elinorwise

I patted Mom’s back and said there-there. Dad didn’t cry, but the tears were standing in his eyes as he approached me and held out a check in the amount of five hundred dollars, made out to me. When I asked what he did for a living, he said he had started his own contracting firm the year before—just now little, but gettin on our feet pretty good, he told me. I considered that, factored in one kid here plus another on the way, and tore up the check. I told him I couldn’t take money for something that was just part of the job.
You have to remember I was only twenty-one.

  “It’s shells,” I murmured, lying back down. “Shells under the house. The tide’s in.”

  I loved that sound from the first, when I woke up and heard it in the dark of night, when I didn’t know where I was, who I was, or what parts were still attached. It was mine.

  It had me from hello.

“I’m done.”
Jess blinks.
“Done with what,” he says around the mouth of the bottle, raising one eyebrow and feigning disinterest as hard as he can, because it’s the only way to combat the dread that’s climbing up his chest. Because if Dean means what Jess thinks he means then he means he’s done with Jess. Done with whatever little game they’ve been playing all this time, done fighting for dominance, done having verbal battles and knocking his shoulder against him in the hallway at school and towering over him and looking at him like he’s a piece of shit.
And that’s just one more person to add to the list of people who’ve washed their hands of him.
His mother. His father. His entire family, in fact, except for Luke. Luke too, once he catches on that Jess isn’t following his rules, isn’t going to graduate, isn’t going to be worth anything, ever. Rory, soon enough, when she realizes the same thing.
At least when Dean is looking at him like he’s a piece of shit, he’s looking at him.

Your memory is bad. You have enough awareness to understand this. The one thing you know for certain is there is supposed to be someone with you. You don’t know if you’re not there anymore (you never left you never left you never-- ), or if he’s angry at you.


You like writing stories, but none of them are very good. Your thoughts don’t make sense so they’re abstract nonsense. The ways you weave in plot and narrative are not typical, not what the books on the shelves tell you. Sometimes you read them in the language they’re written in, and sometimes your mind is full of piercing light. You understand the passages, all the same.


There are people, humans (?), in this world. You think about it really hard to place. California? There’s a small little store that sells mostly fruit a couple of miles away. But when you tried conversing with the patrons, you couldn’t figure out the right language. At least, you like to think that’s the problem. Why they kept telling you they couldn’t understand you. It’s perfectly logical it wasn’t a language barrier, but rather the fact there’s no language you can make your thoughts linear enough for them to comprehend. Sometimes you miss him, because he understood.

To write a book like that, he thought, you'd have to begin by talking about how it was to measure distance in green mile markers, and the very width of the land, and how the wind sounded when you got out of your car at one of those rest areas in Oklahoma or North Dakota. How it sounded almost like words. You'd have to tell about the silence, and how the bathrooms always smelled of piss and the great hollow farts of departed travelers, and how in that silence the voices on the walls began to speak. The voices of those who had written and then moved on. The telling would hurt, but if the wind dropped and the spark lights of the farm came back, he'd do it anyway.

 So I cried. Those were real tears, the kind that come from deep inside. Down the hall, I could hear the Lisbon band strike up their victory song--so the home team had won, and good for them. Later, perhaps, Harry and a couple of his colleagues would roll up the bleachers and sweep away the crap that had been dropped beneath them.


 I stroked a big red A on top of his paper. Looked at it for a moment or two, then added a big red +. Because it was good, and because his pain had evoked an emotional reaction in me, his reader. And isn't that what A+ writing is supposed to do? Evoke a response?


 As for me, I only wish the former Christy Epping had been correct. I wish I had been emotionally blocked, after all. Because everything that followed--every terrible thing--flowed from those tears.

Что сделал отец, Сэм в свои тринадцать не представлял. Зато отлично понимал, как ему повезло, что нашел его в конечном итоге не Джон, а Дин. Брат даже разрешил оттащить Боунса в ближайший приют, а не бросать на произвол судьбы. Вытирая сопли и слезы о мохнатую собачью макушку, Сэм сорвал с ошейника круглый жетон и сунул в карман. Просто так.


Сначала глаза жгло обидой. Потом стыдом. Потом — и тем, и другим сразу. Когда Дин привез его к отцу, тот ни слова не сказал. Сэм стоял в дверном проеме и все держал бляшку зажатой между указательным и средним пальцами.

Волосы для него всегда были больной темой. А в пятнадцать, когда очередная их с Дином войнушка перешла все мыслимые и немыслимые границы, тем более. Слишком много приходилось тогда грызться с отцом за право не стричься регулярно под пресловутый полубокс.


Странное дело. Ведь если Сэму было тогда пятнадцать, то Дину — девятнадцать. Подсчитать — так выходит почти двадцать лет. Верится с большим трудом.

Сэм, как водится, проморгал. В последнее время все чаще вспоминаются такие моменты, кажется теперь: копни Сэм чуть глубже, и правда всплыла наружу бы куда раньше. Сэм глубже копнуть никогда не пытался: Дин всегда очень пекся о семье — все его выходки и слова очень удобно было списывать именно на эту зацикленность.