Time After Time

6

|Chapter 6|

•Alistair Beaufort•

Darkness and quiet meet me as soon as I step into my house, and I breathe a small, barely-audible sigh of relief. A brief glance at my phone tells that Mom won’t be home for at least another three hours. I silently remove my shoes and pad to the living room. Look up, just in case there’s anyone watching me from the hallway upstairs. Deserted. Dumbass, Mom’s out. There’s no one home. Relax. Tentatively, I flip a single light on, even though the sun’s isn’t going to even set for another while and I can see perfectly fine without the light.

Without thinking, I slowly stroll over to the kitchen and grab the first glass I see when I open the top cupboard. Then I take the shaker that’s hidden behind all the cups. Setting those on the countertop, I then throw open the fridge door, rummaging through all the groceries Mom bought yesterday. Muttering obscenities under my breath, I finally come upon the two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, place it next to the glass. Then I walk over to the trusty sugar bowl next to the toaster with the keys to our little wine cellar in them. But when I peer inside, there’s not a single key in it.

Shit. Somehow it makes me even more thirsty. My hands move over cupboard handles and I wrench them open. They make a loud clanging sound, but I ignore it, rummaging quickly through the neat piles of plates and silverware. Nothing. Slam it shut, move to the next one, search quickly, slam it shut. I repeat those steps for five more minutes, and only come up with Mom’s extra car keys.

I frown, leaning against the counter, thinking. There’s no way Mom would have taken the cellar key. There’s no way she knows about my drinking habits, so she wouldn’t—

A loud jangle interrupts my thoughts and I whirl around, eyes focusing a single, bronze key. “Looking for this?” Mom says.

Oh shit. Never mind.

4:21 p.m.

“Mom, I don’t need a shrink.”

Her grip on the steering wheel tightens significantly. I can see it by how white her knuckles are. Her eyes remained trained on the road, back dead-straight, teeth gritted. Pretending to be so focused on perfecting her parallel parking that she can’t hear a word I’m saying. Or maybe the radio, which is currently blasting Thrift Shop, is too loud for her to hear me. So I turn it down and repeat my words, though maybe not so nicely.

“Mom, I don’t need a fucking shrink.”

“Language, Alistair,” she says through her teeth, grabbing the back of my seat and looking behind her as she slowly eases the car into the parking space.

“Well, I wouldn’t be swearing if you’d actually answered me the first fucking time.”

“Alistair Ryan Beaufort…” Mom says in her dangerous tone, finally looking at me for the first time since we drove off to therapy. We’re in the parking spot, and I hear my mother mutter some obscenity under her breath before pressing her foot on the gas again and moving out of it—again. “Too crooked,” she says, more to herself than me.

The car—a green Buick—that has been patiently waiting for nearly six minutes for us to park properly before it can pass, rolls down its windows and some middle-aged guy glares at us, hanging a flabby tattooed arm out of the window. I see a cigarette hanging between two fingers on that arm. I recognize him as the dad of the guy who sits next to me in English. I saw him and his family sitting front-row at last year’s grade ten performance of Hamlet, which I led, of course. Seatbelt unbuckled, I sink even more in my seat, looking out the window so he won’t recognize me that well. Fuck, I swear, this place knocks down my reputation by at least one hundred points.