The Soul of a Boy

Billy is My Spirit Animal

I woke up to the smell of something burning, which wasn't exactly a rarity in my house.

Smoke clouded my room, masking my walls and ceiling and floor with a charred odor that seemed to stick in my throat.

Mom was making breakfast.

Oh god, I thought. What had I done to deserve this?

I sat up and flung my legs over the side of my bed—a king sized water bed complete with threaded throw pillows—and weighed my options, half expecting the fire alarm to go off any second.

My options were somewhat unfair.

I could go downstairs and suffer through her terrible cooking; be a man and force down whatever foul food she had summoned from hell, or I could climb out of my second story window and walk to Burgerhut—which was conveniently five miles away.

I grabbed my shoes from the foot of my bed.

All's well that ends well, I thought to myself.

"At least she is trying," Billy Shakespeare cut in.

I couldn't see him, but I imagined a disapproving frown on his 15th century face.

"Fine," I grumbled. I dropped my shoes and Billy said, very good, in a commending motherly voice.

I sighed.

Maybe, I thought, maybe, if I stood up from the bed, I would fall through the floor and enter an alternate dimension, one where Mom could cook and couldn't stand the taste of Heineken and Billy Shakespeare kept to his own business.

I stood, closing my eyes and placing my feet lightly like a child would do, my imagination like a wild fire, and the universe shifted around me, pulsing in colors.

When I opened them again, the door was light years away, but somehow, impossibly, I reached it in a matter of seconds.

The old oak stairs creaked as I limped down them.

Mom came to the bottom with a spatula in her hand, smiling up at me weakly. Her curly black hair was a halo around her thin face, and her light green eyes were a shade of pain.

"Hey honey," she said hoarsely. "How does your ankle feel today?"

Falling down three flights of stairs had left my ankle bruised and fractured, and also left my ego to whither at the bottom of the staircase where I had laid crying for twenty minutes.

"Great," I lied, and a sharp pain laced up my ankle like, hey, I'm right here dude, I'm not deaf. I told her, "I don't think I need my crutches anymore," and Billy applauded my terrible lying skills.

"That's wonderful," she said, not managing to keep the disinterest from her words. "I made breakfast," she waved the spatula in the air and turned to return to the kitchen, "we can celebrate with food."

"I smelled it already." I pushed past her before she made if through the kitchen door, where a cloud of strong alcoholic fumes seemed to linger.

The granite counter was lined with half-empty bottles; vodka, rum, whiskey, beer, ale.

She followed me into the kitchen and stumbled drunkenly, grabbing the edge of the counter hard. She didn't let go, just stood there breathing heavily, and our moment of normal, the mother son moment we had almost shared, vanished.

Gone.

Of course, I knew this would happen. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had already prepared myself for this.