Page 37 of Badd Love
"Aside from the person who—" I shook my head. "Only Rune knows the details."
"What about your parents?"
I shook my head. "I tried telling my mother, but she basically just victim-blamed me. My parents are the worst. I haven't spoken to either of them in years and have no intention of changing that."
"Your father?"
"Hasn't been in the picture since I was, like, seven. They separated when I was five or six, I think, and I saw him every other weekend for like a year, maybe a year and a half. And then he got engaged to a stripper named Flossie and moved to Miami with her. They're married, living in a trailer, she's still stripping, and I'm pretty sure he's a raging alcoholic. Dunno, don’t care.”
"Hey now," he said. "There's nothing wrong with living in a trailerorbeing a stripper."
I laughed at this, despite myself. "No, there's not. He's just a useless piece of fuck."
He snickered. "Piece of fuck, that's funny." He glanced at me. "Also,Flossie?"
I shrugged. "I dunno."
"And your mom, currently?"
Another shrug. "Last I checked, she was still in the same shithole apartment I grew up in, and still parading a constant revolving door of losers through her bedroom. And no, it wasn't one of them." A pause. “She's just weak-willed, selfish, and lazy, and has fuckingterribletaste in men, my father most of all. She's worked the same shitty, dead-end job at a department store for twenty years. There's nothing wrong with the job in itself, it's just…she's…fuck, I dunno. She drinks a lot but isn't an alcoholic; she isn't, like, a meth-head or anything. She never hit me or let her asshole boyfriends hit me. One did, once, and she brained him with a frying pan. So at least there's that. She's just…"I shook my head. "I don't know how to explain my mother, honestly. I think maybe she didn't want kids and ended up with two, so she resented us. When shit with my father blew up, it made her more bitter than ever, which is saying something, because she was a mean, bitter hag to begin with."
"Old?"
I snorted. "At heart. She had my older brother at sixteen, so she's actually not that old; she's just one of those people who always just seemed…old. Weary, haggard, and run down and…I dunno. Thin? Like, I don't mean thin physically. I mean thin as a personality trait. Fuck, how do I put it? There's just not that much to her as a human other than bitterness, resentment, and laziness. Most of the shit in her life is her own fault. She could live a better life if she tried to improve herself, but she's got zero interest in that. She's content to work at the department store, live in her shitty two-bedroom roach-infested fuck-shack surrounded by drug dealers and petty criminals, and screw any loser with a dick and a car and a rap sheet."
"Wow. You really don't think much of her, do you?"
"Nope. I left home at seventeen."
"Left home, meaning…?"
"Ran away. Couch-surfed with friends for a while. Let me tell you, though, being homeless in Boston in the winter sucks hairy assholes."
"Linz, Jesus."
“It was better than being in that house with her and her creepy fucking boyfriends. Better than spending another minute in that house with the woman who told me to my face in so many words that I must have asked for it." My voice broke. "When I was fucking twelve."
"Jesus. Jesus."
I looked at him. "Starting to get the picture?"
“Yeah," he whispered. "I think I am."
"How'd you end up here in LA, if you grew up in Boston?"
"Hard fucking work. When I was fifteen, I had this friend, Abby. She was a senior, and I was a freshman. Some jock dick was picking on me during gym class, and she ripped him a new asshole for it. It was glorious and inspiring, and I wanted to be like her. She had a similar background as me—shitty home life, no prospects for a future that didn't involve taking her clothes off. I guess she and I were kindred spirits, sort of. We lived near each other, so we walked home together. I idolized her. She gave me a piece of advice that I never forgot, advice that I followed, and it changed the course of my life. She told me I had to rise above my circumstances. I couldn't let the life I was born into determine my future. The only way out for girls like her and me was college so either I worked my ass off, stayed out of trouble, stayed away from boys, and got into a good college far, far away from there, or I'd end up dead of an OD, hooking on the street corner, or stripping at Deluca's, where my father met Flossie."
"So you got into college."
I nodded. "It wasn't exactly that easy, but yeah." I sighed. “I went through a rough patch the next year—Abby graduated and left Boston, and I had no friends. The person who…he got put away, and I…I went a little crazy. Got into trouble. Drinking. Drugs. Parties. Bad crowd, bad choices. Did a lot of irresponsible shit. But one night, I was wasted at a party. This girl and I had been hanging out, talking, and whatever. She ditched me for some guy. Left with him and never came back. Vanished. Everyone assumed he'd done something to her, but he swore he didn't, and he actually came up with an airtight alibi. Said he dropped her off at home after they smashed, then went home, spent the rest of the night playing video games online, and his gamer friends validated his alibi. She turned up a few months later, after the snow melted. She'd wandered off after he dropped her off, got lost or fell or passed out in the snow, froze todeath, got buried under a fresh load of snow, and…" I shrugged. "That could've been me, I realized. And I remembered Abby's advice—stay out of trouble, keep your grades up, join a sports team, and get thefuckout of Southie.”
"And you did?"
I nodded. "Yup. Even homeless, I stayed on top of my grades. I'd study in the public library until they closed, and I'd ride the T all night, doing homework, studying, sleeping. I was friends with one of the school janitors—Yuri, a sweet little old Ukrainian guy. I think he understood my situation. He couldn't do much about it, but he was a sweetheart. He'd let me in before the faculty arrived so I could shower in the locker rooms. He spent his own money to buy me a little shower caddy with shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, and he'd hide it in the janitor's closet and get it out for me when I arrived. I'd hide in the locker rooms until people started arriving, and then I'd act like I was just a goody two-shoes eager to get to class early. I'd hang out in the library after school until practice started or I got kicked out."
"What sport did you do?" He asked.
"Softball. I was a pitcher."
