Bottled Up by Jaye Murray Page B

blanket.
    Poor little guy—sleeping in the garage on top of a sled wearing wet pajamas. He had nothing to hold on to but his thumb and the thought that someday he’d fly like Superman.
    At least I could get high.
    I pulled up my sock to see if I had a joint.
    Nothin’.
    I’d left the kryptonite in my bedroom.
    I want to know what my little brother is going to be like in ten years.
    On second thought, I don’t want to know.

    The tapping on the garage door woke me up.
    I was on the floor, leaning against the toboggan with my head on Mikey’s leg. I stood up, walked over to the door, and listened.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s Mom. Open up.”
    I looked over at Bugs. I didn’t want to wake him by pulling the door open.
    â€œWhat time is it?”
    â€œFive-thirty,” she said.
    I rubbed my eyes like I always do when I wake up. My right eye stung.
    â€œCome back and get us up in an hour,” I told her.
    â€œYou can’t sleep in there all night.”
    â€œWhere’ve you been, Mom? We already did.”
    â€œHe knew I was going to come out for you. He wouldn’t let me leave,” she said. “I waited for him to fall asleep, but I ended up falling asleep first.”
    Big surprise.
    â€œCome out of there,” she said. “Before your father wakes up.”
    â€œIs that why you’re here?” I banged the side of my head against the garage door and left it there. “You don’t want Dad to wake up and remember what an asshole he was last night. You want us to come in and play make-believe with you—pretend we’re all one big happy family.”
    She’s crazy.
    â€œI don’t want everything starting up again,” she said.
    Unbelievable. “You think you can stop it?”
    I was probably having the longest talk with my mother that I’d ever had, and she was standing on one side of a wall with me on the other.
    Figures.
    â€œGet your brother inside,” she said.
    I picked my head up off the door. “He’s okay right here,” I said.
    I looked over at him. He wasn’t okay. Neither of us was. But we didn’t really have a choice.
    I could hear Claire in my head saying, You have nothing but choices.
    Yeah. She was going to be a lot of help. She didn’t know a thing about my life—about me.
    â€œCome back in an hour,” I said again and walked to the other end of the garage. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear her tapping on the door or walking away from back there.
    I remember the first day of kindergarten.
    My mother walked me to school—stopped at the front door and kissed me on the cheek before sending me in.
    â€œWork hard,” she said.
    â€œYou coming back?” I asked.
    â€œDon’t worry about that.”
    But I did. All day.
    â€œDo your work,” she said. “Learn a lot.”
    She didn’t tell me how much I’d have to learn for her to come back—what I’d have to know for her to walk me past the door.
    There was no way I was going to fall asleep again. I wasn’t even going to try.
    I sat on the counter in the back of the garage, banging my feet into the boxes I’d left there.
    Something was digging into my butt. It was the Jekyll and Hyde book from English class. I read it for a little while.
    â€œIt seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of that one, but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure.”
    I stared at the garage door. Pictures of my father started going through my head. I thought about how he was one person at his job, never yelling at anybody—and somebody else at home who could scream so loud, the windows shook.
    I thought about his potion bottles all lined up on top of the refrigerator. He drank his potion—his scotch—and most of the time when he did, he turned into his own kind of monster.
    Dad. The Grinch. The Beastie.
    Hyde.
    I put the