Clinch
By: Stories with Laura
xxx
Sometimes—rather often, lately—Stef wondered what the hell happened to the kid who's most ruthless crime was stealing a matchbox car from Target.
'Twenty minutes,' He'd said. 'I'll be back in twenty minutes.'
Apparently, in the mind of Brandon Foster, twenty minutes was the equivalent to three hours.
It did not take three hours to retrieve a few belongings from an apartment four blocks away.
She wanted to be angry. She wanted to be livid with him. She wanted to unleash the kind of motherly rage that even the most wayward of rebellious teenagers feared.
But three hours and thirteen unanswered phone calls later, the anger that both she and Lena shared began to morph into anxiety.
Lena suggested that Brandon may have just decided to spend the night at Mike's. But that didn't explain the fact that he wasn't answering his phone, or Mike's home phone.
And another thing to add to the never-ending list of 'Problems We Have because the Universe Hates Us', was that Mike had been AWOL for nearly two days.
And now Brandon had gone AWOL. Like father, like son. Super.
"He couldn't have run off, Stef," Lena argued. "He's smarter than that. He knows he'd end up just like Callie did."
"What, in Girls United?" Stef quipped sarcastically.
"No," Lena exhaled, pursing her lips. "Most likely in juvie, considering the whole fake-ID thing,"
"How many kids do we have in juvie, now?"
"Stef,"
"Okay! You know what? It was our fault for trusting him. It's pretty damn sad when you can't trust your sixteen-year-old to drive down a couple streets by himself."
"Are you even trying to make this better?"
"What am I supposed to do, Lena?" Stef snapped. "Because I don't even know how to handle him anymore,"
Lena closed her eyes, and Stef exhaled deeply, massaging her temples.
After a lengthy beat of silence, Lena proposed quietly; "The least we can do is go over to Mike's," When Stef didn't reply, she continued. "If he's there, then he's there, and he'll be in trouble. If he's not there...well, we'll figure it out then."
Stef pursed her lips, and looked up.
"Okay," She breathed. "Okay. I'll go, you stay with the kids. And try to get a hold of Mike."
"And you will call me."
"And I will call you." Stef half-smiled, kissing her on the cheek. "See you in a few."
'Hey, you've reached Brandon, say your thing at the beep.'
Stef sighed and threw her cell phone onto the passenger seat. She was getting more perturbed by the second. Brandon wasn't dumb enough to just run off, was he? Problem was; Brandon had been making an astronomical amount of dumb decisions lately.
She pulled into the driveway of Mike's apartment building, and felt a blazing fire of rage ignite within her when she saw Brandon's car parked on the curb.
Strike—what was it now, nineteen?
With a clamorous slam of the car door and a string of colorful words, Stef was storming up to the entrance of the apartment building, when she got a glimpse of something flashing out of the corner of her eye.
Turning around, she discerned the flickering—what was that, a cell phone?—near the hood of Brandon's car.
Yep, a cell phone—Brandon's, to be exact. Flashing all of the missed calls and raging voicemails in his inbox.
Stef scrolled through the endless list of Missed Call from Mom, Missed Call from Mom, Missed Call from Mom, Missed Call from Other Mom...
Stef was about to rise from her crouching position on the pavement, when a sudden, overly-loud drip ripped through the silence of the night.
Freezing, she listened carefully.
The drops were slow and consistent, and Stef hesitantly looked underneath the car, where the drops seemed to be falling.
There were two things she noticed when she looked underneath that car.
One; the substance dripping into a puddle of itself was thick and red. Blood, her brain supplied frantically.
Two; there was a body lying limply on the pavement, their torso slightly elevated near the driver's side door.
Stef's heart pounded rapidly in her chest. A body. There was a body on the other side of this car.
She swore when the remembered she hadn't even brought a gun.
What the hell...
Stef carefully edged her way around the car, taking a deep breath before she looked down at the person.
The mop of messy brown hair was all it took for Stef to lose her nuts.
"Brandon!"
Stef dropped to her knees next to her son, and absorbed his appearance with horror.
The best description, really, was that the poor kid looked as if he'd been mauled by a bear.
Black, nasty-looking bruises littered the majority of his body, and blood trickled out of his lax lips, landing loudly on the pavement. Blood ran down his face from a gaping wound near his temple. And his jawbone...it was barely attached to his face. Nosebleed, black eyes...hitched breathing? Please don't say there were broken ribs...
Stef's eyes followed a bruised arm to the car door.
The closed car door.
Brandon's hand was trapped in a closed car door.
And Stef held back a brief wave of nausea.
Oh my God...
"Brandon," She said, unsuccessfully holding back tears, and tapping his cheek lightly. "Brandon, baby, you've gotta open your eyes for me, okay? You gotta open your eyes."
Nothing. She wrestled her cell phone out of her pocket, and tried tapping his cheek again.
"Brandon, honey, please, wake up for me, okay? You have to open those eyes, baby, you have to."
After a moment of constant cheek-tapping from Stef, Brandon's eyelids blearily blinked open to exhausted slits, and hazy eyes slowly rested on her face.
Stef nearly drowned in fear at how unfocused his gaze was, but hey, his eyes were open, right?
"Brandon," She said desperately, her hand gently gripping his shoulder. "I'm gonna take care of you, alright? I'm gonna take care of you. You're gonna be okay. But you gotta stay awake for me, buddy, alright? You're gonna be fine."
Her anxiety overwhelmed her when he blinked lethargically. Brandon had no idea what she was talking about.
One 911 call and one more reassurance later, Brandon's eyes slowly started to slip closed.
"Shit, shit...son of a—"
Tears ran down her face when she looked at his hand again. The operator had told her not to remove it. Sirens blared in the distance, and she held her son's free hand tightly.
But the hand trapped in the door would give her nightmares until she was on death row.