Clean cut American kid ~ Stranger things

CHAPTER NINE

The usual life on the streets downtown has been taken inside. The weeknight is calling for an earlier bedtime. Everything is still and silent except for myself. My breathing is rapid from the running, and my shoulders are shaking from the cold air. I pull the hood on my sweater up over my head to keep the wind from tickling my neck. I have to figure out what's happening. What's wrong with me.

I stand outside of Bradley's Big Buy, the supermarket. My mind is swirling with possible explanations for what has happened today. Billy fell when I was about to push him. That's the only fact I have. There is no logic. The laws of physics are being torn apart. I was weakened afterwards. More than if I would've gotten my hands on him. Whatever I did had taken me a lot of energy. I didn't touch him. Is my brain so fried up that I've become a fucking mutant? Or I've just done so much shit I'm stuck in a permanent high, filled with hallucinations and confusion.

I'm going to see if I can "hallucinate" the doors to the supermarket opening. I look at the doors. They are plain glass sliding doors. There's probably one or two locks keeping them together during the closed hours. I concentrate on those locks. My eyes are burning holes in the slit between the doors. I imagine them opening. They don't. I focus harder. I narrow my eyes and tune everything out. Open the fucking doors. I clench my fists in frustration. What am I doing? This is insanity. My face is heating up with frustration despite the coldness surrounding me.

"OPEN!" I scream and throw my hands in the air in devastation, interrupting the silence for a second. My surroundings are eerily quiet in the midst of the night and the chaos in my head. The silence is interrupted by a loud bang from the supermarket's front door when they explode and shatter into a million pieces. I instinctively throw my body on the ground and cover my head as I feel glass shatters raining down around me. The alarm inside the store goes off and the insides starts to flash with red lights. My heart is pounding in my ears and tears pour from my eyes. I broke the doors. I wanted to open them.

I don't know for how long I remain still on the ground. The hard concrete is freezing and I've started shaking from coldness. I carefully push myself off the ground. I feel blood pouring from my nose and dripping down my chin and onto my clothes. My brain is definitely fried.

I shout leave this scene before someone comes to tend the alarm. There's a long way home. How the fuck did I run so far. Oh right, I'm a mutant. I psycho laugh to myself. Might as well embrace the crazy. I begin to walk slowly. All this crazy is exhausting. I would go to Richie but I don't know where he lives now that he shares an apartment with his girlfriend.

I'm reminded by the blood covering my face when it dries and starts to flake. I rub vigorously over my chin and cheeks trying to get rid of it. I look at my reflection in a window. Probably as good as it gets before I get home and I am able to take a shower.

I see the welcome sign for Loch Nora after what feels like all night but is probably just a few hours. I brush my fingers through my hair and do my best in straightening my clothes in case someone is awake at home. I turn the knob on the front door and step inside. The stairs creak when I step on them and I wince, but I think he was already up and waiting for me.

"Sherry." I hear his voice behind me. He sounds tired but angry, and when I turn around he looks like it too. His pale eyes are narrowed above deep dark circles and creases created by decades of worry and fury cover his face. I don't say anything and wait for the man who is legally my father to speak again.

"I thought you were past this behaviour." He says firmly through clenched teeth. "But we come home, you're not here, and we catch your brother lying on your behalf. You're a bad influence on him and that is something he doesn't need."

"I didn't ask him to lie for me." I whisper hoarsely, both to my father and to myself. My brother cares for me more than is good for him. If he could just focus on himself our parents would too, and they would lay off me. I know it's selfish to think like that but I've always been selfish. I just want to keep to myself without my parents breathing down my back and pushing their disappointment up my face.

"Then I expect you to tell me the truth now."

I take a deep breath and rub my eyes. Being out the entire night has left me fighting to stand now in the morning, and the revelations adds exhaustion and confusion to my head as well.

"I was with Richie," I say and look at my feet.

"Steve said you went to Richard as well, and it was obvious he was lying about it."

"Steve didn't know I went there." I shrug my shoulders.

"Is that blood?" My father takes a step towards me and the stairs and looks up at my face. I know what he's thinking.

"Yes, but it's not from anything like that. I've been getting nosebleeds a lot lately when I'm straining myself. This must be from staying up studying so late." Adding the last part is pathetic, but I'm trying to soften him up and let me go.

He looks at me and seemingly debates in his head if he wants to keep pestering me or if he wants to lay off. He must be as tired as I am and lets me go with a curt nod. I walk into the bathroom and peel my crusty hoodie off. The shower feels great on my tired body and to feel fresh after the night I've had is enough to send me to sleep once I get into my bed. It's nice for as long as it lasts, because it doesn't take long until the nightmares crawl under the covers beside me.