Rules for Werewolves (25 page)

—I hate living here. The houses are better down in Glendora. They’re bigger. And there’s views of nature. Not everything is billboards down there.

—Don’t tell me to “go outside and play.” I can’t. I don’t have any friends. All my friends are in Fuller going to the concert.

—If our house burned down and we had to move, would you let me pick the new place? I would pick somewhere farther south. So that we’re out of the flight path of the airport and we have less bad traffic all around us.

—How about fifty dollars? I can get a one-day ticket for tomorrow. Please? I’ll do all my chores for the next year and a half.

—I don’t want to go to Harvard anymore. I wanna go to Fuller State—’cause I can’t get into Harvard. I’m never gonna get into Harvard and you know it. And I’ll be lucky to even get into Fuller. I’ll have to keep living
here and take the bus down there. There’s a bus that leaves every day from the Denny’s. I know. I’ve watched the students get on it. I watch ’em get on the bus and I think, “Someday soon that’s gonna be me.”

—I don’t want Domino’s. I want Papa John’s. Go south on Recoleta. There’s lots of Papa John’s down there.

—What about you just give me permission to go down to Fuller? I don’t need any money. I’ll just sneak into the concert somehow. I won’t do anything bad. You know, sometimes toward the end of the night they just start letting people in, so that the bands have a full crowd. Or a band from the stage might yell out to the security guards to let everybody in and then they have to. That’s what my friend told me. And even if I don’t get in, I would be able to hear the music from outside the fence, ’cause music is free. You can come with me. We’ll take a blanket and make a picnic outside the fence and get Papa John’s pizza on the way. Why not? That’s stupid. I hate you.

—Enough. We’re eating Domino’s or we’re not eating anything.

—Fine. I choose not anything.

—Me too.

—What is with you two today?

—We’re just trying to say things could change around here.

—I don’t need this.

—We don’t need it, either.

—What is it with all this “we” stuff? “We” want this kind of pizza. “We” want to change stuff. It’s not you two against me and Donald.

—Then get rid of him. Be on our side.

—I’m not on Donald’s side in anything. All of us, all together, are on the same side, about all of this. Even when we disagree. We’re a family.

—We’re not.

—Your father is the one that isn’t part of this family.

—I know. Fuck Dad.

—It’s not that we miss Dad. He doesn’t call or give you money or anything. We know.

—But Donald is a real asshole.

—I don’t want to hear it.

—He is. You just don’t want listen.

—If you would tell me the truth, I would listen.

—We are telling you the truth.

—The whole truth.

—We are.

—All right. Where were you the last two months? Where are those people the police are looking for? Let’s start with that.

—I ran away because Donald is a pervert, to both me and Timmy.

—All right. All right. Don’t stop. Where did you go when you ran away?

—I met these guys who live on the street.

—On the street?

—And they break into people’s houses and houses that are for sale and places like that and they live there.

—And what did you do with these guys?

—Nothing.

—Donald attacked and abused you both—right under my nose. But you didn’t do anything while you were living with a bunch of fucking homeless thugs?!

—I broke into houses. And I shoplifted. A lot. And I had sex with a girl who I’m in love with. And I drank beer. And I smoked pot. And I vandalized some people’s stuff.

—And you burned down somebody’s house with those hooligans. Didn’t you?

—They’re not hooligans. They’re werewolves.

—Fucking great!

—And I’m one, too.

—What is that? Is that a gang name?

—And pretty soon, Mom, Robert’s gonna take me to them and make me one, too.

—Fucking great. You’re both gonna run away again?

—We’re not running away because of you, Mom. We’re running away because of Donald.

—You want the truth, Mom? That’s the truth.

—Oh, yeah? Where are you gonna go? Where are these werewolves you’re running away to?

—They’re down in Fuller.

—And that’s why you wanna go down there so bad?

—Yeah. That’s the total and complete truth.

—We love you, Mom. We do. It’s Donald who’s a bad person.

—I’ll talk to him. Maybe we can do counseling or something.

—We’ll write to you and let you know we’re okay.

—All right. That’s great. That’s fucking great.

—Are we still getting pizza?

—I thought you weren’t hungry.

—We’re not.

—You sure?

—We’re sure.

—We’re both sure.

—Great. Then we can go back home and you can both go to bed hungry.

—If you want me to, I’ll go beat some sense into ’em.

—That’s the last thing we need.

—I don’t know. You let ’em say anything to you. You let ’em do anything to you. When I was a boy, I got whipped if I didn’t end every sentence with “yessir” or “no, sir.”

—How’d your mother feel about that?

—I don’t know what you mean. But I know you mean it as some sort of put-down.

—I’m just being smart—as if you called your mother “sir.”

—You’re as bad as those boys.

—We know where they get it from.

—Seriously, Dawn. What’s got into you?

—Did you ever touch my boys?

—We already did this.

—Let’s do it again.

—I never touched either one of ’em. Unless you knew about it. And then it was only to punish ’em. Usually it was when Bobert sassed off to you. To teach him to respect his mother.

—I don’t need a bodyguard.

—You need some kind of help.

—I’m starting to think so.

—Those boys have got you so wound up. It’s because Bobert doesn’t want to be disciplined that he starts telling stories. He sees it on TV and he thinks he can get out of a jam if he says I attack him. I’m haven’t laid a hand on him since he’s been back. Now what’s he got to say?

—Neither one of ’em says anything.

—Good. I don’t know why that worries you.

—Because they should be able to say anything. They should be able to tell me what’s happening to ’em. And when they tell me, I should help them deal with it. Instead of running away.

—What did you run away from? Come ’ere.

—Leave me alone.

—That’s running away.

—Leave me alone.

—I’m going to bed, Dawn.

—Great. We’ll talk some more in the morning.

—What is there to talk about?

—We’re gonna keep talking ’til we figure that out.

—All right. You go first and then I’ll hand the bags out to you.

—What?

—You go onto the roof and I’ll hand the bags out to you.

—All right.

—Wait.

—What?

—Did you hear that?

—What?

—Shh.

—What is it?

—I thought I heard something.

—What?

—It sounded like an animal.

—I don’t see anything out there.

—It sounded like it was coming from inside.

—Don’t try to freak me out.

—I’m not. I swear.

—Swear?

—Shhh. There it is again.

—Let’s go.

—It sounds like a dog is hurt or something.

—Come on.

—Hold on.

—Hand me your bag.

—Here.

—Give me my bag, too.

—It’s heavy.

—I’ll figure out what I can do without once we’re on our way.

—I told you not to pack any books.

—I’ll get rid of them as I read ’em.

—You know you won’t.

—Let’s go.

—Shh. There it is again.

—Stick to the plan. It’s time to go.

—What is it?

—I don’t care.

—Hold on.

—Don’t. Just step out the window. That’s what you promised.

—I’m just going to look down the hall.

—Don’t.

—Hold on.

—

—

—

—

—

—All right. Let’s go.

—What was it?

—It wasn’t anything.

—What was it?

—It was Mom. Standing in the hallway. In her pink robe. Leaning against the wall. Listening to us leave. Crying.

—She knows?

—I looked her right in the eyes.

—If Mom knows we’re leaving, then let’s go down the stairs and out the front door. I don’t want to jump.

—She’s knows, but she’s not gonna let us walk past her.

—I don’t want to jump.

—Trust me. If you try to walk past Mom, she’ll grab on to you and she’ll start crying. She’s already crying. She’s going to wake up Donald and then everything’ll get fucked up. I shouldn’t have left you to see what it was. You were right.

—I told you.

—You did. Now let’s go. Jump.

Because when Bobert says something—it’s true. That’s the way I feel about him. For the most part. When he ran away the first time, I tried to follow. I didn’t know why he left me behind. Probably ’cause I would have got him caught. I got caught. I didn’t know where Bobert went, so I went to the mall, where we used to hang out. That’s the first place Mom came looking for me. Just like the hints we spent all day dropping about going down south. Back then I always talked about the mall. So of course Mom would go look for me at the mall. She brought me home. I missed Bobert. I expected him to be waiting for me somewhere. Did you ever feel that about somebody? Even when they’re not there, they’re just somewhere waiting for you? So I ran away the very next day. I went to the school we go to. It was summer. But some janitor or some teacher who was doing summer work saw me hanging around the school and called Mom and—boom—I was caught again.

I don’t know how to go somewhere I’ve never been. I don’t even know how to imagine it. I think you have to get to be a certain age when you can have enough knowledge about the world to think up all the places where people like you don’t normally go. I know there are cowboys in the world. I know there are truck drivers. I know there are ballerinas. If I went to one of the places those people go to, then Mom would never find me.

Bobert says there’s such a thing as werewolves. We’re going to where
they are. So I know for sure we’re never gonna be caught this time. ’Cause just like I don’t have enough experience to go where cowboys go, Mom and the cops don’t have enough
belief
to go where werewolves go.

When Bobert came back for me, the first thought I had was “Of course!” He was always coming back for me. All the anger I had for him just disappeared. I thought about how stupid I had been. I decided from then on to trust my brother. No matter. When he ran away, I thought that Bobert was a lie. Not a liar. But, like—if someone
says
he’s your brother and he’s not, then what he
says
is a lie. But if someone
is
your brother and he doesn’t act like it, then
who
he is, is a lie. Does that make sense? Donald is a lie. He says he wants to be a father to me. And I don’t like to admit it, but Mom is a lie, too. When she says she wants to be a better mom, that’s the truth. That’s what she wants. But she can’t do it. So it’s not who she
is
. I don’t even know if she knows she’s a lie. When Bobert came back, I knew he was my brother all along. And “all along” means going forward, into the future, too.

“Where were you?” That’s what I asked Bobert. And he told everybody else something different. But he told me he ran away to find us a new home. To find us a new way of living. Entirely different from anything that Mom, or any of our relatives, or Child Protective Services could imagine. He told me that he went to a lot of places. To homeless people camps and the way they live together in the woods on the edge of town. And he went to visit some people who were living on an organic farm by the university campus. And he said he talked to a lot of truck drivers when he was thinking about hitchhiking across the U.S. He thought he might have to hitchhike because we wouldn’t be able to find a home around here. And at first, talking to these truck drivers, he thought that we, him and me, would make great truck drivers. He thought we would love living in the little cab. There’s a bunk bed in back of the driver’s seat, and when you have a team of drivers one can sleep while the other one drives. That way you never have to stop except for gas. But we’re just kids, he’s seventeen and I’m fifteen, so all the stuff we would have to go through to get licenses and not get pulled over every five miles would be too much. Bobert says maybe that’s something we can do later in life. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Like, I don’t really think we’re going to get to live off the land with farmhouses that face one another and back doors that lead out into the
forest. And I don’t think we’re gonna want to spend all our time together when I’m eighteen and he’s twenty-one and we could both be long-haul truck drivers.

Why can’t you do the things you wanna do
when
you wanna do them? That’s the fundamental problem with the world. By the time he’s twenty-one, Bobert will want to be married, or in a college, or in jail for fucking killing Donald. That’s what’s gonna happen if we get caught and we get taken back. But why can’t we be long haul truckers at the age when we want to be? The stereotype of a bunch of grisly, old, dirty truckers who hate their lives and take speed to get through the long drives wouldn’t have to be the case. A bunch of dirty old truckers who want to fuck little boys. Because how else did Bobert get to see the bunk beds in the cab? You think he met the world’s nicest trucker? That’s harder to believe than werewolves. You might as well believe that the rules are gonna be changed so that all the young pairs of brothers in America are going to be allowed to drive all the trucks back and forth. They’re gonna open up big schools to teach driving to all of us. And they’re gonna assure the American public by putting GPS things in the trucks so that if we go over a certain speed limit or start weaving from our lane, then the engine shuts off.