You Can't Hurt Me

YOLO WE ARE NEIGHBORS WOAHHHH

"How's your classes bud?" Calls Races dad from the other side of the house. Race rolls his chair out the crack of the open door.

"It's good! I don't really understand this science." Race admits, "I've been working on it for an hour and I still can't classify this leaf."

"You'll get it squirt, you ain't stupid like the rest of them boys." His dad calls back. Race's mouth quirks and he gets back at it.

"The lines are vertical," he whispers, "the stem is light green, and the leaf is waxy."

He checks back at the taxonomy chart and it leads him... nowhere.

"Dammit" he whispers and rubs his face.

"If you want a break, I'm heading to the Red Rings to do some poker," Race pauses looking up at the clock.

"No sorry, I've gotta finish this and Math."

"That's fine, there's beer in the fridge." The door locked shut.

Race probably spent 10 more minutes on it, before groaning and walking into the living room. Beer cans and cigarette butts lined the dirty unkept carpet floor. The ceiling was full of popcorns that had been poorly smoothed down, two knife holes stabbed through the wall, the door was peeling and didn't shut completely so Race often had to put a chair on the handle when certain neighbors got home. He loved it, the house smelled, almost covered in slime, and was completely his and his dads.

True to his dads words, there was beer in the fridge. It's moist glass bottle was covered in a thin layer of dirt. Plus there was a sketchy build-up of slime on the top and the ice tray had a frozen cockroach he didn't want to touch.

The downside of the house was that it made noise, constantly. The air-conditioning was cheap and almost never stopped making sound, the people next door often were screaming and fighting, the fridge almost filled with white noise. Race hated it, he hated the way the heavy words clumped around his ears and filled his thoughts. Instead of nice clear thoughts it was a buzz, a thousand bees screaming in his head, tugging his brain, his ears, his thoughts. He couldn't sleep it out, couldn't think it out, and couldn't bang it out. He could hit his head on the wall, over and over and over again yet it would just continue to scream and scream.

It was filling his ears now, he shut his eyes tight and covered his ears. The sound now muffled, still bursting through the barricades.

He grabbed a pillow, and jumped onto their springy couch, a loose spring digging into his hip. It felt wet and hot on his leg, drip. Drip. Drip. He ignored the small inch of pain and covered his head with the pillows but it did nothing.

He needed out.

Race shot up and wiped off the small pool of blood on his hip. Wasn't a big ordeal.

He looked at the door, suddenly it loomed over him, towering over his frail skinny body. Mocking him. It was a test and Race might fail.

"You never leave this house unless you're walking with me, you hear me?"

A rule.

Race lived his live in rules, they were his ball and chain. The rule had never been hung over the couch, but it filled his ears whenever the door tempted him. It was his apple, and he was Eve, and like Eve, the promise meant more than the pain.

He wrenched open the wobbly knob and stepped outside. The hallway was crusty, dark, and most importantly quiet. He sat down on the wall and rubbed his ears affectionately almost, the relief was uncanny.

He looked down his hip and found a small hole where the spring dug in, he hissed lightly and rubbed away the dry blood. It would scab over just fine, he reckoned.