Blazed

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  For my beautiful family. Thank you so much for your endless support as I’ve pursued this writing dream. Thank you for putting up with my terrible behavior over the years (and there was so much of it). These books wouldn’t exist without each of you and your encouragement.

  For Nayla, and all of the times you’ve talked me down from the ledge after two in the morning (especially during the last draft of this book). Thank you for answering your phone whenever I call. Your friendship means everything to me.

  For Sydney Erin Fleishman. They broke the fucking mold when they made you. I am so proud of you and everything you’ve defeated and accomplished. The first time I met you, people were raging tough in my apartment while you sat in the kitchen till two in the morning, cribbing a paper for school. I thought you were a weirdo and kinda crazy (both turned out to be true), which also meant I knew we’d end up being the best of friends (“Well, you weigh 160 pounds and I weigh fucking 90, man.”). You are an amazing fucking soul.

  For Annette Pollert, my editor for the last three years. You’ve been so great to work with. Thank you for bringing out the best in these stories and characters.

  For Youth Lagoon (Trevor Powers). Thank you for making the wonderful, beautiful, haunting, and nostalgic music you do. This story was born out of an image that flashed through my head while I was listening to your song “Montana” for the first time. And as that image evolved and grew into this book, Year of Hibernation became the soundtrack that guided the main character, Jaime, throughout his complex and very difficult journey. Your music is where these characters sought out so much of their refuge and safety, and it was where I went time and time again for inspiration and comfort.

  And finally, for all of my fucking fans! I’ve always said I have the best fans in the world. You all mean the world to me. There wouldn’t be The Mission, Dead End, Run the Game, or Blazed if it wasn’t for your tremendous support of Exit Here. My success has been strictly word of mouth all these years. Your loyalty continues to inspire me. And this fucking book is for all of you! I love every one of you! Stay rad, kiddos. Stay rad forever!

  There’s smoke in my iris,

  but I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids.

  —Aesop Rock, “Battery”

  1.

  “WHY ARE YOU SO ANGRY?” She asked me.

  We were sitting on a green park bench, and she looked so anxious and so pretty. I’d known her for three weeks.

  “That guy is so fake,” I said. “He’s a phony. How can you like that? He looks so generic and he’s not cool and he never will be. He’ll never like good music or good books. Who cares if he has a fucking car? He’s not real. He doesn’t have a soul.”

  “I wasn’t just talking about right now, Jaime,” she said. “I was asking why you’re so angry all the time?”

  “I’m not.”

  She threw her arms into the air. “Oh my god! Yes, you are! You are an amazing boy. You’re cute and so talented and so fucking sweet. But you’re also the angriest boy I’ve ever met.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. “Why don’t you go climb back into his car and listen to that bullshit music and listen to him lie to you? I thought you were better than that.”

  “And I thought you were better than this,” she said, before standing up and walking away.

  I never saw her again.

  And I’ve thought about her every day since that afternoon.

  2.

  I’M FOURTEEN YEARS OLD NOW. And I set an Oxycontin 30 in the middle of a sheet of aluminum foil the size of my hand. I’ve had the Beach House album Teen Dream playing on my computer for at least twenty minutes, and I hold the lighter underneath the foil. When the pill starts to smoke, I chase it back and forth and back and forth with the hollowed-out Bic pen in my mouth.

  I close my eyes as the smoke slowly releases from my mouth and nostrils.

  Everything is very different now.

  I feel like fog.

  It’s so perfect.

  When I open my eyes again, the world is glass and it’s beautiful and I’m happy.

  I’m so fucking happy here.

  In my castle.

  All alone.

  This glass castle.

  I set the foil on my bed and stand up and grab a blue-and-gold-striped tank top off my floor and slide it on.

  Stare at myself in the mirror that hangs on the back of my door.

  I flex both my arms for a second and then wipe the sweat off my face with the bottom of my shirt. Then I sit down at my computer and open my notebook up to the page my pen is sitting on.

  I read over the poem a couple of times and decide it’s ready, so I turn the music off and turn my webcam on and adjust the screen, making it just perfect.

  I look fucking great.

  I’m ready now too.

  So I start recording.

  I go, “I dreamed that I was made out of wood and glass one night, it was on the same day I chartered a tugboat to find this island of rare parrots and elk . . . when I woke up with her arms around me, she asked me what my biggest fear was and I told her that I didn’t have one until I realized that wasn’t true . . . there was mystery to everything we did, from the puzzles we built with the teeth of sharks and the Twin Peaks VHS tapes that I carried in my backpack for a decade . . . on the radio, the commercials ended and Nirvana played four songs, my mind was full of pictures of shredded jeans and cardigans and the lyrics to “About a Girl” . . . One time she asked me when she would ever get all of me and I told her that it wasn’t so complicated, that I’m a simple boy and that a smile and the perfume she wore and that baby-blue sundress she was wearing on that afternoon behind the ice cream store she was spray painting was just that . . . well, kind of, it was all I needed . . . the time moved so fast and I began to distrust the numbers on the clock and the snooze button one of us would hit . . . I never liked time, it kills those afternoons on the couch watching Chinatown and daydreaming about Cuban beaches . . . she refused to answer the same question she’d asked of me, and that was okay because we were already answering it . . . we each had all of each other, it was just that we thought it meant something else . . . six years later I was at a Mobb Deep show on a big boat and I bumped into her, I asked her about the dress and she blushed and smiled as I told her I’d never seen someone wear something so good . . . Back on the land, I got a hotel card in the mail one afternoon . . . I stared at it for hours until I realized I didn’t have to go, I didn’t need to go . . . I wanted to keep the memory of that day in my head, it was perfect, and how on earth can a person live with themselves when they go out and they destroy the lasting image, shred the gorgeous memory and make it irrelevant, because talking about work and your basic cable package is how it all ends up . . . it was then that I sought out the beach, every girl there was something but none of them wore a dress like she did . . . It’s been ten years now, and if I ever run into her again, I’ll ask her to meet me at the drive-in and I’ll buy the tickets for Point Break and the popcorn and the cherry Coke, and then I’ll ask her to never wear that dress again, and then, just maybe then, I’ll finally be able to tell her my biggest fear . . . someday forgetting exactly how she looked on that day, during that moment, and how I forgot what her name was and how she never asked me mine. . . .”

  The end.

  I turn the webcam off and save the video. Then I grab Tao Lin�
��s book Shoplifting from American Apparel and read a few pages before the alarm goes off on my phone.

  It’s five.

  I grab the tinfoil and smoke the rest of the Oxy.

  I’ve found that being really high on this shit makes playing the piano for three hours in front of my mother much more fucking bearable.

  3.

  “JAIME, JAIME, JAIME . . . PLEASE WAKE up, baby. I need your help.”

  The voice on the phone is my mother’s. It’s her wasted and high voice.

  It’s one in the morning and she’s been drinking all day. I saw blue powder on her nose twice while I was playing piano for her. Both times were after she excused herself, glass of red wine in her hand, to use the bathroom.

  I sit up in my bed.

  “What’s going on, Mom? Where are you?”

  “I’m at the place where the monsters come to get me, Jaime. I need you. Please come save me.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Hell.”

  “Mom! What bar are you at?”

  “The Checker Board, sweetie. Oh, please come and save me. Please, my boy.”

  “Okay. I’m leaving right now.”

  I jump out of bed and throw on a T-shirt and a pair of black jeans. This hurts. I’m so pissed at her. I grab the switchblade from the desk drawer and put my earphones in and put that Kendrick Lamar song, “HiiiPoWeR,” on repeat to get me pumped.

  Like a minute later, I’m on my bike.

  And I wonder if it’s a good idea I didn’t get high before I left.

  4.

  THERE’S MY MOTHER AND SHE’S got this guy all over her and they’re pushed up against the side of the bar in the parking lot.

  I jump off my bike and yell at them. My mother, she starts to push the guy off of her.

  “Stop it, you jerk,” she hisses at him.

  He laughs and rips her arms off of him and then slams her back against the cruel brick.

  “Leave me alone!” she screams this time.

  But he doesn’t stop. He puts his mouth on her neck and jams his hand over her crotch and tells her to calm down.

  My skin is red.

  Blood is boiling.

  I rush over to them and I grab the guy and try pulling him off of her.

  He turns around and looks shocked to see me, this fucking kid, trying to break this up.

  “What the fuck?” he snaps, and then whips an arm around my head.

  I knee him in the thigh and he gets pissed off now, which is what I want.

  We struggle.

  He’s trying to get his other arm around me, but I’ve got him off balance and he can’t do it and then my mother swings her purse right into his ugly face and demands that he get his hands off me.

  This is when he fucks up.

  He pulls his arm loose from me and charges at my mother.

  “You cunt bitch!” he yells. “What is this?”

  “Leave us alone,” she says, then swings her purse again. This time he bats it away, and then he grabs her shoulders and shakes her.

  “Get the fuck off of her!” I’m yelling. “Don’t touch her!”

  Dude spins around and smacks the side of my face. “Scram, bitch!” he growls. “This is none of your business.”

  When he turns back to my mother, though, I grab a rock the size of my fist and lunge at him and smash the rock into the side of his head.

  He yells out and then tries to duck away.

  When he does this, I hook my foot around one of his and yank it back and he trips and falls down.

  “Jaime,” my mother cries out.

  The guy looks up at me. He’s so fucking nasty and gross.

  I can’t believe my mother.

  My beautiful, sophisticated mother, who was once a ballet star in New York before she had me, would even talk to a piece of shit like this, let alone kiss his lips.

  I’m so furious as the man sizes me up.

  Then he laughs and goes, “Now you’re gonna get it too, boy.”

  But right when he starts to get to his feet, I take my switchblade out.

  He stops.

  “What?” I go. “What?”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” he snorts.

  “Is this what you do with your pathetic life? Stalk the drunkest woman in the bar and force yourself on her?”

  “Fuck you.” He laughs.

  “What?” I go, and then grab his hair and yank it as hard as I can.

  He screams in pain and I say, “You will never touch her again.”

  “That cunt doesn’t deserve to be touched by me.”

  I pull his hair even harder and then start ripping the blade through it.

  It’s tough.

  It’s stubborn at first.

  And it sounds like sandpaper rubbing against gravel.

  But finally, a huge chunk of it comes off in my hand.

  “You bastard,” my mother shouts. “You miserable, pathetic bastard.”

  She spits on him and then the door opens and this guy walks out and tells us he’s calling the cops.

  My mother grabs my arm now and goes, “Let’s go, Jaime. Now.”

  I drop this dude’s shitty hair and then I knee him in the face before me and my mother take off running for her car.

  “Give me the keys,” I tell her.

  She hands them to me and we both get in and then I start the car and peel out.

  BAM!

  The car bounces up and down and there’s this horrible crunching noise.

  “What the hell was that?” my mother goes.

  “My bike,” I tell her, pressing the gas pedal even harder. “I just ran over my new bike.”

  “Oh.”

  Me, I don’t say anything at all after this. I just drive us back to the house as fast as I can.

  5.

  MY MOTHER WALKS OUT OF the downstairs bathroom wearing a white nightgown. Her beautiful auburn hair hangs straight down her back. There are traces of blue powder below her nostrils. Dark circles dominate her face. She looks so exhausted.

  She opens the liquor cabinet in the dining room and pours a glass of whiskey.

  Her eyes, they’re so empty and lost.

  Her eyes can be so beautiful too when she’s not wasted and high, which ain’t very often anymore.

  She downs the drink and pours another.

  She looks over at me finally. “What?”

  “This has to stop,” I say.

  She looks irritated and rolls her eyes.

  “Mom.”

  “What?” she screams. “Goddamn it! I do everything for you. I gave up my career as an artist for you. I’ve made you so talented and smart. And now you come after me? You come after me!”

  “I’m not coming after you.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m not. This is the fourth time in the last month you’ve pulled this shit, and you never remember anything the next day. One of us is going to get hurt real bad.”

  “I was having fun, Jaime.”

  “I sliced off a chunk of a guy’s hair. Are you for real? I had a knife pulled on some drunk stranger you were kissing. I’m gonna get killed one of these times.”

  My mother, she looks away and doesn’t say anything.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know why you’re trying to destroy yourself so hard right now. It’s like you’re trying to get away from me, this world, and it’s scary and it’s sick. You don’t care that I’m gonna get fucked up real bad one of these times. You just don’t even care, and that’s the worst part.”

  I’m glaring at her and she’s shaking and her cheeks are getting red. And just like that, she whips her glass across the room and it shatters against the wall.

  I jump back.

  “What are you doing?”

  She turns toward me, scowls at me. She looks like she hates me, but I haven’t done anything except help her. I’ve done everything she wanted me to—practice piano, guitar, drawing, learn about philosophy and literature. And she still re
sents me because of what I represent to her. She hates looking at me because of how much I look like my father.

  My father I’ve never met.

  I watch her grab the bottle of whiskey and pour some down her throat. Then I walk toward her and I go, “I can’t watch you do this.”

  She makes another face. “And what are you going to do, huh? Where are you going to go?”

  The fact that she’s being so fucking evil to me right now is really making me resent her.

  I don’t say anything.

  And she says, “I’m all you have, Jaime.”

  Stopping a few feet in front of her, I say, “Oh yeah? What about my father?”

  The way her face contorts, well, I wouldn’t wish this image on my worst enemy.

  My breath leaves my lungs.

  My face turns white like snow.

  My mouth goes dry.

  “How dare you?” she rips. “After what he did to me, the way he ruined my life. You have the fucking nerve to stand there and say that to me.”

  “I don’t know anything about him except from the things you’ve told me. I bet if I went to live with him in San Francisco, he wouldn’t put me through this kind of shit.”

  My mother’s reaction sends chills down my body.

  I’ve never seen anything this wild.

  “Excuse me,” my mother whispers.

  I double down.

  No way I’m backing off.

  I say, “All you do is demand things from me. Perfect piano playing. Perfect guitar playing. Demanding I debate Sartre for hours. And I’ve never complained. I always do what you want.”

  “You don’t have any friends.”

  “I don’t have time for friends.”

  “Why are you saying all these mean things to me?” she cries.

  “Because I do everything you tell me to. Every fucking thing. And the only thing I’m asking of you is that you stop this madness before one of us gets hurt or dies.”

  “Just shut up!” she yells. “You’re not making any sense.”

  I look away from her and bury my face in my hands.