Good Until it Hurts

2. Smashing Windows

I fucking hate mornings. When the alarm clock goes off I grab my pillow and place it over my head, trying to shut out the noise. From his side of the room, Tim mutters something I can't really hear 'cause of the fabric covering my ears, and then the buzzing finally stops. I hear how he rises and the rustle of clothes, but I stay where I am, too tired to do anything else other than hate the people who decided school should start this early.

"C'mon, Curly, get up." I feel Tim grab my ankle and shake it roughly, not stopping until I irritatingly yank away the pillow and blink up at him.

"I ain't goin' to school today," I grumble. "I wanna drop out."

"Yeah?" Tim gives me a smirk. "What you gonna do instead, bum around and get in trouble?"

"You can talk to your boss," I mutter, for maybe the hundredth time or so, staring up at the ceiling. "You can say I'm sixteen and he'll hire me. He won't care."

As always, Tim ignores it. "Get dressed," he just orders me. "You got five minutes if you wanna ride with me."

With a sigh I drag myself out of bed, finding my jeans and t-shirt on the floor. They ain't so dirty since yesterday, so I put them on along with my sneakers and leave the room. Maybe I should let Tim drive me and then ditch - I'm already in trouble anyway. I have written maybe five words on the paper Shaffer asked me to write and I know he wants me to give it to him today. Problem is that I don't even know where I put it, so I guess I can look forward to another week in detention. That's just great, 'cause I fucking love to spend my days in classrooms.

Downstairs Angie has locked herself into the bathroom as usual, so I ignore my bladder and rummage the cupboards for breakfast. Our table is still filled with dirty dishes since yesterday, so I jump up on the counter to eat - a few crackers and some juice that I found. I drink it straight from the package - it tastes a bit funny, but I'm thirsty, and Pa would kill me if I touched his beers. I guess I can't blame him - I would kill for some eggs and bacon, if Ma ever made it in the mornings. But she's too busy fighting with him in the bedroom.

Tim comes in and starts the percolator, turns his head and shouts for Angela. Then he shakes his head, looks at me and mutters, "Three minutes."

That means I will have time for a cigarette. We smoke indoors all the time, but I prefer to be outside. I don't know why, I just do. So I jump down from the counter and walk through the living room and out the front door. I light up my last cigarette and smoke it, but when I'm finished there's still no sight of Tim and Angie. So I start picking at the chipped paint on the house wall while I wait, trying to decide if it's worth going to school today or not. I guess not.

It takes a lot more than three minutes for them to show up, and when they finally do they're arguing about her make-up. As always.

"Ma lets me wear it," Angie mutters, glaring daggers at Tim as they walk past me. "She even gave it to me. I don't know why you care so much about my lipstick."

"'Cause you're fuckin' twelve years old, that's why." Tim unlocks his car on the curb, gesturing at us to get in. "And I know damn well you lifted it yourself."

Angie bats her eyes. "And who taught me to do that?"

xXx

"What about these?" Davy asks, turning to me with another pair of sunglasses on his nose, their frame white and heart-shaped. I shake my head and burst out laughing, so he gives me a playful shove hard enough that I stumble into the magazine rack behind us.

"Boys!" The old man behind the counter narrows his eyes, and I grab Davy's arm to gain my balance.

"What?" Davy says cocky. "We haveta try'em on, don't we?"

"You break the stuff, you pay for it."

Davy mutters something under his breath and puts the sunglasses away again, and we walk over to the candy bars instead. Picking out a few, we let some of them slip into our pockets, glancing at the cashier so he won't notice. Davy raises his eyebrows at me and I nod.

I wait by the magazines 'til he has dropped his stuff onto the counter, and then I absent-mindedly make my way over to the smokes. Almost all the stores around keep them close to the cashier, making it harder to lift them, but it's all about planning. The old man in this corner shop seems to be aware of the game, though, 'cause he don't stop glaring at me.

"Hey, I want to buy this stuff," Davy says, trying to grab his attention. "How much is it?"

"No. You have to go."

"Geez, I've got money."

For a second the man turns his head down to the candy bars in front of him, and my hand works fast while Davy puts his hand into his pocket and drags up a wrinkled piece of paper.

"Whoops," he grins. "Looks like I forgot my wallet."

The cashier gapes at him and I step up, punching at Davy's shoulder with my fist.

"C'mon, man, they ain't got nothin' in here. Let's go."

I swear, the man goes redder than a tomato, but he's too fucking old to do anything more than shout at us.

"You have to pay for that you know," he growls, turning to the phone on the wall behind him. "I know what hoods like you are up to. If you try to leave I'll call the police!"

"Yeah, that's so scary," I tell him with a grin, grabbing Davy by the sleeve and dragging him along. Out in the streets again I make sure the cashier can see me through the window as I pick up the pack of Kools I slipped into my pocket while he wasn't looking. He won't do anything. He can try to call the fuzz, but we will be long gone before they show up and he knows it.

"Stupid fucker," Davy says, taking a cigarette from me.

We go to the park 'cause that's where we mostly hang out when ditching school. We can't be at my house and Davy has a million younger siblings running around, so we mostly avoid his place, too.

I leap up on a bench to sit on top of the back, squinting a little in the sun as we share the candy bars. It's lunch-time and I'm real hungry, but the chocolate almost don't help at all. I wish I had asked Tim about some money this morning, but then he probably would have figured I planned to ditch and he would argue about it. Sometimes I don't know what's up with him and school, 'cause he left as soon as he could, and before that I know he ditched a lot, too.

"I'm bored," I say, throwing away the last candy bar wrapper and watching it land in the grass. "I wish we had a car."

Davy turns his head to look at me, and then we both start to grin.

xXx

Cursing loudly I walk inside the house, pressing my t-shirt hard against my forehead. It hurts like hell, and I can't even focus my gaze on something before I feel nauseous. This is so stupid - I know I shouldn't have let Davy drive, he always forget that car's have brakes. It ain't like I don't want to go fast, but sometimes you have to stop, too.

In the bathroom I slowly lower my hand, dropping the shirt to the floor to look at the wound across my eyebrow. It looks nasty, but at least it seems to have stopped bleeding.

"Shit, Curly, what happened?"

"Nothin'," I mutter, turning on the tap in the sink to wash myself off.

"You got blood everywhere," Angie says happily. "You get beat up?"

"No."

"Did ya lose?"

"No. Fuck, it wasn't a fight, all right?" I turn around and put my hand on her shoulder, pushing her backwards out of the bathroom. "Go play with your dolls or somethin'."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't play with dolls anymore."

Like I care. I slam the door shut in her face, then have to lean my shoulder against it as the world starts to spin. But it calms down soon enough, and I turn to the sink again, starting to wash my hands and face. I take the towel hanging on the hook on the wall, wetting a corner of it and clean around the wound, too. I look in the cupboard to see if we have some band-aids, but we got nothing. Not even a fucking aspirin for the pain.

It's not that late, not even dark outside, but I decide to crawl to bed anyway. I must have fallen asleep pretty fast, 'cause I don't remember anything more until Tim wakes me up again, but this time a lot gentler than he does in the mornings. As soon as he sees that my eyes are open, he grabs my chin and tilts my head, to look at my eyebrow.

"I'm all right," I mutter, pushing his hand away.

"Angie says you got jumped." He sits down on my bedside, and I push myself up to sit, too, frowning as the room starts to spin again. But then I stop, 'cause it only makes the throbbing worse.

"I wasn't."

Tim sits quiet. He knows me too well, 'cause when he is like that, for some reason I always start to babble sooner or later. And now I'm fucking tired and just want him to leave me alone so I can go back to sleep.

"Davy drove the car into a fuckin' stop sign and I hit my head against the window. That's all."

"You don't have a car."

I don't answer to that, 'cause he already knows how we got it. There's only one alternative, really.

"Someone see you?" he probes instead.

I snort at him. "I ain't stupid." I lift my hand and put my fingertips against the wound. "'Sides, you've done it, too."

"Difference is I don't get caught a lot."

"We weren't caught either. I said no one saw us."

"This time," Tim says. "You've done a lot of stupid shit, Curly. How many times did we have to come an' get you down at the station this summer?"

I shrug, even if I know it's five times. But who cares about it, it was just some smaller things - two times shoplifting and two times 'cause of fighting, then that time we scared some elderly people on the bus, but that was an accident. We weren't even arrested then, just hauled in so they could call our parents.

"Just start to use that thick head of yours," Tim says, starting to grin, snapping at my forehead with a finger. "For other things than smashin' windows, okay?"


Sorry it took a while to put this up. Thank you so much for reading, reviews are really appreciated :)