MILES AWAY: CHAPTER THREE

This chapter is the last of the three that will be shipped off to agents near the end of the summer.  If you've read all three, how do you feel about the story?  Are you drawn in?  Are there any major areas that should be overhauled as I continue the drafting process?  Honest thoughts and feedback only.  Thank you.

            Miles watched through the glass partition as his foster mother, Carol Lyle, strode angrily and with purpose through the outer double doors, into the high school lobby, and toward the main office.  Her teal nursing scrubs hung upon her gaunt body like burlap sacks on a scarecrow’s frame.  The brunt of her brunette hair hung in a ponytail out the back of a surgical cap.  It snapped back and forth from the briskness of her movements.  Miles looked to her feet.  She still wore her shoe covers.  He knew he was in for it now.  They pulled her out of surgery to get him.

            With a violent yank, Carol opened the door to the office.  The aluminum blinds clanged against the wire-reinforced safety glass.  Her eyes locked on Miles, and she stalked toward him.  A foot from him she stopped, glared, and shook her head with displeasure.  The smell of cigarette smoke wafted from her clothes.

            “Mrs. Lyle,” Mrs. Clancy, the principal’s secretary, interrupted.

            Carol quickly composed herself and faced Mrs. Clancy.

            “Ms. Dempsey is expecting you.”

            His foster mother turned back to him.  “We’ll talk in the car,” she grumbled low.  The veins in her neck bulged.  Miles knew she was really holding back.  She whipped around and walked down a short corridor and into Ms. Dempsey’s office. 

            He waited a good half hour before his foster mother finally emerged.  While she looked pissed before, she now seemed despondent, unsure of what to do.  The wrinkles around her eyes appeared more distinct, pronounced.  In her hand he saw the pink carbon copy of his referral.  Calmly, Carol drew near Miles and resignedly said, “Let’s go.”

            Miles stood up, grabbed his bag, and followed her out the door.  Through the lobby, the outer doors, across the parking lot, and into the car, she didn’t utter a word the whole way.  The rumble of the Dodge Caravan coming to life seemed to be the only sound that hit his ears.  He could swear even the birds stopped chirping.  It was an unnatural silence.  The moment the van left the school grounds, Carol lowered the driver’s side window and lit up a cigarette.  She took long, concentrated drags.  With a half inch of ash dangling from the glowing tip, his foster mother finally broke the silence.

            “I’m trying, Miles.  I’m really trying to understand you.”  Carol shook her head with a look of despair.  “Why would you do that to another kid?”

            Miles tried to not show any emotion.  He stared out the window, not making eye contact with her.  “He deserved it,” he uttered flatly.

            “Deserved it?  Miles, you sent him to the hospital.  Who deserves that?”

            “You wouldn’t understand.”

            “Try me.”

            Miles lost himself in the blur of emerald pastures and sweeping hillsides passing by.  He couldn’t admit why he beat Jack to a pulp.  The thought of exposing a weakness to her, of telling her that other kids abuse him would let the sturdy wall surrounding his emotions crumble.  Besides, what could she do?  Talk to the principal?  Talk to Jack’s parents?  That would only make things worse.  They’d feign ignorance and then Miles would be made out to be a bigger liar than they all already thought he was.  The volatile persona and the dangerously short temper he put on display today, he decided, would serve him far more than opening up to his foster mother.  She’d be pissed for a few days, just like his foster father would be once he found out, but their anger would subside.  The added ridicule and bullying he’d suffer as a result of whining about being picked on far outweighed any benefits he might reap. 

            “You can ignore me all you want, Miles, but your father won’t stand for it.”

            He glared at her out the corner of his eyes.  “He’s not my father.”  Miles drew his earphones up over his ears and pressed play on his mp3 player, shutting her out.

            Carol took a long, hard drag of her cigarette and puffed out the smoke in exasperation. 

            As the fairly short drive home passed, Miles couldn’t help but try to make sense of what he felt back in the hallway outside the locker room.  Jack deserved what happened.  For as much as he terrorized and ridiculed Miles, he wasn’t the only victim.  Like a quintessential bully, Jack fed on the weak, the smaller, and the insecure.  No one dared stand in his way for fear of what Jack or his parents might do.  Rest assured, sooner or later he was bound to mess with the wrong person and be put in his place.  Maybe, Miles thought, Jack was lucky it happened now when he was still a kid rather than as an adult.  Kids can only do so much damage.  Adults are another story.  Jack never counted on someone smaller than him fighting back.  But through all his rage and anger at Jack and even his foster parents, Miles’ true hatred, the root of his anger stemmed from his real parents.  Why did they give him up?

            Before he could entertain that thought any further, Miles saw the Lyle’s raised ranch roll into view.  With an aggressive turn and a squealing of the brakes, the van came to a stop.  Miles reached for the door handle and popped it ajar.  The firm grasp of his foster mother’s hand on his arm kept him from jumping out.  With a frustrated yank he pulled his headphones down off his ears.  “What?” he snapped at her.     

            “I have to get back to the hospital,” Carol replied with a calmer, measured tone.  “We’ll talk about this tonight.”

            “Whatever,” he replied apathetically.  He pulled himself free of her grasp, hopped out of the van onto the damp asphalt, and slammed the door shut.  Within moments the van was out of sight and Miles was alone in the house.  He descended into the pitch black basement and to the small walled-off space he called his bedroom.  The flimsy door opened and a flood of light washed over him from the lone window that revealed the outside world.  Posters of Bruce Lee, Cam Newton, and bikini bimbos washing sports cars covered the meager bit of wall space.  In the corner opposite his bed sat a worn-out, dial-tune television and a collection of retro video games he haggled from neighbors at garage sales.  His foster siblings had a nice HDTV upstairs in the living room and all the newest gaming systems.  It was okay though, these were his.  After all, things could be worse; he could live in a closet under the stairs.

            Miles threw his backpack across the room where it landed on his duck-taped bean bag chair.  Then he moved over to the edge of his bed, knelt down, and pulled a tattered cigar box from under the frame.  Turning and sitting with his back against the bed, Miles lifted the top off the box and laid it on his lap.  Inside rested an odd collection of items that he had collected in his travels.  Miles had lived with so many families and in so many homes over the years, he kept a memoriam of sorts from each.  Most of the items meant little or nothing to him in the grand scheme of things.  A few, however, held special meaning: a tattered John Franco baseball card, a few seashells from the Outer Banks, and a ticket to Busch Gardens.  In his sixteen years of life, these three moments stood out, mainly because they were the only true happy times.  He spent the better part of his life feeling unwanted and alone.  Family after family passed on him after a few years of care, not ready to “adopt” him.  By the time he was ten, he stopped letting himself get too vested in his foster families or hope that someone might offer him a permanent home.  He kept his distance and wouldn’t let anyone in. 

            But it wasn’t those happy memories from the past that Miles sought at that moment.  His heart ached—not because he had to listen to the taunts of a bully or because he brutally repaid that bully in kind (deserving or not), but because the people who could have prevented him from ever having to listen to such heartless insults had cast him out into the cold world, naked and vulnerable for vultures to pick over.  It was their picture for which he dug through the contents of the cigar box.  Sliding it out from under the weight of all the other trinkets, the photo came into view.  It was from one of those instant cameras, a Polaroid he was told, with its white paper border surrounding the developed picture.  Small creases and discoloration marked the picture, but he could still see his parents clearly despite the wear and tear.  He held it at arm’s length and studied the two strangers he saw.

            Miles’ father looked no more than twenty, maybe twenty two, with closely cropped brown hair, the very hint of a moustache, a distinct, pointy nose, and a small scar over his right eye.  He had the look of a rugged man, the kind that worked with his hands, and that work made him tough.  Yet the smile on his face showed sincere love for both his wife and the small son she held wrapped in her arms.  His mother, on the other hand, had shoulder length, curly red hair, high cheekbones, and an equally beaming smile.  She had a chubby, childlike face, probably from carrying him for nine months.  Examining the picture for the thousandth time, he wondered if they were so happy, how could they walk away and leave him behind.  Through her smile, his mother had tears streaming down her face.  Did she know that she would never see her son again?  Is that why she was crying?  How could they do it?   Not knowing made the hurt inside Miles all the more unbearable.  In the quiet safety of his room, he let all his pain out in a crescendo of agony.  He clenched the fist of his right hand and swung it brutally against the side of his bed, pounding it over and over again.  The mattress bounced and lurched at the power of the blows.

            “Son of a bitch!” Miles bellowed as his hand struck the edge of the metal bedframe.  He rose from off the floor onto his knees, clutching his throbbing hand.  The photo fell from his hand and the box of trinkets spilled across the rug.  “Why did you do this to me?” he screamed, pressing out every molecule of air in his lungs.  He began to hyperventilate from the sobs that racked his body and the thunderous pumping of his blood.  Like an angry hammer, Miles brought both fists down hard upon the thinly padded, carpeted floor.  This time he felt no pain.  His sense of self and connection to reality left him in his rage.  He recklessly slung the spilled belongings from his box to the walls, putting as much power and malice into his movements as he could.  With both hands he snatched up the last to pieces, two crystal spheres with letters etched upon them and squeezed them in both hands as he howled.  Miles closed his eyes and focused his thoughts on his parents; all his anger, all his pain, all of his loneliness he cast at their memories and squeezed the seemingly fragile orbs as he wished he could strangle his parents and to turn them into nothing.  Yet he heard no cracking, felt no sting of glassy shards rending his palms.  Instead he felt something, something he couldn’t explain; a tingling of sorts akin to sticking his tongue to a 9-volt battery.  It raced up his arms and held them tight like a squid squeezing his forearms to bursting.  He fought the sensation, gritting his teeth, hoping that what he sensed was splinters of glass deepening into his nerves and flesh so his physical pain might equal his mental anguish.  But Miles could take it no more.  His hands opened from the unbearable discomfort and the spheres fell with a clunk.        
            Opening his eyes, Miles immediately perused his arms. He looked them over, front and back, and felt utterly befuddled. Though he didn’t know whether lightheadedness made his eyes play tricks on him or if he actually saw something real and tangible, he did see minute threads of blue energy pulsing along his forearms and then fade into oblivion. His breathing slowed, and the storm within him subsided. What his parents did to him had taken a back seat to this mystery. Miles rubbed at the ache that began to nibble once more at his now bruised right hand. He ruminated over the event.
            “What the fuck!” Miles mumbled. He scratched at his head and shrugged. Miles didn’t realize just how much of a mess he had made until he stood surveying the carnage. With a burst of energy, he gathered up all his valuables, placed them back in the cigar box, and thrust it under the bed. Then he threw himself down on the bed and stared at the ceiling, no longer obsessed by demons of the past. A new one had taken its place.