Spencer never got tired of it, and Alek didn’t either; they’d started a little insurgency in their leafy Sacramento suburb; they fought into the night. And Spencer tried to make those days stand still, because even then he had the sense that other forces were coming along to change their lives; powerful forces beyond their ability to control. Something big and hard to see and almost impossible to confront, stronger than just him, which he and Alek would try to weather together, but that would eventually drive them apart. At least for a time.
SPENCER CHARGED.
He’d had enough; Everett was driving him crazy. Jerkface Everett, dumb idiot butthole Everett. Spencer’s brother was in his own uneven way trying to fill the man-sized hole in the family left by their father, but had no way of knowing what that should look like. Joyce saw her oldest son driven to torment Spencer and Kelly by what was fundamentally a good, pure instinct: to be a strong man in the house, an authority figure. It was just that it came out all wrong. He lorded over Spencer and Kelly, exercising authority by showing he could control them, not just physically but also emotionally. He knew what buttons to push, how to stoke the flames of rage in Spencer just right. Everett needled and needled, and then when Spencer was near exploding, Everett put on an impassive look like he hadn’t the slightest idea what poor little Spencer was so upset about. So one day when the kids were home alone and Everett was goading, Spencer finally exploded, running past the kitchen, putting his shoulder into Everett’s chest, and then to his own surprise, driving Everett back four steps, off his feet and into the wall—the wall cracked and they went tumbling right through it, the two boys collapsing into a giant water tank they hadn’t even known was back there.
A moment of confusion.
Oh, crap.
They scrambled to their feet and surveyed the damage to the wall: a hole approximately the size of two adolescent boys. A water tank peering back out at them.
They snapped to action. First Spencer called Alek. “Crap, Alek, put your stepdad on, we’re in so much trouble”
“He’s not here, Spence. He went to the station. He’s working.”
Spencer called the fire station. “Is Tom there?” An impossibly long time for Tom to pick up. “Tom! Sorry to bother you, sir, but please come right over. We need your help—we really screwed up.”
“Calm down, Spence. What’s the problem?”
“We … um … we broke the house.”
“You did what now?”
“Well, Everett mostly, he broke the house. He …” Everett was speaking over him, trying to litigate Spencer’s assignation of blame, while Spencer waved at Everett’s face with his hand. “Please, Tom, you gotta come help us! We gotta fix the wall before Mom comes home!”
“Gosh, Spence! I’m sorry, bud, I’m still at work! Anyway the stores are all closed, we wouldn’t be able to get supplies.”
“No, no!”
“Don’t worry, just fess up to it. I’m sure it won’t be that big of a deal. Just be honest.”
Joyce arrived home two hours later. Everett met her out front, helped her out of her car, diverted her from the front door, and escorted her instead through the garage, into the laundry room, showing her the house like a peppy real estate agent. “And here we have the newly cleaned floor!” He showed her the whole house vacuumed, spit-polished, candles burning on the mantelpiece, ending the tour by the front door, where Spencer and his cousin were standing sentry, stately as palace guards. Chivalrous as you like … if a little awkwardly close to the wall.
“Well, will you just look at this house! To what do I owe this wonderful surprise?”
The candles flickered; Spencer looked at his big brother. Slowly, sheepishly, he stepped forward and revealed the hole.
The glow on her face disappeared. “Are you fricking serious?”
AS EVERETT LEFT SPENCER in elementary school and moved on to junior high, his nose for trouble began to concern Joyce. She heard about him getting pushed around at school, and more frightening still, about him pushing back. It wasn’t just boys being boys anymore; the boys were becoming men. Other kids were menacing Everett in the halls, drawing their thumbs across their throats when he walked by because he’d dared to shove one of them back. A gang of them came by her house one day before she got home, threatening Everett and goading Kelly, who came out of the house screaming in defense of her older brother, which only emasculated Everett and riled him up even more, pushing him closer to that place where boys do stupid things out of pride. Joyce started to worry about brawls happening at her house as much as in the halls of the school. Everett wasn’t backing down.
This school was doing bad things to Everett; it was not a safe place for a kid to learn. And even if Everett could handle himself, what about Spencer? Spencer was still small, still sensitive. Joyce was sick with worry about what would happen to her youngest when he moved on to junior high.
And bullying aside, the public school wasn’t handling Spencer right. Because Spencer was behind on reading, the teacher wanted to dose him up on drugs for ADD. Joyce confabbed with Heidi about it. It turned out the school was saying the same thing about Alek, because—and this was rich—Alek liked to look out the window in class. Joyce and Heidi agreed over coffee that it was unconscionable for teachers to try and medicate their kids.
When Joyce went to a parent-teacher conference and said she wasn’t about to put her kid on meds (Just because you’re not very good at your job, she’d wanted to say), Spencer’s teacher told her, “Well if you don’t medicate him now, he’ll self-medicate later.”
That just about put her through the roof.
“You know, boys with single moms,” the teacher went on, “it’s just statistics, Ms. Eskel. Statistically they’re more likely to develop problems.”
Statistics? Joyce seethed. How dare this woman look down on her just because she was a single mom and her kid was a little behind? She lit up with a million things she wanted to say to this woman. You know what, she thought, my God is bigger than the world’s statistics, so I don’t really care what any of you say. You don’t get to talk to me like that. When she composed herself, she stood up and pronounced, matter-of-factly, “If you think I’m going to drug my child to make your job easier, you’re sorely mistaken.” The teacher rolled her eyes, and Joyce stormed out.
And that had been the last straw. Spencer needed a better place. He needed a place where there weren’t kids in the halls who might beat him to a pulp, no teachers who wanted to fill him up with chemicals. She needed a place where the adults had more control of their kids, and where he’d be protected, looked out for, maybe a place that provided some of the mentoring Spencer and Alek missed out on from being separated most of the time from their fathers. But private school was expensive. So she prayed. And when a close friend told her about a small Christian school, she knew she’d been given another miracle. The school was nearby, a five-minute drive, not even two miles from her house. How had she not