Chapter 2

Everybody that you meet

Most of the dream came to me as if through a stained glass window. It was all either highly obscured, or it was merely shadows in the glass. I wonder sometimes if I merely saw the window, and imagined the re. There were woods with trees shaped like wailing figures from some surrealist painting, ground that lost more and more green as I walked across it, there were eyes moving in the shadows beyond the Oaks, and the one thing I could not mistake, a bright yellow school bus, its mouth screamed with a thousand voices: women, men, and some little cries I dared not name.

my grandmother's voice called to me "Arthur."

She cried for me to stare at the side of the bus. On its yellow frame read the name "tomised."

I paced towards it, and the screams grew louder. The trees began to dance.

"Hey!"

The makeshift world of muddled imagery gave way to the real one, a pink shirted second grader with a coke-dusted nose was shaking me awake.

"Are you okay? I didn't mean to scare you."

I had forgotten up until that moment how hard it was to fake emotions. The anger In my response was as raw as the moment it had first risen in my heart. I threw D.W. off of me, and stomped into her room.

The first thing I did was toss her goddamned radio out the window and waited for it to hit the pavement, but I heard nothing, and the music was still blasting. I almost couldn't believe it, and it just made me angrier. I found a tiny mound of cocaine on her desk and some of it was spread into messy lines.

It became clear to me, in that moment, how real the problem this town faced was. It wasn't confined to our classroom like I had thought. This would spread and affect every aspect of the city. It would change. I could almost see it, like a prophecy traced into the grains on her table.

My anger was compressed from a bushfire down to a searing hot coal as I threw her desk over. The crazy bus music was still coming from outside. I grabbed D.W. and I pulled her out of the house, her feet stumbling. I expected her eyes to be on me, like a puppy dog's begging for forgiveness, but they were all over the place. The only focus I found in them was after she sniffled and looked back at her room. I threw open the door and flung her onto the concrete. She crawled to the grass, still delirious from her last bump. Did she even understand what was going on?

I looked out at the lawn and noticed a silence. Her radio was gone. I swore that I hadn't thrown it too far out the window. I figured someone bad stolen it, and shrugged it off to throw my attention onto the garbage that was lying on my lawn.

"Do you have any idea what you're getting into?!"

She didn't respond. She just stood up and tried to walk back into the house, probably for more coke. I grabbed her, and threw her back onto the concrete, holding her down this time.

"Let me go!" She cried as blood dripped from her nose.

"Oh, I'll let you go. I'll let you go back onto the street where you belong!"

"I'm just trying to have some fun. What the hell did I do wrong?"

"What haven't you done wrong! You've endangered Kate! You've endangered our entire family! You've let Francine..." I couldn't believe those words almost escaped my mouth. I thought I had slipped for the first time in years in front of some miserable pile of filth.

"Wait, what was that about Francine?"

I ignored her. "Dad makes $18,000 a year and drinks half of it. Mom barely covers what he drinks. What do you think is going to happen to them? To What happens when the DEA busts down our door and takes the house away? You've almost got a felony quantity in there! You might as well just be selling it."

D.W. gave a nervous eye roll. "Well…"

I lifted myself off of her, breathing heavily. I thought to myself, "what if somebody is already on to us? It's in my house, and I could be implicated."

I turned around and told her, "You're fucking dead to me, you worthless piece of shit. If I ever see you here again, you'll wish that I killed you today."

All of a sudden, she got up and bolted towards me. "No, Arthur please!" the look in her eyes almost made me want to change my mind. I felt like a monster telling her this, but her eyes quickly peeked behind me and she threw her hand past my torso. "Please, just let me grab some coke before I go! Please God just a little bit, I'm begging you!"

I was disgusted, and I threw her back onto the pavement.

She quickly got up. "Please…I'll do anything."

I didn't want to know what "anything" meant, so I turned my back on her and waited for her to walk away.

But still she cried, "I'll- I'll sell coke for you!"

I turned back around and picked her up by the straps of her overalls. "You fucking asked for this."

Before I could even ready my fist, she cried "No, I mean it! I can sell coke for you! Please Arthur."

If only we didn't have eyes, something in them speaks to us on a level that tongues cannot. Even when you're about to hurt someone you despise, you can look in their eyes, and you will always manage to find good in them. That good will always stop you, as long you still have a heart. I set her on her feet and turned around for the final time.

"I know what you are Arthur. I know what you want."

I stopped in the doorway. "What do I want?"

"Power. You want power over your classmates. Over Elwood. Over your own future. Francine took that from you."

"Stop."

"Francine has all the power, and you can't bear that."

"Stop!"

"It will consume you because you have nothing else Arthur."

She'd cut to the core of me. This coked out bitch could see right through me.

"I'm your sister Arthur. No one sees you like I can. Not mom, not dad, not even yourself."

I looked into the door. I could see Kate. I could see my dad picking up one of her formula bottles and taking g, mistaking it for booze. When he noticed It wasn't, he threw it at her. I heard mom screaming at him from the other room, demanding that he get a real job or get out. I heard Kate's cries and the smashing of dry wall. I could almost see the feathers being pulled from her infant wings.

"If we ever put her in any danger, I'll kill you. I'll kill you as many times as I have to. I'll kill your hopes, I'll kill your dreams. I'll kill you in my head every night before I go to sleep, while I dream, and every morning as I wake up. God will cry when he sees what's left of you."

"I promise no one will hurt her. We'll be rich. We'll start small, but we will be rich"

"How?" I refused to show her anything but my back.

"I've got a wealthy benefactor."