Cath Trilogy: Hey Jane

That same morning:

Ryan laid on the couch in the living room not wanting to move. His entire body was numb and nothing was changing that. He had run out of tears the other night, and it was 13 hours from when Danny had died by his father’s hands.11:00, the clock on his phone read. He was still tired, but a smell from the kitchen got him to actually move.

“Hey sugar,” his mother walked away from the skillet she had been using and hugged her son. “How’d you sleep?”

“Okay I guess,” Ryan shrugged and looked at the assortment of ingredients that were on the counters. He smiled when he realized what she was doing, “You haven’t made pancakes in forever.”

“Well, you could use some,” Claire winked and ruffled his hair.

Ryan smiled and pulled away with his arm raised above his head. The smile quickly faded and was replaced by a frown. He was on the verge of tears when his mother took him in her arms and said nothing. She just handed him a Swedish pancake and nodded to the table where there was syrup, butter and powdered sugar.

He used all three and rolled up the thin pancake that his mother had managed to make into an almost perfect circle only imperfected by the patterns that the batter had made on the edges. “Thanks mom,” he choked out the words and looked out the window to see the car from which their house was being observed.

Ryan couldn’t stop himself now, tears were pouring from his eyes, and all he wanted to do was take Danny in his arms one last time. Claire walked up to him and with her accent that had South Carolina in it from the years that she had spent there in her youth, she said, “You know breakfast is the cure to all ails.” She smiled with her sad eyes.

Ryan nodded and tried to stifle his sobs. “I miss him so much,” Ryan cried and flung himself into her open arms.

“I know, I know kid,” Claire said. “Did I ever tell you about Riley?”

Ryan didn’t pull away from her to shake his head.

“Well, she was my best friend from one day in fifth grade to the time I was a freshman in high school. She was everything I wanted to be: pretty, smart and a social butterfly. Puberty wasn’t kind to me in my youth. We still stayed best friends even with this difference, and we did everything together. I think I might have had a crush on her.

“But, freshman year came, and we diverged. I hadn’t talked to her in weeks when she called me over to stay at her house for the night. I came over, and she was still her same self, and we had a blast. I remember waking up at her house and feeling like it was the best thing that could have happened. I couldn’t find her in the morning, but when I turned on the TV, she was there. She had snuck out in the night and gone to a party with a few seniors. There must have been drugs because she had ended up slaughtering four of them, sending two to the hospital, and the other two had been having sex in the bathroom, so they weren’t there for it.

“Riley was burned from the inside out from swallowing a match and gasoline,” Claire, too, had tears in her eyes from the memory. “She was taken from me in one night. I thought she had been the same, but she had changed more than I had noticed. She was able to do all of that without me even thinking that was possible for her. She told me that she had missed me when we talked the night before.”

Ryan looked at her with a shocked expression, “Wow.”

Claire nodded and looked him in the eye, “We’re in this together babe.”

Ryan hiccuped from the sobs and went to eating him soggy pancake of deliciousness. Claire laughed and joked with him as she ate the same as him getting syrup all over her fingers and showing him the food in her mouth more than once.

Ryan walked away from the table feeling truth in her words about the power of breakfast. Then, a wave of grief hit him, and he flopped onto the couch thinking about Danny. His thoughts went to the origin.

The origin story of Danny and Ryan:

”We’ve assigned you a tutor until you aren’t failing any classes. We think it might be best if you work with another person,” Mr. Lockhorst, Ryan’s least favorite person, said. He was a math teacher who doubled as an academic coach and had a habit of sticking his head in all the places Ryan wanted him to keep clear of.

“‘kay,” Ryan shrugged with his jacket unzipped part way and falling to his shoulders.

“You’ll visit him everyday after school until we see those grades rise,” Mr. Lockhorst put unwanted enthusiasm into the last part.

“Great,” Ryan said with sardonic enthusiasm.

“Failure to see your tutor will lead to fines for taking up the young man’s time.”

Ryan looked at the ground before saying, “Can I go back to history now?”

Mr. Lockhorst sighed and wrote Ryan a pass. Ryan only really cared about history. It was the one class that he wasn’t failing. He was pretty sure he would receive a failing grade in lunch too if he could. He didn’t sit with anyone, and he didn’t eat, ever.

On his way to the class, Ryan thought about how cruel and unfair his punishment was. He would rather be locked in his room for what his father called “thinking time” for a week with no food or drink for a week instead of being patronized about grades and shit.

Mrs.Hayashiramm, everyone called her Mrs.H, took his pass without a second glance and continued to talk about the newest project for geography. They were supposed to pick a region and make a weather map. It actually sounded interesting to him, and he knew it was the only thing he would work on as homework.

At the end of class, Ryan slipped out the door and tried to bring himself to care about his next and final class: English 11. No thanks. He didn’t care about anything that they read in the class, and he really didn’t want anything to do with being graded on how creative he was with his writing or insightful with his essays.

Mr. Bisi greeted him with a frown. “And a good day to you too,” Ryan muttered under his breath.

“What’s that?” Mr. Bisi turned on him.

“I said hello,” Ryan said the half truth.

Mr. Bisi didn’t look amused, though, he didn’t think it was possible for the man to be amused.

The next just about hour was spent discussing Edward Taylor and his wonderful word choice that Ryan could give less caring to if his life was on the line. Ryan was just about to fall asleep when Mr. Bisi told them the homework which Ryan didn’t quite hear over the sound of the ending alarm. He doubted Mr. Bisi would repeat himself, so he just didn’t care.

Now, time to do some studying. Everyone else was chatting with their friends about their oh so very exciting Wednesday plans or complaining about their oh so hard schedule as a cheerleader. Pity the poor child! What if she can’t get home in time to watch the latest episode about people and their white people problems. How terrible it must be to be middle class.

Ryan passed them all and went to his locker. He opened it to have every paper from the seventh ring of hell to come crashing to the floor. Ryan sighed, picked them up and went on his merry way with his bookbag and geography textbook.

Mr. Lockhorst had given him a piece of paper with the room number he was supposed to go to written on it. He followed the decreasing numbers until he came to a room that was unoccupied except for the boy who was eating an apple at one of the desks. The boy sitting sat up and asked, “Ryan?” His auburn hair was envy making for Ryan as well as the boy’s green eyes.

Ryan thought about his bland appearance of brown hair, brown eyes, black clothes. He barely matched this other kid’s refreshing appearance and brightly colored clothing.Ryan decided to just be as rude as possible and just sit down without a word. “I’m Danny,” Danny smiled.

“I know,” Ryan said. He had seen Danny around school, and Danny wasn’t known for keeping a low profile.

“Awesomesause,” Danny rubbed his hands together. Ryan felt horrible. It was even worse that his tutor was going to be a fellow student. This kid, who was the same age as him, was going to help him understand his work. No thank you. Danny said, “So, we should start on english first ‘cause it’s your lowest grade.”

Ryan shrugged and pulled out his book of Edward Taylor poetry.

“We look at this guy before Christmas break,” Danny said excitedly.

“How very fascinating,” Ryan said dryly.

Danny went pale for a second with the mean words. “I just,” he said then stopped himself. “So, have you started working on your assignment?”

“No,” Ryan said curtly.

“Alright,” Danny picked a neat paper out of a binder that had the assignment written on it. “So, which poem do you want to do this for?” Danny asked as he read over the assignment.

Danny only knew one poem, and he didn’t even know it very well, “I really don’t care.”

Danny said, “Well, our class did something similar; we could do ‘Upon a Spider Catching a Fly’. It’s my favorite.”

That had been the one poem that Ryan knew. He shrugged and said, “Sure.”

“Cool,” Danny smiled and helped Ryan write the essay that was required of one of the poems to make sure that at least on was understood. Ryan could still barely understand what the hell Taylor had meant. He just looked at the stanza:

“This Frey seems thus to us.
Hells Spider gets
His intrails spun to whip Cords thus
And wove to nets
And sets.”

Ryan understood the main concept that the fly and wasp were human and the spider was Satan. Other than that, he couldn’t really pick out any of the important points that Taylor put into this work. Danny understood it perfectly, and he was able to tell Ryan without sounding like an asshole. He was able to convey the religious tones without sounding rude, and Ryan respected that. That didn’t make him any less pissed that he had to spend time in the hell-hole of school.

The time was finally over, and Ryan got out as soon as he could.

This continued every day for the next week with Ryan’s snarky behavior growing less and less, but he also showed Danny something else. Ryan showed how smart he really was. How well he could take in information.

Meanwhile, Danny was known to Ryan as mature and interesting. He wasn’t two dimensional like he thought every other person in school was. Danny had character that made Ryan respect him even more.

On the next friday, Ryan and Danny were working on a science lab write-up. Ryan tapped his chewed up black pen against the table. Danny’s green pen was in his ear as he read over his own homework.

“Je ne sais pas,” Danny muttered to himself.

“Hmm,” Ryan looked up for a second.

“Oh, nothing just French,” Danny rubbed his eye to get an eyelash out of it.

“Right,” Ryan went back to looking at the data that he had written down in the chem lab.

The rest of the time was spent in silence with only Danny pretending to be teaching when a teacher walked by. Frankly, Ryan felt like this was actually helping him in school more than anything he had ever done. The only distraction was Danny himself.

“Hey,” Danny said as they were leaving. “I think you won’t need me after two more weeks.” He smiled, “You can finally do the important stuff.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said and switched from foot to foot. “I won’t bring you a profit anymore.”

“What am I, a pimp?” Danny joked.

“Yeah with your love of women,” Ryan said with sarcasm in his tone.

“God, you’re just like Nicole and Max,” Danny rolled his eyes.

“Who?” Ryan asked.

“My two best friends,” Danny waved his hand. “They think I’m gay.”

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that,” Ryan said.

“Really?” Danny asked.

“Was I?” Ryan swallowed.

“No, I must have been imagining it,” Danny looked away. “Yeah, totally straight, me.”

“Same goes for me,” Ryan said suddenly and felt like hitting his head against a wall, hard.

“Yeah, of course,” Danny said and took his pen from his ear and began to bite the tip.

“So, leaving,” Ryan said and made his way to the main door.

“Right,” Danny said and walked the same direction. “So, anything planned for the weekend?”

Ryan shrugged, “Nah, how about you?”

“My folks and I are going to see my grandparents in Sonoma,” Danny smiled. “I haven’t seen them in, like, forever.”

“Nice,” Ryan said. “I never met my grandparents.”

“Really, sorry to hear that. My dad’s dad had a bad ticker. His pacer gave out three months before I was born.”

Ryan looked at the ground, “My dad’s parents died to get my dad to America from Vietnam. My mom’s mom was a hooker, and her dad could be any man in South Carolina.”

“Oh,” Danny said and put walked over to his car. “Hey, do you want a ride?” He asked as the rain played a violent percussion solo on every surface.

Ryan looked at the rain for a moment before saying, “Only if you have candy.”

“Always,” Danny laughed and took his keys to his hybrid out of his bag.

Ryan walked to the cluttered car with wrappers and papers covering every space. Danny took everything out of the passenger seat and threw it to the back seat. “Wow,” Ryan said with surprise in his tone.

Danny looked up at Ryan and said, “It’s usually not this bad.”

“So this morning you decided to get about three hundred coffees?” Ryan raised an eyebrow.

Danny shrugged and said, “A) No. B) The body’s got to do what the body’s got to do.

“Alright,” Ryan said as he got into the car.

“Where do you live?” Danny asked as he tried to get the engine to start.

Ryan told him, and Danny stared at him, “No way,” he said. “That’s the street next to mine.”

“Small world,” Ryan smiled.

The engine started, and Danny clapped, “Yay.” He pulled out of the school parking lot and drove off to their homes.

They fell into a comfortable silence as Ryan watched the sun set over the roofs of buildings. His mind wandered, and he wasn’t paying any attention until his phone buzzed. It was a text message from his mother:

Don’t come home tonight.

Ryan knew what she meant, but the last time she had told him this, he had nowhere to go. He still had nowhere to go. He looked saw his road coming up and looked at Danny. “Hey, this may sound a bit weird, but would it be possible for me to crash at your place?”

Danny pulled over the car and looked at Ryan with surprise. “Why?”

“My mom and dad are fighting,” Ryan told the partial truth.

“Really, that sucks,” Danny put a hand on the back of his head. “I guess I could let you sleep on the couch. My folks wouldn’t mind. They always tell me to be more social.”

“Thanks a million,” Ryan said. “I’ll just stay out of your way.”

“It’s no bother,” Danny said and pulled into his own road then to his own parking space.

Ryan followed Danny into his house where the scent of dinner was in the air. “Mom, Dad, I brought company,” Danny called into the house.

The last time Ryan had been that loud in his house, his father had gag and bound him.

“Come on, you could have told me before I made dinner,” Danny’s father came out of the kitchen with a sigh. “Hello, I’m Harrison Richman. You can call Lord Captain Commander Richman, and you better remember to add ‘may the light shine upon you.’”

Ryan gave him a quizzical look as he shook the man’s hand. Danny gave a look of terror, “Dad, what’s your damage?”

“I’m just joking,” Lord Captain Commander Richman (may the light shine upon him) said. “Call me Harris.”

Ryan smiled and shook the man’s hand as his mother had told him to do. “Thank you,” he said with a polite smile.

“Some people still have manners I see,” Danny’s father smiled at Ryan.

Dinner consisted of orange chicken, broccoli and rice. Danny’s father had cooked it himself with the knowledge he had gained from this wonderful thing called the internet. Danny’s mother, Melissa Weillandersen, came down on a phone call and waved to everyone before taking a plate of food back to her home office. She worked in finance, and that was all that Ryan could make out of the vague description Danny had given the last week when they were introducing themselves. She worked hard but managed to be there for him when he needed her just like his father was. His father was more keen to be there for everything Danny needed.

He was a secretary at a high end daycare. That didn’t take up very much of his time, and he ended up spending a lot of time home. The situation had Ryan green with envy.

After dinner, Danny went to finish his homework in his room, and Ryan did his own in the living room. He listened to his music player which alternated between scream and broadway. Oli Sykes followed by Miss Saigon followed by Marilyn Manson followed by Avenue Q. His mother often said he followed her taste whereas her secret admiration lay in rap. Eminem and The Beastie Boys were her guilty pleasures. Other than that, she prefered the Ramones and The Rivieras along with indie rock bands that managed not to make her sick: Death Cab for Cutie, Fun., Youth Lagoon, MGMT.

Ryan didn’t care much for that type of music, and his father absolutely loathed it. He made it very clear that he didn’t want her listening to that type of music. The scars on her kneecaps were reminders of this.

Ryan didn’t want to think of this given the text he had received. He wasn’t sure that she was safe, but he knew the consequence of telling anyone what was happening. The pistol in his father’s office was always loaded and ready.

Thinking about it made his stop working and fall onto the couch. He had been given a blanket and a pillow, but it was far too early to go to bed. He just sat there listening to how Madonna wanted to be “Rainbow High” and how Argentina shouldn’t cry for her.

He held back his tears that his father wouldn’t take from him that day.

The same rule did not go for his current day. He was sobbing over the loss of his best friend and lover. He tried hard not to think about it, but he wasn’t doing so well. His mother tried to help him, and he didn’t make it through the day that well.

Nicole and Max came by that night, but Ryan didn’t feel like talking. He just pushed them away and said he would see them at the funeral.