'Youth Novels'
Chapter Four
John woke up to the sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs. Blearily blinking his eyes open, he searched the wall of faded flowery wallpaper above the twins' bunk for the old Mickey Mouse clock Eddie had scavenged from a skip. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet. He pulled his yellow quilted blanket up over his ears and shivered into it, cursing the cold and damp spring air as it settled into his skin and bones. A voice in his head reminded him that he had to get up; that he had promised to pick up Brian today. Screw Brian, his sleep deprived brain rebelled and he closed his eyes once more, intent on dreaming of red hair and full lips and the creative things a girl who could apply her lipstick with her cleavage might do.
They didn't stay closed for long. Reinette made sure of it. She came barging in like a tornado, the door banged and rattled away from the wall behind her. John watched from underneath his covers. She was dressed for work in her turquoise and white waitress uniform, curlers hanging from her mane of cheaply dyed black hair and a long thin cigarette was smoking between her red lips. Reinette had decided sometime back in the '50s that she looked like Elizabeth Taylor and thus styled herself appropriately. Unfortunately, no one had ever told her that she looked more like an African Gnu─ a Gnu which smoked and had its face backed over by a JCB.
She headed straight for the pile of last night's clothes lying on the floor by the wash basket, just like John knew she would. Her quick bony hands rummaged through his pockets, pulling out his cigarette packet and matches, his van keys and tossing them on the floor. John said nothing. Experience had taught him never to leave anything important where she might find it, not even his switch blade.
"Where is it?!" She demanded eventually, turning with dark flashing eyes.
John decided to play dumb. "What?"
"The money!"
He lifted his head slightly from his pillow. "Money?"
"I heard you coming in, Johnny!" She yanked the pillow out from under his head as he went to lay back down on it. "Hand it over!"
"Hand over what money exactly?"
"Do you think I'm stupid?!" her voice dropped to a low whisper when the sound of mattress springs squeaked and shifted beneath the weight of a body in the next room.
John stared back at her, nonplussed. "Do you really need me to answer that question?"
She whacked him hard across the face with the pillow. Ignoring his stinging nose, John snatched the pillow from her hand and fluffed it up, placing it behind him. She grabbed it again seconds before his head landed.
"I'm using that!" At her stony expression, John let out a sigh. "I don't have any money."
"Cut the bull crap. I know you were out shooting pool last night," she hissed.
"I wasn't," he lied. "I was on a date." A grin formed at the memory of Claire's arms around his neck, her dark eyes sparkling into his like diamonds in a coal mine. It had really happened.
"Until half two in the morning?" Reinette asked suspiciously.
John's grin widened. "It was a good date."
His mother regarded him shrewdly, the crow's feet at the corners of her eyes knotting like tree roots beneath her pencilled on eyebrows. John knew what she'd say if she knew he'd been out with a girl like Claire. She'd tell him to wake up and stop dreaming. When she found no obvious trace of the lie in his face, Reinette flung the pillow on Derek's old bed. It missed and bounced to the ratty green carpet with a thump. John stared at it forlornly.
"Well, that's just great news, Romeo!" she spat, every word dripping with sarcasm. "I'm fucking delighted for you that your love life is thriving! Meanwhile, the heating bill's come in and the washing machine's broken down again. I need forty-five to give the repair man tomorrow. Eighty three for the heating by Friday, and Senior's gotta get another scan-"
He sat up, good mood ruined. "Thanks for the heads up, I suppose," he glared. "Next time how about telling me a week before all this shit is due?!"
"You're never here and when you are there's no speaking to you. If you don't like it come and talk to me. I ain't got time to be chasing you around."
"Because that would involve talking to you."
She planted her hands on her hips, drawing herself up like a vulture preparing to swoop. "Well, you live here so tough shit."
"Don't remind me."
Reinette's face tightened and John knew he'd stuck it in good. It was always a fight between the two of them, always, always, always. Reinette said it was because John had her mouth and Senior's brain. John would always reply that at least he had a brain. Whatever hurt he had caused was quickly absorbed into her iron skin and filed away for future reference, never to be forgotten. Hurt turned to contempt. For a long moment, she simply stared down at him, looking at him like he was the most disgusting thing in the world.
"What?!" he demanded eventually.
"What are you even good for?"
It cut, just like it always did, just like she knew it would. Her words were like splinters, they got under the skin and infected it, turning it green and yellow and black with rot. John kept his face impassive as she turned to leave.
"Bitch."
She stopped at the door, her back to him. "And you're the son of one."
Once she was gone, John let out a long sigh and pulled off his blankets. There was nothing for it; he'd have to get up. Thinking back over what Claire had said, about knowing how bad it could be made him laugh. How on earth had he agreed with her? She had no fucking clue; she didn't know how good she had it. Girls like her had it made in comparison. They'd never know what it was like to actually have the hated inside their flesh, taking up room, eating them alive.
He placed the old wooden chair beneath the handle of door to hold it closed, checking the handle twice just in case. Once satisfied that it couldn't be moved, John went to the window, kneeling down he began to roll back the carpet to reveal the old whitewash floorboards underneath. He lifted one and reached inside to take out his weed, wallet and blade. It wasn't his main hiding place, floorboards were too obvious. He kept the really important stuff in a safety deposit box downtown, the key to which was taped to one of the bottom planks of his bed. Experience had taught him forty bucks a year was a small price to pay for his future.
After he returned the room to normal, he got dressed and placed his belongings back in their respective pockets. The door to his parents' bedroom was ajar when he passed it on his way to the stairs. John glanced inside; even in the blue black of morning he could make out that the bed's sole inhabitant was still asleep, mostly likely KO'd from yet another cocktail of Valium tablets and Corbin's Bowl Happy Hour Specials.
Reinette was waiting in the kitchen at the grey flaking enamel table, in her usual seat the one closest to the window. In front of her smoked an ashtray and a small vanity mirror stood propped up against the telephone book, her make up lined out in a neat row before it. She picked up her cigarette and turned fully to face him as he walked in.
"I need that money, Johnny. I needed it yesterday so you're getting it to me by tomorrow."
"Okay, please hold a moment while I clap my hands together and it will magically appear-" He clapped his hands together before holding out his empty palms to her. "Oh, I'm sorry," he drawled. "Must be running low on pixie dust-" He didn't bother checking the fridge, all there ever was in there was beer and maybe a watered down bottle of milk. "Food?" he asked.
"In the casserole dish."
John grunted and picked up the green dish in question. It was Mac 'n' Cheese for breakfast, the same as it had been for breakfast and dinner over the past three days. John was highly doubtful that the cheap mix Reinette got from the supermarket actual contained any real cheese, dried or not. Still, it filled a hole. He grabbed a spoon from the drying rack and tucked in.
"Johnny, I'm not messing around," Reinette warned. "If you wanna live here, you gotta contribute."
John forced the watery mixture down his throat. He hated the way she said it, as though he had some place else to go─ as though he had a choice about living there with her, with him. So he wasn't going to make it easy for her. He'd be damned if he did. Part of him knew that he was being unnecessarily difficult but it was hard not to be when you hated your entire family.
"I've got school," he shrugged. "What do you expect me to do?"
"Fucking man up and pull your weight for once, you lazy little shit!"
John clenched his jaw together. "You should go to the doctor and get yourself checked for senile dementia because I clearly remember giving you eighty bucks last week."
"Good for you, I'll make sure to give you a gold star," she retorted in a deadpan snark. "Now go out and get more. I need at least three hundred."
John nearly dropped the dish in disbelief. Shaking his head, he let out a long hollow laugh. "Pull the other one cause that's never gonna happen in one night," he told her.
But Reinette would not be deterred. "Heating, your Dad's CAT scan and the washing machine," she listed off each bill with an acrylic nail. "If you're anywhere near as good as you like to say you are then you'll be able to do it."
She'd got him and she knew it. John glowered at the smug smile as it spread across on her face. Now he really had no choice.
"Besides," she settled back into her chair with a self-satisfied air. "I ain't asking you to do it in one night. I've called you in sick."
Christ, she really was desperate. Normally she just took whatever John gave her and then bitched for more a few days later. For a second, he idly toyed with the idea of giving her the money from his personal stash. The thought passed as quickly as it had come. That would've been the decent thing to do and they sure as hell didn't deserve it. If he did something like that, he'd never get away.
"How'd he fuck it up this time?" he asked. She'd won and both of them knew it. "Bowling?"
Shaking her head, Reinette took a drag from her cigarette, the ash falling in clumps onto the table. "Bowling made it worse. He pulled it giving you that thrashing on Saturday. ─What's so funny?" she demanded as John doubled over with laughter.
He quickly recovered, grinning happily to himself. God, he lived for those moments. "Poetic justice, Reinette," he informed her. "Or fucking irony, take your pick."
"You can call it whatever you want," she replied with an arched eyebrow. "You're paying for it. The painkillers and everything is coming outta you this time around."
That put a significant damper on everything. "So much for a silver lining to the shit storm," he muttered to himself.
"It's your own damn fault for getting hit, Johnny," she began to pulled the curlers from her hair and brush the kinks into waves with a flat brush. "Eight detentions? What are you like?"
John didn't answer at first. He finished the rest of his breakfast, tossed the empty dish and dirty spoon in the sink to add to the other mountain of dishes. He smiled grimly at them. Senior was gonna flip at her for not doing them.
"I'll bear that comment in mind the next time he gives you a black eye," he told her before walking out the back door to his van.
He picked up Duncan first and gave him a dead arm for shouting Jehovah the second he got in the van. Brian came next and lastly Garth, who they found waiting out of consideration for them all at the very end of the street, furthest away from his house. They were an odd mix, made odder by Brian's nervous babble about Star Wars. Eventually Garth did them all a favour and handed him a joint.
"Right ladies," John said, stopping the van a block away from Shermer High. "You're on your own."
"You're not coming to school?" Even slightly high Brian sounded dumbfounded, as though such a thing was completely inconceivable to him. It probably was.
He shook his head. "Gotta hustle together some cash. The old hag's on my case again-" then he smirked. "-Senior put his back out when he hit me on Saturday. Just desserts are one hell of a treat I'm tellin' you."
Duncan giggled like a little girl, weed always made him slightly effeminate for some reason. "What a fucking dumbass!"
"What a prick," John corrected him. "You're a dumbass."
The boy flipped him a lazy bird as he giggled and toked, eyes blinking from the thin white smoke curling into them. He looked like a pug with his face all screwed up like that.
"Is he like…?" Garth fumbled for the words as his eyes slipped out of focus. "Can he move?"
John sighed. "I believe he still can. Better luck next time, I guess."
Duncan giggles gave way to uproarious laughter. He wheezed and choked like he was heaving up a lung. John plucked the joint from between his fingers and pulled a drag. The heat burned his lips and throat like he was swallowing embers whole. Slowly the much needed haze began to settle in. He had his work cut out for him, Reinette might as well have been asking for the goddamn moon.
"Course," he said after a moment. "Then she told me that I gotta pay the hospital bills." He took another toke and passed it to Garth. "They make me work off all the teeth he busts, you know that?"
Duncan's laughter trickled off. An awkward silence settled in the van. Neither Duncan's folks nor Garth's Mom had much money but at least they didn't expect their children to foot the bill. They didn't hit their kids either. Brian, well Brian's parents were the fucking pseudo-intellectual Stage parent version of the Brady Bunch.
The nerd looked at him, worried. "Has he not got insurance?"
John scoffed. Brady Bunch Brian indeed. "Of course not, dumbass that costs money…" He paused. "If you see Claire tell her I'll be in tomorrow."
Duncan let out a whipping noise and John punched him in the arm again, harder this time.
The three of them finished the joint and filed out of the van. Brian lingered behind by the passenger door's open window.
"Are you gonna be alright?" he asked.
John stared at him. "Course. Unlike you, I don't need my Mom to cut my crusts off my sandwiches."
Brian rolled his red eyes. "I mean… you're not gonna do anything illegal? Right?!"
He rolled his tongue over his teeth and sucked in a deep breath. Hustling wasn't illegal just risky. People tended to turn mean when they were losing money or whenever John let his mouth run away from him, and then there was the risk of losing a game. Still, he had to play big if he wanted to win big, that was the aim of the game.
He flashed Brian a grin in reply and pulled away from the curb, leaving the boy to the tender mercies of his imagination.
A/N: Quite a short chapter but I want to keep the ones with John's family interactions separate from everything else. You'll understand why as we go along. Next chapter return to Allison and Claire. Also, thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far, feedback is always greatly appreciated.