Hero–Type by Barry Lyga Read Free Book Online Page B

back on it now.
    I also had this weird inkling, this feeling that I couldn't get rid of. It was the idea that maybe this was what Mom and Dad had wanted, what they'd agreed to. I knew other kids whose parents had huge custody battles when they got divorced. I think Mom and Dad figured they'd just split up the kids. Make it easy. No fighting that way. And I knew something that my parents didn't
know
I knew—I knew that they had had Jesse to try to save their marriage. I overheard them one night. (It wasn't tough—they were yelling.) I mean, he's six years younger than I am. They were desperate.
    I couldn't decide if that made Jesse more important than me or less important. I mean, on the one hand, he was this Golden Child, born to save the marriage.
    On the other hand, it didn't work.
    I still felt like he was some kind of prize, though. Mom pretty much talked me into staying with Dad, didn't she? It was never
really
my decision. But she made damn sure she took Jesse, no matter what.
    Maybe it didn't matter, though. As miserable as I was, Dad was even worse. If I left, Dad would be all alone. I couldn't do that to him.
    Even though I really, really wanted to.
    The only thing that helped the misery ... was Leah. When I stumbled over those stolen moments of her, it's like my life changed. For a little while. I didn't feel as lonely. And that was good.
    Right?
    I don't know. I roll over and feel for my keys on the coffee table I use as a nightstand. The key to Brookdale is on the ring. I hold it in a tight fist.
    I wish it opened something.
     
    In my dream, I know it's the Surgeon. It's not just some creepy guy in an alleyway threatening Leah—it's Michael Alan Naylor and I know that from the get-go.
    I throw down my backpack, just like in real life.
    But in my dream, I do more than just tackle him, do more than just hold him while Leah calls the cops on her cell. In my dream, I knock him to the ground, land on top of him, thrashing him over and over, beating his face into a mass of red pulp. He tries to beg, to plead, but he can't even talk for the shattered teeth and the mucus and blood and crap clogging up his throat and my fists pounding his face over and over. Because in the dream I knew it was him, see? And I threw myself at him anyway, with reckless abandon, not caring about my own safety, not worried that he's raped and murdered four girls already, that he's bigger and stronger than I am. All I know is that I've followed him here, stalked the stalker, and now I'm beating him, maybe to death.
    In my dream.
    In my dream, I'm a hero.
    I wake up, and my fingers are moving on their own. I'm crossing myself, like I used to do back when I prayed. When we stopped going to Mass, I sort of lost the habit of praying—it seemed weird without Mass to back it up.
    So now here I am, like I'm back at Mass, my hands folded together, the key pressed between them, eyes aimed at the ceiling, ready to talk to God.
    But I don't know what to say.

SELF-LOATHING #2
     
    D AD'S GONE IN THE MORNING, OF COURSE . Off heaving other people's garbage, probably solving world hunger in the back of his mind while he's at it. Mom used to say that Dad had two compartments in his brain and that they didn't connect. There was the part that kept him showered and fed and shaved—that was the smaller part. Then there was the part that wanted to save the world. That's the bigger part. Problem is, without the one regulating the other, the big part just sort of runs amok sometimes. He can't stop it; he can't direct it.
    What happens is that sometimes his mouth can't keep up with his brain. So he starts talking, like, ten words ahead and then he realizes he's out of sync and he tries to catch up, but his brain's still running a mile a minute, so he just gets even
more
jumbled up. And in
his
brain it all makes sense, so then he gets frustrated that you don't understand what he's thinking and that just makes him even worse. He's like a kid who needs Ritalin,