One by One. Nicholas Bush

the girls ask how old I am, and I tell them, “Old enough,” or “Find out.” From there, I usually just try and get laid, you know? I never really get drunk because I’ll have to drive my sister home. But after my experience smoking weed at the farm, something is different. All I really want to do is get high. I don’t care about looking cool or saying the right things to get with girls, like I used to. That takes effort and time and there’s no guarantee that it will go well.

      My parents know that I party, and although they’ve always been strict with us, my father encourages it to a degree. I think they like the idea of having a popular kid and are okay with whatever I need to do to make that happen. On a few occasions they ask me what I did last night at “a friend’s house” and I tell them I just made out with some girls. They don’t press for more info. Whenever Allison and I head from one place to another, we’re supposed to call my parents so they know what we’re up to, but she’s not always in the best state to talk to them. Sometimes she even accidentally drunk dials our house. Without them ever implicitly saying it, I just know they know, you know? They do, however, make one thing perfectly clear: if I get a girl pregnant, my life is over, and they mean this in the fullest extent of the word over. In bed I think, I better pull out or start using condoms because my life is on the line. I could die. But while it seems like a good idea, in the moment, my body always prefers to go in a different direction. Something in me puts the threat of death on the back burner in favor of instant physical satisfaction and release. This theme will stick with me into adulthood.

      Chapter 2

      Living with my family always feels so off, like something is missing. Looking back, I will know it had a lot to do with the fact that I knew my home wasn’t normal. I mean, I was normal, or at least I thought so, but my home wasn’t and I was powerless to change that, which is enough to drive a person crazy. Every home is dysfunctional if you look at it closely enough, but damn, mine was like a movie and I had to play my part to perfection. There wasn’t love so much as manipulation. To suck up and feign affection went beyond what I was willing to express; I would never bow in that way. But as kids, we had to put on a show for our parents that said, “We like you, we’re friends,” while enduring their impossibly high standards of perfection and absorbing the punishments that inevitably came.

      To hold onto my sanity and cope with the stress, I adopt several strategies. First and foremost, I make sure to check in with my siblings as often as I can, to connect with them at a heart level; we all yearn for deep personal relationships. I stick close to Allison and especially Austin, who sleeps on my bedroom floor when I’m home. Sometimes we lie awake for hours. I’ll say, “Ask me questions,” and he will.

      “Why do some people in my class never talk? They just never say anything all day.”

      “They’re just shy, little buddy.”

      Aside from them, I have music and video games. I can sit alone and listen to entire Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin albums, or shoot bad guys in the face all day on PlayStation 1 or Nintendo 64. I also teach myself to play my favorite songs on the drums. I played Jay’s kit so often over the summers that his mom eventually just gave it to me. It’s a Yamaha Stage Custom with total beginner cymbals. I practice in the farthest corner of the basement, wearing headphones and listening to the songs I’m learning on CDs turned up to full volume.

      At home, I become a moody, tough, and silent type of guy. My shaky relationship with my parents is a ticking time bomb, always on the brink of exploding. Eventually they will find out what I really think of them, one way or the other, and it will have to be by my actions because I sure as shit can’t tell them anything they don’t want to hear.

      One day in the early 2000s, I’m going about my business, chatting with friends on AOL’s instant messaging service, AIM, when some mysterious fucker messages me and begins attacking me. He says he knows all about me and tells me his name, but I’ve never heard of him so I message other people, asking around about him. I learn that he is my age, in my grade, and plays football with me, but isn’t on my team. He’s on the losing squad and it’s pretty clear to me that he’s bitter about this and jealous of me. I wonder how it’s possible I’ve never heard of him, until he says he just moved to Green Bay and joined the team late. These aren’t problems, but what is a problem is when he says he hooked up with one of the girls in my grade who I am enthralled with and trying my best to cajole, but to no avail. He even calls her his girlfriend. My blood boils at this, and when I message the girl to ask, she confirms it. She says he just walked up to her and started calling her his girlfriend, and that’s how it all happened. I wonder if he’s dating her just to piss me off. She isn’t even that hot, so why else?

      I message the scummy piece of trash that he’s about to meet his maker, and that I persuaded and arranged with this girl a winner take all Wild West duel of a fistfight for her. It turns out that the guy recently moved from Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, to a house just kitty-­corner from my street, next to my suburb’s park, and we arrange to meet there the following day after school. Giovanni Russo and I will fight to the death if necessary, like animals in mating season. That’s my girl, and this is my neighborhood. Or are they now his? No weapons, no other people—just me, him, and our fists will decide.

      The next day, I hop off the bus with my teenage boy strut and a familiar fluttering feeling in my stomach as I blare a Slim Shady CD through my Discman. I approach the park on foot and sure enough, there he is, Giovanni Russo. I’m wearing a classic pair of three-stripe Adidas sneakers, carpenter jeans, and a tight white Quiksilver T-shirt. He’s dressed like a skater with thick-soled flat shoes, ragged cargo pants, and a flannel shirt, and it appears as though he doesn’t want to fight. Slowly shifting his weight and walking back and forth, he glances up and to the side in a perfunctory manner, as though contemplating a higher train of thought than my own. It seems to me like he knows something I don’t, which gives me a sense of unease and a need to clarify what is about to take place. Giovanni calmly makes an attempt to reason with me. He takes a step toward me and in a calm voice says, “You know, it’s actually in your best interest not to fight me.” I reply in many cruel and inflammatory words that it’s in my interest to do whatever I have to do to get the girl I like. He seems calm and unafraid and tries to reason with me. By now he’s increasingly throwing me off and it’s alarming. I take a fighting stance, my fists raised and chin tucked, and start walking toward him, my eyes locked and glaring.

      I don’t make it half of the twenty feet separating us before I hear, “Vonn-ny!” called out from a distance about two hundred yards ahead of me. I glance and see a woman beckoning with her hand while calling in a friendly and beautifully mesmerizing voice. A man with dark shoulder-length curly hair stands next to her. He’s lurched forward with his hands on a house’s deck railing. They are just beyond the small creek adjacent to the road that hems the park. I stop and tell Giovanni what a coward he is for having his parents interrupt us. He turns to acknowledge them, and I, for some reason that will forever remain unknown to me, am unable to bring myself to rush him and deliver the beatdown necessary in order to ensure the romance with my prize.

      Giovanni waves off his parents, and then turns back to me. “Okay, look, how about this . . . I’ll back off Cassie if you just come over to my house.”

      The statement is so odd, but his tone is so confident, even friendly. I drop my hands, letting my guard down. Time stands still and we just look at each other: he waiting for me to respond, me confused and not knowing what to say.

      In the awkwardness of the moment, a lonely, awful feeling encircles me and wraps around me, growing tighter by the second. Where does my aggression come from? For the briefest of moments, a flood of horrifying suppressed memories flashes through my mind. I’m not sure what he’s doing and it’s messing with me. Is this a trick, or is this what kindness is? Am I so broken by what I’ve endured that I can’t even recognize kindness? Giovanni turns to face me. He motions for me to walk with him to his home. I’m not sure what to do, but I sure don’t want to go back to my house, especially not with the fire that’s building inside me. He then says the