Aaron (2 page)

Aaron leaned against the gleaming surface of the kitchen counter and grabbed a banana. He wasn’t hungry, but eating something helped to defray the constant arguments with his mother about his weight loss. Though he never said it aloud, it didn’t matter if he ate, or if he wore his seatbelt, or even if he looked both ways before crossing. He was dead anyway; what difference did it make? It was only a matter of time before his body realized it, and he would finally have some peace.

Moving a little closer to the wall by sheer instinct, Aaron heard the thundering footsteps of what could only be his younger brothers, as they pounded down the stairs. They both greeted him with a quick “Hey, man” before making their way to the table. Chairs clattered and scraped against the wood floor as the boys sat down with their father. John Downing started talking to Anthony about a play from the younger boy’s last soccer game, and it wasn’t long before both of the boys were laughing and joking with their dad while Aaron stood seemingly forgotten in the corner of the kitchen. Only their quick, anxious glances gave away the fact that he was never forgotten.

For over two years it had been that way: polite nods, the briefest of required conversations. People treated him like a china doll: one wrong word and he would crack. For the most part, sadly, it was true. Though his younger brothers knew, at least conceptually, what had happened to him, sometimes they did say things that set him off. Allen would mention Juliette, or Anthony would tell him he was going to kill him if he didn’t stop clicking the pen in his hand. They were horrified afterward by their slips. Of course any normal person would have taken such comments in stride, but Aaron was far from normal.

He had become a complete stranger to his own family.

At the time Aaron’s world had changed, Allen had been fourteen and Anthony only ten. Aaron knew that, while he was still recovering in intensive care, his parents had sat his brothers down and explained as much as they could to them, given their young ages. Allen understood for the most part, but they had tried to shield Anthony from some of the horrific truths. Unfortunately, Aaron couldn’t hide all his scars, so eventually Anthony was faced point-blank with the brutality that had been visited upon his hero. When Aaron first came home from the hospital, the younger Downing boys hadn’t understood that their older brother, the one they had played catch with, the one who had taken them to the movies and the arcade, was a different person. He wasn’t fun. He wasn’t outgoing. He was frightening and screamed in his sleep every night, terrifying them to the point that they started to sleep in the rapidly finished basement. Aaron had offered, halfheartedly to move to the basement, but the cement walls and the cold concrete floor reminded him of the place where the men had taken him. He couldn’t even make it down the steps. Thankfully, his parents wanted him close so they could help him.

It wasn’t too long before they had started to sedate him, anyway.

His mother was already nearby at the stove, finishing up their eggs, by the time Aaron came out of his thoughts. Since he was always so quiet, neither his parents nor his brothers had noticed that he hadn’t been paying attention to anything around him for the last fifteen minutes. Of course, Aaron had done it frequently: completely shut down his attention to the outside world. These periods of complete dissociation from everything scared him. He was terrified that one day he’d get trapped in his own head and never find his way back out again.

Aaron

 

His head was a fucking scary place to be.

Michelle Downing took the plates of eggs, bacon, and toast to her husband and younger sons at the table. Aaron hadn’t really even noticed that she’d been standing next to him cooking. He looked away from her stressed features and the premature gray in her hair, all caused by him. Her petite frame was where Aaron got his small stature, but that was one of the few similarities between Michelle and her eldest son. Where Aaron had inherited his father’s black hair, as had Anthony, Allen and his mother had chestnut curls. Aaron was the only child to get his father’s blue eyes. His brothers both had his mother’s soft brown eyes.

They had once been a typical close American family, John worked while his wife stayed home to raise their boys. Now their younger sons were left pretty much on their own while their mother struggled to care for their damaged older brother. They no longer went on vacation because Aaron didn’t deal well with change. They rarely went out to dinner because Aaron didn’t deal well with groups of people. They took turns going to Anthony’s soccer games or Allen’s wrestling matches because they didn’t want to leave Aaron alone.

It was as if they were all merely surviving, in the dark with no light on the horizon.

Aaron watched his family talking quietly as they ate around the table, and felt a stabbing pain of loneliness. They were the happy family, and he was just the freak that lived upstairs. Physically, everything in the house was the same, from the apple accessories in the kitchen to the bigscreen television in the family room where they used to watch baseball together.
He
was different. There wasn’t a place for him anymore, even though his chair sat empty at the table waiting for him. Without another word, he set the unpeeled banana back on the counter and walked past the table where his family sat glancing at him with surreptitious looks. Opening the sliding glass door directly behind his father at the head of the table, he walked out onto their huge deck and closed the door behind him. It felt better out here, less suffocating, with fewer expectations. He sat down on one of the patio chairs, looked over their small, well-maintained yard, and thought about how much he hated days like this, days where he just couldn’t turn off his mind.

He squinted into the morning sun as his mother joined him on the deck. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that she was wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt that probably belonged to his dad. She handed him an instant breakfast drink. He took it, opened the top, and sucked it down in one long drink. Mr. Handley next door stepped out onto his own deck as Aaron handed his mother the empty container. Aaron could feel the old man’s eyes on him across the fence and wondered if he could hear Aaron screaming in the night. He heard his mother’s quiet sigh as she reached down to smooth back a wayward piece of his hair, and he jerked away violently. He hated the fact that he couldn’t even stand to be touched by his own mother. With a visible effort, she forced the hurt from her face as he looked up, but then turned and walked back into the house without another word.

Pulling his music player and the book from his pocket, he settled back on a nearby chaise, ignored his portly neighbor, and lost himself in someone else’s life.

S
PENCER THOMAS pulled the garbage can from beneath the sink and

took inventory. Six empty Samuel Adams bottles and one Jack Daniel’s bottle. He knew that the Jack Daniel’s bottle had been mostly empty from the weekend binge, but it still didn’t make him feel any better. He needed to have a talk with his father. Since the good doctor let his practice go, the drinking had gotten worse. The nightmares had gotten worse. Their lives had gotten worse.

With a sigh, he closed the cabinet door and left the alcohol graveyard in peace. It would be hours before his father emerged from the dark cave he called a bedroom, so Spencer ambled down the hall and into the rec room. He picked up his mother’s framed picture from his desk and looked at her face for the millionth time. Miranda Thomas died about three months before she was supposed to deliver her son, whom she left premature and in the hands of his father, Henry. Spencer had heard stories of his mother from his grandparents and from his aunt Nelle, but never from his father. No one had to tell Spencer he’d gotten his shaggy brown hair and introspective hazel eyes from her. Even his freckles and pale complexion were a gift passed down to keep his mother alive in him. From

Aaron

 

his father, he’d inherited a small chin, a button nose, and an ingrained lack of self-control. They made for an interesting combination.

 

The phone in his pocket vibrated as he dropped into the plush leather chair in front of his desk. He pulled it out and checked the display.
Doorbell

The message might have seemed cryptic to anyone else, anyone that could hear and didn’t get a text message from the front door. After he jumped out of the chair, he retraced his steps and jogged back up the hall. Instead of turning right to head into the kitchen, he turned left at the end of the hallway toward the living room. A silhouette stood just beyond the door’s frosted glass. The rug slid under his bare feet as he skidded to a stop and turned the handle. A hot young delivery guy in shorts waited on the doorstep with a large box balanced on one arm. Spencer stared for a long moment at the man’s muscular frame, perfect skin, and impish grin before the movement of sweet lips broke him from his musings.