Guardian

It seemed like Mom and Trick had been snapping at each other since he said his first word. She had always disdained the company he kept and the choices he made, and rare was the conversation in which she didn’t criticize him for something. He couldn’t miss her, because even in his earliest memories, she was only an obstacle to be negotiated.

What he missed was the possibility she had represented – the chance, however slim, that someday things might change, and he might understand why people bought flowers on Mother’s Day. He missed being able to assume that no matter how little Mom liked him, she still loved him, like mothers were supposed to love their kids.

But she wasn’t coming back. With every phone call, he became a little more certain. How could he keep telling himself she loved him if she couldn’t even stand to be around him?

“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said. “Of course I’m coming back. I just don’t know when yet.”

“You already missed Christmas.”

“Yes, and I spent it with my only sister for the first time in ten years. Honestly, Patrick, do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

After they finished talking and Trick hit ‘end’, he barely checked the urge to fling his phone against the nearest wall. Drew, who had been reclining beside Trick on the couch when he got the call, snorted. “Toldja.”

“Told me what?”

“That no one really gives a shit about you,” Drew said mildly. “Not that that makes you special. My mom split when I was just a lil’ brat, same as your dad. I could tell Dad wished he’d thought of it first. And when he and Gwen got hitched, they were popping out replacement kids so fast it’d make your head spin.”

“Sucks for you,” Trick muttered, getting up off the couch.

“I’m just saying, parents are people, and that’s what people do. They give up on you. They bail.”

Trick went to the front hall to put on his jacket and shoes. “I’m goin’ out.”

He could have texted AJ and Zu. If he didn’t want to talk about Mom, they wouldn’t make him. They could have biked around vandalizing light-up lawn ornaments leftover from Christmas, or just smoked some weed and listened to music on Zu’s bed. They would make him feel better. They always did.

But that night, Trick didn’t want to be around people who knew him, who would know he was hurting even if it went unspoken. He didn’t want to have to give a shit about anything or anyone. He wanted to be anonymous. He wanted to feel free.

There’d been some buzz online about a party this guy was throwing at his apartment while his parents were away, so he biked over and went up. Inside it was hotter than hell and crammed with bodies, bass-heavy music thrumming through the floor. On the kitchen counter were a few handles of rum and vodka, a few cartons of fruit punch, and three twenty-four packs of beer.

Trick filled a Solo cup and stood against the wall, nodding to people he knew. He could mosh with the best of them, but dancing to the Top 40 wasn’t really his thing. He was thinking about poking his head into the bedrooms to see if anybody had brought a bong when someone’s shoulder brushed his.

It was Mackenzie Quinn, wearing bubblegum-pink lipstick and a glittery blue tube top. A fountain of red curls framed her long, pale neck. “Hey, Trick,” she said, smiling coyly.

Trick smiled back. “Hey.”

A few refills later, he was grinding his crotch into Mackenzie’s ass amid a crush of their sweaty, alcohol-smelling classmates. He buried his face in Mackenzie’s hair and mouthed sloppily at her neck, tasting her fruity perfume. She turned, looking him up at him, pressing the front of her body against his. He cupped her face, bumped their lips together, and on the second try they meshed.

Being drunk made them clumsy and overenthusiastic, hardly kissing so much as slobbering into one another’s mouths, but that was okay. Trick wasn’t trying to have the best, or hottest, or most memorable night of his life. Just the most ordinary.

This way, for at least a little while, he didn’t have to be Mom’s son who wasn’t good enough for her, or AJ and Zu’s friend who made them knit their brows at each other, or Drew’s...whatever he was to Drew, his responsibility, his chew toy, who was breaking curfew and would probably get the belt when he got home. He was just a guy making out with a girl at a party. Mackenzie could have been anyone. He could have been anyone.

The apartment cleared out sometime around two in the morning and Trick biked home, miraculously managing to get there without crashing into anything. He fit his key into the lock, swayed inside, and passed out on the living room couch.

He woke some time – he had no way of knowing how much time – later to the same air horn blast Drew used to wake him when he slept in too late for his liking. He groaned, his head reverberating with the sound, and tried to put a hand to his temple.

But his arms wouldn’t move. The realization washed through him like ice water: he couldn’t move. He lay naked on his back, on what he could only guess was his bed. His feet were in the air, his knees spread and secured with what felt like duct tape to something tubular wedged beneath them, such that they couldn’t unbend or close. His arms were stretched out straight, wrists duct-taped to either end of the thing under his knees.

“The fuck is––”

Drew’s face appeared in Trick’s field of vision, and he swallowed the rest of the question. Judging by the look in Drew’s eyes, he wouldn’t want to hear the answer.