to try to like it next practice. I am more than proud of you, Tyler. You have no idea. And then she's hugging me again, and the mashed potatoes on my plate blur into the peas, and the peas become the carrots and my life turned into havoc. And it just continued to get worse. Sunday morning came and Vincent wasn't at the service. And on Monday I asked where he had been, taking notice that he was wearing the same clothes I last saw him in, and he said his father had kicked him out of the house. And he smiled at me. Vincent gave me a type of hope I didn't realize I needed. If he could smile post-abandonment, I could smile after a post-apocalyptic-war inside my head. Things will increase like time. Like Josh walking in and adding a twenty to the cash register (which gave us five--can you believe?). Like my depression increasing from birth. Like my father buying more scratch cards even though he always loses. This one, Tyler, he'd tell me. This one will make us stinkin' rich. But I didn't want to be rich, I wanted to he happy. But then again, money can buy a psychiatrist. And Heaven knows how much I desperately needed one. Henry begins to yodel in his office. I close the magazine as the door chimes.
"Welcome to Henry's Hoard, what can I do for you today?"
CHAPTER FIVE
Start from the beginning
