"Tyler! Wake up! You're going..." Mom's voice trailed off, and I blinked, trying to figure out where I was. "TYLER CROWLEY!" she shrieked and I sat bolt-upright in bed. A socket wrench rolled onto the floor. My room looked like a bomb hit it. "What in the world is this?" Mom demanded.
"Uh..." My mattress was on the floor, along with the pieces from the rest of the bed. "Uh..."
"And what is this, young man?" she demanded, looking down. The toe of her white tennis shoe nudged a used condom on my floor.
I could feel my eyes bugging out as I stupidly stared at it.
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Uh... Uh... I don't know." I ran my fingers through my hair, unable to think straight in this mess. I didn't remember doing anything last night. My bed was still in one piece when I fell asleep. And there's no way I could have had a chance to use a condom without remembering it. It would suck to get punished when I didn't even get to have any fun.
"I don't know?" Mom echoed, disbelief dripping from her words.
"Honestly, Mom," I said hoarsely. "I don't know."
The panic in my voice seemed to convince her, and her tone suddenly softened. "What did you do to yourself last night?"
I tore my eyes away from the incriminating evidence to look at my mom. The color had drained from her face.
"I didn't do anything!" I wailed.
"What did you take?" she demanded sternly. "Did you get drunk? It wasn't meth, was it?" she whispered, horror-struck.
"No, mom, I didn't take anything. I don't drink and I don't do drugs." The only time I ever drank alcohol was when Dad and I were watching Monday Night Football and he'd give me a beer. Underage drinking didn't count if it was with a parent.
"But sweetheart..." She looked around my room. "You can't lie about this. It's a cry for help." She sat down on the bed, a bit of a stretch without the frame, and her face was ashen as guilt burned in her eyes. "I'm sorry I'm such a bad mom and didn't see the signs sooner. But I'm here now. You can talk to me. I'm listening."
"WHAT?"
"I'm... not going to be judgmental. But you obviously have a problem with drugs and girls and... well... you know you can talk to me about anything, right?"
I almost whimpered aloud at those dreaded words. Yeah right. Like I was going to talk about sex with my mother! "I don't know what happened here, but it didn't involve drugs and it didn't involve any girls!" I would have remembered!
"You know," she said serenely, "denial will only keep you from getting the help you need."
"Argh! I'M NOT IN DENIAL!"
"Don't talk to your mother that way!" My dad stormed into the room, then stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the bed. Following my mom's meaningful gaze, he looked down at Exhibit A on the carpet.
"What's all this?"
"Your son doesn't know." There was a bitter edge to the word. "And he's not in denial either."
Dad rolled his eyes. "Oh, cut him some slack, Beth. At least he was being responsible."
"Responsible? You call this responsible?"
"You want him to get some girl knocked up?"
"I didn't — " I tried to cut in, but my parents just shouted right over me.
"I want him to act like a man, not some overgrown boy who thinks getting plastered and screwing around at home constitutes responsibility."
"Well maybe if you lightened up on him he wouldn't rebel — "
I threw off the covers and marched to the bathroom, slamming the door.
"Where are you going?" Dad yelled after me.
"I'm taking a shower!" I bellowed back. "I have to get ready for school!" Angrily, I yanked my t-shirt off over my head. This was insane! There was no way I could have done all that in my sleep. It had to be somebody's sick idea of a practical joke. But there's no way I would have slept through somebody taking my bed apart.
When I pushed the shower-curtain back, I nearly growled. My bed-frame stood there, thumbing its nose at me. I moved the pieces to a corner, not wanting to go back out into the fight that was still raging in my bedroom. When I turned on the water, I was half-expecting the hot and cold water to be reversed or mud to come out or something crazy like that. The water came out clear and hot. Suddenly suspicious, I took a sniff of the shampoo bottle, but all I got for my trouble was a bubble up my nose.
Under the stream of water, I mulled over what had happened. I wasn't crazy. And unless somebody had slipped me something last night, I wasn't high. Mom or Dad were the only ones who would have had an chance to do that, and I wasn't even going there. So somebody else had taken apart my bed. Who would... MIKE NEWTON!
It was his way of getting back at me for the whole locker thing. Mr. Greene didn't believe him when he told on me, so this was his way of getting revenge. But he couldn't have done it by himself. Jessica would do anything he asked her to do, but even the two of them wouldn't be enough to take my bed apart under me. How many people were in on this?
Great. Add paranoia to the list of "why this day sucks."
I toweled off, but then I couldn't find my deodorant or my toothbrush. I actually growled that time.
When I went into my room to finish getting ready, Mom was sitting white-faced on my bed. She rose to her feet and said, "Get dressed. I'm bringing you to the doctor's."
"Why?" I demanded.
"I want to know what drugs you took last night."
At the clinic, I sat morosely with my back to a tank full of Finding Nemo fish, with un-brushed teeth, dirty socks, and no deodorant, giving my mom the silent treatment and plotting my revenge on Mike.
We'd been friends since elementary school. How could he do this? I mean, sure, I tricked him, but I didn't actually get him in trouble! He was the dork who confessed.
"Tyler Crowley?" the nurse called.
Mom stood and glared at me until I heaved a sigh and followed her. I gritted my teeth while the nurse took my weight and height, chatting cheerily with my mom. Then the nurse took blood and urine samples. "We'll call you with the results in a few days," she reassured my mom.
THIS WAS CRAZY!
Then Mom did the worst possible thing she could. She drove me to school.
