Sgt. Dazey's Forgotten Dreamer's Band

viii. Leanne

I was late getting home by two hours.

It took a half hour for me to walk home, and the rest of the time was spent waiting for the high school boys to leave already. They wait for me everyday, and everyday I usually get off before them, plenty of time to get a head start.

By the time I get home, Leanne is no where to be seen. I drop my things off in my room upstairs, already start making dinner before I notice a note left on the counter.

Ted—
Having a night out. Got your school's call.
Order a pizza if you have to. Emergency number is on the fridge, Georgia should call to check on you before I'm home tomorrow.

Mom

The note is predictably short, and i crumple it up in a sheer, sudden rage at seeing it. I don't know how to express why. I open my mouth to vent my anger to some unseen force, but no words come. I don't have the motivation to hit something. So instead I stand, and wait until I can go back to the food on the stove. I keep cooking, deciding that I'll do more than she would in my situation.

Maybe, I think, I'd like it better if she was hear to bite my head off. Then at least I could vent.

Dinner isn't great, but so few things have been lately that I don't notice. The icy English wind blows through my blankets and clothes that it takes me hours to fall asleep after, giving me even more time to wonder if it's this cold in my late father's mansion.

I awake to the sound of a door slam, and shooting up the name of my mother flashes into my head. I can feel my head start to go over every little thing I've done since I got home to see where I've done things wrong, given her an excuse to be upset at me, and the sound of her harsh footsteps up the stairs and to my room don't help. My arms reach up infront of myself instinctively as I stand, if only the public school boys could see me now. They'd never let me hear the end of it for being such a wimp, and I can't stop thinking about it. The minutes it takes Leanne to walk upstairs and open my door seem like they drag out for an eternity.

"Theodore." I hear her say, fighting past the slur in her voice. I wish you had crashed drunk driving home. I wish you had driven your car into a lake and drowned there. I wish nobody found you for days. I wish when they did they sent me away to say with dads boyfriend.

I don't respond to her.

And to that she staggers towards me, and I move away.
But even in her drunken state she's too quick for me, and lands a grip on my arm. I can smell the alcohol from her. She's too close. She yells at me, so loud I can't register what she says. I feel myself try and move down, back, any direction to get away, to twist out of this she-devils grip, but nothing happens.

Until I snap.

She moves her hand towards me, and I slap her across the face.

A silence falls over the previously loud room. She says nothing, for a second I can't believe what I've done. But as soon as she makes eye contact with me I know there's no taking it back.

So I run.

Out the bedroom, out the hall, down the stairs and out the door without shoes or a jacket, in my pajamas, into the cold English air with nowhere to go. And I instantly know there's no turning back.