Content Warning (CW): drug use
Fifteen
H.M. Minnich
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Nick watches the buildings outside flit by, most the noncommittal gray-tan of the suburbs. It is early morning, too soon for all but faint orange light to hit the streets. He squints against it. The coffee should have been enough, but he hasn’t slept properly since he quit weed on Friday. What dreams he does have are bad ones, feverish worms that never fully leave him. One jabs at him now—a bat flew in through his open window last night and murmured things to him that he didn’t want to hear. He doesn’t remember what.
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If he leaves his eyes unfocused for a while longer, he can forget the moving car is here at all. That he is here, inside it. The trick is to focus only on the motion. The telephone wires merge into a thin black line, the streets one concrete blur. He feels sick after a minute, but that’s okay. That’s it. It feels familiar.
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His father says his name from the driver’s seat, and he is fifteen, and he is just passing the fourth of four restaurants in town with his forehead pressed up against the passenger seat glass, the surface rattling his brain.
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“Just look at that sunrise,” says his father.
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Nick doesn’t say anything. Today is the third day since his parents caught him in his room with the joint. Three days since he has been able to lock his door.
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“So, have you finished it?” his father asks.
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“What?”
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“Your collage.”
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“No.”
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“Mm.”
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It is due tomorrow, and they both know it.
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“What are you putting in it?”
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“Dunno.”
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His father nods, as if this is a perfectly acceptable answer. “That’s good. Keeping an open mind. You’ve got the right idea.”
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Nick’s not buying this, the casual tone. In the passenger seat, he resolves to say nothing important. The only thing to say, after all, is that he is too old for collages. Or that maybe the fact that his final grade depends on one is unreasonable. Or can he have the lock on his door back? Please.
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He knows the answer will be no.
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“Can we stop at Rite Aid after school? I need a poster board, ” he says instead.
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Monday crawls along. He expected this when he stopped smoking and even braced himself for it. Still, the boredom swells until it hurts to think. He itches for a distraction, anything to take his mind off the time. In English class, he hears a girl clicking her pen a few seats in front of him. Four times, then a pause, then another four. She won’t stop. So, when nobody is looking, he slips on his airpods and lets his eyes close.
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Respite, instantly. He can listen to anything—pop, rap, rock—as long as there is a strong enough bass. It glazes over everything, pulls the pen’s clicking and his bedroom window and his father’s face and even the immediate sound of Ms. James’ voice into a soft void. Sheets of noise blanket him, and he lets himself float for a moment. This could be all he asks for, ever, just more of this. He turns up the volume and thinks, if only he could put this into—
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A tap on his shoulder.
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“Now’s not the time,” says Ms. James to him. Her voice is quiet, but he feels a dozen eyes on him anyway. Someone in the back laughs.
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What he did not anticipate before were these moments of clarity, like jerking from sleepwalking into sharp discomfort.
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He relinquishes the airpods and is told to come back later for them. And also, Ms. James reminds him at the end of class, he can turn in his collage tomorrow with everyone else’s. The way she says it, like she knows he hasn’t started it, makes him hate her just a little bit.
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His friend Peanut finds him at lunch. Peanut is a year older than him and isn’t particularly small or otherwise peanut-like. Nick’s not sure how his friend got the nickname, but the guy holds tight to the strange notoriety that comes with having it. It’s shaped him. He’s put together with an ease that makes most people like or at least tolerate him, even adults. Sometimes Nick wishes he could have that sort of name. A lot of times, actually.
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“You look pretty down,” Peanut says.
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Nick nods, chewing his pizza. It tastes worse than usual, like soggy paper towels. Or this could be how it always tastes, he’s not sure.
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“Got busted.”
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“Want to talk about it?”
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Does he? He considers brushing it off--what good could this do?--but then again, who is Peanut going to tell? Being who he is, his friend has probably heard it before. So Nick tells him, not about how he was caught but about the aftermath. His father prying the lock off his door while Nick stood behind him, asking—no. Pleading with him not to. His mom protesting at first but not doing anything, not really.
“It was barely anything. I don’t get it.”
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Peanut nods and claps him on the arm, because what else is there to do? They eat in silence for a while. Nick is struck suddenly with the fear that a teacher will see him here with Peanut and draw the wrong conclusions. But no one is watching.
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“Well,” says Peanut. “A few of us are hanging out tonight. We’ll probably smoke, if you want to...?”
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Nick hesitates.
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“Right. Forgot you don’t do groups.”
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“No, it’s…I’m taking a break.”
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“No shit?”
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Nick shrugs.
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At Rite Aid, he buys scissors, markers, and the whitest poster board he can find, the kind that reminds him of teeth in ads. His father stands watching by the register, in front of where the lighters are sold. Nick grabs a pack of gum on his way out, instead. He feels his father’s eyes on him, nonetheless.
“Your sister’s going to call tonight,” his father says in the car.
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Nick feels for his airpods before remembering that Mrs. James still has them.
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“I think you should talk to her. She’d like that.”
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“Okay.”
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Then he is home in his room with a chair fast against the doorknob and the poster board empty except for his name.
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Okay. All right.
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The prompt is his life. What does it look like? What does he do in his spare time? Who is he?
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But even if he gets it past his father in the morning, how can he show that to his class? To Ms. James? And he knows he’s overthinking it, but he can’t help it. It’s too much. He feels it in his stomach.
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He’s someone who’s forgotten the glue. This is the only other thing that comes to mind.
That, at least, he can put aside for later. For now, he goes to the home office computer and finds anything remotely familiar he can summon up, something that looks like his life. It doesn’t take long. He uses his father’s work printer without asking and carries the stack of papers back to his room, making sure to wedge the chair back in place.
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His room is small and sparsely decorated. The bedspread is a deep blue-black, worn and soft and dusty. He lets the papers slip out onto it. It is the first truly hot week of May, and he can feel the heat radiating from the walls and floor. So, popping a piece of gum into his mouth, he goes to open the window that overlooks the backyard. A lean black cat jumps up beside him to look out.
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“Hey, buddy.” He didn’t even notice Lear was in his room, but he’s not surprised. He’s Sarah’s cat, but Nick has been Lear’s favorite in the months since she left.
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He sits for a while, petting him and watching the poster board, half-hoping it will just tell him what he needs to do. He needs a B- on it, just a B-, to pass English.
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Some amount of time passes. He doesn’t know how long. There is no clock in his room. He wonders if he was right to turn down Peanut’s help.
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After a while, the sliding door to the back porch opens, and he can hear his mom talking to someone outside. She mentions summer classes, and when he doesn’t hear another voice out there, he knows she is talking to his sister on the phone. So he goes downstairs, Lear chirping behind him, and leaves the blank poster board where it is on the floor. Relief.
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His mom is the only one on the patio. He lets out a breath.
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“Of course. Yeah. Here, talk to your brother,” she says to Sarah, and hands the phone to him.
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“Hey,” he says.
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“Hey! How’s it going?”
“All right. Good, I mean.”
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Sarah left six months ago for an English program three states away. She slipped away quietly, and nobody tried to stop her in the months before. It was a smooth exit. Most days, he lets his jealousy sleep quietly inside him.
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“Lear left a dead mouse on my pillow last week,” he says.
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“What? That’s disgusting!”
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“Yeah. He looked really proud of himself, too.”
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“Why would you tell me that?” Sarah says, but he can hear the laughter in her voice.
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“He’s your cat. You should know.”
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“Still.”
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“How’s college?”
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“Not bad. Too many essays, though, four of them this week. One’s about The Metamorphosis, which I don’t mind that much. But the way my roommate reacted, it was like someone threw shit at her.” Sarah goes on, laying out the other three essays in order of interest. He doesn’t follow, not all the way, but he lets her fill the silence. Something tugs at the back of his mind.
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“Can I visit sometime?” he interrupts.
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“What?”
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“Just for, like, a long weekend or something. A few days.”
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He should have taken the phone inside.
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“Yeah, okay.”
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“Yeah?” He tries to keep his voice even, but his mom is looking at him funny from across the porch.
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“If you don’t get in the way too much, then okay.”
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And then his sister says she has to go, that the shit-throwing-Kafka essay wasn’t going to write itself, but that he should tell Lear that he’s a bad cat for her. He says he will. And then he hands the phone back to his mom without meeting her gaze.
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He sits out on the porch for a while longer, watching the sky get dark. His mom stays, too, reading her book and sipping her glass of wine. He tries not to think about that whiter-than-white poster board. Instead they both sit, something waiting in the air.
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“Do we have glue?” he says eventually.
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“Hmm?” She doesn’t look up.
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“Mom? For the collage.”
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“Not sure, honey. I don’t think so.”
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Shit. If she can’t drive, and he needs glue, then he’ll have to ask his father. Shit. Shit.
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“We have duct tape, though. On the counter.”
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“Okay.”
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“Can I help with it?”
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He knows she is thinking about that time, back in eighth grade, where she helped him write a two-page paper about himself. He almost says that she can. But then her eyes shift to the driveway, and he hears a car pull in, and he knows that his father is home from the store. Nick wonders how much she’d tell his father if he let her help. Maybe everything, or just too much.
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“That’s all right.”
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“Oh.”
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She goes back to reading.
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“Mom?”
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“Yeah?”
“I really need the lock on my door back.”
Now she closes her book and looks, if not at him, at least in his direction. After a moment, she nods, as if to say, I’ll see what I can do.
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He chews his gum, fast and loud, as he cuts out the pictures he has printed out. Next to him, Lear lies asleep on the floor. The bedspread is warm against him in the heat of late spring.
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Here is a drawing of a bass guitar, polished and teeming with illustrated music, like the one collecting dust in his basement. A pencil sketch of someone vaguely like his sister. Four stick figures. A window. His birthdate. A patch of blue, his favorite color. A door and a chair, because why not. The address of a house they lived in, years ago. A chameleon, his favorite animal. A bicycle, for the one in the garage. A peanut. A lawn chair. A photo of his own face. Lear, too, in clipart form. He sticks them all on with little loops of duct tape, which more or less works. Slow going.
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When everything is on, the poster looks alright. A little shabby, a little empty, but alright. B, even B+ material.
It is dark out, and in the backyard they are fighting about the door.
“It won’t do any good,” his mom keeps saying. “He needs his space.”
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“We can’t just let this one slide,” says his father. “It’s too much. Grades, everything else. I just see this getting worse unless we change something.”
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“Not this.”
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“Why not? It’ll stop him from smoking.”
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“It’s no good.”
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“Right. You’d rather just ignore it. Gotcha.”
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“No! That’s not what I’m—”
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“We’ve tried it your way!”
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“What’s that supposed to mean?”
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His father sighs.
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“This is just what teenagers do,” says his mom. “Even good ones. Nick’s a good kid.”
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“I know he is. Don’t pretend I don’t know.”
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“Then what?”
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“It’s just...we did all right. With the other one, is all. What changed?”
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And it seems like there should be more, but there isn’t. Nick wants to close the window. Or better yet, yell something down to them, because they have got to know that he can hear them, haven’t they? They’ve got to know by now. But the room would feel smaller with the window closed, and it would get stuffy again. It’s hard enough to breathe, as it is.
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And he can’t do anything else because his fingers are busy pulling everything into small, fist-sized strips. The bass he still can’t play, torn in half. He crumbles Lear, who is not even his cat, between his fingers. He takes it all apart. The cardboard comes away in snarls of brown and stark white. He tries to force himself to stop.
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When there is nothing left to tear, his fingers still. Slowly, cautiously, he lowers himself to the floorboards, letting them heat his lungs and back. There are hairline cracks in the paint above him. Nick’s eyes flick up to them, and he is transfixed for a moment, watching them flow one into another like rivers. With his face to the ceiling like this, maybe he can get to that place where his airpods and the smoke took him every night, hovering somewhere right outside his own skin. Somewhere he can breathe, letting the motion brush him gently along. Maybe, maybe. At least he can try.
The minutes go by painfully. At some point, Lear curls up on his chest, making each breath an effort. He knows his parents are done when he hears them leave the backyard and then heavy footsteps up the stairs. His father’s bedroom door closes hard, then his mom’s door a heartbeat later. Silence.
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His collage lies in pieces.
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Nick’s not sure he can fix it. But, because he has to, he pulls off pieces of duct tape to match the chunks of cardboard. Stretch. Bite. Tear. Again. There is a raw satisfaction to it, to pulling off long strips and shearing them at the end with his canines. The cat watches with interest next to him.
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It takes some unsteady number of minutes or hours, and then he runs out of tape. But he’s so close to having something here. He spits his gum into his hand. Bites into another piece. Another. He chews over half the pack.
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The pictures are out of order when he is done, some backwards, some unrecognizable. Stitched with silver and beneath it, in places, the guts of pink slobber exposed. His sister’s head is on a little crooked. But he has made something, still, that is his. He takes a piece of gum off his tongue and uses it to stick on a wrapper as a finishing touch.
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He tries to sleep, he really does. When he finally slips away, he dreams of the bass in the basement. Dusty and strung out of key, it twangs out notes anyway, though he never touches it.
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He wakes too early, before the sun is up. It is dark in his room, dark enough that he can pretend the school day is still hours away. He lies prone for as long as he can, pushing his muscles to relax, until he gives up.
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Before he can think much about it, he texts his sister. The first time in a long time.
Hey, did Mom say anything to you?
He doesn’t expect a reply, really, but he gets one.
About what?
Idk, he texts. Anything.
She said you and Dad were bickering.
Of course their mom would tell it that way.
I guess, he says, then, Did you ever get high in high school?
Nothing, for a long while. Sarah sees the message and starts typing, then stops. The sky is beginning to change now, the first streaks of pink lining the dark. In the room next to him, he can hear his father’s alarm go off.
Yeah, a few times, his sister texts finally. Don’t tell Mom.
I won’t.
I knew this one girl who could roll a joint out of anything.
That’s cool.
Nick is halfway to asking what he wants to ask, but then his father opens his door. It swings wide and the AC hits him hard from the hallway. Nick shivers.
“You awake?”
Nick stares at him. His father nods, satisfied, and heads to make coffee. He leaves the door gaping open.
He texts Sarah: Did you ever get caught?
She doesn’t respond, so he gets dressed and drinks his coffee like every other Tuesday and like nothing has changed. His father follows along, keeping his morning comments to a minimum. And then they are in the car. Instead of their routine silence, his father flicks the radio on. It’s loud enough to fill up the air between them. Were he to bring up his bedroom lock, his father would not hear him. If his father comments on the sunrise, Nick does not know. He cannot decide if he is grateful for this.
The thing he made doesn’t look the same by morning light, nor resting against the class wall in mid-afternoon. It’s too visceral, sitting there exposed and ugly among the clean patchworks of his classmates’. Ms. James must see it, too. She tells him, in her polite way, to come back after school lets out.
He finds Peanut at lunch and asks him if insomnia is some side effect of quitting. Peanut doesn’t know. Nick sighs and sits down. They drink their frozen milk and talk about other stuff. He checks his phone.
Is that why you and Dad are fighting? Sarah asks. Then, They never caught me. Too careful.
Lol sure. He had been careful, too. Careful enough. They just weren’t looking.
Maybe not.
And then he is back in the English room after school, a piece of him still not convinced that he should be here at all. Another piece deeply, utterly unsurprised.
“Alright,” Ms. James sighs as she sits down, almost as if she were the disruption here. “Okay. I guess we know why we’re meeting, right?”
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Nick shrugs.
She holds up his collage by the tips of her fingers in response, then lets it slump back onto her desk. He tries not to look at it.
“Could you maybe explain what’s going on here?” She picks at the corner of his project, where he put Lear, and he wants her to stop.
“I mean,” she tries. “There’s effort here, I think...but. What were the pictures like, before you did this to them? I can’t give you the points you need if I can’t tell what anything here is.”
She seems to be waiting for him to respond.
“Yeah,” he says. She frowns at him.
“It would help if you have the typed page explanation—”
He hadn’t known he had to do that.
“—but in any case, why would you do this to your project?”
He chews his gum and thinks about the window in his room. He debates once again whether it would be better to just close the window when his parents argue, let it get stuffy.
Ms. James says his name. “Why would you wreck your project? I know you’ve got more in you than—”
“It’s not wrecked.”
“Of course not. I just meant—”
“It’s not. That’s wrong, you’re wrong.”
He’s said it too forcefully and she looks at him for a second, taken aback. He feels tired, tired of chewing his fucking gum and just listening to this goddamn conversation. So he swallows it, feeling and hating the rubbery scrape as it rolls down his throat.
And then he tells Ms. James to go to hell, among some other words, mostly to stop her asking him things, stop her picking at his collage, stop himself from looking at what he did.
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He texts his mom to come pick him up, but guidance calls his father. Somewhere in the subsequent hour, his parents decide to come together as a united front. Nick sits in the back, as if he were eleven, while his father drives.
When can I come visit? he asks Sarah.
Maybe in a few weeks? Finals first.
Oh, ok.
His mom is holding his collage gingerly.
“It smells funny. What is that?” his mom says, and his father looks closely at him in the rearview mirror.
“Just gum,” Nick says, but it feels like the wrong thing to say. “From…”
Now she, too, has a look of distaste on her face.
You could come home instead, he tries.
Maybe.
You should. It’s weird here.
None of them say anything else for the drive back. After everything, Ms. James gave him his airpods back, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The silence of the car, in a way he can’t fully grasp, has deafened him.
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His father whistles as he takes the hinges off the door. It is an old sixties song that Nick has heard earlier through the family car’s tinny speakers. He usually doesn’t mind it—it’s got a good beat.
“Could you stop?”
“Sorry.”
The door is half-removed by now, hanging on by a single hinge. His father takes a water break. Nick sits on his bed against the corner of his wall, watching.
“Dad?”
His father fidgets with the screwdriver.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why did you yell at your teacher?”
Nick’s legs feel strange. Tingly.
“I don’t like this, either,” his father says. He looks tired. “Do you think I like fighting with you?”
“No.”
“I hate this.”
“Then put my door back.”
“I can’t. Just until we can trust each other again, Nick.”
“You can trust me, I’m not...”
“You could just tell me what’s going on.” It is only now, when his father actually looks at him, that Nick knows. No, he won’t be getting his lock back, nor his door. Not any time soon. He holds his father’s gaze for a moment, then looks down.
His father sighs and goes back to work, this time quietly. Nick pushes himself a little closer into the corner.
No more his mom knocking at dinnertime. No more chair against the door, even. Nick’d heard the threat before, he was warned. But it always felt far-off. Hollow. Never like this, not real.
No.
“All done,” his father eases off the last hinge and his door collapses. In half a second, there is a new, gaping wound to his bedroom.
“Hey, Dad,” he says. “How can you even stop me from smoking again?”
It is too far a question. He feels it and so does his father. A week ago, he would never have asked. If he still had his door, it wouldn’t have crossed his mind. But his father came to wake Nick up this morning just by letting himself in. He wonders, what is stopping either of them?
Sarah texts. His ringer is on, and it chimes from across his bed. He looks at it. So does his father. Then Nick leans across his bedspread and clutches his phone tight, feeling its edges dig against the palm of his hand. His father is still standing in the doorway.
“Forget it,” Nick says.
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It’s boring here, too, Sarah says.
No, not like that. And, Mom sleeps in your room now.
Oh, she says. That is weird.
It always is.
He thinks, why does she get to be over there?
You could stay here for the summer.
I could, Sarah texts. Ten seconds later, I don’t want to.
Me neither. And he thinks, why does she get to be the older one? Let him have it for a change. Only for a few days. It’s not fair.
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The curtain they install in his room is black with white notes on it, fermatas and sixteenth notes with little staccato dots, spiking from floor to ceiling. Maybe he might have liked it a year ago, when he was still trying to play, but it’s doubtful. The pattern is too jarring for him to ever keep voluntarily. Nick always preferred the whole notes. This feels instead like a quick appeasement, a compromise between two negotiators. His mom says that the curtain is cooler than the door ever was, a pretense through which all three see. She probably picked it out. Lear’s tail brushes it and it flutters.
He sits on the floor, cradling the collage, and listens for the sound of the back door. It closes, and after it comes the creak of lawn chairs right below him. The murmurs of his parents. Nick thinks once again of closing the window, but it doesn’t sound like they’re fighting today. Only talking.
“It’s been a rough semester,” she says quietly.
“A rough year,” agrees his father. “But that doesn’t make what he did today okay.”
“Maybe not. No.”
He hears her wine glass ping softly against the table and then quiet. Nick’s thumb finds his sister’s name in his phone, and then he hits Facetime. He waits as it rings.
“I’m worried, too,” says his dad.
“How could he not know better?”
Ringing.
“I don’t know.”
Nick crosses to the window, his hands poised to force it down like a guillotine. Pick up. Sarah, pick up.
“I think we made the right call today,” says his mother, and then he slams the window. The curtain bucks in its wake.
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When they finally head upstairs, there is no anger in their footsteps. His father’s bedroom door closes softly, and when he waits for his mother’s to follow, he hears nothing. He wills the staccato pattern on his doorway to soften, but it won’t. Time unfolds at the same unbearable pace it has for days, now, and he has had enough.
It’s not fair, he said earlier to Sarah. It feels childish even a few hours later, like a tantrum. She never answered his calls—she was probably out with friends.
You’re right, she finally texts. It’s really not.
But Sarah is four hundred miles away and has been for months. She left Lear behind, sure, but how is her cat supposed to know just the right things to say to their parents? How is Lear supposed to keep him out of trouble?
So he opens the window again. In his backpack is the weed, better hidden than before. Peanut even double-bagged it today, so there is barely a smell. He owes the guy.
Nick knows the curtain will not do much, and that were his parents to wake up, the slightest draft would tip them off. His phone might be gone by morning. But still he rolls a shoddy joint out of his last gum wrapper. He lights it, takes a drag, looks out the window. The backyard is empty but too visible and too harsh, and he waits patiently for it to blur.​
H. M. Minnich is a recent history alumnus from Temple University in Philadelphia. When she is not working at her local independent movie theater, she spends her time camping, playing music and writing stories about real life, fantasy, and anything else in between that comes to mind. A personal reflection, A Love Letter for Squirrel Hill, has previously appeared in the Schuylkill River Valley Journal.