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  “You are so screwed up, Aysa Branton.”

  Ezra

  “Not again, Dauber, not again.”

  “Yes, you lost the bet. Now you have to go talk to…her.” He points at a busty blonde wearing a toddler sized tank top that reads ‘Juice & Jerky’.

  “I didn’t lose the bet. I didn’t run for three weeks on the street. I used my treadmill. You said, ‘I don’t want to see you running at night for the next three weeks.’ So I ran during the day and on my treadmill. Technically, I won.” I tip my glass and let the last of my scotch trickle a burn down my throat. Running had become a habit after I’d run for so long after the accident. I’d never trained to be a runner and had no dresser drawers full of running t-shirt trophies to boast. I just slipped into a pair of shorts every night and ran like I ran that day.

  “That’s sleazy, and you know it. Now go. Anyway, you and I both know she’ll dig all that bruised lion vibe you’ve got going.”

  “Bruised lion?”

  “Yeah, you know, strong, fierce, but needs to be hugged and nursed back to health.”

  “Shut up,” I say, dropping some peanuts into the rest of his beer. I hate beer. It looks like piss and smells like moldy bread. I’d had it once, at a party when I was seventeen. It was the weekend before I met Mara—I knew when I laid eyes on her that my life would never be the same. Of course, my naïve, cocky self-thought that meant I was gonna get laid for the first time. I think most people, if they had one wish, would go back and tell themselves to do something different. They’d make sure they didn’t do anything stupid or future altering. I just wanted to go back to that post-game party and drag Mara away from the teenager me—tell her that if she valued her life, if she valued life at all—she’d run. I would shake her if I had to, take her by the hand and pull her into another room, a car, a cab—anything. I’d scream in her face, ‘He’s gonna ruin you. He’s gonna make your life hell. He’s gonna royally screw up any hopes and dreams you’ve ever had. Run, Mara, run.’

  The clinking of glasses nearby breaks me free of my pointless dreaming. The bus boy gathers shot glasses from the table next to ours, looking none too impressed with his tip. I signal the waiter and order another round.

  “Why don’t you have this one? Go after her if you think she’s so hot.”

  “You know what? I think I will,” He winked at me, and it makes me feel violated. Dauber, we named him that when he took an old cane fishing pole and went around knocking down dirt Dauber nests when we were kids, always balanced the line between funny and pervy. He was the real life version of Howard from the Big Bang Theory without the turtlenecks and tight pants.

  A football game plays on the flat screens hanging from the walnut beams above me while I watch Dauber play his cards. I’d seen his royal flush so many times I can practically recite it verbatim. ‘Hi, I’m Roman. I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful you are…’ that’s his repertoire, because no man every got anywhere with a girl going by the name Dauber. When he’s got a few beers in him, he thinks everyone is beautiful. He told me I was pretty one time when I was peeling him from a stranger’s bathroom floor. We also don’t speak of a time that he tried to slow dance with me to ‘Soul Provider’ either. Busty blonde is leaning over the bar now, letting him see all the places she’d let him slide his debit card—starting with her cleavage.

  Above the noise of the crowd and the sportscasters on TV, I hear the screeching of brakes outside somewhere. Several patrons turn along with me, but there was no sight to be seen. They certainly don’t look as if the noise made them have a mini-cardiac arrest like it did me. The sound is enough to cloud my brain and make my ears hum. Suddenly, I’m back in the driver’s seat, hands sweaty on the wheel, legs straight as a board prepping for the impact. Blood splatters act as a filter between the windshield and the Oak my car is horseshoed around.

  My head pops up to meet Dauber’s gaze, and he drops the blonde like a hot cup and keeps pace with me as I forget everything else, but getting outside into the fresh air. The walls of the bar seem to fold in on me as I walk toward the door. I just want to rip off my t-shirt, Superman style, and see if it will relieve any of the tension in my chest.

  I need air.

  I need space.

  I need freedom.

  Peace—I’d kill for a moment of peace.

  Stumbling out into the humid night, I breathe it in. The car accident is to my right at the cross streets, and I see both drivers chest to chest fighting about whose fault it was and who is gonna pay.

  Don’t they know it could’ve turned out so much worse?

  A chunked bumper and a cracked hood are nothing in the scheme of life.

  Nothing.

  I look over at Dauber, who’s now perching on a bench, waiting me out. My poor friends, it seems they’re always waiting me out. He isn’t even looking at me. He knows I just need to work through the shit in my brain and clear it enough to function again. It would never be clear in my head, though, that was something I’d come to grips with at the age of eighteen.

  But I could shake it enough to live.

  Not live—exist.

  I swipe the already forming sweat beads from my forehead and shrug at Dauber, who glances up just to see if I’m in control. I’m okay enough until I can get home and take it out on my legs. I drive home after Dauber goes back inside to BB and tells me to text him when I get home. I feel like the jilted girlfriend who’s going home early while he goes prowling. But he still cares enough to want to make sure I got home safe. How sweet.

  I live with my two best friends from school, one being Dauber and the other was Gray. Gray had been Mara’s best friend at one time. I suppose she still is. But after the accident she became my saving grace. Gray is playing Rocksmith when I get home, thoroughly convinced she’ll learn how to play guitar from a video game. I kiss her cheek, careful not to interrupt the rocking out as she calls it.

  “You running,” she asks reading the scowl and lack of color on my face.

  “Yeah.”

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Nah, get your shoes on.”

  She nods once and moves to put her guitar up. A similar demon haunts Gray. Hers isn’t as nefarious or vile as mine, but it claws at her relentlessly and robs her of joy. Besides, it’s already ten at night, and she shouldn’t run at night by herself. She needs the release just as much as I do. I duck into my room and fish out a pair of shorts, a white t-shirt and some socks. I pull my running shoes out and realize it’s time for a new pair even though I just bought this pair a few months ago. I slip it all on and go out to the living room. Gray is situating a ball cap atop her head, threading her ponytail through the hole in the back.

  She’s smokin’ hot. I will give her that. She’s exactly as tall as me; we measured once. Her blonde hair is down to her lower back, and she plays video games better than Dob and me put together. She’s like a nerd’s ultimate fantasy. But she’s also my best friend. And…no.

  Plus she knows my past.

  She knew me when I was that guy.

  She knew me afterwards when I was looking down into the abyss.

  She’d offered me a hand after I’d fallen in.

  I take the opportunity to sneak up behind her and poke her in the ribs which sends her into fits of squeals and scary dances.

  “Don’t do that, asshole,” she screams at me with a smile on her face.

  I clasp my chest, “I’m hurt. You never call me an asshole.”

  “Seriously, Ezra, I call you an asshole like twenty times a week. Stop scaring me. I nearly peed.”

  “Like when we were on the playground in third grade, and you peed your pants when the clown came out? He was hired to teach us about staying away from drugs or some shit.”

  “You’re never gonna let me live that down, are you? Besides, we hated each other then.”

  “One day—when you’re old and you’re peeing on yourself I will hate you again—promise.”

  “Asshole!” sh
e shouts at me again, landing a punch to my shoulder.

  “Let’s go,” I tell her growing more and more somber with each passing moment. I both dread and love my runs. I dread the silence and the moments it affords me to think about Mara. The truth is I never really stop thinking about Mara. She hums in the back of my head like my grandmother’s old washing machine. You can try to ignore it, turn up the volume on other things to drown it out, but sooner or later your brain will revert to hearing it.

  And the worst part? It’s the part where I’m not only a bastard for what I did to her and to him, but as much as I try to wrack my memory, there are some things I can’t remember for the life of me. I can’t remember how her hair felt. I don’t remember what she wore on our first date. Hell, I can’t remember her face as a whole. I remember pieces, her blue eyes, the freckles on her collar bone, the way she scrunched her nose up at meat. Her unholy infatuation with birds—she even had a shirt that said ‘Aviphiles do it in the air.’ But if I try to picture her right in front of me, the pieces get jumbled, and before I know it, I’m just looking at nothing.

  After this purgatory, I’m going to Hell.

  Though I can’t imagine Hell is any worse than this.

  I can remember every one of the ways I wronged her, beginning with the way I treated her before we even got together. I asked her out with a note written on a piece of paper, torn from a spiral notebook with a dull pencil I’d chewed the eraser off of. I’d eaten bacon or sausage for breakfast the morning I slipped it through the slits of her metal locker, so I’d gotten grease stains on the paper. It was no wonder she even spoke to me afterwards. Nothing like the smell of pork grease to make a girl swoon. I was such an animal.

  Actually that was tame compared to what I put her through later.

  “How’s work,” Gray asks as we step down from the curb four or five blocks from home.

  “It’s just work. And it gets the job done.”

  She knows what job I speak of and that it distracts me from myself more than it pays the bills.

  “Yeah,” she says as she pulls the lightweight hood over her ball cap.

  After a half an hour or, so we came upon the corner of Jessup Lane, and though it was miles and miles from where it had all gone down, the sight of the street sign stops us both. Somehow my runs always gravitate to this point. Gray pulls her hood back down and looks in the same direction I am staring. I reach out and hold her hand, for me and for her.

  “I have to look at pictures to remember what she looked like,” she whispers to the darkened street.

  “I know,” I nod in agreement, never breaking my stare.

  We stand there, on the edge of the curb, until a car swerves by, cutting a little too close to us.

  “I’m not numb yet,” I say, finally looking forward.

  “Me either.”

  I squeeze her hand once and tick my head toward our path. She replaces her hood and swats me on the butt once, giving me a half smile. We run for hours until we reach the sign welcoming us to Klein’s Farm and Feed store. Gray runs to the sign and plays a melodic beat on it with her bare hands before turning around and starting the trip home. By the time we reach the apartment, I can’t feel anything but the need to shower and go to sleep.

  The only way I ever catch a break from Mara is to sleep or work. Anything else, and I get caught in the whirlwind of guilt and regret.

  Aysa

  On Friday nights, I go to Immaculate Conception church. It was the first church built in Mansfield, and it’s huge. But the thing is, I’m not Catholic. I’m not really anything, religiously speaking. My father is Mormon, and my mother was an on and off Pentecostal. She has a hidden stash of skirts for when she was feeling particularly Godly, usually around Christmas and Easter. She wears them for about two weeks and then reverts back to the pants.

  That was a long time ago. Now she just ignores Pentecost altogether.

  So between them, they just decided to raise me as—nothing.

  But there is something about Catholic churches that draw me in—there’s something holy about the hallowed ground and the intimidating architecture. Also, they’re always open, and though there may not be lights on, candles always illuminate the dark. Candles make me feel not so alone.

  Why are regular churches closed and locked during the days other than Sundays? Why are they locked at all? I wonder what Jesus’ take would be on locked church doors.

  I enter through the massive carved side door. I always have the feeling of a bride parading in to state her vows when I go through the front doors. Plus, it didn’t matter how deep people were in prayer, when I go in through the front double doors, they turn around and stare. I bet they wonder what I have to confess. I bet they wonder who I need to pray for or why I need to pray for myself.

  Sometimes I don’t even pray. Sometimes I just sit and talk to the air.

  The place always smells like lemon scented furniture polish mixed with the faint smell of the wax from the candles. The scent tickles my nose and feeds my eidetic memory. I thank whoever is in charge of the candles that they haven’t made the transition to the electric ones. Some things are better done the old fashioned way. I pick a pew, third from the back, near the enormous cherry wood post. Its shadow umbrellas over me and gives me access to secluded praying and thinking time. I run my finger down the pages of the worn hymnal, laying stray on the pew next to me. I wonder how many people found hope through those songs. I wondered how many people sat on these benches wondering if they were worthy enough to be in a place like this. I wonder why they let me in at all.

  Glancing upward, I spot a young woman go to the front, leaving her boyfriend sitting on a pew parallel to mine on the other side of the church. Her clothes almost read prepubescent boy with a Star Wars faded red t-shirt and jeans torn at the knees. But her tattoos contradict the image, telling me she’s at least old enough to get inked. A pretty blonde, but she walks carrying an air of something familiar—failure, guilt. She heads for the altar with flickering candles. Reaching for the tissue box on the first pew, she plucks two out and fists them before kneeling before the candles.

  Does she expect to cry?

  How does someone preempt crying?

  Maybe she does this on a regular basis—though I’ve never seen her here.

  A side door, one of those hiding doors that makes it look like just another piece of the paneled wall, opens and in walks a priest, young and lively. The white rectangle on his collar betrays the rest of his modern, hip presence. He can’t be more than twenty five, and his black shirt is coupled with dark washed jeans. He zeroes in on the boyfriend guy. He shoots one concerned look to the woman kneeling in front of the candles, and both males then converge at the confessional. Boyfriend is dressed like a guy who drinks espresso and visits art museums. A black blazer tops a green vintage wash t-shirt and is coupled with dark jeans and Chucks. Before going in, they exchange one of those hand holding, back clapping man hugs. The priest pats him on the back and smiles, nodding toward the confessional. They must know each other. I know I’m not Catholic, but the last time I checked, parishioners and priests didn’t give thug hugs before they engaged in heavy duty soul baring.

  I turn my attention back to the girl at the front. She’s hugging herself around her abdomen like it wants to liberate itself from her body. Her shoulders are shaking. She was smart to get the tissues as she’s using them to mop up her face. I see her grab for the edge of the altar and my body perks up, wondering if she’s okay. She seems to straighten out, so I concentrate on the massive figure of Jesus in the front.

  I can relate to Jesus. It sounds stupid, relating myself to a man who was crucified. But that’s not the part I relate to –I relate to the part where he went to the mountains for forty days and nights. Mountains or cabinets—either way, you’re escaping the voices of a world that doesn’t understand you.

  Minutes, maybe an hour, pass. A noise from the front grabs my attention and Blondie is now on the floor. There’s no one
else in the church, so I race toward the altar in a walk-run. When I reach her, her face is clammy, droplets of sweat make a crescent along her hairline. I look around for help, but there’s no one around except for the guys in the confessional. I shake the girl a bit, but she’s not showing any signs of waking up. I lean over to the holy water basin and dipping my hand in, I splash some on her face. I’m so not slapping her like they do in the movies. There’s just no way.

  She starts to come around just as I hear a shouting voice get closer and closer, “Gray?”

  Her eyes are open now, but they’re glazed over and lost.

  “Gray,” He kneels down next to her and grabs her up, knocking me awkwardly on my ass. He wipes her forehead with his hand and darts his gaze to me, “What happened?”

  “I…I” Good job, voice.

  “Is she okay?”

  “What if she’s just tired or hungry?”

  “We just ate.”

  “Then maybe she’s tired?”

  I wish, just once, during duress, I could form an intelligent sentence. I had a habit, a nervous tick, of speaking in hypothetical questions in times of anxiety. And most normal social situations were terrifying in my book.

  It made my sister roll her eyes and turn away when I started doing it.

  “Hi,” he coos, looking down at her when she seems to gain some lucidity, like he’d lost his lover, and she’d returned to him. His hair is cut close to his scalp on the sides and longer on the top, leaving one or two dangling black curls to make their escape and lay on his forehead. From this angle, I could see a patch of freckles on the back of his neck. A pair of smoky eyes beg Gray to be okay. They are connected deeply—anyone could see that. He holds her in a Romeo-like stance, like he’s just discovered Juliet had poisoned herself. His brows, a little larger than most eyebrows, dip down to a point of concern as he holds his breath.

  I wish someone would look at me like that, just once.