Changing Tyler-Chapter Seven

It was a little past four in the morning when the front door slammed shut and heavy footsteps stomped down the hallway. I came awake suddenly, startled out of a unfathomable sleep by the noise, popping up in my bed like one of my preferred breakfast foods. Doug was home, and from the sound of things, not in a good mood.

Great! Just what I need! I groaned. I lay back down and rolled over, pulling the pillow over my head. I just didn’t crave to hear it. Not in the middle of the night and of course not after the day that I’d had.

After Dylan had left, I’d tried to do some homework but I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the algebraic equations. no thing appeared to be to make sense to me anymore – not the numbers, not my life, no thing. I spent the rest of the day watching movie scenes and trying to figure out why I’d come out to Dylan. Why had I told “yes” when I had each intention of saying “no?”

Did I subconsciously desire to come out?  Or had my nerves over being Dylan’s trainer been also much for me to handle? Was that it? Had I gone temporarily mad?  I didn’t know for sure. I was just grateful that this chab took it as well as that guy had. The situation could have gotten ugly fast.

he had flat-out asked me, without bothering to beat around the bush. I hadn’t offered the information. He’d said this chab asked coz I hung out with Billy. Was that the only reason? Had Billy told smth to somebody? I didn’t wish to believe that Billy would have outed me when this guy knew I wasn’t willing. he was my best friend, right? Even Billy, as self-absorbed and attention-hungry as that guy was, wouldn’t have done that, right?

The real question, the one I kept coming back to, was why had Dylan asked me? If this guy was as comfortable with it as this chab said this guy was, as this chab seemed to be, then why did he need to know in the first place?

I had a ton of questions and no answers.

Then there was Billy. He’d had his big date with Robbie-the-Hunk that night. If my nerves weren’t jangled sufficiently for one day, this guy had to add to it by disappearing off the face of the earth.

I’d stayed up until three-thirty waiting to hear from Billy. The clubs in Chester closed at two, which meant that either Billy had gone home with Robbie-the-Hunk, or he’d wrapped his car around a tree on the Interstate. he hadn’t called and this guy hadn’t answered his cell phone when I’d given in and dialed his number.

Even when he’d gone home with a lad to spend the night he’d always called or messaged me. Except for tonight, and it was driving me crazy.

You’re being stupid, I said myself.  Maybe his cell phone was off. Maybe his battery died. Maybe he forgot to call, went to sleep and didn’t hear it ringing. Maybe the moon was made of bleu cheese and underclothing models would serve me breakfast in sofa the next day.

Hey, everything is possible, right?

This is ridiculous. You’re not his mother. he doesn’t have to call u each time he farts, I thought, punching the pillow, shoving it back under my head and trying to go back to sleep.

Doug was still stomping around, bumping into the walls in the hallway, rattling the pics mom had hung there. I heard him go into the bathroom, heard the familiar sounds of him puking his guts up, and hoped he’d pass out with his head in the lavatory and drown.

I wasn’t that lucky.

I heard him tramp into the bedroom, heard something, probably a shoe, hit the wall.

“Darlene! Wake your slothful gazoo up! I’m sick!” this chab bellowed, slurring badly. “Darlene! Do you hear me? acquire up!”

That bastard! mom was exhausted – this babe deserved to sleep and not have to get up to take care of a forty-five year old deadbeat drunk at four o’clock in the morning.

I lay on the couch as stiff as a board, listening hard, terrified that I would hear a slap, that that guy would hit her. this guy hadn’t before, not that I knew of, but I was always afraid that he would and I wasn’t sure what I would do if this guy did.

this guy quieted down. mom must have gotten up and done soever it was that that babe did to get him settled and into daybed. After a while, I could hear him snoring.

I don’t know why that babe put up him. It was just some other question for which I didn’t have an answer. Was this babe lonely? Was this babe scared? I felt that way too, most of the time in fact, but you didn’t see me bringing a loud, obnoxious dickhead home to live with us. I was going to need to have a talk with mommy soon. It probably wouldn’t do any fine – I’d tried before – but it couldn’t hurt.

I never heard from Billy on Sunday, either. By Sunday afternoon, I was ready to climb the walls, worried half out of my head. I’d called his folks, who not merely didn’t know where he was, but didn’t seem to care, either. Instead, his father sounded as if that guy were annoyed that I’d interrupted their lunch.

He’d suggested that I call that ally of Billy’s, the one with the bad haircut and the waitress mother. Then he’d hung up.

Jerk.

The ally he’d been talking about was me. I’d call myself, but I didn’t think I’d wish to talk to me.

I hung up and decided to give Billy one more pair of hours in advance of I called out the Marines to look for him. By “Marines,” of course, I meant me.

Doug was hung-over – large surprise. That meant no noise, no Guitar Hero, no breathing also loudly. mamma was supposed to be off from work, but she’d picked up a shift for one more waitress and had been gone before I woke up.

I spent part of the day locked in my room, forcing myself to finish my homework. I wasn’t a star student, I didn’t delude myself into thinking I’d receive a scholarship, but I thought if I could at least pull off a three point oh, I could get into the local community college. Take a few classes. get a job, an apartment. A life.

Later that afternoon, when I still hadn’t heard from Billy, I decided I needed to at least try to discover him. My best bet was to mosey on down to the Home Depot and have a talk with Robbie-the-Hunk. I grabbed my keys and wallet, pushing ’em one as well as the other into the pockets of my cargo pants, slipped past Doug and out the front door.

I slammed it behind me as hard as I could, and hoped the noise would make Doug’s head explode.

The store was a couple of miles from my house, an simple ride through mostly residential neighborhoods. My mind was spinning like the spokes on my wheels, racing with every possible, horrible fate that might have befallen Billy.  this chab could have been mugged, beaten and left for dead in an alley, or taken by a serial killer. Maybe he’d been drugged and sold into white thraldom. Hell, for all I knew, this chab could have been abducted by aliens.

I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, also absorbed in the grisly fates for Billy that my mind concocted at lightning speed. A horn blared, a car clipped the back fender of my bicycle, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air. I landed hard, rolling a hardly any times before I stopped and sat up, dazed, scraped to Hell and back, but still basically in one piece. There was a lump already rising on my forehead, but I didn’t think it was serious. I hadn’t blacked out, and I knew my name and where I was – I figured that was a precious sign, at least. I’d be fine, but unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for my bike. It was DOA. It lay in pieces, scattered across the road way.

When the car hit the bike, I was thrown free but my trusty steed had been dragged under the car’s tires. It lay in a twisted heap of savaged metal twenty five yards away.

The car never even slowed down.

Remember a whilst back in English class when I commiserated with Dylan and the times in life when nothing short of the F-bomb would suffice? This was one of these times.

Except that I didn’t hiss it under my breath like Dylan had. I screamed it, valuable and loud, as I limped over to where my bike’s carcass lay on the asphalt. “Oh, dude. This sucks!” I gave the bike a hard kick, as if the hit and run were the bike’s fault.

I heard tires crunch on the gravel behind me, and for a moment wondered if the hit-and-run driver had returned to finish the job. When I turned, I was surprised to see Dylan getting out of his Mustang.

“Holy shit, Tyler! What happened?” this guy asked, trotting over to me. “Are u okay, dude?”

I nodded, likewise upset to speak. together we stared down at the wreckage, sharing a mutual pont of time of silence for the untimely death of my only means of transportation.

“Did the lad take off?” Dylan asked, peering into the distance as if he might spot the bastard who’d left me for dead on the side of the road.

“Yeah. The arsehole at no time even slowed down.”

“Oh, dude. You’re bleeding, Tyler!” Dylan said. Were those charming eyes of his filling with worry and sympathy, or had I hit my head harder than I’d thought in the accident? I chose to believe the former.

“It’s nothing,” I said, swiping at the blood that leaked down my face from the scraped lump on my forehead. It was true enough. I wasn’t bleeding to death or anything, but it was nice to think that he’d been concerned.

“Well, come on. Let’s load the bike into my trunk and I’ll give you a lift home,” Dylan said, toeing the remains of my bike.

“Yeah, ok. Thanks.” Maybe it was his sympathy, or just the fact that this guy was the closest warm body, but I unloaded all over him. “God, this sucks! It wasn’t bad enough that my stepdad came home drunk another time last night, or that Billy disappeared off the face of the earth, but did that jerk indeed have to use me as a Crash Dummy?”

“Whoa…Billy disappeared? Nobody knows where this chab is?”

“He absolutely pulled the Invisible fellow action. No trace of him anywhere. His parents don’t know where he is and don’t care; he hasn’t called, hasn’t messaged – no thing. I was heading down to Home Depot to put the thumbscrews to the chap he went out with yesterday to watch if I could track Billy down, but now…”  I waved at the bike in frustration. “I just can’t catch a freaking break!”

“No problem. I’ll run u down there,” Dylan said, hefting my bike up and carrying it to the car.

“You don’t need to do that. I know how constricted your schedule is, man.”

Dylan opened his trunk and stuffed the bike in, slamming it shut. “It’s cool. Come on, receive in,” he said, walking around the car to the driver’s seat. that guy slid in, looking as if he’d been born to drive a muscle car. Dylan and the Mustang fit together perfectly.

I opened the passenger door and pushed my head into the car. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I can walk…”

“Yeah, right, and bleed all over the highway. Maybe we should go the hospital instead, Tyler. That knot on your head doesn’t look so good.”

“No, no hospital,” I said, “but a lift to Home Depot would be great. Thanks.” I slid into the bucket seat, closing the door and buckling up. In truth, now that the shock had worn off, I could feel the ache starting. My neck hurt, my head throbbed, my legs ached…suddenly I felt as though I’d been, well, hit by a car. I kept my mouth shut, though. Finding Billy was greater quantity important to me than going to the hospital for a Band-aid.

We made the drive to Home Depot in near silence. I didn’t know what I’d do if Robbie-the-Hunk wasn’t working. I needed to find Billy. I was convinced that the feeling I’d had in the earlier part of the week, the one where I felt something was terribly wrong, had to do with him.

That feeling had felt nothing like it did now. Then, it had been as if something was just off kilter; now, as we pulled in to a slot in the parking lot and I stared up at the brick face of the building and the clutter of tractors, fencing, and barbeque displays, it changed.

In short, I was scared out of my mind.