WUSS
By Jordan Sullivan

Published in Third Coast Magazine
Finalist for the Third Coast Short Fiction Award

 
     I ran away from home the day my mom burned wuss into the back of my neck. Maybe you heard about me on the news, though I’m sure you’ve forgotten by now. It was almost ten years ago.

     I was about to leave for school when my mom got hold of me. She’d been giving me hell all morning, all month, my whole life really. But things got really bad that week because her dentist cut her off. She’d been making appointments all year to get her teeth pulled so she could keep up her Vicodin habit. She was rotting her teeth out herself and popping thirty, forty, pills a day.

She already had the needle red hot when she caught me. That’s what bothered me most about this particular act of abuse - it was all so premeditated. While she was roasting that needle, she didn’t once think: This is a bad idea, or I’m about to permanently scar my child, my only daughter. It wasn’t like when she’d hit me. At least then it wasn’t so thought out. She was just acting out of passion. Only after she’d landed her fist across my face could she really wonder whether she’d made a mistake. But I was beginning to think I was the only mistake she ever regretted.

     My destination that morning was California. I didn’t know where it was or how far it was from Ohio, but in history class, that’s where people were always escaping to. But I wasn’t too keen on going alone, so I stopped first at Jason’s house. Jason was sixteen, four years older than me. He was my boyfriend; he just didn’t know it yet. Kids said he was retarded on account of the school he went to and the short bus that took him there. I couldn’t give a shit either way. He was the prettiest thing I ever saw and the kindest, too.

     I caught him that morning at the bus stop, frying worms with his magnifying glass. It was the same story every morning, and it didn’t matter if the sun was out.

     It’s too cold, I told him.

     He looked up at me. His Buddy Holly glasses that made his eyes look big slid down the bridge of his nose. He was wearing that same Hard Rock Café t-shirt from some faraway city neither of us would ever visit. Hi-ya, he grinned. And just that was enough to make me grin and enough to break my heart too.

     I crouched down beside him. We’re leaving, I said.

     Where?

     California.

     Where’s that?

     I don’t know.

     I have to be back by tonight, he told me. My mom’s making fish sticks.

     That won’t work.

     Can we go tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Saturday. Let’s go tomorrow.

     I shook my head. We have to go today.

     I can’t.

     Please, I begged. The Partridge Family lives there.

     He stopped frying the worm and looked up at me. He pushed his glasses up his nose, squinted. Have you been crying? he asked.

     No.

     You look sad.

     Well, I ain’t.

     He went back to his worm. I grabbed the magnifying glass from him.

     Hey, he shouted.

     I held the glass tight against my heart. Please come with me, Jason.

     Give me back my magnifier.

     I thought about breaking the thing right there in front of him.

     Give me, he moaned and then started to cry.

     I handed him the magnifier. Stop being such a baby, I said. Why do you want to stay here anyway?

     He ignored me.

     I’m sorry, Jason.

     It’s ok, he sniffled. We can go to California Saturday.

     I love you, I said.

     No you don’t, he told me. You only think you do.

     I took off up Memorial Drive. I scratched at the wound on my neck, then looked at my hand. It wasn’t until I saw the blood that I started to feel any pain.

     I had five dollars in my pocket, so I stopped at a Sunoco station for supplies.

     I’m going to California, I told the clerk. You know how far that is?

     The old guy just shook his head, some oily strands of hair falling like little dead water snakes over his red eyes.

     I bought five candy bars.

     Hey kid, you’re bleeding, he shouted to me on the way out.

     Nothing new, I said and swung open the door.

     I walked along the back streets, figuring I’d avoid the cops or anyone else who might catch me ditching school. Along the way, I ate all the candy bars and felt sick. I sat down in an empty dugout in Lamb Park and thought of my dad. I wasn’t meaning to. The memory just sort of snuck up on me. My daddy tried to teach me to pitch on that diamond, but I had no knack for it, or any sport for that matter. But over and over I’d toss him the balls, and he’d just get more and more frustrated. At home, after practice one night, he played me old tapes of Nolan Ryan, his hero. Look at that form, he said. See how patient he is. That’s how it’s done. This guy’s tough as nails. You, you’re tough as smoke, girl, but we’ll fix that. We’ll fix you. I didn’t understand any of it, but I nodded along. You’ll get there, he kept telling me. We’ll get you there.

I walked down Diamond Street until it turned to dirt. I passed the old roller-skating rink, sitting all boarded up in the gravel lot. No one came around that part of town. Whenever I was over there, I thought of death and got a lonely feeling. Off in the distance I could hear cars on the interstate, and I followed the sound across a field of corn stubble and through a shelterbelt of oaks. I walked up on the footbridge leading over the highway, spit on the passing traffic through the chain link fence, and smoked the last cigarette I found in a pack buried at the bottom of my backpack. I only got two or three drags before I puked up my candy bars. My stomach could never handle sweets, but I’m not sure if it was the candy or the world spinning too fast that was making me so nauseated.

     I sat down on the bridge, grazing my fingers across the new tattoo on the back of my neck. It felt much bigger than it was. I started to cry.

     I stood up when a pair of kids pushing BMX bikes came by. I tried to dry my eyes, but it was no use. Show us your tits, one of them shouted. Another lunged at me like he was going to hit me, and I cried harder and closed my eyes. When I opened them the kids were gone.

     My dad told me stories of how he’d hitchhiked all the way to Alaska one summer, so I got on the shoulder of the highway and stuck my thumb out, but no one was stopping for hitchhikers.

     Some clouds covered the sun, and it got cold. I walked up the highway and down a slope to the creek. I sat under the overpass and read the graffiti painted all over the concrete columns - hearts surrounding the names of boys and girls in love, swastikas, pictures of flying saucers, aliens. I wished right then one would swoop down and abduct me. There was a man in the courthouse square who wandered in circles all day, drinking orange juice and talking about the spaceship that kidnapped him. He said they stuck needles and pink fluids into his brain. They grew flowers in his stomach, he said. When they were done, they showed him everything - God and the universe and everything. No one believes you when you talk like that. They call you crazy. They can’t think of any other word.

     The colder it grew the more I wished Jason were with me. He was the only one of them that didn’t ask to see my tits or call me a wuss. He didn’t call me anything. We would just roam around together all day. We’d go stealing from huckleberry patches, climb to the tops of the highest pine trees, or I’d sit there, watching him fry worms. It didn’t matter. As long as I was with him, I wasn’t worried.

     I got back on the highway, figuring I’d stay warm if I kept moving. A cop picked me up about a half-hour up the road. The officer looked at my neck. Who did this? he asked. I told him who did it. He looked scared when I told him. I probably looked the same. He put me in the back seat.

     Am I in trouble?

     No, he said.

     Am I going to jail?

     You’re not going to jail. Got to get you to a doctor though.

     How far’s California?

     He looked back at me. California? Why do you want to go there?

     My daddy’s there.

     The cop just laughed, and that only made me madder. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Open it, I screamed. Open the damn door.

     The cop turned around, flashing this sad smile. Calm down, sweetheart. You’re safe now.

     I looked out the window at the blurred fields, at the road slipping away under the tires. The world was colored gray, and soon everything would be black and blue in the dusk. I miss you, Daddy, I thought. I’ll learn to pitch. I’ll learn anything you want me to. I’ll be anything you need me to be. I’ll be a boy. I’ll be an athlete. Anything.

     I closed my eyes and tried to think of him and California, but all I could see was my mom and our kitchen; the stench of old bologna and vinegar; my mom’s sweaty forearm wrapped tightly around my neck. I was squirming, sucking at the air. Hold still, she was grunting. Her breath was hot and filthy as factory steam. She dragged the red-hot tip across the nape of my neck. I squirmed again. Don't let her see you cry, I thought. Don’t let her see you cry. She was snorting, then hawking phlegm onto the grease-stained linoleum. I was shaking all over. So she tightened her grip till I couldn’t breath, dug the needle in deeper. Hold still, goddamnit. Don't move. Don’t fucking move. Her voice was the only sound in the whole world. I hate you, she muttered. Over and over she reminded me of that. I hate you, Dana. And I wanted to tell her the same, but I couldn’t tell a lie.