I switched the channel to some movie I had seen a million times and stared at the screen without really seeing it. I couldn’t escape the bad feeling that was rising inside me. A feeling that I was having a hard time ignoring. I replayed last night in my head. I was sick. I was tired. I went to bed early. I woke up this morning in my clothes and still in my bed. I slept there all night.
Hadn’t I?
What about the scratches on my arm? Was it possible that I had gotten up in the middle of the night and went out without remembering?
A sound from the kitchen brought me out of my thoughts and back to reality. What was I thinking? I scoffed. Even if I hadn’t slept in my bed all night, there was NO way that I had been the one to destroy that mini mart. That much destruction couldn’t be caused by a single person. The logic made me feel better.
And as for the car accident, that wasn’t caused by a person, but an animal and I certainly wasn’t that, either. I glanced down at my scratched arm, still completely covered by my sleeve and I put it all out of my head. A little while later, Dad came into the room and I swear his eyes about bugged out of his head. “Are you sitting in my chair?” he asked incredulously.
“Didn’t see your name on it,” I said lazily.
“What did you say to me?” he said, his voice low as he moved across the room to stand in front of me.
“I said, I didn’t see your name on this chair.” I clicked to another channel, anger building in my chest.
“Get your ass out of my chair, boy!” he bellowed. Vaguely, I wondered if the vein in his temple was going to pop.
When I didn’t get up, he reached down and grabbed my arm, yanking me out of the chair. I stumbled, then righted myself. Rage burned through me. I snapped my eyes to my father’s. “Keep your hands
off
of me.”
His eyes flared and I took a menacing step toward him, our eyes colliding.
Dad actually took a step back. “What’s gotten into you?” he said, quietly.
Just like that, my anger evaporated and I was standing there, wondering what I had just done. “I’m sorry, sir.” I dropped my eyes to the floor.
“Everything okay in here?” Mom said, sticking her head in the room.
I glanced over at her. Dad waved her off. “Everything’s fine.”
She disappeared without another glance.
Dad took a step toward me. It took everything I had to not back up. He looked straight into my eyes. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you better get rid of it right now. I will not tolerate this kind of
behavior
in my house.” He said the word behavior
,
but I knew exactly what he actually meant. “This is the only warning you’re gonna get, son.”
I rushed from the room, running past Mom, who was standing in the hallway, looking like she’d seen a ghost, and into my room, slamming the door. I stayed in there until dinner when I sat at the table and did exactly what my parents expected of me.
To pretend.
***
I floated through the morning at school, not really paying attention in any of my classes. I couldn’t stop thinking about Sam and how I might be like him. I just wanted to talk to him, but I had no way of contacting him at all. I didn’t know where he was.
When the lunch bell rang, I went into the bathroom and splashed some water on my face. I was feeling weird again, unbalanced, and the scratch on my arm was tingling. I knew what it meant. It meant that there was a hound inside of me, trying to take over. I couldn’t let it. I had to fight. I could be stronger than Sam. I didn’t have to give in.
The bathroom door swung open and Brent and his crew came in. I wanted to groan. “Hey, Loogie. I forgot my lunch money. Give me yours.”
“I don’t have any money, Brent.” The five dollars in my pocket began to feel heavy.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
I squared my shoulders. “Yeah. So why don’t you go find someone else to torture because I’m not gonna be your punching bag anymore.”
Brent’s eyes widened at my declaration and then he laughed. “Yeah? Who’s gonna stop me?”
Are you gonna let him talk to you like that?
a voice in my head whispered
.
Brent took a menacing step toward me and I snapped. My hand snaked out, grabbed the front of his T-shirt and yanked him forward. I reached up and slammed his head down on the countertop. He howled in pain, but I didn’t release him. I shoved him backward and he flew through an open stall door, slumping over the toilet and then scrambled to his feet. He charged me and I grabbed the door and swung it closed so that it hit him right in the face.
“Get him!” Brent yelled from behind the door.
They all took an unsure step toward me and I let out a growl. It was deep and rumbled through my chest. All three of Brent’s “friends” rushed from the bathroom. I turned toward the sink and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
I was wearing Sam’s “look.”
I smiled.
Brent came racing out of the bathroom stall. I stepped aside and he ran right into a headlock. I dragged him across the room, stuck his head in a urinal, held it there and hit flush. Water rushed over his head as he made gurgling sounds, spitting at the water. When I released him, he slumped to the floor, looking at me with shock in his eyes.
I leaned down so my face was mere inches from his. “If you ever even look at me again, what happened here today will only be the beginning.”
He nodded.
I reached into his front pocket and yanked out a twenty-dollar bill. I shoved it in my pocket on my way out the door. There was a crowd in the hall and they all stared at me when I came out. Suddenly, I was shocked at what I had done. I had never acted like that before.
I couldn’t deny that it had felt good.
That thought scared me more than anything.
I turned away from the stares and whispers and ran.
***
When I finally walked through the front door that night, the sun was setting and I was starving, tired, and more confused than ever. I didn’t make it past the living room because that’s where both my parents sat. Dad was wearing a disappointed frown with sparks of anger in his eyes and Mom… well, her eyes were swollen from crying and there was a tissue in her hand.
Sorrow filled me when I looked at her. To lose one son and now another… I knew that after Sam left, I was the only thing that kept her going. Maybe she would fight for me. Maybe she would stand between me and Dad, and maybe together we could find a way to make this hellhound go away.
Dad cleared his throat. “Where the hell have you been?”
I shrugged. “Around.” Actually, I was at the arcade across town spending Brent’s twenty bucks, but I didn’t think that would go over very well.
“The school called,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“Why didn’t you tell us that you were being bullied at school?” Mom asked.
I felt like someone slapped me. But really, why should I be surprised? “Like you didn’t know,” I said, looking at her. “Like you didn’t see the bruises I came home with, or feed me on the days I was starved because someone else ate my lunch.”
She seemed to wilt beneath my words. “You always had an explanation,” Mom said.
I snorted.
“Don’t take that tone with your mother,” Dad snapped.
My eyes shot to him, then back to her. “You’re right. I always had an excuse. Because coming home and admitting that I was getting beat up at school was unacceptable. Just like bringing home anything lower than a ‘B+.’”
“We expect you to be successful,” my dad said.
My shoulders slumped. “No, you expect me to be better than
him.
To make up for what you lost.”
Mom started crying and stood to give me a hug. “We don’t want you to be anything other than what you are,” she said between her tears.
“Yeah? Well I am a lot more like
Sam
than you both hoped for.”
Mom gasped and stumbled back, whether it was because I said the forbidden name or because she figured out what I was trying to say.
Dad let out a roar and jumped up from the couch. “No son of mine,” he began, but I cut him off.
“Actually,
two
sons of yours.”
That vein in his head was popping out again. Both my parents stared at me with horror drawn across their faces. “When?” Dad asked, his voice hoarse. “When did… did you shift?”
“I haven’t shifted.”
Relief was clear on both their faces. “Then why would you think that you are… like him?”
“I can just tell, okay?” I shouted. This conversation was making me angry. “Don’t you think I would know?”
“Look, you’ve been sick. Those jocks at school have been picking on you. You’re just confused, you aren’t a… a…” Dad’s voice trailed away.
“A hellhound,” I finished for him.
“You aren’t,” Dad said firmly as if claiming it would make it true. “We’ll forget about what happened at school today. Those guys deserved what you gave them. That’s the way to take up for yourself, son.”
Yeah, he’s forgiving me ‘cause he’d rather have a bully for a son than a hellhound. He didn’t stop to think about how suddenly I seemed able to take up for myself when I hadn’t been capable for months.
I glanced at Mom, who was wiping her eyes with a tissue. “I’m so sorry I let you down. I never wanted to.”
“I know, Mom.” It hurt me to see her so upset. She just hadn’t been the same since Sam left. It broke something inside her. I didn’t want to make it worse. “Can I go to my room now?”
“I’ll call you for dinner.”
We ate dinner that night in silence. All of us pretended that nothing was wrong—all of us knowing that there was. When I was in bed and staring at the ceiling, Dad opened the door and came in. He stood over my bed, staring down at me through the dark. Finally, he spoke. “Whatever this phase is that you’re going through stops now. I expect you to be strong enough to handle yourself, to know who you really are.”
My stomach clenched and I said nothing.
He cleared his throat. “Do you understand me, son?”
“Yes, sir.”
He left without another word.
I lay there, processing his words, hearing what he didn’t say. I wondered if he ever went into Sam’s room and told him to just
not
be a hellhound. I didn’t think so, because with Sam, there was no denying what he was. We all saw him shift—even when he tried to hide it. Dad thought I was acting out; he thought since he hadn’t seen me change that I couldn’t really be one, that I had some control over it.
I wished he was right.
I knew that he wasn’t.
***
Everyone whispered at school. Everyone went out of their way to give me space. The teachers eyed me warily and the jocks avoided eye contact. I didn’t really mind being treated like a freak; in fact, deep down, a part of me liked it. It made me feel powerful.
Control feels good. Other people’s fear tastes good. Power is yours for the taking,
the voice in my head told me.
Sometimes, I deliberately walked down the hall and bumped into Brent. The satisfaction I felt when he skittered out of the way made me smile. I liked that he was afraid of me. I wanted him to be.
At home Dad pretty much ignored me. He no longer asked what my grades were. We didn’t watch sports together. I listened to Mom cry herself to sleep every night and then she was back to pretending in the morning.
But that wasn’t the worst thing.
The worst thing was the rage.
Sometimes, I felt like a switch inside me had been flipped and all of a sudden, I was ripping things apart. One evening, I was doing my homework and it overcame me. I ripped apart my math book, ripping the hardback cover completely off and tearing the pages to shreds. I didn’t know what to do, so I stuffed it all in a trash bag and threw it in a dumpster on my way to school.
I told myself I was just tired of doing homework, tired of working so hard for excellent grades.
After school a few days later, I was leaving when I passed Brent and his crew. They fell silent, avoiding eye contact. I should have kept going. I didn’t. Instead, I shoved Brent up against the lockers and dumped the contents of his book bag all over the floor. When he lunged at me, I decked him in the jaw and proceeded to destroy all his notebooks and books. When I was done, torn paper littered the ground and people stood, staring at me in shock.
I told myself that I just had a bunch of pent up anger because he bullied me for so long.
Another night, I was taking a shower when I ripped the shower curtain and rod out of the wall and sent it crashing to the floor. I threw a bottle of shampoo at the mirror and it shattered all over the sink and floor. Mom came running, trying to hide the cold fear in her eyes.
I told myself that I was just tired of pretending.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating steak and potatoes. Dad was doing his best to pretend I wasn’t there. Mom was trying to wring every detail of my day out of me and rain was falling in heavy sheets outside the window. Suddenly, pain lanced through my body. My fork clattered onto the plate and everyone looked up.
Oh my God, the pain. I had never felt such mind-numbing pain before. Every single cell in my body screamed and burned. I swear the bones in my body began to shatter, one at a time. My back arched and I pushed up out of the chair and fell onto the cold tile floor.
Mom’s mouth was moving, yelling my name. But all I heard was the rushing of my blood in my veins. My body began to shake and I bit my tongue, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. I curled into a ball, trying to make the pain stop, but there was no stopping what was happening to my body.
I screamed. And screamed and screamed. Tears leaked from my eyes as my body convulsed. There was a popping sound as my shoulders fell from their sockets and my knees left their joints. My body was twisting, doing things that it shouldn’t be doing.
It felt like something was trying to get out. My skin stretched, feeling like there wasn’t enough space beneath it for the monster that I had become. I waited for it to rip open, for blood to spill from my veins and everything to turn red.
I waited to die. I begged to die. I wanted the pain to stop.