A/N: This chapter focuses on alcoholism and domestic abuse. You are forewarned. Be also forewarned that I have little experience with these issues and therefore am not the best portrayer of them, but I think I did okay. Please review constructively; no flames.

Part Two – Empty Life

"Roger!" came the shout from upstairs. "You unplug yourself from that piece-of-shit guitar and get up here this instant!"

Roger shut his eyes, wishing it would just go away. He knew it wouldn't. "Coming, Dad." He hated the word. His father had never been a "dad" to him. There hadn't been the games of catch in the driveway, or the hugs, or the sports games watched together. Well, maybe there had been once, a very long time ago. Nowadays the alcohol was all his father cared about. Reluctantly, Roger put the guitar down and left his bat cave—as his mother so dubbed it. He'd chosen the basement room; he didn't mind that the air conditioning worked overtime down there. It was the best place to sit and sulk, or play music, or get away from his father. Slowly he ascended the staircase.

"You coming, boy?"

"I'm coming." Roger began to walk a little faster. He reached the first floor and went to the living room. He was surprised not to find his father on the couch there, although the TV was still on.

"Kitchen," he heard his father grunt.

Roger reached the kitchen and faced his father; smelly, overweight, and drunk again. Roger felt the hair on the nape of his neck rise in trepidation.

"Where's the beer, boy?"

"The beer?"

"The beer. I had another case of beer in here. I need it." He advanced toward Roger, who began, reflexively, to back away, but stopped himself and planted his feet.

"I don't know."

"Don't you lie to me, boy!" Roger's father put his hands roughly on his son's shoulders. "Did you take it? You and your hotshot rocker wannabe friends been guzzling my beer in the garage?"
"No, Dad."

"Did you hide it then?" Roger sensed his father becoming more frantic. The hands on his shoulders were shaking him. "Where is it?"

At that moment, the door swung open. Roger winced, knowing what would come next.

Sure enough, a gentle voice issued from the doorstep. "Honey, I'm…" Her shoes clicked her into the kitchen with the shopping bags, and she saw her husband and son. "Home…" she whispered timidly.

Mr. Davis rounded on his wife. "You! Did you drink it?" Silence. "Answer me, woman!" He backed her into a corner. She squeaked in fear.

It was a familiar picture to Roger.

"She doesn't have your beer, Dad. Did you check the fridge in the garage? Sometimes it's there…"

"Shut up, you dirty son of a bitch."

"Jerome…"

"Shut UP!" Mr. Davis's hands had strayed to her neck. He pressed slightly.

Roger's mother, eyes wide with fear and pain and shiny with tears waiting to spill, nodded mutely, her delicate chin barely being able to bob up and down against the rough hands on her throat. Not taking his glaring, bloodshot eyes off his son, Mr. Davis retreated to the basement, threw the door open and clunked downstairs.

"Mom, this is getting worse. We have to get out of here." Roger ran to his mother, who was massaging her neck.

"Roger…" His mother looked pained. "We can't just leave…we'll have nothing."
"I can stay at Mark's, they'd take you too. There are support lines. This is too much, we need help."

"Roger, honey…"

Roger pulled the plastic sandwich bag he'd found out of his pocket. "I found these," he whispered, thrusting the bag toward her. "Why didn't you tell me you were on these?"

The tears spilled down his mother's cheeks. She recognized the assortment of antidepressants and painkillers Roger was dangling before her. "Oh, honey. My doctor put me on those antidepressants a long time ago to help me…cope…"

"With me?"

"Oh, no, honey! No!" She wrapped her son in a tight hug. "With your father."

"And the painkillers?" Roger whispered, hating his father more and more.

"I didn't know…what else to do..."

Roger knew where the bruises his mother covered up with long sleeves and makeup came from.

"You have to stop," Roger said. "This has to stop." He shoved the antidepressant back into his pocket and threw the pills away. He took his mother by the hand.

Jerome Davis emerged from the basement a few minutes later, a beer in his hand. His wife and son were already gone. He downed the beer in minutes before staggering over to the couch and collapsing asleep upon it, the TV still flickering on.

Roger's one regret was his Fender. He'd abandoned it. But there was no way he could have gone into the basement and gotten it without his father hearing and getting suspicious. And he'd had to get his mother out. It couldn't wait. He should have done it a long time ago.

Mrs. Davis knew where Roger was going. Where else would he go? She followed him, silent for awhile. When they were halfway to Mark's house, she finally spoke. "I'm proud of you, Roger."

"Mom…"

"I'm proud of you. I should have left years ago. I was staying for you."

"I'd been planning to leave since I was ten. I was staying for you."

Finally, they reached Mark's door. His mother's well-kept yard looked just the same by the dark of 6:00 p.m. EST as it did by light of day. Roger knocked.

It was Mrs. Cohen who answered. "Roger, honey! So nice to see you! And Nina too! It's been too long since we've had you two over!"

Mark's head appeared somewhere over his mother's shoulder. He looked bewildered at the sight of his friend, on his doorstep, with his mother. "Roger?"

Another voice cut in. "Judy, what's going on?"

"It's Nina Davis, honey, and Roger, Mark's friend."

"Oh." Mark's father sounded less than pleased.

"Mrs. Cohen…" Roger exhaled. "Is it okay if…we stay here tonight? There's been a…problem."

Mark had figured it out, Roger knew. Mark knew Roger's family was screwed up. From the look on Mrs. Cohen's face, it was clear that all the meetings at Starbucks with Roger's mother and some other friends had shed some light on their troubles too.

"Of course, honey. Come in. Roger, you can stay in Mark's room. Cindy?" Mrs. Cohen called.

"Yes?" replied the voice of Mark's sister, a pretty girl home from college for Thanksgiving weekend.

"Can Mrs. Davis sleep in your room tonight?"

"Sure, Mother."

"Thank you so much for this, Judy," Roger's mother said. "We won't be a burden."

"Of course, Nina. Anytime, you know that. Now come in; we're just about to eat."

It was late. Roger wasn't sure how late. His mother and Mrs. Cohen had made petty chat all evening; Mr. Cohen had been sullen; maybe he'd had another problem at work.

If it had been any ordinary dinner that his mother had taken him to, hosted by the sunny Mrs. Cohen, Roger would have skulked in the background with Mark or flirted with Cindy a little (to no avail). Today Roger was silent, nodding or saying "No" or "Not really" or "Uh-huh" once in awhile when addressed. Mark had sensed that his friend didn't need to talk, didn't need to be alone, didn't need to be interrogated; Roger only needed Mark there. And, silently, Mark was, all evening. They had gone up to Mark's room, strewn about with old reels he was cutting together for his portfolio, without comment, quietly pulled out the mattress from under Mark's bed, shut out the light and lay down. Neither had slept.

Roger was worrying now. He'd finally done it. He and his mother were out of his father's oppressive hold. Here they were in the house of Mrs. Cohen, his mother's friend, as good a defense as any. Roger knew his mother had been beaten; he'd call an abuse hotline tomorrow, make sure they got a restraining order, whatever. His mother, he knew—he had to keep telling himself—was going to be all right. As for Roger, he'd survived in one piece, physically. He didn't know how much he'd be hurt emotionally; he'd grown up that way. It was the Fender that worried him now.

Since he'd first seen a Fender guitar when he was six, he'd known he'd wanted to learn how to play one. He'd always liked to compose his own music; snatches of melody to keep him company, to drown out the shouts of his father and the sobs of his mother, late at night.

He'd saved up money for three years. During the summer, he'd mowed lawns. During the fall, he'd raked leaves. During the winter, he'd shoveled walkways. During the spring, he'd gone without a school lunch for weeks. All the money went into the combination safe he'd gotten from his aunt for his eighth birthday. He counted his savings daily, until one day he had his total.

Without hesitation, he'd paid his four hundred and sixty-eight bucks to a bored teenager whose rock band had died an inglorious death, receiving in return a gorgeous, sleek Fender with an amplifier. The eleven-year-old Roger had played it, always unamplified, in the quiet safety of his room, or at his best friend Mark Cohen's house. It had been his pet, another friend, when it seemed that not even Mark could be his solace—the rarest of times. He'd called it his angel, or sometimes his Angel. He'd never known why; inexplicably, making Angel a proper noun had always seemed right. Now, when Roger needed solace most, his guitar was in the home of the man who'd ruined two lives he'd been entrusted with.

And Roger couldn't stand it anymore.

Slowly, determination flooding his body head to toe, he pushed the ratty pink comforter Mrs. Cohen had supplied him with off him, down to the floor. He sat up, awake as he'd ever been.

"What're you doing?" muttered a sleepy, tousled Mark, raising his blond head.

"I have to get my Fender."

"Roger…"

"Don't try and stop me or anything, Mark."

"Rog…" Mark looked pained. "I'm not gonna stop you."

"Good." Roger eased Mark's window open. It creaked a little.

"You're crazy, you know that?"

"I'm not crazy. I need my guitar, Mark. You know I do." Roger swung his legs out.

"I'll cover for you, in case."

Roger paused, and then flashed his friend a little smile. He only smiled around Mark. "Thanks. I know you will." He now stood on the awning under Mark's window. "And I'll stick my neck out for you someday."

After Roger had slid down from the awning and landed with a thump on the well-mowed, wet grass, Mark reluctantly pushed his own covers off. In his stripy pajamas, he tiptoed over to Roger's mattress and shoved a few pillows under the comforter, creating a Roger-sized lump. In case Roger wasn't back by around 6 a.m., when his mother would slip naïvely into the small room in attempt to rouse them, she'd not be put off, Mark reasoned. It was midnight now. He'd be back. But just in case.

Roger had gotten in easily. The front window blinds had been open, and he'd seen his father, sound asleep on the couch. Roger knew when his dad was asleep.

He'd gone in through the back door he and his mother had used to escape. Oh so quietly he'd tiptoed down into the basement, the door left open carelessly. He grabbed his Fender, resisting the urge to hug it. Snatching up the amplifier and hastily winding the wires around it, he adjusted them around himself and tiptoed back up the stairs. No problem.

When he reached the top and had moved towards the door, he felt the amp slipping. No…he thought in desperation, but his hands were full with the guitar. It fell and made a horrible noise, smashing on the hardwood floor.

Roger tried to scoop up the pieces—it might possibly be able to be fixed?—but heard his father get up. He'd have slept off some of the beer, Roger realized, and be feeling like shit.

"Whozairr?" Mr. Davis's voice was slurred. "Lemme atcha! I'll fuckin' kill ya if you've been stealin'…." He then saw his son.
"You!" he bellowed. He advanced on Roger. "Where's your mother, boy? How dare you leave? You two are mine, you belong to me, you hear? You had no…" he hit Roger, hard, squarely in the chest, thrusting him back towards the wall "…right…" in the nose, "to leave this house!" As Roger clapped a hand to his profusely bleeding nose, the first punch having knocked the wind out of him, Mr. Davis seized the guitar and threw it against the wall behind his son with all his might.

It happened so fast, Roger was only dimly aware he'd been hit. When the Fender hit the wall and fell, in several pieces and twisted beyond imaginable salvage, however, Roger felt a searing, indescribable pain. Hate welled up within him. He kneed his father in the groin, satisfied to hear him scream. The two tussled, but Roger, who was sober and in considerably better shape, got the upper hand. He grabbed Mr. Davis by the shirt collar and rammed his head to the floor. He hadn't killed him, Roger knew, but he was knocked out.

Police, he thought. He got himself, somehow, to the phone and dialed 911. When he'd gotten through, he choked "A man's been hurting me and my mother. He's unconscious. I'm bleeding." That was all he could say. He gasped out the address, spit his own blood onto the tiled floor, and collapsed.

It was 3 a.m. Roger ran across the Scarsdale streets, hating his little suburb more by the second. He passed a diner, with a happy little mascot announcing a special sitting out front, and hated it. He ran past a row of neat houses, and hated every one. He really hated the little dog visible from a window. Anything cute or fluffy was, at that moment, loathsome to him.

Police officers had come. His father was in custody for evident abuse of a minor. They'd called his mother at the Cohens, and she'd bravely confirmed that her husband had been abusing her for ten years, since he'd started to develop serious alcoholism. The police officer had told her that Mr. Davis would face time in prison, and that she and Roger would remain safe. Two hours, a support hotline, and a haze of epithets from Mr. Davis saw Roger back at the Cohens', but he couldn't stay. He'd wanted to say something to Mark, knew Mark would want to talk to him. But Roger didn't feel like being a documentary at that moment.

What he didn't really want to admit, but what the part of his brain he'd come to call "the Mark part" was nagging him to face, was that he was on guitar withdrawal. It was his security blanket and his drug, both at once. It represented so much to him: the devotion it had taken to wait for it, the dedication it had taken to learn to play it, sitting up, feverish, late at night and plucking it quietly, without the amp. It represented Mark, in a way; the times Mark had teased him for how much he loved that guitar, the hours that the two friends had spent making corny music videos, falling about laughing when they actually saw them later. All Roger had in life was his best friend, Mark, and his angel, the Fender. And now one was gone.

Mark had once pointed out—Mark was always pointing things out—that Roger was addicted to addiction. He'd been addicted to the guitar from the first time he'd seen one. He'd saved money, hoping so hard. He'd finally gotten it, and regarded it as the best day of his life. Every second he'd had with the guitar was like a new epiphany, it had seemed at first. Then it had evolved into pure obsession.

Roger thought of it this way. What he felt for his mother was love. What he felt for Mark was that he was his complement; that they shared the strongest bond two people could have. What he'd felt for the Fender had been passion, only that.

Unbidden, the image of a slim girl with brilliant red hair, streaked with black and pink, various earrings lining her delicate ears, sprang to his mind. Roger pushed it back. He wasn't sure how he felt about April. He'd mocked her with Mark as a slut so many times…and yet…

He stopped running. This was insane. Now he was thinking about the Fender and April. The party that day, even if she'd remembered none of it, had felt so good, and he couldn't even tell why.

Maybe there were other ways to get highs, without the guitar.

The guitar was gone and he had to accept it. He'd deal with April later. At that moment he needed to go back to Mark's and get some rest.

I got loaded with so much emotional baggage today I'm a fucking airport, he thought, before heading back past the rows of neat Scarsdale houses.