Isaac
I woke up shivering, wrapped tight in my blanket that wasn’t nearly thick enough. Icy light fell across my bed, offering no warmth.
Goddamn trailer. Like living in a cracked eggshell.
I kicked off the covers and padded through the double-wide to the living area. Pops was passed out on the couch, instead of in his room behind the kitchen. A fifth of Old Crow—empty—stood tall amid the beer cans on the rickety, stained coffee table. An ashtray overflowing with butts still smoldered.
One day I was going to get the heat I craved in the form of a fire from one of Pops’ smokes.
His snores filled the trailer as I crossed to the heater. We had to be careful about the thermostat—I made sure we kept it at sixty-five degrees—but the trailer had shitty insulation and no underpinning. I waved my hand in front of the vents. The heater was on and working, pissing our money away for all the good it did. A cold January wind whistled beneath us. I could feel it through the floor.
Outside the front window, the scrapyard lay under a cloak of white. Our Wexx-brand gas station at the far end, closed up today. Not that we had any customers. It was silent and still out there. The acre of rusted old cars were white mounds, pure and pristine over the tangles of metal. A graveyard.
All of Harmony felt like a graveyard to me, a place that buried you. But tourists loved it. In summer, they came from all over to step out of time and into USA circa 1950. Downtown Harmony was six square blocks of Victorian-era architecture, colorful storefronts, one ice cream and burger joint with a jukebox and posters of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis on the walls. A single traffic light hung over Main Street, and we had a five-and-dime that sold Civil War-era souvenirs. Some big battle had been fought in the rolling green fields between Harmony and the next real outpost of civilization, Braxton. The tourists came for the history and a milkshake and then left. Escaped.
I looked at Pops. Fifty-three years old and he’d been out of Harmony maybe twice. Once to the hospital in Indianapolis when I was born, and to that same hospital when my mother died eleven years ago.
He was like the cars we scrapped and the gas station he sometimes operated—old before his time, broken down, and reeking of his favorite gasoline. He wasn’t getting out of Harmony, but I sure as shit was.
Someday.
I laid my palm on the cold windowpane. Icy tendrils of wind snaked their way in from cracks along the sill. I’d been saving up for better windows all summer—doing odd jobs for Martin Ford at the Harmony Community Theater when I wasn’t manning the gas station. When October rolled around, Pops promised to get to the hardware store for the new panes. But I’d given him the money and he used it to go on a bender.
That’s what trust’ll get you.
Pops stirred, snorted, and blinked awake. “Isaac?”
“That’s me. You want some breakfast?” Blowing on my chilled fingers, I moved to the small kitchen.
“Sausage,” he said, and lit a half-smoked Winston.
“No sausage,” I said, fixing us two bowls of cornflakes. “I’ll go to the store on the way home from school. Before the show tonight.”
“You bet your ass you will.”
He hauled himself off the couch with a grunt and lumbered over to sit at the foldout card table that served as our dining table. I sat across from him and tried to ignore him slurping cereal in between drags off his cigarette.
Pops hunched over his bowl, the weight of his own life dragging him down. He was heavy with years of struggle and poverty, harsh winters, heartache and alcohol. His jowls were unshaven, drooping like the bags under his watery eyes. Unwashed hair fell like gray straw over his forehead. I dropped my eyes, determined to finish my food in ten bites or less and get the hell out of there.
“What’s tonight? A show?” Pops asked.
“Yeah.”
“Which is it this time?”
“Oedipus Rex,” I said, as if it hadn’t been running for two weeks and in rehearsal four weeks before that.
He grunted. “Greek tragedy. I’m not all stupid.”
“I know,” I said, my hackles going up. He hadn’t had anything to drink yet, so the meanness was still slumbering. It was mostly nocturnal—the Jekyll in him—and I did my best to stay out of its way until he passed out.
“And what part are you?”
I sighed. “I’m Oedipus, Pops.”
He snorted, shoveled a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, dribbling milk down the gristle of his chin. “That Martin Ford really has taken a shine to you.” He jabbed his spoon at me. “You watch out. Turn you into a fag if you keep up this acting nonsense. If he hasn’t already.”
I clenched my teeth and hands both but said nothing. It wasn’t the first time he’d insinuated Martin—the director of the Harmony Community Theater—favored me for reasons other than my talent. Truth was, Martin and his wife, Brenda, had been more like parents to me than Pops could ever imagine.
But I didn’t tell him that. You don’t talk to a braying donkey and expect to have a real conversation.
“The play closes tomorrow night.” I hazarded a glance up. I wasn’t stupid enough to ask him to come, but the part of me that still wanted to believe he was a real father never fucking gave up. “Last show.”
“Yeah?” Pops said. “But how many more after that? You been doing this shit for years. Turn you soft, is what. I’m not leaving my business to a queer.”
The words bounced off me. I had a dozen girls’ numbers I kept on rotation in my phone, and the idea of him leaving me Pearce Auto Salvage or the Wexx franchise station was laughable. It had no business anymore, unless you counted the occasional stranded traveler who didn’t know better than to go five miles farther up to the shiny, big-name places in Braxton. We lived off Pops’ disability and my pay from the theater. Or rather, he lived and I existed. I didn’t live until I was on stage.
I could take his words. It was his fists I had to watch out for.
More than once, after one of Pops’ tirades that left us both bloody; I’d pushed my old blue Dodge pickup as hard as it could handle along the winding roads out of Harmony, intent on getting out of Indiana once and for all. Then I imagined Pops stuck here, alone, eating cold cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until a bad winter gave him pneumonia. Or maybe he’d dive into a bucket of fried chicken and eat himself into a heart attack. Lay dead and rotting on our shitty couch with no one to check for weeks, if not months.
I turned my damn truck around every time.
That’s what you did for family. Even if your sole family was a piece-of-shit-drunk who didn’t give a damn about you.
“Gimme some more, yeah?” Pops said, as I rose to dump my bowl in the sink.
I poured him a second helping of flakes, then went to get dressed for school.
In my small room—bed, dresser, coffin-sized closet—I put on my best pair of blue jeans, boots, a flannel over my undershirt and my black leather jacket. I dug the wool cap and fingerless gloves Brenda Ford had knitted for me from under a pile of scripts and slipped a pack of my own Winstons from a secret stash Pops didn’t know I had, or else he’d raid it. I stuffed them into the jacket’s inside pocket.
Pops was peering blearily at the wall calendar a salesman had left us after a failed attempt at selling us homeowner’s insurance. “Today’s the eighth?”
“Yeah,” I said, shouldering my backpack.
He turned to me, a glimmer of regret and pain floating in the bloodshot depths of watery eyes.
“Nineteen now?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Isaac?”
I froze, my hand on the door. The seconds stretched.
Happy birthday, son.
“Don’t forget to get the sausage.”
I closed my eyes. “I won’t.”
I went out.
My blue ‘71 Dodge, parked to the side of the trailer, was frozen up. I managed to get it started and left it idling to warm up while I scraped ice off the windshield. The dashboard clock said I was late for school. I puffed clouds of curse words in the air. Walking into a class already filled with students was low on my list of favorite things.
I took the icy roads from the scrapyard at the edge of town as fast as I dared, through the main drag and across town to George Mason High School. I slid into a parking space, then walked fast into the building, blowing on my fingers. The warmth inside eased some of my irritation. When I got the hell out of here, I’d move somewhere where it never snowed. Hollywood worked, but I wanted to act on stage more than film. Or I’d hit it big in New York and it could snow all it wanted; I’d keep the heater on in my place all the time and never think twice about the cost.
I strode down the empty hallway and into Mr. Paulson’s first period English class. Thankfully Paulson was a little scatterbrained—he was still organizing himself at his desk and I slipped past him, eyes straight ahead and ignoring my classmates. Intent on the third-row desk where I always sat.
A girl was in my seat.
A breathtakingly beautiful girl in an expensive coat with a fountain of blonde, wavy hair spilling down her back. Sitting in my damn seat.
I stood over her, staring down. It was usually enough to get people the fuck out of my way. But this girl…
She looked up at me with eyes like pale blue topaz and a defiant smirk on her face that belied a sad, heaviness that hung over her. Her gaze darted to the empty desk beside her, and she raised a brow.
“Everything all right, Mr. Pearce?” Mr. Paulson called from the front of the room.
I held the girl’s stare. She stared right back.
I snorted and slouched into the empty chair on her left, stretching my legs into the aisle. Doug Keely, the captain of the football team two seats over, hissed between his teeth to get Justin Baker’s attention. Justin, a baseball player, looked around. Doug jerked his chin at the new girl, eyebrows up, and mouthed the word hot.
Justin mouthed back, Smokin’.
“All right, class.” Mr. Paulson stood at the front of the room. It was only a few minutes after eight and he already had chalk dust on his pleated pants. “I trust you all had a restful holiday break. We have a new student at George Mason. Please give a hearty Mason Mavericks welcome to Willow Holloway. She comes to us all the way from New York City.”
New York.
The classroom rustled as kids turned to give Willow the once-over. A few raised hands in a cursory greeting. A murmured “Hey,” here and there. Only Angie McKenzie—the yearbook editor and queen of the geek squad—gave her a genuine smile that Willow didn’t return.
She mustered a throaty “Hi” that sent a shiver up my spine. Willow Holloway looked like her namesake—beautiful, delicate, and weeping. Not on the outside, but on the inside. Martin Ford trained me to observe people by how they inhabited their bodies instead of what they said or did. This girl ran deep. Her eyes had given her away when we’d locked stares.
Of course she’s sad, I thought. She had to trade New York City for Harmony-fucking-Indiana.
“Scorching,” Doug whispered to Justin Baker, drawing the word into three syllables and Justin grinned.
Fucking meatheads.
But they weren’t wrong. All through class, my eyes were drawn to Willow Holloway, keenly aware of how opposite we were. She wasn’t immaculately put together—slightly disheveled, with long, thick hair that looked a little wild. But her boots and jeans screamed money. Her oval face was porcelain smooth, as if she hadn’t spent a day in her life working under a harsh sun or biting wind. And as of that morning, she was likely a good two years younger than me.
Too young, I thought, even as my eyes stumbled on the swell of breasts under her cashmere sweater and got stuck there, along with that mass of just-climbed-out-of bed hair that my hands itched to touch.
Who’s the fucking meathead now?
I shifted in my seat, reminding myself I had all the legal-aged ass I could handle, one text or phone call away. Still, for the rest of class, my entire damn body was acutely conscious of Willow beside me. When the bell rang, I lingered in my seat to watch her rise. She gathered her books with a lackadaisical confidence, as if she’d been at George Mason for years instead of minutes.
She turned to me with a dry smile. “You can have your seat back tomorrow.”
I met her gaze steadily, silently.
She shrugged, and walked away, flipping that incredible mass of soft hair over her shoulder. It swished to one side, then the other, settling in a curtain reaching nearly to her waist.
Forget it, I told myself. Too young, too rich, too…everything you’re not.
I’d been poor as shit for my entire life. I’d learned to roll with it most days. Other times, like this morning, it punched me in the teeth.