"Young man," says The Cop, "What do you have to say for yourself?"
I'm tired of being called Young Man, like that's my name or something. Like I'm an action figure with the package newly ripped. Young Man, special edition, limited time only. Young Man. In my head, the words are in a white speech bubble with tall, capital, purple letters.
It's funny when they call me Young Man, because I know they've looked at my file at least five times in between questionings. They've seen my age, they've seen my nationality, they've seen my name—but, still, I'm just a teeny-bopper with criminal intent.
They always ask what I have to say for myself. They always ask me if I regret it, if I feel guilty, all of that stuff. But anything I say will always be taken as a threat, taken as sarcasm, taken as a joke. They don't care if I feel guilty—which, by the way, I do. Their fingers are only itching to wrap the silver bracelets around my wrists and drag me away, they don't care what I'm thinking, or what I have to say.
I shrug my shoulders, my arms wrapped around my own waist like a straitjacket. I know that my answer was the wrong one as The Cop's nostrils flare and he turns on his heel to leave the room, but this time will be like all the times before. He will try to throw me behind bars, but I'll be let go in about an hour. I start counting under my breath. One... two... three...
"Okay." He reappears when I'm at twenty-three-thousand seconds (I think, anyway. I might have miscounted). "You're free to go."
I nod and stand. His heavy hand presses against my chest when I step forward.
"Don't let me see you here again, son."
Son. Another name I'm tired of. My mom doesn't even call me son. I don't know these people. Son is a word I can see clearly in my head: bright blue like the sky, slanted to the left. Son is like a whisper against Young Man's scream of aggravation.
"Alright," I say, my voice gruff with lack of use. It has to be around one in the morning, and I haven't spoken since yesterday when I told my mom I'd be back for supper, which I obviously wasn't.
The sky is black. Cool, dark air washes over me as soon as my sneakers hit the outside pavement, and it's good to smell the crispness of city air instead of the stale-coffee-and-post-it-note air inside the police station. I close my eyes, letting the wind brush its fingers through my hair and across my scalp. I shove my hands into my stiff jean pockets and begin walking down the uneven sidewalk. I keep my eyes down. I don't dare look at the shops, and instead focus on the humming noise of the neon signs whose lights color the sidewalk, flickering and swaying.
I am exhausted. My heartbeat shudders in my chest, annoying me to no end. It's kind of like that poem by Poe, but it's my own heart that drives me to madness—not the guy in the floorboards that I obviously don't have.
My bottom line is this: I don't want people to say that I'm normal, or that what I do is okay. I just want people to understand that I can't help it. When I go home, I don't go to my evil lair, I don't… like, dedicate my life to theft; I eat dinner with my mom, maybe watch a little bit of TV, do my homework, and go to bed. My head's a little bit messed up, but otherwise I'm the same as any other person with a disorder. It doesn't take over my entire life—well, at least, not all the time.
I push the apartment door open with my hip. My mom is sitting at the kitchen table with her head resting on her folded arms, asleep. She's been waiting for me. A plate with cold, lumpy mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, and some kind of mystery meat sits at my place at the table. I don't bother with it.
When I get to my room, I take my shirt off and throw it somewhere across the floor. My hands fling the closet doors open. I gaze at my collection: five watches, two packs of baseball cards, ten pairs of kids shoes, a few tiny paintings from the convenience store window, a few bottles of Drano, fourteen packs of various brands of pencils, and some cheap sunglasses. I reach into my pocket and place the lighters that The Cops missed inside some tiny, white sandals.
I lay down on my bed, so old that it groans with every movement I make. I close my eyes and, before I know it, I'm asleep, dreaming of open fields and fresh air.
My mom wakes me up at twelve-fifty in the afternoon by accidentally knocking over the lamp by my bed. The lightbulb shatters, shards of glass scattering around my wooden floor, around her bare feet.
"Spencer," she says—or, slurs. "Get up. Late for school."
I don't tell her that it's Sunday, nor do I tell her that she's drunk. She knows what she's doing to herself, we both do. The only way our world will keep turning is if she stays intoxicated and dumb, because that way, I won't have to worry about my bad grades and I won't have to worry about her asking about my collection of things in the closet that she didn't buy for me, and neither did I.
"Be careful," I mutter under my breath as she wobbles out of the room. Sometimes I hope she falls. Sometimes I hope she drags me down with her.
We are the Dysfunctional Duo of our apartment complex. The alcoholic hallucinating mother and the klepto-synesthete smartass son, a perfectly perilous pair. We are addicts, dangling off of a building, holding ourselves up by our pinkies, ready to fall but we. . . tend to underestimate the power of our pinkies. My mother's clothes smell of orange juice and liquor, while mine just smell of Cheese Doodles and the city (with, of course, a hint of liquor). We make the least noise, we never fight, we love each other to death, but just because our heads get dopamine from a different source than most people, we get the complaints and the strange looks. I would blame Society (bright green blinding letters), but Society has a better lawyer than I could ever afford.
I pull on a different shirt from yesterday and, after peeling the orange price tag off of it, shove a smiley-face lighter into my back pocket. Torn, brownish-greenish shoes adorn my small feet as I stumble down the hallway. My mother stands in front of the stove, slumped over on one of the burners, sound asleep. I check to see if the stove is on, but surprisingly, it is not. I grab the sticky note with milk and eggs scribbled on it. I don't plan on getting milk and eggs.
People don't talk about kleptomania. I didn't know why I was like this until two years ago, a few months after my sixteenth birthday. A lady screamed klepto-freak at me through the police car window as I was being pulled away from the convenience store. Klepto-freak. That name looked scary in my head, dark gray letters on a yellow background. I didn't like it, it seemed unhappy.
In the Oxford Dictionary, kleptomania is a recurring urge to steal, typically without regard for need or profit. That doesn't use enough words to define what I have. Urge is a small, red word for a tall gray word. It doesn't make sense. When I go into a store, my fingers begin to fill with some kind of static, like they're falling asleep, and it becomes so powerful that I find myself grasping onto something—like, say, a lighter or some kids' shoes—and tucking it into my bag, or my pocket. And it makes it feel all better.
I can't go back to the convenience store I went to yesterday. Or the day before. I have to go somewhere else, somewhere they don't know my face.
Besides. All I want to do is look around.
Aaron spots me from his usual spot on the corner. He hasn't been out in awhile due to his broken leg, but he's healed enough to lean on the corner and act miserable with his chipped mug sitting to his side. He's wrapped his sky blue cast up with an old rag, his face dirtied by the dirt in his mother's windowbox full of dead flowers.
That's his Urge. He's too lazy to work, but not too lazy to make money. In the hours of six in the morning to about ten before noon, money rushes in from parents rushing to work and parents rushing to lunch. They think of their own children poor and on the street, dirtied and broken, and can't help but to drop a few bills in the mug. He gets $100-$150 per day.
To keep up his charade, I drop a few coins in his mug and sit down next to him.
"How are you?" Aaron asks, looking around once before throwing a handful of dirt onto my shoes and pulling one of his bigger old jumpers over my head. I slump my shoulders like he does, and bend one of my arms awkwardly, kind of implying I have an injury.
"I'm good," I respond quietly. "Got caught again. Thinking of going out of town in awhile."
"Huh." Aaron murmurs. "Well, since you're my best friend and all, I've gotta say I'm worried for you."
"You? Worried for me? You lie to get money, I steal because I have no money. We're in the same business."
"Then let me get you money. You get out here and sit next to me. Bring your own mug. We'll make money together." He smiles and pats my leg. A man passes and places a $20 in Aaron's mug.
"Yeah... But I can't help it, y'know? It's like..."
"It's like me being good at looking like I need a hand. Can't help it. Right?" Aaron nods to me like he wants me to tell him he's right. I nod. He grins.
"Right." I look around. "That guy just gave you a twenty."
"It's one thing to be a young hobo. It's another thing to be a accident-prone, young hobo with a buddy beside him that may or may not be a lover." Aaron smiles, hiding it behind a dirtied sleeve. I shrug and bat my eyelashes as people pass.
A few hours pass and he gives me fifty bucks. "Here. Take whatever you want, but give them the money. Buy something. It'll make you feel amazing."
I walk five miles out of town. I ask for five ones for a five, shoving the rest of the money into my sock, and we trade. On the way out, I steal a bag of chips and eat them as I stumble down a miserable-looking sidewalk. When I see Aaron again, I drop the ones into his cup, hiding three of them behind one so he doesn't catch onto me. Aaron smiles at me. The smile I give him is as full of guilt as my closet is full of treasure.