Straight Boys

Straighten Up

Do you ever feel lost? Not like you're wandering around unfamiliar territory trying to find your way back home, but just lost. You're home, or you're somewhere you've been many times, done different things there, or with the people who guide you through tough times, yet you can't seem to find your way? Their directions aren't helping, nor are the constant feelings of hopelessness you get when you can't get a grip of the situation to help yourself get back to where ever it is you're going. That kind of lost, where you're there, but not there at the same time, where you don't know what the Hell you're doing or why you're even doing it anymore.

That's the kind of lost I felt as I sat in a hospital chair in the ICU where my mother and sister sat in their comatose states.

It had been a few days since the party, since the occurrence with Zachary Rogers in my kitchen, a Thursday. A week since everything started spiraling down hill, jumbling together, becoming a confusing mess. A week of Zachary Rogers giving me fleeting glances in the halls and my time spent in and out of hospitals, where I was skipping football practice to be with my loved ones; the people I cared about more than myself.

My dad was at the hospital's cafeteria getting dinner for us, so I was alone, free to just sit there like a vegetable. My tired eyes stared down at the person who took most of the beating, my mother, with my larger hand engulfing her frail and pale one. It was cold, her skin, so I was doing everything in my power to give her my body heat, to somehow will my life, my power into her through skin-on-skin contact. It wasn't working, obviously. Her skin never really heated up; she just stayed a constant chill, her whole body, that was covered head to toe in bandages and bonds and casts and an IV in her arm and a feeding tube was always feeling chilled. How could she not? She sustained a number of hits from the impact of the car.

The doctor had said she took the brute of the force, that she had encased Lola, shielding her daughter from the man that got to get up and walk away without a single scratch. He had said that their fractures had aligned, yet my mom had it worse, and more thrusted upon her body.

How could she not? She may have saved Lola, but at her own cost, at their own cost. They both had broken pelvis', a few broken ribs, yet she had hit her head against the street, keeping Lola tight to her chest so my little sister wouldn't injure her developing little brain. They both were beat up, but my mother was broken inside, literally.

And I blamed myself for it because they had called me. My dad had called me to get Lola from her friend's house a few blocks away from us as I drove back home, but I didn't pick up. He had called again to tell me they found my mom and Lola curled up just outside of Mrs. Rayburn's house, an old, beat up truck all dented and like it had been in a crash. He had called me again to tell me that it was a drunk driver and he was alive and well and really sorry. And he called again, to tell me that they had rushed to the hospital because my mother was suffering a fatal hemorrhage in her brain and my sister was falling in and out of consciousness with profuse blood loss and no feeling in her right arm. I blamed myself for that.

I should have blamed Coach Matthews, fuck, I should have blamed Zachary Rogers for all that happened. It was his fault for everything, but... I couldn't bring myself to even put an ounce of blame on him. I couldn't and I didn't know why. No, wait. Yes I did.

Because I didn't call them back.

Because I was supposed to pick Lola up as soon as I got off practice.

Because if I had done that, then nobody would have gotten hurt; only the bastard that decided it was alright to drink and drive.

Maybe that's the real reason why you never ate his stupid breakfast a few days ago?