CHAPTER FIVE
The wind blew all the clouds away that evening, and by nighttime, a great number of stars were visible. But in Mark's vantage point, they all looked like blurry lines of light. If he had not been more experienced with drinking, he would have been stumbling. But instead, he quietly slipped into his house, using the spare key, and tip-toed up to his room. Like a pro. It was late; about two o'clock in the morning, and the house was completely dark. The air was cool and dry, and it felt good on his skin. His mother was sleeping in the master bedroom with the door open, and she was snoring. Damn. As carefully as he could, he quickly opened the door to his room, which was proned to squeal when opened slowly. He didn't want to wake up his mother and be faced with a grilling session. Thankfully, it didn't happen.
Safely inside his room, he collapsed onto his bed. He was still high on pot and buzzed from alcohol, but coming down. He was dizzy and light-headed. He'd been at Joey's house, drinking and smoking for hours, and his body felt drained of all energy. The room spun around him, as he lay in the semi-dark. Some moonlight offered the ability to distinguish various shapes inside the room, but for the most part, the room was masked in darkness.
The bed felt comforting; warm and soft. He didn't change out of his clothes. He didn't even take off his jacket. He merely sighed and closed his eyes. He pulled his covers possessively over his body, and curled up on his side.
Immediately after talking with Meg, he'd headed for Joey's. "Something strong, Joey," he said, and was given chemicals with no questions asked. Laughter, chatter and smoke filled Joey's living room that evening, but Mark was quiet and serious. He stayed to himself. Beth was there, but he didn't talk much with her. He wasn't much in the mood to listen to her daily whines.
Before long, he fell asleep. But the dreams were disturbing, and vivid. Mark tossed and turned, his blood still thickened with the alcohol he'd been drinking all night.
They were in the woods, behind Cory's house. It was a lot of fun to go into the woods behind Cory's house because there were a lot of places to run and to hide, and some of the trees were good for climbing. That day Cory decided he wanted to play hide-and-go-seek. The woods stretched for miles, so they both knew that it was going to be a good game. Golden sunlight streamed down upon the earth, broken up by the leaves in the trees overhead, although dark storm clouds were forming in the distance.
"I'll hide first!" yelled Cory.
"I'll find you wherever you go!" challenged Mark.
Mark leaned against a tree and covered his eyes. He was going to count to one-hundred. "One, one-thousand, two, one-thousand, three, one-thousand..."
Mark could hear the shuffling of running feet. "...ninety-nine, one-thousand, one-hundred one-thousand. Ready or not, here I come!"
Mark looked behind trees, and steep hills. He looked behind every tree and hill within a quarter-of-a mile radius, but Cory was not there. He had mysteriously disappeared. Mark could hear the crackling of thunder overhead. It looked like it was about to rain.
"Cory, where are you?" he called, projecting his voice deep into the woods. Only the sound of echoes came back. Cory was gone.
"Here I am!" From behind a tree, out jumped little Megan. She wore two short little braids on either side of her face and had bangs. She wore a short yellow dress, with patent leather shoes and lace socks. She was a beautiful second-grader, with dark hair and light skin.
"Megan, we have to find Cory!" Mark said. "He's lost in the woods!"
"No, silly," she said. "He's not lost. Let's play a game." She began to run away. "Catch me if you can!" she hollered.
"Don't go!" Mark pleaded. He didn't want her to leave, because he was afraid she would be lost forever. But the little girl wouldn't stop. She kept running, and Mark chased after her. "Stop, Megan, stop!"
When he finally caught up to her, she was giggling. He tackled her and then they were both lying on the ground, then rolling in the leaves. "You're silly," she said.
"Why's that?" he said. He kissed her on the face. He'd always wanted to do that.
"Because you forgot to say please."
He was smiling at her now, glad that she hadn't gotten lost, too. "Please. But I didn't ask you for anything, Megan."
"Yes you did, silly Mr. Potato-head," she said. "Did you already forget?"
Bewildered, he looked at her adoringly and said, "What did I ask you for?" He looked up at the sky, which threatened to open up and pour down upon them at any moment.
She giggled, and threw leaves up in the air. Lightning crashed, and thunder boomed in the distance. "If you can't remember I'm not telling..."
Before he could pull out of her the information he so desperately wanted, a voice spoke up. "Pull the trigger, Mark." It was not Megan who'd said it. The voice had come from out of nowhere. It was Cory's voice, but he was nowhere to be found. Mark looked all around, but no one was there. Mark looked at his hand. He was holding a gun, and the gun was pointed directly at Megan's head.
Mark lurched out of bed, and coughed and coughed. It was only a dream. He shook, and sweated all over. His head still spun from the drugs, so he got out of bed, and poured himself a glass of water, then chugged it down. Then he bent his head, and began to cry.
"Meg?"
"Yes?" They were in the hallway. It was Monday morning, and Mark had seen her enter the school as he'd parked his car. He'd finally found her at her locker on the first floor. It was twenty minutes before homeroom.
"I've been thinking about that conversation we had," he said, as he approached her at her locker, out of breath, "and I'm glad we got to talk."
Meg was visibly surprised. She placed a thick Chemistry textbook in her locker, and turned around, to face him. She looked tired. There were bags under her eyes and her hair was a mess. She put down the bookbag she was carrying and closed the door of her locker.
"I don't get to visit with people like that very often, and I just wanted to tell you that," he said, in a low voice. He was telling the truth. It was even an understatement. He never got to visit with people like that.
She gave him a quick, harried smile. "How did you find me?" she asked. "I never seem to spot you when I look for you at school."
He laughed quietly. "Maybe you don't look well enough," he said. He looked around. Then he added to the comment, "At school I like to be inconspicuous; that way, I don't get in as much trouble."
She gave him a flirting look; something out of the ordinary for Meg to do. Given her shyness, it was downright daring. He was taken aback. "You mean if the teacher doesn't see you cutting class he can't give you a detention?"
"Yeah." He was glad to see her, and this gladness surprised him. She zipped closed her bag.
"Where is Beth?" she asked, noticing that he was alone.
"She's with her friends." He shifted the weight on his feet, then scratched his temple. "Look, Meg..." He sensed that she liked him. He could sense her growing attachment for him. He could see the emotion in her eyes every time she looked at him now.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry about the way I treated you that first day..." He looked into her eyes with an expression he hoped came across as sincerity.
She interrupted him. "I caught you off guard, and I shouldn't have done that. After several years, I come out of nowhere? I should be the one to apologize." She looked at her hands.
"No, that's not it," he said, giving her a more serious look. "I should have been more kind to you. I have no excuse for myself."
"Then what is it?" she asked.
He took a deep breath. "Maybe it's just that you remind me of him, that's all."
"Who, Cory?" She was so casual about it. Mark could hardly believe it.
"Yeah." Their gazes locked. A chill ran through Mark. He looked at her face, and it was the same as Cory's. Different coloring, but same bone structure, same shape eyes, and nose, and chin. He remembered the dream he'd had last night, and shuddered.
"Does it bother you that much?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No." She looked down again. He didn't want her to leave. "Can I take you home again today, after school?" he asked.
"If you want to," she said.
"It's the least I can do, after everything," he said.
"You don't owe me anything, Mark," she said, quietly. "But if you want to take me home, I'll let you." They said their good-byes, and left for homeroom.
She was waiting by the flower-pots at the South entrance of the school, alone, when it came time for him to pick her up. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
She nodded. "Yes." He led her to his car, which was parked closeby. He cleared a place for her in the passenger's seat before she sat down. "I got this car as a guilt present," he said, as he buckled himself in. "My father said he had a few hundred extra dollars that were just burning a hole in his pocket."
"That sounds feasible," she said. "Maybe he was telling you the truth."
"There's something you should understand about my father," he said. "The divorce cleaned him out pretty good and my father doesn't make a whole lot of money. There's no way he would have extra money just lying around. It was a guilt present, no doubt. He'd probably been planning it for months."
"It's a nice car," she said. "Makes me wish I had a driver's license."
He turned the ignition and backed out of the parking slot. Kids were everywhere-- pouring out of the school entrance, walking along the sidewalks, and in the parking lot. He wove his car through pedestrians and made his way to the exit.
"Does your father do that a lot?"
"What, bribe me?"
"Yeah."
"He's been doing it for years now. Every time I see him he gives me cash and prizes."
"Does your mom know about it?"
"No."
"What do you do with the money?"
He hesitated. He knew very well what the answer to her question was. "Drugs, mostly," he said.
She made only the tiniest reaction. It was as though she already knew. "Lots of them?" she asked.
"As many as I can find," he affirmed.
"Doesn't it take a toll on your health?" she said.
"Probably. But it's something I never think about."
She changed the subject. "Did you have a good day at school?" she asked.
He looked at the rear-view mirror. "These days, no day is a good day at school for me. I'm lucky if I make it through the week alive."
"That bad?"
"Probably worse."
"But why? You're so intelligent."
"I used to think so. But over the years, school has become harder and harder for me, and now I'm just waiting to graduate, if you know what I mean."
"Is it just school that's difficult, or is it your life, too?"
That made him silent.
"What's it like having divorced parents?" she asked.
"I don't think about it very much, but if I did, I'd say it's like playing for two opposing teams at one time."
Mark was an only child, and while growing up, he often asked his parents why they never tried to give him a sibling. "One is enough," they'd say. Then they'd add, "But it's none of your business, Mark. Only grown-ups can decide that."
The real story, he found out later, was that his mother, Judith, had gone through hysterectomy surgery shortly after Mark was born, because the doctors told her that she was a high-risk mother due to her high blood pressure and anemia. His father was so disappointed in this decision that he went out that day to an adoption agency for a preliminary interview, but the reply came back from Judith, "Mark would not accept a child whose birth parents are different from his own."
In actuality, Judith Powell did not want to have another child to take care of; she was tired from taking care of her baby Mark already. A hysterectomy was not even a medical necessity, but Judith downplayed the word, "optional" for her husband.
But both parents soon made it a habit to blame Mark for things. Not spending much time together anymore? The baby's been sick. Didn't get any work done? The baby was crying. No sex life? The baby. Always the baby.
Mark was a shy, sensitive child. He rarely acted up, but his mother and father still found ways to blame him for practically everything going wrong in their marriage. "We shouldn't have had a child," his father once said, out of exasperation, and Mark had heard it.
It should have stunted his emotional growth back then, but it did not. He was sometimes emotional, but not overly so. He was generally a happy child, with a mind for intelligence and a gentle, polite nature. The real moment of change came at the age of nine, at the moment the bullet left the gun. And from then on, Mark was never the same. A quiet, unassuming child became an emotionally imbalanced youth, and then an angry, rebellious teen right before his mother's very eyes.
Who was to say what caused the divorce? Certainly key elements were already missing from their relationship before the incident and the hospital stay. But a sick child could naturally bring to mind the illness existing within the marriage already. Mark was never told what went on while he was away, but he knew that to bring it up would probably just be opening up a path that neither of them would want to traverse.
And after the divorce, the two parents continued to blame Mark for things while at the same time coddling him for the remorse they felt for breaking up. The bipolar nature of their treatment towards Mark left him feeling confused, and angry.
Meg spoke up. "Do you do drugs because of your parents?" she asked.
He shook his head, surprised at her question. "No."
"Then why?"
He couldn't answer. To his friends, it was just fun. All he could think to say was, "It's mindless, Meg. That's all it is." The answer seemed to satisfy her, and she dropped the subject. They drove to Meg's house, and he left her off. After he watched her ascend the front steps to her house, he lit a cigarette, and drove away.