Cleave

My parents came to pick me up from my aunt and uncle’s place early on Sunday morning. I’d already packed up all of my things so that we could leave as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to spend longer than I had to in that place. I had hardly spoken a word to my aunt since the ‘incident’. I could hardly believe that she did what she did to me, but I guess in a way, it was a blessing in disguise. I was coming home. It was the only thing I wanted the entire time I was staying in that house.

I said goodbye to my friends on Saturday. At first I think that Mason thought I was leaving because of our fight, but I made sure that he knew it wasn’t that at all. I apologised to him for not realising sooner that he was into me in a romantic way and for getting mad at him for feeling like that. It wasn’t something anyone could control, but I could have handled finding out about it better than I did. Alex and Kyle were sad to know I was leaving too, but understood that I couldn’t stay at a place where I was being abused and where I was miserable.

The four of us hung out at Kyle’s place until late on Saturday night, drinking and smoking and reminiscing the time we spent together. There were some undoubtedly good times and I was going to miss them all very much. We all agreed to stay in contact with one another and I hoped that it wasn’t just an empty promise.

I had to get my cousin Jeremy to pick me up from Kyle’s place because my friends and I were too drunk to drive (not that I had my licence anyway) and Kyle’s place isn’t exactly walking distance away from my aunt’s. Jeremy was surprisingly okay with the fact that I was so drunk I pretty much had to be poured into his car half naked with some pretty epic sex hair. (Mason and I had one last rendezvous some time during the night. I don’t remember who initiated it, but I enjoyed it either way.)

The car ride was pretty quiet because I don’t think either of us knew what to say to each other. Jeremy and I were never close cousins, even when we were young kids, so it surprised me when, once he stopped the car outside of his place, he turned to me and started to speak. I had been struggling to open my seatbelt, but paused to take in what he was saying.
“Micah, I know you’re leaving tomorrow and I just wanted you to know… I’m sorry about what my mom did to you,” he said. “You didn’t deserve the way she treated you. People can’t help their sexuality and the sooner she figures that out the better. Same goes with your mother too. I hope things will be better for you back home than they were here.”

I looked at him in silence for a few seconds. He seemed sincere and I was grateful for that. Aside from the three friends I met when I first moved into my aunt’s place, nobody really took the time to say to me that they didn’t think everything that happened in the last year or so was entirely my fault. Jeremy and his sister Hallie were barely around, at college and living their own lives, so I didn’t blame him that it took so long for him to say something, but I was glad he did take the time to before I left. I smiled at him.
“Thanks, Jeremy,” I replied. He nodded, then he pushed my hands away from the buckle of my seatbelt, where they’d been resting since he first started to talk, and undid it for me. He then got out of his side of the car and came around to my side so he could help me out and lead me up the driveway to the house.

“You’ll need to be quiet, okay? Mom and Dad are probably asleep,” Jeremy whispered to me as he opened the door. I nodded and let him guide me into the house. He brought me to the kitchen, where he got me a glass of water and watched as I drank it. Once I finished, he took the glass from me and placed it on the counter. “Are you okay to get to your bedroom?”
“Um, yeah, I think so. Thanks. For like, picking me up and looking after me and stuff,” I said quietly.
“You’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” he said, patting me on the back gently before he left the kitchen. I followed suit, and headed into the room I would hopefully never have to sleep in again after this night. The room was still a huge mess. Everything that I didn’t own from the room was still strewn over the floor. A lamp was lying, shattered, next to the bed. One of the bedside tables was resting on its side with two drawers pulled out and tossed aside. The bedsheets were a mess, since I tore them off during my rampage and didn’t bother to put them back on the bed properly when I needed to go to sleep. The only thing that looked neat was my enormous suitcase, which was standing against the wall near the doorframe, already packed with everything I brought with me. Looking around the room, I smiled to myself. I was getting out of there in less than a day.

I plopped down on the bed and pulled the messy covers over me, falling asleep quickly. I slept dreamlessly, and before I knew it, it was morning and I was having my shoulder shaken roughly by a bony hand.
“Get up. Your parents will be here soon,” my aunt’s voice snapped, her grip on my shoulder tightening ever so slightly. I winced.
“Get your hand off me,” I said with as much power as I could despite how groggy and hungover I felt. My aunt released me and left the room without another word. I don’t think she was able to stand being in the same room as me anymore. Good. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near her if I had the choice.

I laid there for a few minutes, letting the fact that I was leaving sink in, before I decided I needed to get ready. My stomach lurched unpleasantly when I sat up and I felt everything I drank the night before come rushing up into my mouth. I slapped a hand over my mouth and bolted out of the guest room and to the bathroom, where I was thankfully able to empty my stomach into the toilet. I groaned loudly as another wave of vomit came up, followed by one more, until I finally felt like I was done.

As I was standing up from the bathroom floor (where I had basically collapsed while I was throwing up), Jeremy walked past the open door and looked in. He smiled a little, clearly knowing why I was just on the floor.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
“Yeah. Hangover,” I replied, grimacing slightly. “Thanks again for picking me up last night.”
“Don’t mention it, Micah. I hope you had a good last day here, at least?”
I nodded with a smile, which Jeremy returned before he walked off. I went over to the sink and rinsed my mouth out with water. That made me feel a lot better, so I headed back to my old room to get changed into some clean clothes and wait for my parents to arrive.

At around 9 o’clock, the doorbell rang. I didn’t rush to answer it because I knew that there would most likely be some sort of discussion between my parents and my aunt and I didn’t really want to get involved with that. Not yet. I did get up from the bed, though, and scanned around the room to make sure that I wasn’t leaving anything of mine behind. The clothes I’d changed out of earlier were already packed back in my suitcase and my iPod and earphones were sitting on top of the suitcase so that I could listen to music during the four hour trip back home, so I was all set ready to leave. I lay back down on the bed again. I had no idea how long it would be before we were actually on the road home and I wanted to be comfortable. Voices were rising and falling out in the living room. I could hear my mother’s and my aunt’s voices speaking loudly, although I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Probably something about how terrible I’d been during the time I was living here.

After a few minutes of trying and failing to hear what was being said, there was a soft knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I called, and the door slowly opened to reveal my dad. I immediately stood up and rushed towards him, pulling him into a tight hug. I stayed attached to him for a good minute or so before he pulled out of the hug and held me at arm’s length by my shoulders. He studied my face, where there was still a slight mark on my lip from where my aunt hit me.

“Are you alright, son?” he asked gently. I took a few seconds to consider my answer. It was a simple yes-or-no question, but I couldn’t give the easy answer. Yes, I was physically alright, but emotionally, I was somewhere in the middle. I was happy that I was leaving, but deep down there was still a lot of emotional scarring that I wasn’t sure would classify me as simply ‘alright’. Maybe ‘okay’ was a better description of how I was. ‘Alright’ is more on the positive side of the spectrum. ‘Okay’ is more neutral. I was neutral. Good and bad things hit me in pretty even whacks. It was accurate.
In the end, I just shrugged in reply to my dad’s question and he seemed to understand.

“Is all of your stuff packed?” Dad asked, looking around the still-trashed room. It didn’t even seem like he cared about the state of the room and how much damage I’d done to it. Maybe he thought my aunt deserved the clean-up that would take place once we left.
“Yeah, it’s all in the suitcase,” I replied. “Are we nearly ready to leave? I kinda want to get out of here.”
“I don’t blame you. Come on, we’ll bring everything out of here now and hopefully your mother will wrap up the conversation quickly,” Dad said, grabbing the handle of my suitcase. I grabbed my iPod and earphones off the top before he started to pull the suitcase out of the room. I followed him down the hallway and into the living room, where my mother and my aunt were sitting on opposite couches. Neither were speaking when Dad and I walked in, but both looked up.

“Hi, Mom,” I said quietly. Her eyes raked over me and I noticed they rested on my face just slightly longer than anywhere else.
“Hello, Micah. Are you ready to leave?” she asked, her voice sounding very forced and formal. I nodded. “Let’s go then. Micah, please say ‘thank you’ to your aunt for letting you stay here.”

My mouth dropped open at her words. Say ‘thank you’? She had to be fucking joking. There was no way in hell I was going to thank someone who spent their time making me miserable. Not a chance.
A few seconds of stunned silence on my part went by. My mother and my aunt were staring at me, waiting for me to say those two words. My dad turned around and I could tell that he didn’t approve of what I was being asked to do.

“I know you don’t want to, and I don’t think you should be forced to but it’ll get us out of here faster,” Dad said, his eyebrows furrowing in concern. I sighed.
“Thank you,” I muttered, looking at my aunt but not quite meeting her eyes.
“What was that?” Aunt Tina asked smugly.
“He said ‘thank you’, Tina,” Dad snapped. Dad and Aunt Tina never really got on very well, but he was usually very civilised when speaking with her. I guess he was really annoyed about how she treated me. He turned to Mom. “Davina, I’d like to leave now please.”

Mom stood up and smoothed down her skirt. “Thank you for looking after my son, Tina,” she said as she looked at her sister.
“It was my pleasure,” Tina said back. I shuddered at the tone of her voice. It was almost evil-sounding. “Goodbye, Micah.”

As nervous as I was, I wasn’t going to let her get the last words in. I didn’t care if I would get in trouble off Mom; I really wanted to say what I thought. “I know you didn’t hear me before, so I’ll say it again. Thank you, Aunt Tina, for letting me stay here and for hitting me and making my life miserable. I had a really great time.”
With that, I marched to the front door and opened it before I walked through it for the last time.

Once I was outside, I breathed in a deep breath of fresh air and let it out slowly. I walked down the driveway to my parents’ car and leaned against the back door while I waited for them to come out.

After a few minutes, they both walked out of the house. Dad unlocked the car and I immediately opened the door and got in. Mom and Aunt Tina hugged briefly, Dad nodded at Tina and then they both came over to the car. Dad put my suitcase in the trunk of the car while Mom got in.
“Have you got everything?” she asked me, twisting in her seat to look at me.
“Yeah,” I replied simply, and busied myself with finding something to listen to on my iPod. Dad got in the car and started it and we were finally on our way home.

It was an uneventful trip. I just listened to music the entire time and looked out the window, thinking about everything but nothing in particular. I wondered how people would react to my return. I didn’t even know if my friends knew where I was or why I was sent away and that worried me. Going back to school at Hillcrest would be kind of weird; like I’d be the new kid all over again. Would my friends even want to know me anymore if they did know why I was sent away? That worried me. Would I be ostracized? I didn’t think I could handle it if I was bullied for liking boys. I know that Angel was always pretty open about his sexuality at school and he didn’t seem to get any trouble, but he’s the kind of person who won’t take shit from anyone. I just didn’t know, and that worried me.

I think my mother wanted to start up a conversation a few times during the car trip. She shifted in her seat, almost like she was going to turn to look at me, but decided not to at the last second. I didn’t mind. As glad as I was to be coming home, I was still so mad and hurt about what she did to me by sending me away.

We drove straight through lunch and I think we were all getting pretty hungry by the time we made it into our hometown. I know that my stomach was growling, and I guess Dad’s was as well because he pulled off the main street into the driveway of our local McDonald’s. I pulled out my earphones, an action that Dad noticed in the rear-view mirror.
“We’re getting some lunch,” he informed me. He parked next to a familiar looking four-wheel drive and stopped the car. “Come on.”

I did as I was told and got out, following my parents through the door of the restaurant. Inside, it was noisy and chaotic. There were a bunch of kids running around and several people waiting at the counters either to order or to pick up their food. I groaned to myself. I hate McDonald’s. Not the food; the environment. It always seems to be busy and it’s just plain annoying.

I looked towards the counters, where the menu was up behind them. I hadn’t had McDonald’s for a long time so I wasn’t sure what I wanted to eat. My eyes didn’t make it to the menu, though, because they stayed stuck on the person behind the register. His eyes were on me, too, and I would know them anywhere. They belonged to the person who I missed the most while I was away, the one who broke my heart by moving on without me. But despite that, I still wanted to run into his arms and kiss him until we both ran out of breath. I couldn’t do that, though. He had a boyfriend, and remembering that, my heart broke all over again.

“Micah?” Mom’s voice sounded like it was coming from the other side of the room. I shook my head slightly while still looking at Angel. I was hoping that I was imagining him being there in his McDonald’s uniform, staring at me like he was a blind man seeing for the first time. I blinked. He was still there. “Micah, what are you…?” She trailed off when she followed my line of sight and her eyes rested on my ex-boyfriend. Her hands found their way to my shoulders and she began to steer me away towards the tables and chairs.

“Mom, stop. What are you doing? He –” I argued weakly with her.
“No. You’re not talking to him,” she said firmly.
“But –”
“No. We’ll discuss this when we get home and that’s final.” She found an empty table and guided me into a chair. My ears started ringing as my brain finally comprehended what was happening and my thoughts went into overdrive. Mom started talking to Dad but I had no idea what she was saying. Dad went off somewhere and came back a little while later with a tray of food. Some of it was given to me. I ate it, not knowing what it was and not caring either. All I could do was think and shake. Shake with what, I don’t know. Anticipation? Fear? No idea.

I don’t remember rest of the trip home after lunch. I don’t remember the reunion I had with my sisters. I don’t remember dinner, or “family time”, or deciding to go to bed.

The only two things I remember from the day I came home was the look on Angel’s face when our eyes first made contact in that fast food restaurant. And the determination I felt to make my way back into his arms, where I know I belong.