Straighten Your Ties / Book 1

Let us be cold, make us weak
Let us, because we all have ears
Let us, because we all have eyes
Good God
-Underoath – Too Bright to See, Too Loud to Hear

Our dogs barked out as I opened the door. I could see my mom and dad sitting on one of the living room couches looking directly at me. I took off my shoes and stood in the atrium. On the other couch, I saw two police officers. French. Grungy. Short hair, the both of them. Police uniforms and all.

“Please have a seat by your motter and fotter.” One of the cops said to me. I stood in the threshold for a second and advanced to the couch. I sat between them. I didn’t look at them. I kept my head straight, looking at the policemen.
My mom whispered, “I’m sorry I couldn’t pick you up. They didn’t want me to steal you away or something. It’s ridiculous.”

“Monsieur,” the cop who looked like he was more in charge (somehow) was looking at me; he told me his name, though I can’t remember it for the life of me, so we’ll call him Jean, and the cop who told me to have a seat Yves. “It was brought to our attention this evening by your school, and an anonymous caller on Info Crime that you may have threatened people’s lives on your website.” He meant my blog. “Seguin House contacted us a few hours ago saying that parents and students called Minerva Walsh, and had said that your writing on your…” He struggled for the word.

“Blog.” I said.
“Yes, blog.” Jean nodded. “It said that you may have bad intentions to act on next week.” I blinked. What? I wrote I was having a bad week. What does that have anything to do with…
“Did you have plans to do something on Monday?” I shook my head. “Are you sure?”
“Ummm… no.” I started shaking for no reason though. I didn’t like being questioned like this. It was making me feel useless.
“Monsieur Madison,” Jean gave me a stern look, as did Yves. “You must tell us if you were.”

“My dad doesn’t own a gun.” I said.
“So you were planning on doing something with a gun?”
“No!”
“You can tell us. No charges have been made against you.”
My parents just stood there, saying nothing. “No really, nothing.”
“We cannot be sure of this.”
“What?” I said quietly.
“Monsieur, we don’t think you should be in school on Monday.”
“Sorry…” I stood up from my chair. “Can you just tell me what this is about?”
“Monsieur –”
“No, but what in what I wrote –” I stopped and fidgeted with my hands. “What implies that I planned on doing anything?”
The two cops looked at each other, “Uh… We have not read the website in question.” Wow, I was living in Quebec.

“I’m not speaking without a lawyer then.” I said that on impulse. It was something they always said on TV shows, and I didn’t particularly care if I had one or not. I wouldn’t even need one. There would be no case. I would solve this on Monday. I stormed around the policemen, and clamored up the stairs. I turned down the hallway, seeing my brother head into his room and shut the door as he saw me. He shouldn’t have known about this. Perhaps he was twenty, but he was at least five years behind in his maturity level. I couldn’t let him see me being accused of threatening to kill people. I didn’t even want to face myself. This just couldn’t be happening. I became weak as I bashed my door open, crushing a stray box behind it. I crashed onto my bed in a fit and started crying my eyes out. What was wrong with the world?

***

My dad came into my room five minutes later.
“So we let you out to a concert, and this is what I get?!”
I stayed buried in the mountain of pillows surrounding my head. I didn’t want to talk.
“Jesus Christ, Derrick.” He sat on the edge of the bed, putting his hands to his face and wiping sweat from his brow. “What did you do?”

I lay there silent for a few moments, and then spoke through my tears. “You know how I write a lot of stuff, right?”
“Mhmmm.” He never just nodded.
“I just had a bad week…”
“So?” He looked at me, lost.
I sat up. “Grams and Grumps just aren’t… I don’t like staying with them.”
“They don’t do anything though, son.” He stared blankly.
“That’s it! They don’t do anything! I hate it. You send them over here for nothing at all –”
“We have them here in case something goes wrong. We were in Nazi-land. Jeez, Der…” Dad looked away, “They aren’t happy with you though. They kept saying that you were rude all week. Why did you yell at your brother when you were picked up at school?”

I rolled my eyes.
“Don’t do that!” Sternly.
“Whatever Dad. I was just having fun with him. He yelled at me in the first place with everyone outside and around the courtyard. He embarrasses me sometimes! Him and his fucking… So I just yelled back as a joke. I didn’t mean anything! This is so fucking stupid.”
“Watch it.” Swearing is not cool to use apparently.
“Yeah. OK.”
“And what’s this about a kid pushing you against a locker?”
“Who told you?”
“Minerva Walsh called us and the police. I’m not sure if she mentioned it to the police though.”
I nodded, and proceeded to tell him the story of how Greiche strangled me. “Have they decided anything? I haven’t heard about it since when it happened.”
“It was brought to their attention this afternoon. He was suspended for three days starting Monday and he’s on probation. He might not even graduate with a diploma.” How lovely…
“Their?”
“Faculty.”
“Hmmm.”

“But what about this… bog?”
“Blog.”
“Blog… what is it?” My dad didn’t know how to type, let alone know what a blog was. It’s what you got for not going to CEGEP and starting a business soon after high school. It got you to a successful position, but you didn’t learn much.
“I have this site where I type stuff on it about life and stuff. People can look at it and comment on it.”
“Who looks at it?”
“Anyone can.”
“What do you mean anyone can look at it?” Bewildered. Welcome to the 21st century, dad.
“It’s a website they can visit.”
“No, but how do they get to it?”
“I don’t know. I put it in my emails.”
“Wha?”
“It’s at the bottom of all my emails so people can go look at it.”
“And what did you write on it?”
“I said that I was having a bad week and that everything would fix itself on Monday…. Ugh,” I broke down and started tearing up again. “I didn’t write anything!”
“You didn’t?”

“Not about killing anyone. Dad, you know I’m not like that.”
“How should I know? You’re just up here in your room on your computer all night. Writing your little journal.”
“Blog.”
“Bullshit.” He muttered.
“Do you not believe me?”
“I can’t yet.”
“Let me show you.” I took my laptop out of my bag that lay beside my bed. I booted it up and continued talking. “I don’t write anything bad on it.”
I typed in the address of my site as soon as I could open my browser. My page came up. But there was no post written on Thursday or Friday. Whenever I had actually posted it. Maybe someone reported it. ”It’s not here.”
“What?”

“The thing I wrote about Monday. It’s been deleted.”
“Are you just playing tricks on me now, Derrick?”
“NO! Christ, it was here. I wrote it. But now the police can’t even get it.” Sure enough, I logged into my profile to see a message saying that my blog post I had written had been deleted by the site.
“It was deleted.”
“What?” Un-tech-savvy.
“The site deleted it the post.”
“Why?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” I was getting sick of the questions. I just wanted to sleep now.
“WELL WHY NOT?!” He yelled back.
“Yelling isn’t helping any of this! Don’t you get it?”
“NO! I don’t get why my son is writing death threats on the internet!”
“I’M NOT!” I wanted to hit him. He wasn’t getting it at all. “That’s the whole point! Do you actually think I would do that? Really? I’m not dumb dad. I write intelligently and usually watch what I write!”

“If someone needed to call the police on you, then you’re obviously not.”
“Whoever it was just doesn’t like me. I didn’t do shit, dad.” I didn’t. For all they know, I really didn’t, and in reality, hadn’t. I looked down at my laptop. “Screw it.” I logged in and went to the control panel of my blog.
“What?” Dad looked at me not knowing what I had in mind.
I checked off every single post in the panel and clicked the delete button. In a flash, they were gone. “It’s all deleted.”
“You deleted what?”
“The blog.”
“What?”
“It’s gone. I deleted it.”
“Just like that?”
“I didn’t do anything, and now they can’t prove it. People are just going at me because I was pushed up against a locker. And that makes no sense. He was suspended… Christ.”
My dad nodded. Flustered, he rose and walked to the door, turning to say, “We’ll deal with this Monday.” And he shut the door.

I stared at the doorway for a few moments, wondering if he’d come back in and say something else. I didn’t know where I stood now. Was I suspected of plotting murder? What was the problem here? Why was I even here sitting staring at my bedroom door at nearly 1 AM? This was bullshit.

Maybe I was right. Maybe everything would be all right by Monday.