Stepping Up to the Plate

Chapter 2-2

The school had called his house, and when he came out into the kitchen to scrounge up some leftovers for dinner, his step-dad and mom both sat at the kitchen table. His mom strangled a ragged napkin between trembling fingers. Cal stared at those twisting hands, his lips pressed together so tightly that they were almost nonexistent, his bushy graying eyebrows bunched like fat caterpillars butting heads above his nose. Stacy knew he was in deep s**t.

It went down fast, and bad. Cal threatened to throw him out of the house. His mother cried. Stacy packed a few clothes in his book bag and told his step-dad to go f**k himself, something he’d dreamed of saying for years. The man was a jerk, some flabby salesman his mom hooked up with shortly after Stacy’s real father left them, and he hated kids. Stacy in particular, said he was a bad seed, said he didn’t know s**t and he took after his mother in that—how she could stand to sleep in the same bed with that man and not give into the urge to smother him with a pillow was beyond Stacy. “Just where the hell do you think you’re going?” Cal roared as Stacy stomped through the living room, book bag slung over one shoulder. “Get back here, boy—I’m not through with you!”

Stacy didn’t slow down or look at his step-dad. He wouldn’t give him that pleasure. “Stacy,” his mother sobbed, reaching for him, but he shrugged her off and spared her only the quickest of glances. Her face was mottled, red with tears, a little girl’s face that hurt his heart. He couldn’t stand to see her cry. “Stacy, please…”

When he opened the front door, the twilight world beyond his front porch was calm, quiet, sane. No yelling, no crying, no cursing out there. Pushing her outstretched hands away, he said simply, “I’m gone.”

“You walk out now, son,” his step-dad warned, “and don’t you dare come back, you hear me?”

“I ain’t your son.” It sounded bold and courageous in Stacy’s mind, but when the words were spoken out loud they snipped whatever tenuous thread tied the small family together, severing him from them completely. Stacy felt as if he were floating, a balloon set free, he barely seemed to keep his feet on the ground as he stomped down the steps of the porch. Behind him his mother sank to her knees, the hold she had on him all this time gone. Like him—gone.

He walked from the yard at a fast pace and tried to pretend that the slamming of the door didn’t bother him. Shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, he walked down the street to Mike’s, a dingy corner store that sold more liquor and lottery tickets than anything else. There he used the phone, calling collect, and when the operator asked his name he said, fast, “Come get me. I’m at Mike’s.” He waited until he heard Lamar’s gravelly, “Hello?” before he hung up the phone.

On the corner he stood beneath a fickle streetlight—it wasn’t dark enough yet to flick on completely, but the sun was gone from the sky and the spastic light couldn’t decide if it should be on or off. It tried both settings a few times, swapping back and forth like a girl who couldn’t decide which shoes to wear, and Stacy stood beneath its stutter.

He wondered if Lamar had recognized his voice. He wondered if his friend would come. Another five minutes and he’d call Ange. He should’ve called him first, but he couldn’t because he had a terrible crush on Ange, a horrible crush, and he hated the silly way he got when it was just the two of them alone. Better to call Lamar and deal with his attitude. With any luck Ange would be over already. Or he’d call him from Lamar’s place, ask him to stop by. I left home and ain’t going back…

When he blinked, the world around him blurred and he wiped an angry fist across his eyes, then tugged his baseball cap lower so shadows hid his face. This was what he wanted, he told himself. f**k his step-dad, f**k school. Down the street a dark Trans Am turned a corner, tires squealing as if in pain, and Stacy took a deep breath to compose himself so his friends wouldn’t see him cry. He wasn’t ever going back.

As the car glided to a stop in front of him, the streetlight clicked on, throwing the shadows back. The passenger side window slid down and Ange leered up at him, Lamar behind him leaning on the steering wheel, grinning. “Hey kid,” Ange purred, his soft voice like a hand curving into tender places. He winked at Stacy, dispelling the tumult of emotions warring in his heart. “Want some candy?”

Despite everything—or maybe because of it—Stacy laughed.