He didn't expect her to be at the top of the stairs.
"You're talking to him now? Are you serious?!"
Clancy looked into the samurai's eyes, swallowing hard.
The small blue house laid adjacent to every other one on the block. It was a downgrade from their Washington D.C. apartment, which in turn was a downgrade from the Brooklyn one. Clancy moved to Virginia right before he went into middle school, a decision made by his parents that he didn't take lightly.
It was for work reasons, apparently. His mother had gotten a new job offered to her right in the capital of the country, and by her reaction all those years ago, it seemed that she would be making a lot of money. And she was, until the car crash of course. It took longer than Clancy expected to feel the full emotional weight of his mother's untimely death. And when he finally got to that point, everything in his life changed before he could even process it.
D.C. apartment: gone. Fancy middle school: gone. New friends, save for Scott: gone. Clancy's father changed for the worse as well. A week after his wife's death, Mark Peters wasn't in any shape to raise a child. A reliance on cheap alcohol came to him quickly, and with that came a constant barrage of layoffs and a seemingly never-ending tirade of anger that would only temporarily cease when he closed his eyes to sleep. Eventually, he landed a job as a security guard at some shipping warehouse, and before long, Mark and Clancy had moved into the small blue house on Peachtree Street. The rest is history.
Clancy fished through his pockets for his keys. Hopefully, his dad would either be fast asleep on the couch or out of the house entirely. The boy prayed for the latter. The front door squealed open and Clancy crept inside, closing it slowly behind him and making sure to lock it. Instinctively, the boy made his way straight to the fridge, wrenching the door open in search of a snack.
Clancy swallowed the saliva in his mouth and clenched his teeth. He pulled out a bottle of water and slammed the door shut a little too loud. Loud enough for his dad to scream some incomprehensible string of words that slurred into nothing. Ok, so he was home. Shit.
Kicking off his shoes and leaving them on the rug near the front door, Clancy began to walk down the hall towards his small room, nervously sipping the bottle of water. The wooden floor groaned under his socked feet, and he made sure to lighten his steps as he passed by the sleeping mass of his father on the living room couch. He muttered a curse when he realized that he had left the hoodie inside Lucille's car. He'd get it back at some point.
Right now, homework was his main priority, then some Xbox with the boys, and then maybe he'd ride his bike to the grocery store a few blocks away and pick up what Coach Negan told him about. Chicken and broccoli or something. He had no idea how to cook it, but how hard could it be right?
"I'm telling you, dude, I swear I almost burned the entire house down." Clancy said, looking down at the bite he had just taken out of his apple.
"It's literally throwing a piece of chicken onto a frying pan with some oil, bro, how hard could it be?" Scott thrust a fry in the other boy's direction before dipping it in ketchup.
"Hard." The boy leaned in. "Harder than this dick when I see your mom." A smile crept across his face as Scott looked on in disgust.
"She probably wouldn't even be able to see it, man, don't flatter yourself."
"Not what she told me last night, bitch." Clancy snorted, taking another bite of his apple.
"Wait, I just noticed that you're... Eating an apple for lunch today?" Scott fastened his baseball cap on his head. "Who the hell are you and what happened to Clancy Peters."
"New wave, man. I'm uh, trying out a diet, y'know. Talked with Coach Negan about it yesterday after you and Josh ran away like a bunch of pussies."
"First of all, dude, that was Josh who ran away, I chased after him. And second of all, I mean, Coach Negan's kind of an asshole." Scott's shoulders rose and eyes squinted as he cringed.
"He's not that bad Just like, play into his stupid jokes and he'll end up liking you, it's what I've been doing. And I mean, he likes me enough to give me twenty bucks for groceries."
"Yeah, well, you weren't the one getting made fun of by a middle aged man, alright?" Scott took a bite of the small burger on his plate, chewing with a grimace. "I just don't like him, plain and simple."
"Why do you go to a ping pong club then?" Clancy questioned, a hint of annoyance in the boy's tone.
"Uh, maybe it's got something to do with you and Josh dragging me there half the time?"
"You have fun at Coach Negan's place, shut up."
Scott didn't respond.
Clancy looked down at the apple in silence, rolling the fruit around in his palm. "Wanna play Xbox tonight? It's Friday, so you better not get off at ten again."
"Yeah, I'm down. Maybe I can get Josh to play for a bit, too. I'm pretty sure I have a few spare Xbox Live codes somewhere in my room."
"He's gonna have to get a membership at some point, right?"
"Eh, I dunno. The guy barely gets on, and when he does, he kind of sucks. Maybe it's for the better that he doesn't have it."
Clancy smiled and crunched on the apple, getting up from his seat and dropping it in the trash.
"Whattimedoyawanna— hang on." The freckled boy chewed the chunk of food in his mouth, sitting back down at the lunch table as he did so. "What time do you wanna play?"
"I mean, I'm up for right after school. What time do you think you're gonna be home?"
"Uh, probably around 3." Clancy paused. "Wait a second, never mind, I gotta go and meet Coach Negan at the track field."
Scott raised an eyebrow.
"Look, man, it's probably about this weird ass boot camp thing he told me about. I'll be back home at like five, try to cook dinner again, and then I'll get on at like seven." Clancy scratched his cheek. "Can we play something other than Gears of War again? I suck at that game."
"Wanna do the story mode instead? There's no people yelling at you over the mic in that one."
"Yeah, maybe." He glanced behind Scott and narrowed his eyes at the clock in the corner of the lunch room. "Shit, sixth period is in five minutes, gotta go." With a grunt, Clancy lifted himself from the seat again and slung his bag over his shoulder. "I'll see you later."
Clancy was halfway through the fifth lap on the track field when Negan called him over. With a stitch in his side, the boy hobbled down the path and stopped in front of his gym teacher, looking up at him while greedily sucking in air through his nose.
"Yeah?"
"You did good, Clance. Didn't know you had it in you, gonna be honest." With a stretch, Negan bent down and lifted a bottle of water from his bag, slamming it into Clancy's chest.
"Really?"
"I mean, yeah. You seemed to know what you're doing out there, didn't really slow down that much, kept a good pace-"
"It's just running, Coach Negan. Not exactly rocket science."
"Can you let me give you a compliment, here."
"Yeah, yeah, ok." Clancy said breathlessly, waving his hand at his coach as he took a long sip from the water bottle.
"And believe me, some of the kids I've seen run the mile in my gym classes definitely act like it's rocket science."
"So… are we done?"
Negan chuckled before digging through his bag again and pulling out a second water bottle. "Hell no. Five more, I'll run with you this time."
"Shit."
"You're going to work already? It's only five o'clock." Clancy asked his father absentmindedly as he dug through the fridge for the Tupperware of leftover grilled chicken.
"I was actually going out to look for you." Mark narrowed his eyes at the boy looking into the fridge. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"
Clancy glanced at the microwave, turning swiftly back towards his father and parroting what he just saw. "seven o'clock?"
"What the hell were you doing?"
"I was out." He placed the Tupperware into the microwave and set the timer to three minutes.
"With who?"
"Does it matter?" Clancy scoffed, leaning back into the fridge and pulling out a bottle of water.
"Yeah, it matters a little bit, Clancy." Mark took off his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair at the small kitchen table. "Is it wrong that I want to know where my son is after he comes home this late?"
"Dad, it's only seven o'clock." Clancy responded plainly, watching the container of chicken spin in the microwave.
"Look at me when I'm talking, damnit." The older man raised his voice, causing Clancy to turn towards him, wide-eyed. "Where were you?"
"You're drunk." It was a plain and simple statement that found its way through Clancy's lips. He was right. He knew he was.
"Where the fuck were you!?"
"I was working out with Coach Negan, alright? After that I met Josh and we hung out for a little. I don't understand why you're getting so fucking worked up over-" A strike to the side of the head interrupted the boy, sending him crashing into the counter, grabbing onto it for support.
Clancy raised a hand to the point of contact, lips quivering as the man standing in front of him walked closer. "Speak when you're fucking spoken to, you hear?" He turned to the jacket draped over the seat at the kitchen table and balled it under his arm, stomping towards the front door.
"Never speak to me like that again." Mark growled as he swung the front door open, stumbling down the stairs as the door closed behind him.
He sat at the kitchen table and didn't even notice the ear-piercing screech of the microwave and the fact that the chicken he was eating had long gone cold.
It was Saturday.
Clancy woke up the next morning to an empty house. Usually he'd walk into the small living room and see his father draped across the couch, still dressed in his work clothes and a bottle of beer teetering in the man's grip. But there was none of that. No dad, no beer, nothing.
The silence helped him realize how bad his legs hurt. Like a surge of electricity that shot through his thighs every time he took a step. It was a good kind of pain, though, something to remind him that he was actually starting to make progress.
Clancy opened the freezer and looked at the nearly empty box of Eggo waffles. Flipping the box over, he looked at the nutrition facts and scoffed, pulling out two and tossing them onto a plate. Swinging the microwave open, Clancy practically threw the plate in and set the timer. He sat at the kitchen table with a sigh. His face still hurt.
He'd looked at himself in the mirror after he woke up, and there was a bruise. It was a gnarly purple and yellow welt on Clancy's cheek that stuck out like a sore thumb.
It wasn't the first time his father had hit him. Constant drunken outbursts were commonplace in the household, and yeah, maybe he should've answered him earlier. He should've done a lot of things earlier. Like avoiding Josh after he ran with Coach Negan. Maybe then he would've been home before seven and his dad wouldn't have gotten so mad at him.
The microwave beeped, breaking Clancy from his train of thought. He pulled the plate from the microwave and opened the creaky wooden door of the pantry, staring at the maple syrup before slamming the door shut and taking a bite of a plain waffle.
He had to help Coach Negan with yard work today. The realization made Clancy's throat go dry and made the waffle stick to the sides of his mouth like some kind of gummy paste. He chewed with wide eyes and swallowed, feeling the chunk of soft waffle travel all the way down his esophagus like a ball of nails. What's he gonna tell him? What's he gonna tell Scott and Josh and everyone at school?
Clancy looked down at the plate and the two plain waffles stared back at him. Fuck. Shit fuck. Was he having a panic attack? Is that what this is? Clancy got up from his seat and swung open the door of the fridge. No more bottled water. Of course. He dug through the cupboards for a glass and turned on the tap, letting the cup fill with cool water. He took a long gulp right in front of the sink, grimacing slightly at the off-taste that the tap water provided. He filled the glass again and took in a shaky breath, touching the bruise with a shaking wet hand.
The welt stung and somewhere deep down inside him, Clancy knew that someone would find out. He didn't know when and he didn't know how, but he just couldn't hide something like this. What would his dad even say? Apologize and then forget about it? Given his track record; yeah probably.
He absentmindedly took another bite of the plain waffle. Every chew left his mouth coated in the viscous batter that left him cringing. Clancy swallowed hard, washing down the remains with a sip of tap water. Breakfast of champions right here, ladies and gentlemen. He threw the waffles into the trash and dumped the rest of the water in the sink.
Now to the Negan problem. Should he go? What would he say to him? Ok, so if he went and Negan said something, that would lead to Negan probably reporting it to the school, and if the school found out that that would mean that-
Clancy paced in his room, hands gripping clumps of hair nervously. Where was his dad? Couldn't be at work still, his shift ended at six in the morning. Maybe something happened on his way back? Maybe the cops got him for a DUI as he drove back, or maybe he just decided to not come back. Clancy didn't know which one was worse.
Maybe it was just the anticipation of him coming back. Yeah, that was definitely worse.
The boy worried the rest of the morning away, thoughts jumping from Negan, then to school, then to dad, then to working out, then back to dad, then back to Negan, then back to school, and then he heard a car pull up in front of the house. It was him.
Clancy felt his blood run cold as the car door slammed shut. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he left his room, walking down the corridor towards the entrance of his house. He could've sworn he heard his heart beating like those scenes in the movies he watched. Every step Clancy took wracked him with anxiety, and each deafening squeak of the floorboards made the boy shudder.
Then he was at the front door. Was his house always that small? It felt like he had just stepped from the comfort of his room and now he was at the daunting pathway that led directly to his father. With a deep breath, he grabbed the doorknob and pulled, closing his eyes when the door reached its halfway point.
"I- I'm sorry about last night." He stammered, looking up at the man in the doorway. There was no response.
Negan stared back, eyes narrowed at the boy until his gaze fell on the bruise on his cheek.