As the fighting grew violent, my attention fell to a little boy peeking out from his cracked bedroom door. There weren’t no tears in his eyes, just wide-eyed fear. This was the childhood Cody never wanted to talk about, and all I wanted to do was block out the noise for him.
Just walking through the house was kinda hard. It was like wanderin’ a landfill of old pizza boxes, trash bags, ripped up papers, makeshift pipes made from coke bottles. And then there were the needles. A crooked, single-tiered birthday cake sat on a wobbling dining room table with nine candles shoved in it thathad been freshly blown out. It was the poor kid’s birthday, and I’m sure I knew what he wished for.
Things were really startin’ to make a lot of sense. I walked into his bedroom—the only clean area in the house, but there was only so much he could do with what he had. His arms were bruised with bed bug bites, and an occasional roach scurried across the floor before disappearing into another crack in the wall.
“Hey, little Cody,” I said as a loud thud hit the wall in the living room. I shut the door all the way. “Happy birthday buddy.”
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t say nothin’. He just stared at the door as if he was waiting for something, and that something came barreling in screaming at him.
Before I could react, I ended up outside watchin’ two boys sit under a run-down shed in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, looking out across the ugliest plains I’d ever seen. There weren’t hardly no trees, just some nasty-looking storm clouds in the distance.
“I’m not allowed to hang out with you anymore,” a boy said to the older kid who looked like Cody. He was taller with black hair and a jock-like physique. “It was fun though.”
Cody didn’t say nothin’.
“We knew this wasn’t going to work, and we told each other that if one of us got found out, we’d stop.”
“Things change. All those things you said. I actually believed them. You were never going to run away with me.”
“And do what? Drop out of school and give up my scholarship? Hitchhike and be homeless?”
Cody looked at the gravel, his eyes almost empty.
“I’m not ruining my life just to have a fling with some guy from high school.” He stood up from the bench and took a few steps outta the shelter into the sun. “I shouldn’t even be here, but Iwanted to make sure you understood that this is it. I don’t even want you looking at me when we’re in school.”
Cody took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” the other kid added.
“Just go away.”
The other boy cleared his throat and turned, hopping into an old pickup truck before speeding off.
Cody stayed on the bench, watching the truck disappear over a hill. As devastated as he looked, he didn’t cry. He picked his backpack off the ground and set it next to him before giving the zipper a tug. He reached inside and grabbed a flimsy plastic bakery container. It held a colorful birthday cake with a candle and the number seventeen on it, and it was small enough for two people. Watching him hold onto it while lookin’ like he’d lost everything nearly broke me.
“I’m not going to make it one more year if I stay,” Cody whispered before opening the container and lighting the candle. “I wish… I hope I never have to spend another birthday alone.” He blew out the flame and threw the cake in the trashcan next to him. That was when everything went black.
“You won’t,” I whispered, reaching for the place Cody was sitting as I wiped my eyes. Why hadn’t he ever told me about any of this? “You just wait, little Cody. I’m gonna make you the best birthday cake you ever had, and you won’t ever be alone again.”
Austin
My little blue box disappeared right as I was about to take a nap. I heard something I didn’t want to hear. Someone else’s voice.
“Mom! Adam won’t play with me,” shouted a little girl materializing inside of a huge house.
A lean, black woman in a gray fitted business dress pulled her cell phone away from her ear before shouting up the stairs.
“Adam, play with your sister.”
“She’s not my sister! She keeps dressing me in girly stuff.”
The woman put the phone back up to her ear and sighed. “The sitter’s running late. Can you have them postpone the board meeting until I get there?” The voice on the other end was barely audible. “Stephen’s already gone. I need you—” The voice interrupted her as a little boy stomped down the stairs. He was a puny little shit, skinny with a high-pitched voice and short cornrows held in place by rubber bands. They had little yellow butterflies at the end. I could barely hold back a chuckle at the bright pink Barbie T-shirt he had slightly covered with the top half of his denim overalls.
“I don’t wanna play with her,” the boy said. “I want Dad.”
“Hold on a moment,” she pulled the phone away from her ear again. “I am on the phone. Go back upstairs.”
No one seemed to care that I was there, like they didn’t notice me. Why was I having a dream about Adam being a kid? I ran over to the stairs, and lifted my arms over my head, making sure my claws were visible. Adam liked bears, so I tried to roar like one.
