The Masochist Boy (1) He walked faster. Faster, faster, faster. Always faster. He always had to walk faster, and it was never fast enough. Somehow or another they would always catch up to him. And here they came. He could see them out of the corner of his eye. They were laughing. Of course they were laughing. They must have found it so easy, chasing him. He could walk faster. He knew he could walk faster. Heck, why was he walking? He broke into a blind run, throwing his backpack over one shoulder. Running blindly now, past the street signs and the school park and the little white cottages with their freshly mowed grass. If they hadn’t been chasing him he would have stopped to look. He loved to look at all these pretty houses. His house wasn’t pretty. His mother didn’t pay for him to go on the bus, for some reason. It didn’t matter, because even if she had, Tom and Will and their whole damned gang would still beat him until the bus pulled up at his house. Maybe it was better this way. At least he had somewhere to run, somewhere to hide out here in the open. He heard their sneakers hitting the pavement behind him. He dashed across the no-walk signal. Too much thinking, not enough running. He had to go faster or they’d get him this time! He slid his arm through the other backpack strap and plunged forward, feet barely touching the ground. The sweat started on his forehead. His arms flailed out beside him as he ran. Tore through the food court and almost ran over an old lady and her hotdog bun. "Yo Schultz!" Tom sneered. "Watch where you’re running, Schultz! Wouldn’t want to hurt nobody, would ya, Schultz?" Help me, he thought desperately. Dead-end street. Forty-eighth! No, it couldn’t be forty-eighth. It couldn’t be-he didn’t want forty-eighth-he needed sixtieth! How could he be twelve blocks off? What? He couldn’t be lost again. Not again. He was. He was lost. The houses here were all nice cottage types, not the sleazy apartments buildings like in his neighborhood. They had picket fences. He was standing in front of an apple tree. He was staring straight at a bird feeder. He was doomed. He made a half-hearted attempt to hide behind the apple tree. It was a stupid idea, he knew. It was a last stand of a sort. And so he wasn’t surprised when he felt some one grab his arm and bash him face-first into the apple tree. He closed his eyes. They twisted his arm behind him and bashed him into the tree again. His nose hurt, and one of the brambles scratched his cheek, but that was alright; he’d had worse. He closed his eyes and thought about his shots. He still had another fifteen minutes before the last few wore off. He had all the time in the world. He would let them have their fun and then they would leave him alone. Some one kicked him in the shin. It hurt. He was used to things hurting, though; he let them do it. "Aw, come on, Schultz," he heard one of them say disgustedly, through his firmly closed eyes, "haven’t you got any guts at all, you freak? Make it interesting for us!" He said nothing. Someone kicked him in the back. His head snapped backward, and then he fell to the ground. He picked himself up and shot towards sixtieth for all he was worth. They started chasing him again. He ran past another illegal crossing. Some one honked, some one barked a curse at him; he was used to that. He ran past the drug dealer’s house and past the hired thugs; past the serial murderer and the insanity-wracked mother of five who had killed all of them several years ago; and past the little old lady on the corner with a machete in her basement. Signs of home. He ran until, with relief, he saw the house with the car parked on the front lawn and the shutters falling off the windows. He jumped over the waist-high weeds in two unearthly bounds, grabbed the door handle, flung the thing open and himself through the door, then let it slam close behind him. He let it slam. For a moment he was afraid to breathe, as if somehow they would climb through the back windows. Then he sank back against the door, sank to his knees, and let out a relieved breath. A familiar nagging told him it was time for his next few shots, but he fought against it just a little this time; he had them within reach and could take them whenever he wished. He was exhausted; he allowed himself a moment to gather himself before going to the kitchen. It was almost funny. He almost liked the chase, liked the blind adrenaline, liked having his mind distracted from all the other thoughts it now had the leisure to brood upon. He wished they would have really done him in this time. Really. That would be the perfect way to die; running, he thought, so that he wouldn’t have to think about his life. He let out another breath. Something smelled funny. First he thought it might be his mother cooking, but then he realized it was just the wood in the front door rotting. Besides, the day his mother started cooking would be the day he grew wings. He sighed and got to his feet. Of course all the lights were out; his mother hated watching television with the lights on. The only source of illumination in the entire room was the faint blue flickering of the television screen. "…have you ever found yourself craving a sudden chocolate milkshake, but groaning at the thought of having to make it yourself?…" His mother was slumped over on the couch. He leaned over her to make sure she was conscious and hadn’t overdosed on anything again; but she seemed alive enough, however listless. Her hair, half-dyed, half-forgotten, the baggy sweat pants and sloppy bags of tortilla chips and illegal substances on the couch. Yes, he was in the right house. He laughed bitterly at himself and wandered into the kitchen. He pulled his kit out of the cabinet on top of the kitchen, melted the powder on the spoon, filled the needle. He took one shot of it to begin with, then another in the arm. They needed to work this time. So far none of the other thoughts had caught up to him, and he wanted it to stay that way. He needed to be numb. Yes, he could feel them working. He staggered, then crawled to his room, pulled himself onto his bed, and sat. The sleeping pills were on his dresser. When the shots wore off, he would take that to put himself to sleep. Maybe he wouldn’t go to school tomorrow. His little sister watched him from the door, but he didn’t notice her. They were working now. Her eyes saddened. She bit her lip. Then she turned back to her own room and cried herself to sleep. His name was Rob, and he lived for pain. He knew it and he was used to it. Everything in his life-it was all about pain. School was pain. Home was nothing. Home meant nothing to him, nothing at all, only a place where Tom and Will couldn’t get him, and for whatever benefits that rendered there were a million pitfalls. Home meant his mother. He hated her. No, he didn’t hate her. But she disgusted him. Lying on the couch, watching television-watching television, drinking her alcohol, dying her hair. She never cared about him; not at all. She hadn’t fed him half the time when he was little, and he had always been getting so sick, and he would sit there with her on the couch with a fever of a hundred and five degrees, dying, and she would tell him to leave her alone. Leave her alone. When she talked, it was only because she thought he’d taken her smokes, and from there it was only argument anyway. He hated her. What a scrawny little kid he had been. Still was. People told him he was gaunt. He was; he’d already been frail, and he didn’t have much appetite now that he was on heroin. They told him he was pale. They told him he had bruises under his eyes. He did have bruises under his eyes. Bruises from artificial sleep. Bruises from neglect. He had bruises in his heart, and his mind, and they would never, ever heal. His teachers didn’t like him. They didn’t trust him. He was one of those dark-haired, dark-eyed boys who glared at everybody out of the corner of his eyes. They sent him to the office for things he didn’t do. He didn’t care. He got out of school early, went home and went to sleep. His mother didn’t care. His mother never cared. Besides, if he was sent home early, he didn’t have to worry about Tom and Will chasing him. His grades were bad. Actually, they could be better; he knew that at least he could change. He was very intelligent, he liked to learn, he loved to learn; but what did it matter? He would get himself engrossed in the history book only to have the teacher denounce him for something stupid like reading ahead. People were always denouncing him. He hated people. People made him pro-nuclear. Anyway, he didn’t study for tests. He couldn’t. He couldn’t study at home, and he had nowhere else to go. He didn’t like to think about his life. When he did, it inevitably brought to his mind the picture of a man floating face-down in a dirty river. He had his shots. No, to be more precise, he had his heroin. Heroin and sleeping pills were the only reason he was still alive. That and his words; those beautiful words. He kept those in a little notebook someone or other had given him for a birthday years ago. His only birthday present ever. That notebook was his sacred relic, and it helped to get the pain out; it was his way of making something at least almost beautiful. But the words couldn’t get him through the day like those shots and pills. Somehow or other those things kept him going. He would take them before school-not enough to get really high on, because then the teachers would find out and take them away from him-just more than enough to survive on, and then he would take them again when he got home, just to keep himself comfortably numb. That was how he liked to live his life-numb. Placid. Yes, that was the only way you could survive. He had a problem. He knew it; he wasn’t stupid. And it was all the more urgent now, because he wasn’t getting high on the heroin anymore. He was never high. Now he only took it to keep himself neutral, and even his neutrality was becoming bitter and empty. He had tried more heroin, and more heroin, and more and more and more; he’d had a seizure; they’d taken him to the hospital, and the nurse had warned him that taking so much of a drug at only seventeen would hurt his growth and his mind and his immune system and his veins and he really didn’t care anymore! The heroin wasn’t working; what was left for him but to die? He didn’t know what he was going to do. There was a good market for drugs in his neighborhood, so thank G-d their supplier was in town often enough; sometimes three days a week, so he never had to go without for very long. He got the money from his mother’s purse. He didn’t know how the money got there, since she didn’t work. She didn’t care if he took it, as long as he got some cocaine for her when he went. He didn’t do cocaine. Yet. He had thought about suicide a couple times; particularly last year, when he had caught pneumonia and wound up in the hospital because his mother had failed to purchase the necessary antibiotics. It would have been so pathetically easy then, when he was weak. Doctor-assisted? He’d thought about that, but decided he would rather just overdose on his sleeping pills. Die in his sleep. Even better; he would die without pain. Although there was something not quite right about that; he was so used to having pain with everything that even suicide wouldn’t be the same without it. His thinking was warped, he thought. Warped, twisted, broken. There was something not quite right about it, or him. He was thinking about it now, lying face-down on his bed. He could cover himself with the blanket and wait to suffocate. He knew he would eventually. And he could very easily do it. He wasn’t squeamish. Heck, how many times had he tried? But Jenny had always called an ambulance. Jenny. Guilt. Jenny. How old was she now, he wondered. He was seventeen, and she was eight, no, seven years younger…she was ten. Ten years old. Poor, poor Jenny. He knew without looking up that she was standing by the doorway, watching him. If his bones were narrow then hers were tiny; she was barely four and a half feet tall. She was always cold. He knew that if he looked up he would see her, huddled in one of his mother’s old sweatshirts, biting her lip, watching him out of wide and sorrow-filled eyes. She was so sad, so sad all the time. He heard her crying, sometimes, when he came home late enough at night. Such a sad angelic little girl. And it was because of Jenny that he had never actually killed himself yet. He couldn’t do that to her. He felt bad enough already. He’d had to deal with a deadbeat mother when he was growing up; but Jenny had to deal with that and a druggy brother. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way. He tried to lift a hand to cover his eyes, but found he had a surprisingly hard time doing it; couldn’t move any part of his body; and his heartbeat echoed twice as fast in his throat. He would probably be sick in a few minutes. He’d taken a little much. Why was he wasting the high on thinking? He could think when they wore off. Now he should be happy- He moaned softly. Happy. Deep inside his mind he knew he hadn’t wanted it to be this way. Had he ever had a dream? He thought he had, when he was very, very little. He had wanted to make something beautiful with his life. Beautiful. He had wanted to paint pictures with words and ideas with paints. His notebook; that’s what his notebook was. He had wanted to give the world a piece of art that expressed life. It had been close to the center of his being. He had wanted. Too late now, of course. Even if he passed high school, by some G-d-granted miracle. He knew where he was headed. Nowhere. He saw his life. He saw it in his head. One long, straight line, never turning either to the right or left. His life, like his body and his mind, was an artificial numb deadness. He was headed nowhere. He would graduate high school, and then he would dig a grave for himself and wait to die. He couldn’t live much longer; he couldn’t see any point to it. He felt the heroin wearing, and stuffed some of the sleeping pills in his mouth. He couldn’t see why anybody would want to live past eighteen, even if they had friends or normal parents or a nice house. After that it was only a slow descent into senility anyhow. He leaned over the side of his bed and was sick. That was alright; he had a bucket there for that kind of thing. Sometimes Jenny would come in and turn him on his side in the middle of the night so he wouldn’t choke. "Robby?" someone said. Things were mistier now. He was losing his sense of time, and he couldn’t feel his fingers. Oh, yes, they were working. His consciousness was going, going, going, going, go-ing… "Robby?" He tried to say: "What?" but his mouth wasn’t opening. His lips twitched a little. Jenny would know what he meant all the same. "Robby-Uncle Max is coming over in two hours, Robby. Robby-are you going to be-still-Robby, you took too much, didn’t you?" Good. He’d probably still be out of it when Max showed up. At least he wouldn’t be awake for that abuse. Jenny… Blessed blackness. "Biology," mumbled Vivien. "Right. Biology. I can do this." She looked up at the classroom number, and then back at her sheet. Twenty-one ten. Yes, she was in the right room. Well, at least one thing she’d done right. She decided it was a good omen for the class, and then mocked herself for deciding she was going to decide things were omens in the first place. She tucked a loose strand of hair back into the bun at the back of her head nervously, gave herself a private pep talk, and stepped into the class. Unfortunately, the only thought besides her nervousness that hit her as she surveyed the room was: Public school. Yuck. She wasn’t used to this, of course. Living in the slums, going to public schools. She just wasn’t used to it. Her family had lived in the suburbs, by the forests, by the water, by the beautiful river. She’d gone to a private all-girl school with small classes of neatly-dressed girls and spotless rooms and brilliant teachers. And now she was faced with a wad of chewing gum in the threshold and a class full of bored, tough looking punks. She glanced over it again uneasily. Row after row of desks. The room was shabby and dark. There was garbage on the floor. The teacher was glaring at her from the marker board; the students were watching her with apparent boredom. One kid with purple hair and a nose-ring snorted at her and made the sound of a knife. She was late. She felt the hope fall flat on its face on the dirty gum-wad-ridden floor. She stopped smiling, kept her eyes on the floor, and found her meek way to the only open desk. Thank G-d. It was the end of the row, by the window. She slid into her seat and tried not to meet the teacher’s angry frown. She would make it through to the end of the day if it killed her. She was going to come out of this smiling. She was. She glanced at the boy in the desk next to her, and then stared in disbelief. He looked like he was about to keel over. His face was chalk white, he was so fragile-looking she expected him to snap in two, and he had what looked like bruises under his eyes. He was staring straight ahead of him, slouched back in the desk, a brooding expression on his face. There was a tiny mauve notebook at the edge of his desk. After a brief battle with insecurity, she whispered urgently: "Are you alright?" The boy didn’t seem to notice. "Are you alright?" she said again. He blinked once, twice, picked up his pen, looked at the paper, blinked again disconcertedly, and then dropped both back on his desk. "Are you alright?" she said again, louder. "You don’t look good." "Ms. Llewelyn," said a voice that she knew with dread was the teacher’s, "do you have something you would like to share with the class?" She looked around. They were all staring at her in complete silence, none with a look so cold as the one on the boy’s face. The clock ticked mind-numbingly loud. One minute past three. "I’m sorry," she mumbled. She felt her cheeks go red. She hated herself for doing it. Her gaze dropped to the floor. "Are you sure, Ms. Llewelyn? Because if you are, I’d love to have you answer the question I just asked. Can you repeat the question for those of us who, perhaps, weren’t paying attention?" "Um…no, sir. I’m sorry." "Sorry won’t get you a good grade in this class, Ms. Llewelyn. Just because it’s your first day of school does not excuse you from having to listen during class as your peers most certainly do. Justine, would you like to inform Ms. Llewelyn which question I just asked? Ms. Llewelyn, I hope you’re taking notes-this will be on your test." "Yes, sir," she mumbled, staring firmly at her paper. See, she was saying to herself, I’ve already wrecked the first day of a new school. And this was supposed to be the class with a good omen. She bit her lip. Not going to cry. She listened to Justine’s answer, wrote it down on the paper. It looked gray and dull, just like the rest of the classroom. She wasn’t going to give up, though. She was going to hope. She tapped her fingers on the desk, a little nervous tap, eyes closed. They hit something she didn’t remember being there before. She opened her eyes. A little folded paper. She looked up cautiously. The teacher wasn’t watching her. He was talking to Justine. Justine was telling him about her uncle the scientist. He was very interested. She unfolded the paper, trying to keep her hope where it belonged. It was creased perfectly and as neatly as could be. In a small, cramped, precise handwriting, it said: I’m alright, thank you. She looked up next to her. The boy did not look angry or sarcastic. Just watching her. There were bruises under his eyes after all. He had the look of a man wasting away. She felt a pang of guilt. What if he was sick? That wasn’t any of her business. She gave him a little apologetic smile, and wrote on the paper: I’m sorry. She tried to fold it neatly, checked up on the teacher, still enraptured in Justine’s uncle, and passed it to him. He took it, read it, and put it under his book. He gave her a small sort of half smile, which she supposed was about as close to a real smile as he ever got, and looked back at his book. She smiled. Maybe, just maybe, this class would still be alright. "How was school?" demanded her mother. She sighed, and closed the door behind her. She dropped her backpack on the hand-woven rug, set her sweater and books on the perfect couch by the hand-woven curtains which matched exactly with everything else in the room. Nothing and no one in the Llewelyn household had ever seen a causal Friday. "Come in here, Vivien. I made you some fresh-baked low-calorie cookies. I want you to tell me all about your day." She straightened her shirt, smoothed her skirt. Pushed some of the black hair back into the bun at the back of her head, but the wisp fell back anyway. Her mother would call her a mess. She decided not to care. She’d had enough for one day. She walked carefully across the painted-tile floor of the kitchen. There was a sun-flower design on every other unit. There were exactly one hundred and twenty-three sunflowers on the whole kitchen floor. She knew. She had spent a good deal of time staring at the kitchen floor. She kept her gaze on it now as she walked to the table. She had the feeling of a blind-folded prisoner marching to wall in front of the firing squad. There was, sure enough, a plate of cookies on the table. Exactly three. Her mother supervised her diet very closely. Her mother supervised everything very closely. She sat down at the furthest corner of the table. Her mother slid into the seat across from her. There wasn’t very much physical resemblance between Vivien and her mother. Mrs. Llewelyn had a very sharp, pointed face, brown hair and blue eyes; Vivien’s face was rounder, her hair was black and her eyes were green. Her mother’s outlook on life was business; Vivien’s outlook tended more to dreams and smiling and beautiful things. That was what she wanted to do with her life: she wanted to make something beautiful. That wasn’t what her mother wanted for her, though. Her mother wanted her to be ‘successful’. And her mother was pulling all the right strings, too. Nothing happened that her mother hadn’t arranged to have happen or hadn’t known about in advance; there was nothing her mother didn’t know. She had thought of everything. Vivien had been in grade school at the age of five and had been tutored privately since she was six. She had been in Chess Club, French Club, Honor Society, you name it. She had been skipped class after class, she had been the top of her class, she had been through countless extracurricular activities. At her mother’s insistence, she deserved no less. The only thing that was too good for her was confidence in her own decisions. She was not encouraged to make any decisions without her mother’s input in the matter, whatever it was, from what kind of blouse to wear to what sort of people to be friends with. She lived by the rules, did Vivien.
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