The morning his class sharpened their number two pencils and filed into the high school to bubble in their SATs, Robert finally navigated a virtual fighter jet between the Twin Towers. One of the simulator’s tougher tricks, and one that wouldn’t be included in future versions, he was sure. He usually crashed into the right tower, flames filling his windshield, flickering over his screen-reflected face. But this time he tilted the plane just so, sliding neatly between the two. The view through his windshield sloped as he skimmed the cloned buildings, brushing past them.
He lifted Hulk’s paw for a high five and kept flying.
* * *
The cafeteria buzzed with students, but since no one cared what Robert and Joey talked about, they could discuss their burgeoning drug empire openly, over Joey’s greasy, bubbled pizza slice and Robert’s crushed package of peanut butter crackers.
“You got any more?”
“More what?”
“You know.”
“Yeah, I got some more.” Robert retrieved a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Listen. You tell me: Am I reading a list of new animals discovered this year from my current event for Ms. Tell’s class, or the name of the deathcore band I’m going to start?” Robert held up his hand. “Number one: tyrant leech king.”
“Band. You gonna bring them in?”
“Wrong. Number two: dragonfish.”
“Animal,” Joey guessed. “Are they all animals?”
“Ding, ding, ding! Correct!” Robert laughed and shook his head. “This one, he’s gnarly lookin’. Number three: blue fang skeleton tarantula.”
“Dumbass, you gave it away. Animal, obviously.”
“Oh yeah.” Robert crumpled up the paper. “And ‘bald parrot’ would be a very lame band.”
“Are you gonna bring ’em in or what, man?”
“Yeah, I’ll do it. When am I gonna see some money?”
“All in due time.” Joey took a swig of milk. His mouth was rimmed with white, like a clown who’d been interrupted in the makeup chair.
“You’re disgusting.”
“Thank you.” Joey grinned.
“I mean it about the money. I’m going to have to go mob on you soon.”
Joey snickered. “‘Go mob’ on me?”
“Like, break your fingers.” Robert wished he could sound more menacing, but even his threats sounded like jokes. “Joey Kovach sleeps with the fishes.”
“Dude, I am not going to rip you off, all right?” Joey spread his hands. “Quit acting like it.”
“All right,” Robert said.
Joey was his only friend. If he couldn’t trust Joey, who could he trust?
* * *
The first Adderall had fizzed in her blood, firecrackered in her brain.
Deb had been a daydreamer when she younger, her grades always solidly mediocre. In elementary school, the fantasies revolved around wearing brand-new white breeches and shining black riding boots and jumping her own Thoroughbred, which would be chocolate brown and named Abracadabra. By high school, diversions took the form of boys. Later, one boy, who’d knocked her up and kept her from going to even community college. But she’d grown out of her inattentiveness. Or so she thought.
Now she was just exhausted.
When she’d signed up for Real Estate Fundamentals in July, Deb had been picturing her face on ads at the bus station, in the Tide. Smiling, bathed in soft light, confident. A local celebrity, really, like Laura Roth. Trust Deb MacPherson, the posters would advise, to find your dream home.
The dispatch center was a windowless cave. When she stepped out for her smoke breaks, she squinted like she was coming out of hibernation. She talked to dozens of people a day, sometimes while they were experiencing the worst moments of their lives, and she never saw a single one of their faces. If she were a Realtor, she’d have a reason to dress up. She’d shake people’s hands. They’d know her name.
And the money, even if she just sold a house or two a month, would give her a cushion. She could save to enroll Robert in something, somewhere, once he graduated. She didn’t delude herself that he was still college-bound, not with the grades he’d been getting, but she would be able to pay for vocational training. Her son was certainly smart enough to be an electrician, an EMT, a graphic designer.
And maybe, eventually, she could buy her own horse.
The class met at Robert’s high school. Something about being in that school’s stuffy, boxy rooms melted her focus. A pre-class Diet Coke failed to perk her up. When she’d seen those posters with Laura Roth’s carefully straightened hair, her snappy red suit, she’d had no idea that the course itself would be so boring.
During her third class, somewhere between joint tenancy and community tenancy, her chin crashed into her chest as she nodded off.
The state of Washington required ninety classroom hours to obtain a real estate license. She hadn’t made it through two and a half.
She slipped from the classroom as quietly as possible and walked down the dim, empty hallway, hoping that a little movement would rouse her. She snuck out for a quick cigarette, but back in the classroom, she still felt one step behind, struggling to finish taking notes while her classmates were already opening their textbooks. She didn’t hear what page she was supposed to turn to, and by the time she found it, everyone was closing their books again.
On her way out of the class, she passed Barry Lancaster’s office. His name on that closed door, right over its frosted glass pane, was what reminded her of the Adderall. She could practically hear his voice again, reassuring her over the phone that Adderall was a safe drug, one that could help her son reach his potential, smooth out his discipline problems, pave a path for his future.
She’d filled one bottle for Robert as soon as Dr. Rishni had prescribed it, on their way home from the appointment, in fact. And then Robert hadn’t finished it, and somewhere along the way she’d misplaced it. Wasn’t in the medicine cabinet. Wasn’t on the kitchen counter. Had she mislaid it cleaning, somehow? She’d dumped Robert’s book bag and rifled through his things, making sure he hadn’t gotten any dumb ideas about selling the stuff. Deb had driven herself crazy looking for the missing bottle, but it had never turned up. So she’d told herself she’d made up her mind that Robert wasn’t going to keep taking the pills anyway, so what did it matter if they’d accidentally gotten tossed in the garbage? Then about a month later, Deb had gotten another call from Lancaster, asking her how she thought the meds were working, expressing concern about Robert’s still-dismal grades. And so she’d called Rishni’s office and gotten the prescription refilled. So committed had she been to straightening her son out once and for all that she’d asked Ready Drug to fill it automatically, and so a month later another bottle had been ready for her, surprising her when she’d only run in for lipstick and cigarettes. Despite the fact that she’d once again changed her mind and decided that rather than medication, what her son truly needed was a solid kick in the ass, she’d paid for the pills and stuffed them in her nightstand next to the other bottle Robert had never finished.
Two hours before class the next week, she swallowed one with a swig of soda in the dispatch center parking lot on her break.
After the initial jitters, the drug careened through her like a roller coaster, and she found even real estate taxes incredibly interesting. Her notes were a masterpiece of acronyms and highlighting, her capital letters marching across page after page. She did the week’s homework as soon as she got back to the trailer, and had it completed in less than an hour.
The next day she felt a little foggy. A headache pulsed behind her eyes. But if one pill had made her this productive, this sharp, why not two next time? She popped them before her next class and waited for the rush to fade like an outgoing tide.
But the motivation and focus never returned. Her hands shook. Her feet tapped a nervous rhythm on the classroom floor. Her thoughts galloped, and though she fiddled with her pencil like a twirler leading a parade, she didn’t take a single note. Two pills was clearly one too many, the fine line between medicated and high as a jet plane breached.
This must be what my son feels like all the time, she realized.
After class she didn’t sleep. Instead, she cleaned the trailer. She dusted and then scooped out the corners of the windowsills with a Q-tip. She scrubbed the toilet, shook out the rugs. She organized her socks by color.
Or so she thought. The next morning she’d find she was so distracted she’d thrown clean clothes into the hamper with dirty ones, completely misplaced her own hairbrush, and left every kitchen appliance unplugged.
But now, armed with a bottle of Windex, she sprayed and wiped, sprayed and wiped, sprayed and wiped each window until it seemed she’d polished the glass into night-black oblivion. Like she could climb through the empty window frame and fly out of the trailer.
Instead, she studied her own reflection, imposed over the dark spruces at the edge of the yard, and remembered the night, over ten years ago, that Robert Senior had tried to disappear.
After he’d hit and killed a man, Robert’s father had ended up back at their trailer, this time tottering up the front steps and knocking on the door. Deb had answered and, moved by the thick tears of a man she had once thought she’d marry, had allowed Rob to wait crouching on the porch while she packed him a bag: a granola bar, an apple, a bath towel, a can of Diet Coke, and five cigarettes rationed from her own pack. She’d pressed the cigarettes into his hot, slick palm and bundled the rest into a trash bag, knotting it closed. He’d asked for money; she’d refused, and then shut the door. She’d watched out the window as he stumbled across the yard, rounding the trailer’s back corner, where he’d pass right under his sleeping son’s bedroom window before bounding into the forest. She’d turned away before she had to watch him disappear.
At the time, she’d thought she was helping her son’s father. She kept silent during the manhunt, when Sheriff O’Shay came to the trailer and asked if she knew where Rob might run to. But now she wondered if Rob would have been better off if she’d turned him in. She could have stalled him, said she was going to get some money, while she quietly called in the tip. Even later, she could have pointed the posse searching for him in the right direction.
Rob might have gotten a lighter sentence if he hadn’t made Sheriff O’Shay look like such a fool. If the search for him hadn’t dragged on for days, while the Tide slammed the Sheriff’s Department and island residents railed against their incompetence. If Rob hadn’t given the sheriff a black eye when they finally dragged him out of the woods, if Deb had made the call before Rob could even part those pine branches, he might not have gotten the maximum sentence for his crime: eighteen years. The difference was what kept Rob Kelley behind bars today.
Branches pogoed. Her heart hopped like a startled rabbit. She half expected Rob to step out of the woods with a caveman beard and the towel she’d given him knotted to a stick, roaring about how he’d survived by trapping critters and munching on crickets.
Finally, he’d have a true story to tell.
An animal, a blur of fur with twin flashlight eyes, darted across the yard and under her neighbor’s porch.
She wiped away Rob’s memory like just another smudge, and shut all of the trailer’s blinds.
She was cleaning her own room, peering under the bed, when she spotted an amber cylinder lying on its side. She stretched and grasped until she could grab it. That original bottle of pills, the one that had seemed to walk away. It’d been here all along. She hid it in her nightstand drawer with the others.
She’d been right not to keep Robert on this medication, and she was going to stop taking it herself. She’d keep the bottles around, just in case, until she had finished her ninety hours of classwork. Then she’d flush every last little blue tab down the toilet.