I tore up the first letter and sat down at my computer and started to type. Without thinking, I wrote in the lingo I had picked up from my new homies at school.
Dear Popz:
I got your birthday card. I was like stunned. It was the bomb really. I'd been hoping for a letter from you for six years. I had no idea that Momz was returning them to you. I only got this one because I bounced school at noon so I could celebrate on B'day. I confronted Momz with her deceit and betrayal. She reluctantly agreed to let me correspond with you. Like she could stop me! I wrote you but got the letter back saying you were no longer at the prison in Grant Parish. Uncle Clarence gave me your new address.
Momz refuses to bring me to see you, but I've asked Uncle Clarence to do it. He said he'll talk to Momz and see what he can work out. He also said not to get my hopes up. I was going to cut school one day and take a bus to see you, but Momz said I can't come by myself until I'm 16. Is that true or is it just another lie to keep us apart?
The picture you sent is awesome. I hadn't noticed that you had the same lopsided smile that I do until I got it. I got a picture printed at Walmart to send you. It's a selfie I took with my phone. I'll send a better one later.
I've been cleaning out the shed and making it into my own crib. Momz said I can keep anything of yours that I want. I'm gonna keep it all. I'm gonna put a TV in there so I can play video games with my friends. I'll have to put in a desk so that I can convince Momz I'm doing homework, whether I am or not.
I can't believe that Blue Ox is in there. I didn't even know you were a biker until Momz broke down and showed me some pictures of you on it before y'all married. She had hidden them. In fact, she took all the pictures of you out of the photo albums and filled the spaces with cutsey sayings and stuff. She didn't deep six the ones of us, though. They were in a box in the attic, and she let me have them. I made a scrapbook of you and me. It really got her goat, lol. I searched everywhere for the key to the Ox. Where did you hide it? I know I can't drive it, but maybe I can get Uncle Clarence to take me for a spin. I asked him if he knew where you hid the key, but he said I'd have to ask you. I guess you're pretty good at keeping secrets. I know you don't talk to Momz, so I'm pretty sure you won't rat me out to her if I sneak off with Uncle Clarence for a ride. I can tell her that you wanted him to have the bike until I'm old enough. I'm sure she'll totally buy it. She pretty much trusts me or did until I went ballistic when I found your card. We've worked out a truce, though, so I'm out of the doghouse.
I love you, Popz. I never really stopped. I tried to when I thought you didn't care about me, but it never really worked. You don't need to ask my forgiveness. There's nothing to forgive. I've learned about addiction in school. It's a disease. Momz should have tried to get you help instead of throwing you out and turning you in to the cops. She's the one who needs forgiveness. I'm not ready to forgive her, and I don't imagine you are either. Her actions towards you were wrong and returning the letters to you was wrong. She has kept us apart for as long as she can. Now that I know you love me, we'll find a way. This letter is only the start.
Write back.
Love, CW
I addressed the letter and put a stamp on it. The next morning I took it with me and dropped it in a mailbox near the school. I could have put it in our mailbox for the postman to pick up, but I didn't trust Momz. In fact, when I didn't get a quick shout out back from Popz, I thought that Momz hijacked the first letter. I now knew better, but I decided not to give her the chance to screw with my mail.
When I got to school, I bypassed the kids I grew up with and made my way to the big oak tree in the corner where the fringe kids hung out.
Jake and Marlow were leaning against the tree smoking. "Hey, man, whassup?" Jake said between puffs.
"I'm officially ungrounded."
"Bout time. Want a drag?" Marlow offered me his cig.
I took an e-cig out of my backpack. "Told you I have to stick with this. My Momz has a nose like a greyhound."
I had bought the e-cig on the down low. I kept it in my backpack and smoked it at school when I was hanging with these guys. They had sort of shamed me into doing something. I knew there was no such thing as e-cig breath.
"You gotta get over this fear of Momz," Jake said. "Just blow her off."
"You don't know my Momz. If I blow her off, she'll find a way to break my balls."
"Grow up," Marlow spat. "Momz don't have the power. They just want us to think that."
"My Popz is in jail because of Momz power."
"What did his Momz do? Turn him in?" Jake asked.
"Not his Momz, mine."
"Your Momz turned your Popz in to the cops?" Marlow asked. "Man that's low. What did he do to her?"
"Nothing to her, exactly. He was a boozer and a druggie. Momz got a PI to trail him and get proof. She threw him out. Later she let the cops know he was dealing. They set up a sting, I guess. Anyway, he came to see me one day after school and had drugs in his pockets, too many drugs. They busted him for dealing in a school zone. He's done six of the twenty years he was given."
"Harsh," Jake offered.
"Look," I changed the subject. "You know the shed I told you I've been cleaning out?"
"Yeah," they chorused in unison.
"Momz is going to let me use it as my crib. She calls it a man cave." I raised my eyebrows and grinned. "I'm gonna get a desk and put a TV and my Play Station in there. We can hang out after school and play games and such."
"Will there be Internet access?" Marlow asked. "If so, who needs a Play Station? We can play some more hardcore stuff on line."
"Yeah, like Diablo III, World of Warcraft, or Starcraft." Jake's eyes lit up as he listed the possibilities.
"Momz'll know if I download those games." I shook my head regretfully. "She keeps tabs on that kind of stuff. She thinks they're evil."
"Is she some kind of church nut, too? One of those crazy fanatics?" Marlow asked.
"I wouldn't call her a fanatic, but, yeah, she's into church. She sends me to youth group on Fridays when I'm not grounded. She says I need some christian friends. Like she knows anything. My 'christian friends,'" I made parentheses in the air with my fingers, "drink, smoke, have sex and do all the things she thinks going to church is going to protect me from."
"We could use that," Jake said. "You can leave for youth group but hook up with your new groupies instead." He kinda grinned when he said the word groupies. He wanted to make sure I noticed the pun. "Or will she call the leader to see how you're doing?"
"She hasn't in the past, but who knows what this new suspicious Momz will do. I'll just have to play it by ear. Anyway, she works until 11 at night several days a week. It's 12 hour shifts with three days straight and then two off and two on. The days she works, she won't be there to interfere. On the other days we may have to find another place to hang, unless you're good with leaving your cigs at home."
"I don't go nowhere without my cigs," Jake said.
"I know, but my Momz can smell cigarette smoke from a block away."
"How come she ain't smelled it on your uniform?" He held his nose and talked like a chipmunk. "They're bound to smell after you hang with us."
"I change when I get home. I do my own laundry. It's part of the daily grind she set for me. Anyway, she doesn't generally get a whiff of my clothes."
The school bell rang loudly.
"Guess we'd better book," Jake said.
"We can make plans at lunch," I added.
I had started coming outside at lunch and sitting under the tree with Jake and Marlow. Sometimes we'd play poker or craps, but mostly we just shot the breeze and ate whatever junk food we'd brought that day. They were both juniors, for the third time, Marlow would say jokingly, but they were older than everyone else. They were already 18 but stayed in school because it gave them a place to hang out. Jake said if they didn't pass the End of Course tests this year, they were going to be put in alternative school. They had yet to pass any of the tests needed to graduate from High School. If they were sent to the alternative school, they planned to drop out. I'd been helping them by doing their homework and trying to teach them some of the things they'd missed in the lower grades, but I wasn't sure if it was doing any good. Their homework grades had improved dramatically. I still got stuff wrong on purpose so that it wouldn't look as suspicious, but they were now getting Cs and sometimes a B instead of Ds and Fs. But I couldn't actually take their tests for them, and they weren't really into academics. They weren't into getting jobs either, though. They were looking for a way to keep adulthood at bay.
"We're a couple of the lost boys," Jake said one day. "Peter banned us from Neverland, so we're trying to find a place where we don't have to become adults. Right now High School is the place to be, but it looks like that gig is about up."
At lunch, we took up where we left off. The guys were stoked about having a place where we could play videos and stuff.
"Look," Marlow said. "Do you have wi-fi? If so, you don't have to download any games. I can bring my tablet, sync it with your TV, and we can play whatever we want using my account. Your Momz won't be able to find the history because it'll be on my device, not yours."
"I should've thought of that. Sounds like a foolproof plan. I've just got to get Momz to agree to a TV in the shed thing. The one in my room is too old to be used to sync with another device." I stuck my finger in my teeth and stared off in the distance for a minute. "I've got some money I've been saving so I'll buy one, sort of a belated birthday present to myself. I'll tell Momz I need a bigger one than the one in my room so we can play multiplayer games. If it doesn't cost her anything, she shouldn't nix it." I took a fist full of Doritos and crunched on them for a minute. "While we're in a holding pattern on the whole TV thing, she's agreed to let me take some homies to laser tag. I think she's feeling guilty about everything. I'll probably have to ask a couple of my old friends, though, just to keep her from getting suspicious. She wants us to come back to the house afterwards for snacks, so if she doesn't know anyone, she might not be a happy camper."
"Those nerds," Jake said. "The three of us can gang up on them in laser tag. Maybe they'll decide not to show at your crib if we make them feel like losers."
"We can give them a hard time in the game, but some of them have to show. I told you she needs to see some homies she knows. How's Saturday sound?"
"I'm in," Jake said. Marlow nodded his assent.
After school, I found some of the homies I'd ignored since I got the letter from Popz.
I approached the group. "Hey, guys."
They sort of looked at me funny. Finally, BJ, who used to be my closest and oldest friend, spoke. "So you've decided to hook up with your old homies again? What happen? Your new homies decide to ditch you?"
I looked at my feet and sort of scuffed my shoes. "I told you I was grounded for two months."
"Yeah, well that didn't stop you from hanging out with dumb and dumber at school. Grounding is for after school, not during, you know."
I looked up and told a half-truth. "I've been helping them with their studies. They've failed some of their classes a couple of times. They need to pass this year or get sent to that alternative school for losers. They're not bad guys. I couldn't help them after school while I was grounded, so I've been doing it during school."
"I haven't seen a whole lot of textbooks under that tree," BJ said.
"No, but you've seen my tablet. I've been showing them things on there."
The guys didn't look convinced.
"Look," I said. "My grounding is over. Momz said she'd spring the cash for me to take some guys to laser tag. Afterwards there'll be snacks at my place. I'm thinking Saturday. You guys in?"
They looked at each other. "Are dumb and dumber going to be there?" BJ asked.
"Yeah. You guys need to give them a chance. You'll see; they're okay."
A couple of the guys immediately said they had plans. BJ stared at me for a minute and then said, "I'll come." A couple of others agreed. That meant there'd be six of us. I figured three old friends would be enough to convince Momz.
"Great," I said. "See ya."
"Wait," BJ said. "I'll walk with."
I knew I had no choice but to accept. He already smelled something fishy. If I turned him down, he might back out.
As we started off, BJ got straight to the point. "Look, Wayne, I don't know what's going on with you, but this is more than grounding. You don't answer emails or anything. It's like you dropped from the face of the earth for two months."
I glanced at BJ. He was looking at me questioningly. I had always talked things through with him in the past. Finally I noded, "I know. Things have been complicated. You remember when Popz got arrested?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I found out that Momz had been returning letters he wrote to me," I took a deep breath. "For the last six years! I freaked out and decided to do everything I could to hurt her. I kinda got drunk and did some things that she didn't like. That's why I was grounded."
"I can see you flashing out at her. Why cut us off, though? We didn't do anything."
"I dunno. I sort of decided to change my name to CW and take on a new persona."
"So, this new person you're becoming likes dumb and dumber?" He raised his eyebrows. "And why CW?"
"I wish you'd quit calling them that. They have names, you know. They're Jake and Marlow. They're not bad guys, and they're not really dumb. They just aren't into school." As usual, I was waving my hands while I talked. "I changed my name to CW because that was Popz nickname for me. Since I found out he didn't really throw me over, I decided to use the tag he gave me."
"Does your Mom know your new homies are 18 and that they smoke, drink, and do lots of wild things?"
"She hasn't met them yet. I've been grounded, remember."
"So the invite is a way to introduce them without making her suspicious," BJ said. He'd always been able to cut to the chase.
"Sort of. But I wanted you guys to come too."
"Do we have to call you CW?"
"I'd like you to, but whatever." I shrugged.
"And if we decide we don't like Jake and Marlow?" He sort of exaggerated the names. I could tell they were still dumb and dumber in his mind.
"I dunno. I guess I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it," I lied. I did know. I wouldn't be hanging with both groups, and the rebel in me already had chosen.
BJ kept going when I turned into my driveway. "Bye, CW." The moniker sounded sarcastic.
I waved my hand laconically. "Bye, Beej." I used the elongated "B" sound with a "ja" at the end. I usually said his name that way, and it was sort of my peace offering and sort of a sad goodbye. Despite my anger at Momz and the choices I made, I missed BJ, but I knew he wouldn't approve of the rebel. His whole family was into church. He went to youth group because he liked hanging with those losers, even though he'd always cut me some slack. I was kind of surprised he hadn't referenced the e-cig, since he'd obviously been watching us hang during lunch.
When I banged into the house, Momz was standing in the door between the living room and the kitchen. I could smell brownies.
"Why didn't you invite BJ in? You're not grounded any more."
"I know. He had plans." I was getting pretty good at this lying thing.
"There are brownies," she stated the obvious. "Why don't you join me in the kitchen."
I was about to say no when I remember that I wanted to convince her to let me buy a TV. "Sure. Let me just drop this in my room and get changed." I shrugged out of my backpack.
She actually looked relieved. I grinned inside. I could use her desire to make amends to my advantage. I felt a slight twinge of guilt, but I shrugged it away.