The more time we spent together, the more I tried to change her.
“I’m addicted,” she admitted finally. “I’d miss the challenge and the buzz I get from the game. Let’s do another wedding.” “No way.”
“What did you do with your money?” she asked. “The money we split from that wedding party?”
I hadn’t done anything with it. I’d hidden it in my room. I was saving it for an emergency. I never did let her take me on that spending spree. “I don’t know,” I answered, knowing she’d bug me for saving it.
“I don’t know what I did with my share either. Just spent it on this and that.”
Things weren’t that bad at the group home. In fact, it was pretty quiet until one night in the middle of July. We were all sitting in the living room, watching a really bad science-fiction movie about psychic aliens who read your mind and then sucked your brain out. There was a loud explosion in the backyard. Darren led the charge as we all ran outside. Brian was lying flat out in the middle of the yard, unconscious. His face was a horrible red, and his clothes were burned and blackened. There were scraps of metal around the yard and a small fire in the grass where something had exploded.
“Call 9-1-1!” Darren shouted, and I flipped open my old phone and punched in the numbers. When asked what the emergency was, I had a hard time explaining. But I guess I said enough to get an ambulance headed our way.
Connor started walking around the yard in circles, ranting. “Brian, you freaking idiot,” he said. “You could have killed us all. You dumb, stupid piece of shit.”
This really pissed off Kyle, who I had never seen really angry before. Kyle said, “Shut up, Connor. Just shut up,” and then Kyle kicked him hard in the ass, making Connor slam forward into the high wooden fence.
Darren started cpr on Brian and told Noah to go watch for the ambulance and wave it down. “What can I do?” I asked.
“Pray,” Darren said. I didn’t know if he meant it, but I tried. I wasn’t at all sure I believed in God, but I silently asked for Brian not to die. I felt helpless standing there, but a strange feeling came over me. It was like someone had heard my request. There was a voice in my head, the voice of my mother, telling me everything would be okay. Looking at Brian, it didn’t seem that way at all.
When the paramedics arrived, Darren went with Brian to the hospital. He didn’t get back until late that night. Connor was sulking in his room. Noah, Kyle and I were sitting in the kitchen.
“He’s gonna be okay,” Darren said. “The burns are bad, but they’ll heal. But it’s not going to be pretty.” He looked at the three of us. “Can anyone tell me what he was up to?”
“He was making a bomb,” Kyle said. Kyle roomed with Brian. “Some kind of homemade bomb he found out about on the Internet. I thought it was just talk, but I guess he figured out how to do it. I’m sorry. I should have said something.”
Darren looked at Kyle and then at Noah and me. “No secrets,” he said. “Let’s keep it all out in the open. Even if you think you are ratting on someone.” I couldn’t tell if he was mad at us for some reason or mad at himself for letting something like this happen. He ran his hand through his hair. It was the first time I’d seen Darren when he didn’t seem to have it all together. “Do you think he was hoping to blow us all up?” he asked no one in particular.
“No,” Kyle said. “He likes it here. Sort of. He said that. He had this thing about wanting to do something, um, dangerous. I thought it was just an act.”
Darren shook his head. Then he got up and looked around the kitchen. We were all a bit shocked when he clenched his fist like he was going to hit something. Instead, he kicked over a chair and walked out of the room.
Things were quiet around the house for a week or so after that. We visited Brian a few times at the hospital. He apologized to all of us and said he’d never do something that stupid again. Looking at his burned face, I couldn’t help but think what a sorry lot we were. Each of us was damaged in some way and looking for a way to act it out. But I knew it wasn’t just us. There were a lot of screwed-up people out there.
On our way back to the house, I said some of what I was thinking to Darren.
“You’re so right, Josh. I don’t know why it is, but you are bang on. Why don’t you do something about it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got a life ahead of you. Why not try to heal some of that damage?” He looked at me and he was dead serious.
I almost laughed. “I have a hard enough time holding myself together. I doubt I could do much good for anyone else.”
“Yes, you could. Use your own pain to do some good for others.” It was the preachy Darren that I knew.
In those days after the bomb I did some serious thinking about where I was and where I was going. I thought a lot about Lindsey. I missed her even though I knew that she was trouble. If I hung out with her long enough, she’d get me involved in another one of her scams. I figured she could probably talk her way out of anything. Or she would just cry and get away with it. But not me.
I hadn’t heard from her for a while, and she wasn’t answering my calls. That didn’t feel right. I wondered if maybe she’d lost interest in me and moved on. When she finally did answer her phone, I asked her what she’d been up to.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time on the Internet,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Just having some fun,” she said. “Man, summer can be so boring.”
“Not around here,” I said, and I told her all about our recent catastrophe. But I was afraid to ask her more about what she was doing on the Internet, afraid to hear what kind of scams she was up to.