Here is the next chapter of the story. I'm now on a two week updating cycle because I'm only halfway through chapter seven. The good news? I think this is only going to be a nine chapter story. Anyway, thanks for reading.
It Was All About Love For
By: December
Chapter 5: Taking Drugs and Making Love at Far Too Young An Age
Last time: "The same old, same old. Emily protected and invested in. Mike, ignored and treated gingerly when he had to be involved…until Mike was sixteen and got caught sneaking back into the house in an impaired state."
"When you say Mike was sneaking in 'impaired', what do you mean?" Dr. Lawrence asked.
"Definitely drunk. Probably high, too. It's unclear. Mike was into a lot of stuff by the time he was sixteen."
"How did he get caught?"
James laughed. "You see, the thing about drunk people is that they aren't very stealthy…or quiet."
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He swore that the bedroom window was higher now than it had been three hours ago. And that it kept moving. It was like someone was playing keep-away with the window. It was annoying as hell.
Mike shook his head a bit, but stopped as it seemed to make the world spin even more – as well as making his stomach lurch. This is not how he wanted to spend his night. That party that he'd crashed with Harry had been so cool he wished he'd stayed there until the morning. He wasn't even really sure why he was trying to get back into the house. He seriously doubted anyone would miss him. Unless Emily needed something. Even then, they still might not need him. They acted like he was trying to purposely hurt her. At least that meant when they left the house they hired a babysitter; no more forced watching of Emily for him. Too bad they came to that conclusion before Harry became his only option for survival.
Harry wasn't such a bad guy. Admittedly, some would say the whole drug thing was bad, but Mike wasn't so sure. Drugs were an escape, which Mike thought was better for his sanity than his reality. But even if you leave the drug thing aside, Harry was a good guy. Harry actually cared about what happened to him. Harry remembered his birthday and would celebrate with him on the actual day. His mother might do something with him during the month of his birthday. (His father and family had to be reminded of when his birthday was. Mike hadn't bothered to remind them about his sixteenth birthday.) Harry talked with him, tried to help him out with math, and in general, kept high school from completely crushing him. And Harry had a kick-ass sense of humor and the best party sense ever.
As Mike took a deep breath and tried to focus on the stupid moving window again, he thought he saw a curtain flutter in another window near his goal. Emily's room. It must have been a breeze or something, because Emily was asleep by that point, he was sure.
Ignoring that, Mike once again tried for the window. He slipped on the tree branch and briefly ended up upside down before he righted himself. He had just taken a deep breath as a light suddenly appeared below him. Looking down, the light caused him to squint, he could just make out a person holding a flashlight.
"Michael. Get out of the tree and come in. We need to talk," his father's voice floated up to him.
"Why sh-ssshould I?' Mike found himself asking, as he almost slipped again.
"Michael, come off the tree. We aren't doing this outside."
"Th-tha…yeah, easier ssssaid than done," Mike slurred out as he tried to figure out how to get down from the tree. It took him a few minutes before he managed it, half dropping, half falling to the ground. After he dusted himself off, he reluctantly followed his father into the house.
After he walked in the house, Mike stopped in the hallway. His father closed the door and then walked over to stand in front of Mike between him and the steps. By this point, Casey had also walked down most of the steps, stopping three steps before reaching the ground floor.
"Michael Venturi," Derek began, "What in the hell-"
"Is Mikey okay?" a little voice asked.
Mike, his father, and Casey turned to see a concerned six year old Emily, clutching a stuffed bear. That bear had belonged to Mike originally, but was given to Emily four years before. She'd rarely let it out of her sight since then.
"Sweetie, you shouldn't be up," Casey fussed quietly in her 'mother' voice. "Why don't we get you back into bed, hmm?"
"But I want to talk to Mikey. Mikey, you okay, right?" Emily insisted.
"You can talk to Mike later, Emily, I promise," Casey replied as she swept her daughter up in her arms. "But you want to be well-rested when you talk to him, right?" As Emily nodded, Casey smiled. "So we'll just get you settled into bed again."
After Casey had taken Emily back into her room and shut the door, Mike's father started up again.
"Michael, what in the hell did you think you were doing?"
"Getting into bed?" Mike snarked back.
"Where have you been?"
"Why does that matter?"
"Don't talk back to me young man! Where have you been?" his father demanded. As Mike remained silent, his father added, "Answer me."
"You just said not to talk back."
"Michael Venturi, I'm warning you-"
As his father continued to glower, the room seemed to spin to Mike again. Stumbling a little, he managed to find a wall that he could lean on.
"Are you drunk?!" his father suddenly demanded.
"Drunk? Don't th-th….no."
"He doesn't look all that hot, Derek," Casey added as she walked back down the steps.
In what seemed like a sudden movement to Mike, his father appeared right in front of him, pushing Mike's blond hair out of the way so that he could stare at his eyes. "Why are your eyes bloodshot, Michael?" his father asked.
"Bloodsssho? That may be because of the X. Or was that the Everclear? It wasn't the pot brownies, but I don't remember what was in the jello ssshots-"
"Are you high?!" that came from Casey.
Mike's father had already backed away from him. Opening the front door again, Mike's father leveled a stare at Mike. "Get out."
"Whaa? I just got in!" Mike complained.
"Derek-" Casey started, only to be interrupted.
"No. Get out! I cannot believe you even came here in this state! Your six year old sister-"
"Half," Mike objected from this place on the wall.
"Your sister is upstairs right now, hopefully asleep. In your current state, you probably can't control yourself and you might hurt her or yourself-"
"And if something happened to prec-, preci-, to Emily the world will fucking end right? I get it."
"Michael-" Casey began to say something, but Mike ignored her. Pushing himself away from the walk, he got himself almost to the door. Before he got there, his father stopped him.
"Don't come home in this state again," his father ordered.
"Detox somewhere else? Sure, whatever. Hate to be in anyone's way when I'm not neat and clean and all. " Mike agreed as he pushed passed his father.
"Michael-" Casey began again as Mike's father caught his arm. But by this point, Mike had had enough.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. Wipe your feet next time. Heaven forbid that I fucking track mud in the house."
His father might have tried to say something else to him at that point, but Mike ignored it. He might have flipped them off on the way out, but he wasn't sure. All he got is that, since he might not be useful for Emily at the moment, he should go. So he did.
He wasn't sure how he got all the way there on foot, but he was standing outside of a familiar door later that evening. His feet hurt, he was dizzy as hell, and he felt a little sick, but whatever. It was starting to rain and he needed a place to go. So he knocked on the door.
A familiar woman, whose blonde hair now had some gray in it, answered the door. "Well, well. Why are you here?"
"Dad kicked me out for the night," Mike answered.
"Because you are fucked up?" his mother asked. "That's not surprising."
"Can I come in?"
Mike's mother stared at him for a minute. "Sure, I guess. But just for tonight. Derek Venturi has to realize that he can't just gift you back when you screw up or now that wifey has a spawn. I'm not his fucking clean-up girl, ya know? And you can tell him I said that. Besides, I'd like to see how he deals with a problem child. Then maybe he and that woman can stop being such sanctimonious pricks."
She stepped away from the door and let Mike stumble in. As he made for the steps, however, she stopped him. "Just where to you think you are going?"
"Upstairs, to sleep."
"Uh-uh," his mother corrected. "Part of the consequences of coming home wrecked is that you have to sleep on the couch."
"The lumpy couch?" Mike whined.
"Uh-huh. Unless you'd rather sleep in the hole-"
Mike shuddered. He wasn't sure he could get up or down a ladder in his current state. "The couch is fine."
"Well, go on in there. I need to get back to sleep," his mother said as she closed the door and then left him to go upstairs. He didn't see her again until she shook him awake in the morning. She demanded he go to school that morning because there was "no way Derek is goin' pin this on my ass."
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"I'm assuming that Mike eventually went back to his father's house?" Dr. Lawrence asked.
"Yeah, after school that day. No one talked about the fact that he didn't stay with them the night before. The only sign that something wasn't normal was the big hug that Emily rushed to give him…and the assessing look Casey gave him before he had gotten all the way into the house."
"Was that the last time Mike was 'impaired'?"
"Oh, hell no," James answered. "But Mike did listen to his parents, even when he didn't want to. When he needed to sober up after wild parties, he crashed with Harry. He never went to his father's or his mother's house again while impaired; there was no point. His father never talked about it. In fact, the only sign that anyone had any idea that he had been gone for a day or three were the hugs from Emily and the once-overs from Casey."
"Besides the impairment, what else was Mike doing?'
James shrugged, "At that time, Mike probably couldn't even tell you everything he did. He was taking stuff and probably sleeping around at that point as well."
"I thought he wasn't popular in high school," Dr. Lawrence shared.
"He wasn't. And he wasn't sleeping with high school girls. At least not good high school girls. Good high school girls didn't go to the parties that Mike and Harry hit."
"Did Mike ever think about what was happening to him?"
"Not at that point," James shared. "Mike was trying to escape his thoughts, especially as they seemed to point to the fact that neither of his parents wanted him anymore."
"But…didn't this affect Mike's grades?' Dr. Lawrence asked.
"Hell, yeah."
"And, no one noticed?"
James shrugged. "Probably not. See, when Mike lived with Sally, he was a straight C student. Not exceptional by any means. When he first went to live with Derek and his wife, his grades did rise to the B level, until he started high school. That first grading period, they slid to Cs. After that, they hovered around the C/D level. He passed each grade level, but not by a wide margin at all."
"And this didn't come up during parent-teacher conferences?"
"No," James shared. "Mainly because Derek Venturi never had to go to any parent-teacher conferences."
"Wait. How was that possible?" Dr. Lawrence asked.
"Well, by this point, Derek Venturi was famous in his little corner of Canada. And the school loved to say that they had Derek Venturi's son in attendance. For the first parent-teacher conference, Derek asked to reschedule because of a commitment related to his job. Then, things came up with Emily and the conference was never re-scheduled. After that, Mike just forged a note saying that his father had a conflict and that was that."
"No teacher called home worried about Mike's performance, or-"
"Why would they?" James shrugged. "Mike was always a barely passing, hardly ever there student to them. It wasn't like they saw his grades take a huge dip. And the last thing anyone wanted to do is to bother the great Venturi. So, no calls home."
"But wouldn't Derek and Casey have noticed the dip in Mike's grades?" Dr. Lawrence pressed.
"They never looked at his high school grades," James shared. "In fact, they didn't realize how badly things were going until it was too late to do much of anything about it."
"How did they find out?"
"Oh, in Mike's senior year, one of them thought to ask about graduation. That was an interesting dinner conversation."
- to be continued -