Well, I didn’t need to be so excited.
“We invited a few friends and neighbors,” Dad said as he opened the front door to his house. There were black and gold balloons everywhere. Plates and cups on the coffee table and every other table in the place. The smell of pizza and grilled chicken. My mouth watered. My stomach growled.
“Do you want something to eat?” he asked.
I started to write something on my notepad about not eating solid foods, but I stopped because I’d just noticed his shirt. It was an Imagine Dragons T-shirt.
I pointed to his shirt and wrote him a note: Did you go to the concert?
“Oh, yeah, it was great,” he said, smiling. “We ended up with only two tickets. Next time you can go, okay?”
Next thing I knew, my dad had his arm around my shoulders. Like I was a good friend. Like he was glad I was there.
“Hey, everyone,” he shouted above the music. “This is my son! He survived that plane crash and is here in one piece. How about that?”
His friends cheered.
“He’s the big man now! He can fly,” he said, his arm still around me. His friends laughing.
It didn’t feel right to be laughing about it.
“Hey, I’m just messing with you, Wayne,” he said, patting me on the back.
I faked a smile. How could he know what it felt like to be a plane-crash survivor? Not very many people did. We were a small but tight club.
Then I waited to see if anyone would talk to me or point at my face. But the lights were low and the music was turned up high and everyone was in a party mood.
“Go say hi to Carrot and Stephanie, why don’t ya?” Dad said.
Stephanie was my Dad’s new wife. His new kid was named Garrett, but everyone called him Carrot. I checked my watch. Why was Carrot still awake? When I’d come to my dad’s house at night before, Carrot was always in bed.
I wrote a note: Carrot’s awake?
“Why not! It’s New Year’s Eve,” Dad said.
Dad walked with me to Carrot’s room, his hand still around my shoulders. Only now, it didn’t feel friendly. It felt like a shove. He opened Carrot’s door. Carrot was on the floor on top of a rug that had little streets printed on it. He was running his cars up and down the streets.
“Hey, hon, look who’s finally here,” Dad said.
“Hi, Wayne,” Stephanie said. “Did you get something to eat?”
I needed to write all-purpose notes about my limited ability to eat. I would do that later. For now, I wrote: Thanks.
Carrot looked up at me, pointed at my head, and shouted for his mother. “Mama!” He ran and hid behind Stephanie.
“It’s okay. It’s just Wayne. He’s here to play with you,” Stephanie said.
“No, Mama!”
“Don’t be such a crybaby, Carrot,” Dad said. “It’s fine.” My dad left the room and went back to the party.
Carrot looked at me and squinted. He was still a little scared of my new face. Who could blame him?
“Your face is messed up,” Carrot said. “What happened?”
So my dad hadn’t told him about the accident? Figured.
I scanned the room for a toy airplane. There had to be one there. Carrot’s room was a virtual toy store. Sure enough, I found a blue-and-white model prop plane, flew it, and let it fall onto the carpet.
“Okay,” he said. “This is my favorite car.” He picked up a red Matchbox race car.
After a while, I heard fireworks go off. Carrot looked scared. A loud BOOM. And then POP, POP, POP. Carrot’s eyes were wide. He looked at Stephanie with a question on his face. Should I cry or not?
“Oh, what is he doing now?” Stephanie got off the floor and left the room. Carrot and I followed her.
In the living room, Dad was sitting on the old futon, setting off tiny fireworks across the coffee table. Yep. In the living room, across the coffee table. His friends were laughing and slapping him on the back. The next one to go off had a rapid-fire bang. It shot up three or four times and blackened the ceiling.
I coughed on the smoke and went dizzy. The ground fell out from underneath me. My chest hurt.
Don’t panic.
“You look green, Wayne,” Dad said. “Hey, here, set this off.”
He forced one into my hand. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I shook my head.
“Come on and have some fun, Wayne!” He set off a sparkler, and it might have been pretty except that the smell of it choked me. I stumbled back onto the futon.
I couldn’t breathe. My throat tightened. I coughed again. I suddenly thought, I shouldn’t be here. Nobody should be here. I grabbed Carrot and lit out through the front door. The smell of burning chemicals followed me. I gulped down the fresh outside air and bolted down the block. When I got to the streetlamp, I realized I still had Carrot in my arms.
What am I doing?
Carrot had that look on his face like he might cry any second.
I walked back down the street with Carrot. I patted him on the back.
It’s okay, Carrot.
Man, I wanted to talk to him, to say everything was okay and not to be scared. His face was red. I knew he was probably as confused as I was.
Down the street, another neighbor set off a load of fireworks. The stench of sulfur and smoke hung in the air. They went off again and again. It sounded like gunfire. So I carried Carrot to my dad’s front yard. There was Stephanie, hand on her hip, giving me a funny look.
“What are you doing, Wayne?” she asked. “That’s not very responsible, you know?”
She took Carrot from me and went back inside. I stood there like a stump. Like a stupid, hollowed-out block of wood.
I couldn’t go back inside. Loud pops and crackles were still going off. The music seemed to be louder. Someone popped a balloon. My heart raced. The earth felt like it was moving too fast underneath my feet. I thought I might throw up. And there it was. The exact same panic I had that day he did what he did back when I was eight.
I raced away from the neighborhood. I didn’t plan to. I ran, and once I was moving, I couldn’t stop. The sounds and the smoke and the dizzy feeling in my head forced me to the ground a couple of times. I tripped, scuffing my palms on the pavement. I guessed at where I was going. Was it two left turns out of his subdivision? Is that where it intersected with Crossland Road, one of the main streets between my house and Dad’s? My phone was in my pocket. I could text Mom. Grandpa would have to come get me. There would be that look in his eyes. That I told you so look.
I ran faster.
My jacket was back at my dad’s house. The cold night air chilled me to the bone. I tried to warm up by stepping up my pace. Then, relief! I finally sighted Crossland Road. There were plenty of cars racing down the road, people shouting Happy New Year! or Woo-woo! It was after midnight. The year had turned. Everyone in the world was happy. Everyone.
The inside of my body began to warm up. My ankle was tender and sore, but I wasn’t going back. No way. Not inside that house where he was trying to catch everything on fire. Even I knew that.
I kept running, streetlight to streetlight. Then the water tower. The water tower that watched over Cedar Drive with its steady red light. Nerd alert: A guy has never been so happy to see a water tower.
True story.
It was my compass. And it made me swallow the panic.
The sky had turned dark blue and clear, or maybe it had been that way all along and I just couldn’t see it through the smoke or didn’t notice it because I was dizzy. But now that I knew the way home, I focused on it. I made out the Big Dipper. I saw two planes crossing over, too. Full of passengers celebrating New Year’s Eve in the sky. People looking across the aisle, wishing a stranger a happy new year. It all made me think of 14A. So I quit thinking about it.
I turned onto Dogwood Street and then made a left onto Cedar Drive, where it was pretty quiet. I could hear my own breathing. Could hear my feet hit the pavement at a steady pace. I ran right in the middle of the road because, why not? Who would know?
I found the key to our house in the secret place Mom hides it. But I saw the blue light from the TV, which meant Grandpa was still up. It was too cold to wait it out, so I put the key in the lock.
The house was just the way I like a house—with no stupid people shooting off explosives inside it. Thankfully, Grandpa was in the big chair, snoring.
I ran to my room, closed the door quietly, and fell back onto my bed. I took deep, painful breaths through my raggedy throat. I tried to get my heart to slow down. Get my head on straight. Let my face thaw out and stop stinging. Make my ankle stop throbbing. It was like all my aches and injuries had been running five feet behind me and had suddenly caught up. I was in bad shape. I couldn’t risk going to the kitchen for ice.
Why couldn’t you just call Grandpa to pick you up, you dummy? Your ankle wouldn’t hurt. Your throat wouldn’t be on fire. Why didn’t you just call?
But I knew why. I didn’t call because we’d both have to admit that my dad could be a jerk. And yeah, he had done a really jerky thing tonight. But it’s one thing to call your own parent a jerk. You don’t want anyone else to do it. You’d rather feel sore all over and hope someone whose name rhymes with mad worries about how you got home.
True story.