Angels Like You

Freak

Hammering woke me up. I groaned, swatting Toby on the arm in hopes that he would get up and go make the caretaker stop. He mumbled for me to fuck off before I draped my arm over my eyes. It wasn't even daylight out yet. I didn't understand why someone felt the need to be fixing things when the sun wasn't even out.

"Who's the fucker that won't take the hint and go away?" Toby muttered.

"I thought it was a hammer."

Toby groaned as he sat up and ran a hand over his face. "Fuck I feel like I'm going to puke." I squinted at him as he swung his legs over the side of the couch. "And it's not a hammer. It's one in the morning and it's the knocker on the door."

The fact that they had a knocker on their door registered before the one in the morning did.

Toby was almost to the door when it clicked.

"Shit," I muttered as I pushed myself to my feet.

I quickly gathered the bottles as I heard Toby open the door and I dumped them into the trash in the kitchen. As I heard my dad demanding to know where I was, I splashed water on my face. It wasn't going to take away the red, dilated eyes, but I was more concerned about sobering up before he got a good look at me.

"You can't just come into someone's house," Toby was saying. "You don't have a fucking warrant!"

I turned around as my dad walked into the kitchen with a cop right behind him. Dad stopped short and stared at me as I leaned against the counter with my arms crossed over my chest. His chest was heaving, but his words were leveled.

"The school called to tell me that you had not shown up for the after-school program. Then they proceeded to tell me that you had only attended your first class of the day. I have spent the last eight hours making phone calls, hunting drug houses, and calling hospitals to find you. Officer Hilton, who is going to be your probation officer, finally contacted me about a meeting between the three of us tomorrow. I told him that would be great if I knew where the hell you were."

Dad ran a hand through his hair and pointed a finger at me. "We had to jump through hoops to get security camera footage to track where you went through the day and then we started digging about where you could be once we identified who you were even with."

"So...what...you going to drag me kicking and screaming back to your house?" I asked.

He let out a huff of air. "No. You're old enough to make your own choices and this is your choice. You either come willingly with me or Officer Hilton will take you to juvie. I'm not your mother, Rhys. I'm also not the man you think I am. There are too many other things I need to deal with than tracking your ass down every night. If you have to sit in a cell for me to know that you're safe, then that's what we'll do."

It was like he and my mom had joined forces for once. It was new and I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I knew I didn't like it. Two against one weren't very even odds.

"I can't keep up in those classes," I said finally.

"You haven't even tried. You haven't tried anything, Rhys. You give up when you don't think you are capable of doing something and you fall into old habits. What did getting high tonight do for you? Do you feel better or do you still feel like shit? The high is only temporary and you're still going to feel like shit when you come down unless you start learning how to manage your emotions."

I looked past them to Toby. He was about to fall asleep standing up. He seemed unphased. Like people he didn't know burst into his house all the time to take home the poor, broken boy. Maybe it did happen to him a lot. Maybe that was just the people he attracted.