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<\/h1>\n<\/h1>\nby Tyler Johnson<\/p>\n
It was six days before Thanksgiving when Jamie\u2019s mother died, and he spent the holiday watching the Packers trounce the Lions in his grandfather\u2019s beer-smelling easy chair. It was rusted into the recline position, so he ate Spaghetti-Os with a folded-in-half bed pillow tucked under his head.<\/p>\n
His grandparents spent the day the same way they\u2019d spent most of the last week – sound asleep in adjacent rooms.<\/p>\n
To Jamie\u2019s astonishment they weren\u2019t simply bed stricken by grief, or lying on their backs, drowning their grief in booze or smothering it with shitty food.<\/p>\n
They were really asleep.<\/p>\n
Jamie had already tested the theory three times by slipping into his grandmother\u2019s room to pilfer the $180 in her purse in increments of increasing size. Next time he\u2019d take her card and hope that the PIN was his mother\u2019s birthday or something else that could be easily guessed. If nothing else, he\u2019d be able to order food over the phone or from that pizza place that offered online ordering. The delivery guy would surely remember Jamie from when his mother had been alive. They\u2019d ordered out a lot.<\/p>\n
He went to school the Monday after the holiday, and the day after that. On Wednesday he shut off his alarm and laid back down, and no one woke him. He had turned 16 in September, which was old enough that no one would come looking for him.<\/p>\n
His mother had left him a few hundred dollars and the house was on the market. He told himself that when the weather started to warm up, he\u2019d look for a job.<\/p>\n
The days passed in silence. At night, Jamie would put on a ratty bathrobe and take his place in the inert recliner his grandfather had once loved.<\/p>\n
It was there that he would watch TV until sunrise, dozing occasionally and dreaming of the silhouetted figure he recognized instantly as Nick.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d wake to the flush of a toilet or the creak of a floorboard. Most days around noon, his grandmother would trundle into the kitchen and heat up a bowl of soup. Whether it was for her or his grandfather, Jamie never knew.<\/p>\n
The winter was one of the harshest in recent memory, and any doubts Jamie had about his decision to stop attending school (He never thought of himself as a dropout, though he was exactly that in every sense of the word.) were buried under the three feet of snow that fell in the first 48 hours of the new year.<\/p>\n
By now, the few people who might\u2019ve called themselves Jamie\u2019s friends had stopped sending their obligatory concerned texts. He\u2019d rarely responded, as he didn\u2019t know what to say anymore than they did. None of them knew his mother, and he knew little about her in those final years himself.<\/p>\n
She spent half her time in the state hospital, the other half gone on vodka and pills -some recreational, some prescribed – only leaving the house when she got picked up by Nick, who never came to the door, but just leaned on the horn of his long black Cadillac.<\/p>\n
Even though he never saw the man, or perhaps for that very reason, Nick was a common figure in Jamie\u2019s dreams.<\/p>\n
They weren\u2019t always nightmares, sometimes Jamie woke feeling that he\u2019d been bargaining with Nick, never getting what he wanted. Other times he sat bolt upright, trying to shake the feeling that a hulking, silhouetted figure had pinned him to the ground.<\/p>\n
He never saw a face, but always awoke with the certain knowledge that it was Nick and the vague fear that the man burrowed a little deeper into Jamie\u2019s soul.<\/p>\n
As the storm raged on, Jamie\u2019s food supply wore thin, and it became increasingly difficult to find pizza or Chinese places that would deliver.<\/p>\n
He tried to wake his grandmother one afternoon to ask where she kept the car keys, but she blindly swatted at him and rolled over to face the wall.<\/p>\n
Jamie sat in his grandfather\u2019s frayed recliner, fishing Vienna sausages out of a rusty tin he\u2019d found in the back of the pantry.<\/p>\n
For the first time he began to panic.<\/p>\n
He experienced flashes of desperation like his mother must\u2019ve felt those times when she would\u2019ve done anything to score.<\/p>\n
One night, the doorbell rang, and for reasons he would never understand, Jamie knew exactly who had come calling.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello, Jamie,\u201d Nick said, looking just as he had in Jamie\u2019s dreams – gaunt, stoop-shouldered, yet somehow imposing.
\nJamie didn\u2019t remember inviting him in. Interacting with Nick was like watching a film with missing frames or trying to piece together a half-remembered nightmare.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not their fault, Jaime,\u201d Nick told him, now fully at home in his grandfather\u2019s chair. \u201cYour mother owed me a lot. More than those two old folks can give.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jamie couldn\u2019t speak, and it seemed he didn\u2019t need to.<\/p>\n
Nick anticipated his every question. It seemed he\u2019d done this many, many times before.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people can\u2019t make themselves happy, Jamie. They need help. And there\u2019s nothing they won\u2019t give for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that why you\u2019re here?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not your grandparents\u2019 fault that there\u2019s not much of them left. They did everything they could to save their daughters\u2019 life. Well, almost everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was then that Jaime was overcome with a flood of understanding.<\/p>\n
He knew why his mother was so drawn to Nick; he knew what happened to his grandparents; and he knew there was no point in running.<\/p>\n
The house, always quiet, was now as silent as a tomb.<\/p>\n
He almost felt almost relieved by the knowledge that there was nothing he could do. He\u2019d come into the world with a debt he could never repay.<\/p>\n
The understanding brought a new confusion, and his head was flooded with questions he couldn\u2019t articulate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy me?\u201d he managed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a question for your mother,\u201d Nick said as he rose from his chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll see her soon enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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