A Broken Kind of Life (11 page)

The screaming pain had dulled into an incessant throb by the time the alarm went off under his pillow. Tight muscles in his shoulders cramped as he rolled to his side and checked the time on his phone. Spencer needed to be in the shower right then in order to make it to school in time to meet his interpreter. It took all his strength to make it into the bathroom and even more to turn on the shower. Rubbing shampoo into his scalp felt far better than the needle jabbed behind his eye.

By the time he was dressed, Spencer had just enough time for a quick bowl of cereal in the kitchen before he had to leave. The smell of pancakes and sausage made his mouth water as he came down the stairs. He stared, open-mouthed, as his father stood in the kitchen making breakfast for them both. His father turned, plate in hand, and smiled when he saw Spencer in the doorway. He set the plate on the table.

I could not send you off to your first day in college without a good breakfast,
he signed and turned to walk back to the stove. Spencer stood frozen in the doorway another moment longer. His father had been so considerate. Pulling the milk from the refrigerator, Spencer poured two glasses without being asked and sat down at the table with a warm glow in his stomach.

He didn’t care about being late anymore.

I am taking psychology this semester,
Spencer signed after they were both sitting at the table with piles of pancakes and heaps of sausage stacked on their plates. It was one of the breakfasts he’d always loved growing up. Anything in the world could be cured with either pancakes or ice cream—even college jitters.

At least I will be good for something,
his father replied with a shrug and dumped syrup over his fluffy, buttered pancakes. Spencer hated the depression and sadness he saw in his father’s eyes.

“You. Are. Good. For. Lots. Of. Other. Things. Too. You. Could. Still. Practice. If. You. Wanted. To,” Spencer reasoned, but his dad just nodded once without comment. They lost the moment to awkward silence.

Spencer drove to school a while later, feeling lonelier than he had in a very long time.

A
ARON
didn’t want to open his eyes the next morning when his mother called through the door that it was time to get up. It had been years since he’d used an alarm clock; the evil jarring noise made his heart leap into his throat. Even when it was set to music, it startled him so badly that it put him on edge for the rest of the day. So his mom woke him up, and her voice soothed rather than scared him. It was just one more thing she did for him to help him cope with the fact that he barely functioned. Sometimes, as he lay staring up at the blank ceiling above his head, he wondered if maybe his mother did too much for him. She was enabling him by not pushing or challenging him so the status quo could be maintained. Even after two years, he still felt like an infant or some kind of invalid because he hadn’t made any progress. He was still that weak, scared little boy they’d found nearly dead on the oil-stained floor.

He didn’t have time to lie there and dissect the issue of his abnormal psychosis right then, however. At that moment, he needed to open his eyes and get into the shower in order to start his day—his first day of college. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes to see a perfectly blue, cloudless sky. Maybe it would be a good day.

He rushed through his shower and the rest of his morning routine and then grabbed his laptop bag and headed downstairs. He felt bad about making his mother worry after visiting Juliette on Saturday. He had been very quiet, introspective, when they’d gotten home. Seeing her name carved into the tombstone like that really brought it home for him. It wasn’t just some horrifying nightmare. She wasn’t on vacation with her family. Juliette had been raped and murdered less than ten feet from him. Before the men had stabbed him, before they had cut his face and his arms and tried to kill him, they had made him watch as they cut her throat. They had made him watch, knowing it was going to happen to him too, just as soon as they were done with her. He could still feel the cold concrete pressed under his mostly naked body, smell the putrid odor of sweat and gasoline as the boot dug into his cheek while the man held him still. The blood had poured from her as the knife slid with little resistance across her soft skin, soaking her torn sweater and finally pooling on the filthy floor.

Aaron hadn’t wanted to talk about any of this, least of all with his mother. She did so much for him already, there was no way he would plant those images in her head. Those images, and other images that to him were just as horrifying, would stay locked inside him. At no time he could imagine would he burden someone else with his nightmares.

As he walked into the kitchen, Aaron promised himself he would eat whatever his mother put in front of him. It was the least he could do for her, not causing her any more worry than was absolutely necessary. He had already done enough. Allen passed him on his way out to school as Aaron settled into a kitchen chair. Since Allen was old enough to drive both himself and Anthony to school in the beat-up Ford Mustang his parents had bought for them, he could afford to leave a little bit later. The two miles to the combination junior/senior high school took much less time in their Day-Glo orange beater.

“I hope you have a great first day, man,” Allen said, and then he shoved a cereal bar whole into his mouth and grabbed his bag.

“Thanks,” Aaron replied as his mother placed a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of him. Allen said something unintelligible with the cereal bar taking up most of the space in his mouth and ran for the front door.

“If you rolled out of bed more than five minutes before you had to leave, I’d make them for you too,” his mother called after Allen with a laugh. Aaron looked up at her, the guilt eating at his stomach as he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. It was obvious she hadn’t slept well last night either. He must have really scared her.

“Mom, are you busy?” Aaron asked, the words out of his mouth before he really decided to speak.

“I’m never too busy for my boys,” his mother said with a smile and sat down in the empty seat across from him. Strangely pleased that she had brought pancakes for herself as well, he thought it would be really nice to just sit here at the table and eat alone with his mom.

“I’m sorry I was so… quiet. I know that it worried you. I just…. I can’t…,” Aaron started, but had really no idea how to finish.

I can’t tell you about all the horrible things I see in my head.

I can’t clearly articulate what it’s like to die inside.

I can’t describe what it’s like to want to scream every minute of every day.

He had no idea what the hell he was supposed to tell her. Even during the hundreds of wasted hours of useless therapy, he’d never talked about it. The humiliation, the shame were only the tip of the psychiatric iceberg. So the shrinks pumped him full of pills and moved on to someone they
could
help.

“You don’t need to apologize, Aaron. I knew it would be hard for you. To tell you the truth, I would have been more worried if you hadn’t been upset by it, and I’m really proud of you for going. You walked alone across the grass, and you made it through. The Aaron that we brought home two years ago wouldn’t have been able to do that. I hope that you can see how far you’ve come. Things are getting better, honey, slowly.” It was such a lovely sentiment that Aaron didn’t have the heart to contradict her, so he remained silent. Soon after they finished their breakfast, she drove him to school.

As he stood against the wall outside the computer lab where his very first college class was to be held, he took several deep breaths, trying to calm the panicky, out-of-control feeling in his chest. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, and he focused on a single tile on the floor. When he could breathe again, he turned and opened the door. Just as he had hoped, there were no other students in the lab yet. Walking to the very last row of computers, he took the one on the end. Dropping into the ugly fabric chair, he rolled up to the desk and turned on the machine, bringing up a free gaming site once it had booted.

One by one, students began to file into the large auditorium-style rows of tables and computers. Aaron started to get nervous when people sat in the row right in front of him. The class was going to be near capacity. He had been almost comfortable with the empty rows serving as a barrier between him and the rest of the people in the room. Just a few more students, and someone might sit right next to him. Could he deal with that? Would he have to change sections? Would he have to drop? Aaron didn’t see the point of going to college anyway. It’s not like he’d ever be able to hold down a job. He knew he would be a burden on his parents and then his brothers for the rest of his life, which he hoped wasn’t drawn out.

He noticed the empty seat next to his was marked RESERVED. He wondered if his instructor, Dr. Mayer, had done that to give him the chance to sit alone. The panicky feeling in his chest started to loosen when his instructor came into the room and dropped a worn leather backpack on the table at the front. He was a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties, with shaggy brown hair and glasses. He looked fairly at ease in his khaki pants and solid blue polo. It was casual classroom attire. He dallied at the front of the room for several minutes, pulling things out of the backpack. It seemed he was waiting for the students to settle so class could begin. Dr. Mayer had just put up the syllabus on the computer projector when the lab door opened and a teenage boy entered with an older woman. His long brown curls were windswept as he climbed the stairs, walking right toward Aaron, who prayed silently that they would take the seats across the aisle from him.

The boy, who Aaron now noticed had a strong build and probably a day’s worth of stubble on his face, sat down right next to him, pulling the reserved sign off the monitor. He looked over at Aaron with hauntingly deep hazel eyes, smiled shyly, and then turned to watch the woman sitting next to him. Aaron wondered why he was paying more attention to the woman than to the instructor until she started moving her hands. The boy took the vibrant blue messenger bag off his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the woman as she kept using sign language to communicate to him.

He was deaf.

His black T-shirt stretched tight over his shoulders as he crossed his arms, still watching the woman as she relayed the content of the lecture. With each successive line of the syllabus or announcement Dr. Mayer made, the woman repeated it in controlled, practiced gestures. It became apparent to Aaron why they made him sit in the back. The boy might have been able to read lips from the front row, but his companion’s signing would have been distracting to the rest of the students in the hall. By putting him in the back, the distraction was at least minimized.

The first class was all about the syllabus, expectations, et cetera, and Aaron sat quietly, mostly listening. He found himself increasingly distracted by the boy on his left as he listened to the lecture through the hands of the woman. A sense of familiarity or similarity gave Aaron pause, because he understood all too well what it was like to have to rely on others in order to survive. Unable to imagine what it would be like to be deaf, to have the hardships the guy had to suffer through, he felt a surge of empathy as he turned back to the lecture.

Just as he caught up to what Dr. Mayer was reading from the syllabus, his breath froze in his lungs. A quarter of his grade would depend on a partner project. He couldn’t do a partner project. Just the thought of being that close to someone, of the time it would take to complete while they stared at him with horror and revulsion, made him shut down completely inside. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples as panic took over, and the room started to get smaller.

It was all he could do keep it at bay until his mother arrived.

“Mom, you need to talk to the instructor. I can’t do a project with someone,” Aaron pleaded with his mother as soon as he had shut the car door. She had arrived right on time and was waiting for him when he exited the building at a run.

“Take a deep breath and calm down, Aaron. Whatever it is, we will work it out. Now, tell me what happened.” Her calm was unnerving him. How could she be so calm when he was falling apart? He hadn’t wanted to go to college in the first place, but now that he was there, it gave him something to do. It allowed him to think about something else, focus on something other than the miserable reality of his life. His college career was about to end before it ever really got started.

There was no way he would be able to graduate without this class, no matter who his mother talked to. It was the prerequisite for the next course in the series. He’d be stopped in his tracks if he couldn’t take it. The problem was, there was no way he would be able to work so closely with someone else
. What was he going to do?
His hands automatically tightened into fists, as they always did when a panic attack started. Whoever he was paired with, they would pity him, stare at him, maybe even request another partner because they were repulsed by him
. Oh God.