“I think we’ve both been pretty open so far,” he replied.
“Why are you a nomad?”
“That’s a bigger question than you might think.”
“After everything you told me about your brother, Rocky, and the Howlers, I think I understand why you’re in a club. What I don’t understand is why you’d join a club but notwant to be around its members.”
“Kind of makes me seem like a dick, huh?”
I shook my head. “That’s not it. You clearly care about people or Granny wouldn’t have taken such a shine to you. She sees something in you, and I think maybe I see it too, but there’s something going on with you that you keep hidden from everyone and I would like to know what that is.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind ofdirect?”
“Only my entire family, every teacher, all of my close friends and a handful of total strangers.”
Snarl chuckled. “Hey, I don’t mind. It’s just that I find myself inclined to tell you things I don’t tend to share with others, and I’m afraidyou might not like some of the things I might say.”
“I know we’ve just met, but you need to understand something about me. The thing I care most about is the truth. It’s what drives my research and also tends to drive some people away. Of course, you’re under absolutely no obligation to tell me anything you don’t want to, but lying or omitting the truth is an instant deal breaker for me.”
“I respect that, and I believe you.”
“Good,” I replied. “So, why are you a nomad?”
Snarl knocked back the remainder of his pint, pausing for a moment before speaking. “When I was thirteen years old, our house burned down. It was a Saturday, and my parents had taken my brother and me to the movies. Galactic Ranger 2 had just comeout and I’d been bugging them all week to take us to see it, so when the weekend came, my folks relented. Of course, we didn’t know that Galactic Ranger 2 would go down in history as one of the worst sequels ever made, so me and my brother were stoked. After the movie, we even stopped off at Dairy Barn for frozen custard. But, when we got back home, we arrived to find a fire truck on our street and group of firefighters putting out the final flames that had taken our home.”
“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
Snarl shook his head. “No, it’s okay. It’s not a story I tell everyone, because it’s not a happy one, but I’m totally fine with sharing. Since wewere going to be out of the house for a few hours, my mother decided to run the self-cleaning cycle on our oven, and a build-up of creosote caused it to catch fire. In the blink of an eye, my family was homeless and possessed nothing more than the clothes we were wearing and our minivan, which we ended up living in for almost a month. To make matters worse, an investigation led by the insurance company concluded that the fire was ‘avoidable and caused by human hands,’ and therefore they were not on the hook to pay our claim.”
“What?” I gasped. “That’s horrible.”
Snarl nodded. “My family never fully recovered from that fire. We moved into a studio apartment andmy mom went back to work. My father took a second job as a plumber’s assistant so we could save up to buy another house, but when he lost his full-time job at Graymore Industrial due to drinking on the job, the strain was too much, and the old man hung himself.”
My eyes filled with tears and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from letting them spill.
“You okay?” He cocked his head. “I warned you it’s not a happy story. We can go back to regular old gettin’ to know you stuff if this is too much.”
“I’m alright if you are,” I assured him, forcing myself not to burst into sloppy sobs.
“I’m okay,” he said.
“Keep going,” I prompted.
“Well, a little less than a year after that, my mother started dating. I don’t think she wanted to, so much as she felt she needed to in order to better provide for me and my brother. I wanted none of it. I started getting in trouble at school. Starting fights, ditching class, all the usual teen angst rebellion bullshit. But the more the school punished me, the worse I got. After a while I couldn’t stand the idea of staying at any one place any longer than I had to, let alone allow myself to be tied to a desk all day long. Eventually, I dropped out of school and have been taking care of myself ever since. Rocky reacted a little differently. He was rip-shit pissed that mom had moved on so quickly after dad’sdeath, and as soon as he turned eighteen, he left home and started prospecting for the club. I followed him a few years after mom remarried.”
“I am so sorry that happened to you and your family. It must have been really difficult for you to handle at such a young age.”
He shrugged. “I joined the Howlers thinking I’d find a new family, which I did, but the uneasy feelings associated with putting down any type of roots only intensified over time. Getting so bad that eventually Rocky forced me to see a therapist.”
“There’s nothing wrong with therapy.”
“Try telling that to a seventeen-year-old prospecting biker. But Dr. Avalon saved my life. She diagnosedme as suffering from a form of agoraphobia brought on by the trauma of losing both my house and my father.”
I drew my eyebrows together. “I thought agoraphobics never want to leave where they live.”
“That’s true for certain types of the disorder, but my brain is convinced I should flee before trouble comes.”
“So, you live your life as a nomad? Running from place to place. Trying to outrun calamity?”
