Page 1 of Trick
Prologue
Jason, aged 13
I was jerked out of a deep sleep by the sound of our front door slamming. I focused my bleary eyes on the glowing numbers of the clock next to my bed, to see that it was just after two in the morning. I wasn’t surprised. The bar had just closed for the night, so my dad had dragged his drunk ass home.
I eased back down on my lumpy mattress, hoping that the creaking of my rickety, old bed frame through the thin walls of our trailer wasn’t loud enough to catch his attention. I relaxed slightly when the only sounds that followed were from his footsteps as he stumbled into the kitchen, most likely to get a beer, as if he hadn’t had enough already.
I hated my dad.
It hadn’t always been that way. We’d never been close, like my friends Cole and Caleb were with their dad. My dad had been gone a lot since he was a long-haul trucker and had mostly ignored me when he was home. After all, it was hard to play catch in the backyard with your kid when you had a beer in your hand – and Dad hadalwayshad a beer in his hand.
Still, he hadn’t been a bad dad. Just an absent one.
Until he’d shown up for work one day with liquor on his breath and had been confronted by his boss. After a heatedargument, he had been fired on the spot. Dad responded by throwing a few punches at the guy. He’d been arrested for assault and served a month in the county jail.
He’d had trouble finding work afterward. For some reason, decent employers didn’t want to hire guys who’d been drunk on the job and punched out the boss. Go figure.
After moping around and being out of work for months, a foreclosure notice came in the mail. Mom’s salary as a hotel housekeeper wasn’t enough to keep up with the mortgage – or keep beer in the fridge, which had been Dad’s priority. We lost the house and moved into a trailer park a few blocks away. I missed our house, and our backyard, but at least I didn’t have to change schools or move away from my friends.
Dad finally got hired to work on a loading dock at an appliance store. Because of his record – and his inability to pass a piss test – he couldn’t get certified to drive any of the equipment used to unload the trucks, so his job involved moving the individual appliances around once they were off the truck. He was a big guy, six-feet-three and heavily muscled, but it was hard, back-breaking work. He hated every second of it.
He’d come home every evening, tired and sore and angry. On the good nights, he’d head out to the bar. On the bad ones, he’d crack open his first beer within seconds of walking through the front door, and drink steadily through the night, staring bleary-eyed at the television and snarling at us if we dared to disturb him.
Dad was a mean drunk. Quick to anger. Throwing empty beer cans, or his ashtray, or even the phone, once. Punching holes in the wall on occasion.
Mom and I had quickly learned to stay out of his way, but it didn’t always work.
About six months ago, I’d noticed the bruises. Mom had made up some dumb excuse, but deep down I’d known the truth. I’d heard the arguments at night when they thought I was asleep. Dad yelling, Mom crying. I just hadn’t realized what it had meant, until I saw the purplish marks peeking out from underneath her shirt sleeve – marks that were the exact size of my dad’s fingers.
Lately, Dad had stopped trying to keep the bruises limited to spots that didn’t show. Last month, Mom had a black eye. Last week, a busted lip.
When I asked her why she didn’t kick him out, she’d told me that I was too young to understand.
I wasn’t too young. I heard the way her voice trembled when she said it. I saw the way her hands shook sometimes when we heard his truck pull in the driveway.
She was scared.
Scared of him. Scared to be on her own. Scared that we wouldn’t have a roof over our heads without him. Just plain scared.
I’d told her that I would help her the next time, but she’d cried again and told me to stay out of it. “I can handle your dad, Jason. Just go to your room and stay there when he gets mad. He won’t hurt you. It will be all right.”
I had just started to doze off again when there was a loud thump, then muffled cursing, followed by my dad yelling for Mom.
“Michelle, git yer lazy ass out here!”
Moments later, Mom dashed past my closed bedroom door, her bare feet slapping against the worn linoleum floor as she hurried down the hall to him.
I sat up, listening as Mom greeted him, her voice tight with fear. My gut twisted as I drew back the covers, carefully sliding out of bed. I held my breath, praying to a God I was pretty sure didn’t exist that Dad didn’t hear my bedframe creaking.
I shouldn’t have worried, since the sound of my movements was drowned out by Dad yelling again, his words slurred.
“This place is a fuckin’ pigsty! You were home all night, and couldn’t be bothered to clean up? I just tripped over these goddamned boots!”
Two loud thumps against the living room wall – the one that butted up to my bedroom – were followed by the sound of flesh hitting against flesh, and my mother’s cry of pain.
I eased open my bedroom door and tiptoed down the short hallway into the living room, almost tripping over the pair of boots laying on the floor. I guess that explained the two thumps on the wall.
Ironically, they were myDad’swork boots thathe’dleft in the living room when he’d changed out of his work clothes before heading out to the bar. The rest of the house was spotless, just like it always was.
