Don't Worry, I'll Keep You Warm

The next time Vic had to go in to work for the Quinn’s was the Saturday after the first time he’d gone in. He rang the doorbell, right on time, and moments after, the same woman came to the door.

“Hello,” she greeted him, welcoming him inside.

“Is that the cleaning boy we hired?”

A man’s voice spoke, coming in from the kitchen. Vic watched as a tall and rather plump man walked in to the living room. He looked just as sad as his wife, but he had a kind air about him. The scrawny teenager stepped forward, extending his arm to shake the man’s hand. “I’m Vic,” he said, introducing himself.

“Hello,” said Mr.Quinn, taking Vic’s hand. “Don’t let me be in your way, then.”

Vic nodded and looked at Mrs. Quinn, who smiled and lead the way to the kitchen as her husband went off in to a different room. Vic heard the stairs creak as the older man went up to the second floor.

“Same thing as last week, only upstairs. Is that alright?” she motioned towards the same cleaning supplies. Vacuuming and window washing, again. Well, whatever. “When you’re done, I’d like it if you cleaned the bathrooms as well.”

“Alrighty,” said Vic, picking up the things he would need.

“Have fun,” his boss murmured, walking away from him once more.

That left Vic alone with his thoughts. Both of them seemed so sad; he figured they must have just let themselves - and their house - just go. Maybe that’s what two years of having your son be in a coma did to you. After a while, you just start to give up and lose hope.

Did they still ever visit him? Is it possible to even visit someone like that? Hell, Vic didn’t even know wall the signs and side effects of something like that. Would he ever wake up? Or would his brain just… shut down? They’d learned a little bit about trauma victims in his biology class freshmen year, and again in health class. If Kellin did ever wake up, he’d probably be pretty disabled for like, the rest of his life.

It made him think of his brother, Mike. He was pretty obsessed with his skateboard and he knew for a fact the younger boy never wore a helmet no matter how many times their mother told him to. If something like that happened to him, he figured his family would fall apart much like this one had.

Sighing, Vic sent a silent thanks up to whatever higher powers were listening that nothing like that had happened as he washed the two windows in the hall way on the second floor. Wherever it was his bosses had gone off to, they were completely out of his way. Last week Mrs. Quinn had popped up at the end of the two hours to give him his pay and that was that.

As he crossed to the second window, he couldn’t help but notice yet another picture hanging on the walls. This one was a family photo - two proud parents, and what looked to be a boy in middle school. Must be Kellin, when he was in about sixth or seventh grade, or so Vic assumed. He couldn’t really be sure though.

The windows let in a lot more light when they were clean. Or maybe, that was just Vic trying to make himself feel proud of his work. The two that he worked for would probably barely notice.

He could tell they were still extremely hung up over their half-dead son.

After he had done the windows in the bathroom, there were only four doors left in the upstairs. One, he figured, led to an attic, where he simply refused to go up to until he absolutely had to. The other was a guest room. The other two were on opposite ends of the hall - which, he could only assume, meant they led to the bedrooms.

Were Mr. and Mrs. Quinn in their room? God damn it this was difficult; it was like deciding whether to cut the blue wire or the red wire on a bomb as he’d seen on T.V. a few times. Sighing, he went for the door that wasn’t ornate, where no light was cast through the gap between the door and the floor.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed. “Wow.”

This… this had to be Kellin’s room. It was neat, for the most part. But since the accident, it hadn’t been touched. The curtains were drawn. There were papers on the desk. On his bed, it looked like someone had just gotten up to get ready for school. It was pretty big, for a teenager’s room. Vic’s was half the size of it.

“What are you doing?”

A voice made Vic spin around just before he walked in to get to the window. Mrs. Quinn stood looking at him with her arms crossed, a pained look on her face.

“I was washing all the windows, like you said…” he tried to explain.

“I don’t think you should worry about this one. Please don’t open the door to my son’s room, he hates when people go in there without permission…”

Vic nodded and stepped out, making a point to close the door behind him. “I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically. “I didn’t know; I won’t go in again, okay?”

Mrs. Quinn nodded, taking a deep breath and looking a little relieved.

It must be hard, having your son be alive and not living at the same time.

—

“Have a good day!”

That was what she said to me as I walked out the door that morning. “Have a good day,” I mocked, spitting on the sidewalk. The walk to school wasn’t too long - but I was running late. Technically I could still take the bus, but in reality that wasn’t an option for me anymore.

I jammed my hands in to my pockets and hurried along the sidewalk, wondering if my mother ever thought about the amount of bullshit lies I had told her about how I avoided everyone. Of course, she didn’t know they were lies. But I did.

I knew all the lies, all the excuses and diversions. I had to keep track of them so my stories added up.

In reality, I just don’t want to be near people. They don’t take too kindly to people like me.

“Hey, it’s the faggot!”

Damn it. This happened most mornings when I got closer to the school building. I turned away, keeping my head down. A group of juniors drove by in their car, a freshman girl in the back seat. They were flipping me off and laughing…

—-

By the time Vic got home that night, his curiosity was getting the best of him. He could figure all the things that would be in a teenage boy’s room, even with only a five second glance in it. And he even knew what the boy looked like and what his parents were like. The thing was, he wanted to know him. What was he like? What was his favorite band? Did he play any instruments? Questions like this rattled around in his brain and he was way too afraid to ask about them.

At least, he was afraid to ask Kellin’s parents. His own, however, were a different story.

“Mom,” Vic said, walking in to the laundry room, where his bother were folding and sorting Mike’s and his clothing. “Question.”

“What’s up?” asked the woman that Vic had somehow outgrown in the past few years. He could look right over her head now, even though Mrs. Fuentes liked to deny it when he wasn’t around.

“You know the Quinn’s? The ones I just started working for, obviously,” he started.

“What about them?” she said as she reached in to the dryer for another pair of jeans.

Vic leaned against the washing machine a few feet away. “They had a kid, did you know?”

“Oh yes, Alex’s mom - Mrs. Gaskarth, the ones next door to them told me all about him. It’s sad, really, what happened to him.”

“What did she tell you?” He tried to look not as interested as he was, occupying himself with a hangnail.

“Car accident, lots of head trauma. He’s up at one of the University Hospitals. Apparently his parents are still paying for top doctors to take care of him in the hopes he’ll wake up, but as time goes on the chances of that happening are slimmer and slimmer. It’s really sad, actually. He’s about your age, Vic,” she explained.

“That is pretty sad. They have pictures of him everywhere. The ones in the living room are faced down though,” said Vic, recounting his first day of work for the Quinn’s. His mother nodded, turning her attention back to her folding. “So he probably went to the same school as me and Mike?”

She nodded her head, giving a quiet ‘mhm’ sound. Vic shrugged and slipped out, not bothering to say anything more. He didn’t want to make things look weirder than they already were, that was for sure.