Tweaked by Katherine Holubitsky Read Free Book Online Page B

the point that not a word that came out of his mouth was believable or made any sense. Then, one night he was caught stealing a dvd player from a car at the neighborhood shopping center. He was fined, given a conditional sentence and sent back to rehab again.
    When he got out a month later, Dad arranged for Chase to stock shelves in a small grocery store. Mr. Pelltiere, a longtime friend of Dad’s, managed the store and he agreed to do Dad the favor. Chase blew it within two weeks. Ryan and Harris started hanging around. The stuff Chase was supposed to be shelving went missing. Customers complained about the weird behavior and strange appearance of the stock boy in aisle eight.
    Life became a nightmare for all of us after that. Chase came and went as he pleased. Dad would confront him when he could pin him down. He’d lay it all out: Chase had to get work or he was out of the house. He couldn’t keep taking advantage, using the house to shower and eat when he crashed and finally couldn’t stand his own stink. Chase would sit there, nodding in agreement that yes, he was wasting his life,blowing every chance he got and that he’d better shape up. But he didn’t hear any of it. He didn’t hear them and he sure didn’t listen to me.
    But experience had taught me that there was nothing to be gained in trying to reason with a drug addict, whether he’s high or craving the next hit, which were the only times I ever saw him. Not that I didn’t try. But I could think of no other way to make him listen. We were only a year apart in age, but we were so very different. When it came right down to it, we’d had little in common since we were too small to be left on our own, when we were jointly referred to as “the boys.”
    Chase lost fifty pounds off his five-foot-ten-inch frame. He broke out in “speed bumps”—sores that oozed gross stuff as his body tried to get rid of the noxious chemicals. He’d scratch and pick at them even as you talked to him, never allowing them to heal. One of his bottom teeth came loose and fell out—he didn’t seem to notice. Mom and Dad argued day and night, and I was sure they were ready to split up.
    Then, six months before the assault on Richard Cross, we got a call from Grandma, Dad’s mother, in the middle of the night. Chase was marching through her house waving a knife, strung out, demanding money. She had none in the house. Dad jumped in the car while I kept her on the phone.
    Grandma was scared and confused. “Gordie,” she said, “what’s happened to him? I’ve never seen anybody act like this.”
    It was all I could do not to drive over and punch Chase out. I spent the next ten minutes trying to convince her that it had nothing to do with her, or any of us. She should know that, she was a nurse. This is what drug addicts do: they demand, they bully, they take.
    â€œYes,” she said, crying.
    â€œWhat’s he doing now, Grandma?”
    â€œI can’t see him. I’m in the bedroom.”
    I pictured Grandma huddled in her room, alone in the house with Chase. It was an image so not like her. She was normally tough and independent. She’d carried on working at a clinic another ten years after Grandpa had died suddenly, managing the house and huge garden and still insisting on cooking all the holiday dinners herself.
    â€œI think he’s going through the kitchen drawers. What’s he looking for?”
    â€œSomething he can sell. Just let him. Stay where you are, Grandma. But if he does come in there demanding something, give him your old TV —the one in the storage room.”
    â€œBut it doesn’t work.”
    â€œHe doesn’t know that. Just let him take it. Dad will be there right away.”
    â€œOh, Gordie. I’m so frightened for him. Oh, thank goodness,” she sighed with relief, “your Dad is here.”
    I hung up when the dial tone