Warning: Keith has a filthy mouth.
Requiem
Theresa Elisa Analena Reyas Romero held fast to her son's hand as she led him into the church. It was going to be a big day – seven-year-old Alex was going to give his First Confession, and he would be getting his First Holy Communion in a few weeks. She was still bristling over the fact that her husband had refused to attend, had in fact laughed in her face and told her it was "just a stupid meaningless ritual", he who had said so many things about being dedicated to his faith when they had first met.
Alex, for his part, was a mix of awed and terrified at the prospect of telling a priest anything and everything he had done wrong. What if he forgot something? Would he burn in Hell forever? How many chances might he get after this to add something? What if the priest told him he was a horrible person or kicked him out of the whole church?
He hadn't brought his worries up to his mother – he knew that she already had enough to worry about. He had to be a good boy, had to make her proud of him and to help any way that he could. Then maybe, just maybe, things would get better for them.
"Well," Elisa told her son, "Here we are. Now you just head in and talk to the priest – do you remember what you have to say? It's okay if you forget something. What's important is that you tell the truth." She gently put her hand on his shoulder. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
"I'm not scared," Alex piped up instinctively. She kissed him on the forehead.
"There you go." She gave him a gentle nudge, and he walked into the booth and proceeded to unburden his seven-year-old soul.
"Mama?"
"Yes, Alex?"
He had been quiet for most of the ride home, mentally toiling over the list of sins he had accumulated and confessed – talking back, the occasional lie, the time he'd helped Bobby Paris convince Maggie Summers to crack an egg over her head and she had gone home in tears.
"Father Patrick said that we should be kind to anyone, even if they don't deserve it."
Elisa craned her head.
"Yes, that's true." She paused. "Is there anybody in particular?"
Alex scratched at his nose.
"Does that mean I ought to be nice to Keith Summers?"
She let out a little chuckle.
"Well, Keith would fall under 'anyone', wouldn't he? Alex, sometimes you're too much."
The Summers family owned the Seafairer Motel, one of the two motels in the town of White Pine Bay. It was a rundown old place, and the Summers family were quite frankly a rundown group of people. The father was a big, bulky, often yelling man, and his wife was a tiny sliver of a person but from what Alex had heard, in their weekly fights she had won out more than once.
"Broke a vase over his head," Alex's father had mused once. "Ten stitches. Served him right, honestly. Some people shouldn't drink."
Elisa had looked at him with a gaze then that Alex couldn't quite read.
Alex was in the same grade as both Keith and Maggie, and assumed they were twins though no one had told him one way or the other.
Maggie was a quiet girl, but there seemed to be a simmering rage beneath the quietness at all times. She didn't raise her hand in class, instead just tended to glare at the board with her arms crossed.
Keith, on the other hand, would sit in the back of the class and stick tacks on other student's chairs or try to trip them.
They both seemed to continually be covered in dirt from head to toe.
Elisa pulled the car into the driveway, and Alex hopped out.
"I have to go do something," he said in a low, determined voice.
"Not in that nice outfit you don't, mijo. Go ahead and change."
It took Alex about twenty minutes to walk up to the Seafarer Motel. He hoped he would at least be able to catch Keith and Maggie alone – their father scared him and, if he was being honest, so did their mother.
So, honestly, did Keith.
The two children were playing on the steps of the motel – there were more steps than Alex had ever seen anywhere else, and they made him think of the pictures he'd seen in books of historical buildings with Roman columns, or maybe some sort of staircase to another world.
Keith had a large stick in his hand and he was alternating between smacking the steps with it, throwing it in Maggie's direction, and just waving it around in the air while yelling loudly.
"Fuck you!" he bellowed. "Maggie, you're a little fucking shitstained fuck-muffin who's no good for anything other than being a motherfucking cum-dumpster shitwad!"
Alex blinked. He had never heard anyone curse that much at once before, even including the times his father had let out a string of curses in Gaelic when the World Cup wasn't going the way he had planned.
Maggie let out a squeal, ducking to try and avoid the stick, and it was her who looked up and saw Alex first.
"Alex? Why are you here?"
Alex looked down and kicked a dirt clod.
"What are you guys doing?" he asked.
"Playin' with a stick," Maggie supplied.
Alex tried not to stare at them, but it was difficult. Maggie's hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but even that didn't hide the thick matting and tangles that no one had bothered to brush or comb out. Keith, meanwhile, looked as if he hadn't encountered a bath tub in the past four months.
Alex realized he hadn't ever really looked that close before.
"Can I play with you guys?" Alex swallowed and rolled his shoulders up a little. Keith was at least twice his height, and already incredibly broad.
Keith shrugged.
"Do whatever the fuck you want, shitwad."
He threw him the stick.
Alex draped his hands in his lap and faced forward, thinking about the day before.
It had been scary – when he'd gotten home he had thrown water in his face, trying to figure out what he had even been so scared of.
There were scarier things at home, sometimes. Like the arguments his father and mother had, last night.
"Stupid waste of time, Elisa – stupid, stupid waste of time, and now he's running around with that disgusting Summers kid?"
"He's taking an interest. I don't see what the big deal is. He's a good boy."
"I mean something to this community, Elisa. We need to keep up appearances – everything has to look exactly like it should be and I can't do that with your little brat running around with dirtballs and you running off to the loony bin every weekend!"
"That's not fair. You know what happened… That's not fair."
"What isn't fair is that I have a psycho bitch for a wife!"
Alex had wanted to be brave, had pictured himself walking down there and yelling at his father.
But he, too, scared him.
He'd managed to face Keith Summers, but this was different.
This was an unwinnable battle.
"Hello, class." Alex's teacher, Sister Mary Catherine, crossed the room. "Let's begin with a prayer."
Alex bowed his head and prayed for Keith and Maggie and his parents and his own soul.
"A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you!' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.'"
Ten year old Alex Romero gazed up at the priest as he read.
His mother's hand was holding his, and he was conscious of the tears rolling down her face even though he wasn't looking at her.
"Will those being confirmed please step forward?"
He stood up and stepped forward. His mother's hand was on his shoulder.
"Confirmation name?" the priest asked.
Elisa smiled and tightened her grip.
"Thomas."
Alex smiled as he leaned back a little and let his mother adjust his corsage. At seventeen, he'd grown up like a weed, tall and thin but still swift and sure – he'd gotten into more than one fight to prove it, not only with his enemies but more than once with Bob and Keith.
"You look amazing. I can't believe it – my little boy is all grown up!"
Elisa looked at him, and her eyes lit up with glee and pride.
"You be nice to Maggie, now. You make sure that she feels like a princess."
Alex didn't feel particularly enthused about bringing Maggie Summers as his prom date – she had grown from a sullen and dour child to a sullen and dour teenager – but it was marked somewhere in his mind as "the right thing to do" – and there wasn't any other girl he wished had been in her stead, so it wasn't as if he was sacrificing all that much.
Elisa leaned in to kiss him on the forehead.
"You be a good boy, Alex. Be a good boy."
It was raining, and Alex didn't have a jacket, but he did not shiver.
He stood and let the rain wash over him; he pictured it pouring over him and washing him away.
His father tried to pull an umbrella over him.
Alex pushed it away.
"You look like an idiot, standing around in the rain," his father hissed, "But you know what. Suit yourself."
Alex leaned down and pressed his hand to the dirt.
He wasn't sure if he was crying, or if it was just rain in his eyes.
"You may kiss the bride."
Sheriff Alex Romero leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to Norma Bates' lips.
"I'll be back after work with my stuff," he told her.
But he didn't go to work. Not first, at least.
He pulled into the cemetery and emerged with a bouquet of roses, walking over to a stone and gazing down at the chiseled marble.
He pressed his fingers into the cold rock, reading off the engraved name - Theresa Elisa Analena Reyas Romero.
"I got married," he whispered, and laid eleven roses at the edge of his mother's grave.
He felt, for an instant, that he could hear her voice in his ear. Telling him to be good, to always be good. To give people a chance, even when they didn't deserve it.
Maybe he needed to give himself a chance.
He walked slowly, not eager to hear his co-workers asking him about his sudden marriage.
He was a few yards from the iron gate when noticed something out of the corner of his eye.
He turned and walked over to a tiny stone, shielded by a tree.
Alex bent down for the moment it took him to lay the twelfth rose at the grave of Keith Summers.
When he rose, he tilted his head back and stared up at the sky.