Josh.mp4 - 8. Punching the wall

Chapter 7

I finally get to my house, still thinking. It's early afternoon and my father isn't home. I see my mother's car in the garage, though. I hesitate, thinking whether I should go inside or not. I still have to get to the cliffs before dark, which shouldn't be a problem even if I have to walk all the way there-- but if I can borrow her car I would get there much more quickly. I slow down as I approach, debating with myself. I still don't want to talk to anyone just yet, but if I don't take the car it will be a long walk and then I still have to go down to the cave.

I also have to go to the bathroom. And I'm hungry. In the end, basic needs win out and I go inside.

It's cool inside the house. I'm sweating from my walk, and the first thing I do is go to the kitchen to get a glass of cold water or some juice. My mother is in the kitchen, though. She's drinking tea and reading on her iPad. When she sees me come in, she puts the tablet down.

"Josh, honey!" she says, and her voice has that tone that she only uses when she suspects I've been doing something wrong. "Where have you been?"

I shrug, walk around the table to the fridge and get out some orange juice. It's cold, and I drink it straight from the carton. My mother doesn't scold me for not using a glass, which is weird.

"Where were you?" she repeats.

"Out."

"Kate has been calling. She said she can't reach you on your mobile. I thought you had lost it."

"Must've turned it off. I'll call her later."

She nods, but I can tell that that's not what is really on her mind.

"Josh, sit down for a moment."

"I'm kind of in a hurry, mom, sorry. Can I borrow your car? I'll be back in a couple hours."

She doesn't answer that. Instead she stares me down until I sit like she asked me to. I grab a banana from the table to do something other than look at her.

"Josh. You weren't with that… You didn't go to see… well. Where did you go?"

I grin sardonically. She can't even say his name. All she's heard about him are rumors, and she believes every single one.

"See who?" I said, eating the banana. Making her say it.

She sighs and ignores the question. "Honey, I've been worried about you, you know that. I have been praying for guidance, a way to reach you. What happened was almost a tragedy and nobody is saying it wasn't, but you have to understand that you had nothing to do with it and… well, it would be best if you distanced yourself from the whole mess while you still can. You got your college applications coming up and you've been neglecting them. You hardly ever go out with your old friends anymore. And Kate has come to talk to me, more than once, to tell me she's also worried about you. People are talking, and—"

"That's all that matters to you, isn't it?" I cut in. "What everybody thinks."

She blushes. "Josh! Don't talk to your mother like that."

I slam the carton of juice on the table, and cold liquid sloshes out. "I'm leaving. I'm going to my room and then I'm out of here."

"Josh!" she yells. "Come back this instant!"

I stop at the threshold and turn back. Very quietly, because my voice shaking with rage, I say, "Don't worry, mom. I'm not going to go visit him anymore. And maybe you can go and tell your bunch of gossip-loving friends the good news, too: Nathan is gone, he left this morning forever. Now will you stop worrying?"

She purses her lips with disapproval and a bit of shock at my tone. I'm too angry to really care about what I said and I feel a perverse kind of satisfaction at having gotten the last word in. I storm out of the room, stomping up the stairs to my room. I slam the door behind me, go straight to the bathroom and splash some cold water on my face. It doesn't really help much but it gives me something to do. I take a quick piss, flush and return to my bedroom. I grab my jacket because it will be cold when night falls over at the cave, and as I'm looking for anything else I can take with me I spot the hole on the wall. The fist-sized, cracked hole in the thin plaster that I haven't bothered filling out for the past few months, a little memento from Nathan's last visit to my house. He was probably as angry then as I am right now. That hole is one of the biggest reasons why my mother couldn't stand him, and why she was so glad when I finally stopped talking to him for good.

It was maybe five weeks or so after the night at the cave, and Nathan showed up at my house out of the blue. I hadn't heard anything from him since then and in a way I had been glad. That morning in the cave, neither of us had mentioned what had happened the night before. It helped that we both were hungover and that provided a good excuse. Afterwards we each went our own way and then Nathan started ignoring me.

I mean, he ignored me more than usual, not limiting himself to school time but also in the afternoons and during weekends. I tried calling him a couple times and left him some messages on Facebook, but he didn't answer me and I stopped insisting after a while. At the time I told myself I was busy, training for the final games in the local soccer championship. This time the team had a good shot at winning the tournament, and so the coach was drilling us mercilessly every day to get is in top shape for the big games. Then there was school work, which wasn't too hard but which took up a lot of time now that I was actually trying to get good grades to show on my college applications. And then there was Kate.

I had decided I had been neglecting our relationship before and so I became a lot more romantic with her, taking her out to fancy dinners, having flowers delivered to her house for special occasions, all that crap. She loved it, hanging out with me every free moment she had during school and going to cheer me up during practice. She didn't really say to me that she noticed I was trying to be a better boyfriend or anything, but once I heard one of her friends complaining to another that she wished she had a guy as attentive as me. My teammates began to tease me good-naturedly about Kate, asking me when we were going to get married and if I had knocked her up or why we were such an item these days. They didn't say they were jealous, but Harvey grumbled constantly that he wished that his girlfriend would bring him stuff to eat after practice when we were all starving, like Kate did. She would usually be there on the bleachers with some of her friends, and greeted me with food and a kiss after we had all showered and changed.

I felt good in those days, as if everything in my life were starting to fit finally into place. I talked to the student counselor one day regarding career choices for the future since both Kate and my father had been insisting that I do it. The counselor gave me a bunch of applications that I had to fill out and send to several universities in the state that had good sports programs, and he sent me an e-mail with links to more than a hundred other universities I could be interested in checking out. I had long talks with Kate about the future, although to be honest I was not particularly psyched about going to college. Everybody else was, though, so it was easier to just ride along with the flow and think about selecting a career.

My mother loved Kate, and they became good friends. Kate would sometimes even come to my house to talk to her, and once she surprised me with a home-cooked dinner at my house for our six-month anniversary. It was slightly awkward having both of my parents there, and me and Kate, but my mother and Kate handled most of the conversation while my father gave me knowing looks every now and then that basically told me to shut up and not interrupt them. That dinner went surprisingly well, and afterwards Kate and I went up to my room.

"Your parents are really nice," Kate told me as I closed the door.

"Well, you can keep them," I joked.

"Yoshi!" she said, laughing. I cringed at the awful nickname, but less now than when she had first come up with it. "Don't be mean. You know they love you."

I kissed her. "I know, I know. But I love you more."

She melted in my arms. She was a good kisser, and she loved long kissing sessions. There was usually some making out involved, although we usually didn't go further than that in either of our parents' houses. That didn't stop me from getting all worked up, though.

"I'm really lucky that I found you," I told her, lifting her up by the waist and spinning her around once. She cried out in delight.

"I love you, Yoshi," she said in between kisses. "These six months have been amazing."

I looked into her eyes. "I know."

There was a noise downstairs then, voices. I didn't pay any attention to them.

"What do you want to do?" I asked Kate. "It's still early. You want to catch a movie?"

"I don't know," she said playfully, with a hint of something else. "I'd rather stay here with you. Maybe... you could send your parents to the movies instead?"

I kissed her again, laughing. My pants were getting uncomfortably tight. "I'll try."

That's when Nathan barged in.

He opened the door and came in as if he owned the place.

"Nathan?" I said stupidly.

He stopped halfway into the room, his eyes going from me to Kate and back to me.

Nobody said anything for like two seconds. I was too surprised to see Nathan to react properly, and he seemed shocked to have found me with somebody else when he had obviously supposed I would be alone.

In fact, the first one to recover was Kate.

"Hi, Nathan," she said sweetly. "How are you doing?"

She stood up on tiptoe, turned my face with one hand and gave me a long deep kiss. Then she looked at him again. "Anything we can do for you?"

Nathan had gone red as a beet. He clenched his hands into fists, scowled at me with what I could only describe as pure hatred and then turned away suddenly, slamming his fist into the wall. His hand went clean through the plaster, and even Kate gave a yelp of surprise.

Nathan stormed out of the room, ignoring my mother downstairs. I heard the front door slam and then he was gone.

Kate hugged me a bit more tightly than was necessary and said she would like to go to the movies after all. I went along with the idea, although I wasn't in the mood for a movie anymore.