I couldn’t think about our brother or what he might be going through. I purposely pushed that picture from my mind. Whatever was happening to him, he just had to fight and survive and come back to us alive. There was no otheroption.
Wringing my hands in worry, I checked the clock for the thousandth time and was frustrated to discover that it just kept barreling forward. Why was it when you wanted time to move faster, it instead crept by so slowly that you were certain the hands of time had decided to stop ticking? But when time was the only thing you had on your side, and the life of someone you loved was literally hanging in the balance, the minutes turned to hours at heartbreakingspeeds.
I spent those forty-eight hours fixated on the passing of time… waiting, hoping, praying. The number loomed in my brain like a vulture ready to swoop down and devour myfaith.
At thirty-five hoursa search party was formed. Keith went off with Dad while I stayed back with Mom to wait for Jake’s call. Soon, I continued to reason with myself. Jake would behomesoon.
I fell asleep at thirty-two hours and was awakened by my mother’s haunting howls at twenty-four. An entire day had passed. We were back to the same time I had thrown my stupid fit in the kitchen the day before. How could I have been so selfish? Had I known it would be the last normal moment of my life, I might have savoreditmore.
Kyle returned home from the hospital with sixteen hours left. His arm had been broken in two places, and he had a gash in his forehead that had required seven stitches. On some pretty serious pain meds, his red-rimmed eyes were glazed and his head kept dipping to one side, as if it took extreme effort to keep it steady. Although he’d already been interviewed by professionals, that didn’t stop Mom from descending upon him the moment he returned. She was convinced he’d suppressed valuable information related to the kidnapping and demanded he remember it. Kyle tried, he really did, but he was a drugged out, emotional wreck, and certainly in no condition to withstand an interrogation. But as the hours disappeared at an alarming rate and Mom’s terror intensified, Kyle’s spotty memory was the only thing she couldclingto.
At the twelve o’clock hour, the body of a teenager was discovered near a river in a neighboring state. I watched my parents drop to their knees, sobbing. Kyle locked himself into the bathroom and screamed. A steady stream of tears dripped down Keith’s shocked face. Me? I sat at the kitchen table, gripping its sides with a steely-eyed and furious expression on my face. Why had I been such a self-centered bitch? Why hadn’t I cherished the moments with my family? Why had I pulled Grace’s beautiful baby hair? Why?Why?Why?
A couple of heart-wrenching hours passed before we learned the body was, in fact, not Jake’s but that of an older teen who’d suffered a drug overdose. With that stunning revelation, Jake came back to life on my shaky timetable, eight hours and counting. New hope swelled. The search efforts were intensified. The FBI visited known predators. The media descended on our home. Jake’s picture circulated throughout the state and then the country. Yet despite all the valiant efforts of so many, time kept speeding up. The forty-eight hour mark was looming, and we were no closer to finding him than we were when he’d been taken. Desperation took hold. Jake was going to die, and there was nothing we could do tosavehim.
My eyes wereon the clock at that fateful moment. The all-important time came and went with no fanfare. I’d expected so much more than just the passing of another minute. Forty-eight hours and one minute. It should have been bigger, more dramatic. Something should have happened. My brother died, and all the clock could do was tick away another goddamn minute. That was when Icried.
5
Finn: Lord of theFlies
Pullingup to the family compound on Friday morning, I deftly dodged giant potholes, wandering chickens, and the gaggle of small children scurrying every which way in front of my moving vehicle. As was always the case at the Perry house, there were no adults in sight. Kids, at least ten of them, darted around like animals at feeding time. As I waved at all the dirt and snot-smeared faces, I had to wonder if they’d multiplied since my last visit. Jesus, it was like a humanzoohere.
I parked next to the old station wagon. A fixture since my younger years, it was matted in rust and sat on dented rims, the tires and any other useful parts having been stripped away long ago. The kids who lived here used the corroded hazard as a fort, but they were well aware, as I had once been, that the wagon was an interactive play area. One false move and you’d be in the kitchen pouring whiskey on the openwound.
Two boys, both my cousin’s kids, ran up to me as I stepped out ofmycar.
“I’m Indy!” the older boy screamed, pretending to be me, while the younger one slashed him with an invisible cleaver. ‘Indy’ grabbed his throat and rolled his eyes before falling to the ground, theatrically flopping around in the dirt untilhe‘died.’
“Obviously you’ve been watching my movies too,” I said, helping him up. My many onscreen deaths were a source of great amusement in the Perryhousehold.
“Yep, with Shelby lastnight.”
Of course you did.“Those are all rated R movies. How old are youagain?”
“Seven.”
Of course he was.“Awesome. Well, nice job on the death scene. Next time, not so muchdrooling.”
Because they were so starved for attention, I had to spend time chatting with all the little kids before taking care of the business I’d come here for. The pint-sized welcoming committee consisted of my niece and nephew, second cousins, and other children, some I wasn’t even sure belonged in the family. Sometimes I wondered if people in the community just dropped their kids off and used our fenced in property as a sort of day care. With the whole lot of them running around unattended at all times, no one would know thedifference.
Although I only lived about twenty miles away, I rarely made the trip. For the life of me, I just couldn’t understand how my relatives thought it was okay to let these kids fend for themselves surrounded by piles and piles of trash. Even though I’d grown up as one of them, and for the most part had loved it, watching this new crop exist in such conditions bothered me. Back then, I knew I wasn’t living the norm. I saw how ‘real’ families lived on television shows and it was as foreign to me as rules and dinnertime and bedtimes. As a Perry, I got to run around at all hours of the night, grab snacks whenever hunger struck, and fall asleep whereIlay.
Now that I was looking at the situation through adult eyes, I could clearly see that my upbringing was a form of parental neglect and abuse; but as a wild kid, it was just my life and I’d thought it was a blast.Until it wasn’t.Plucked from the chaotic life at fifteen years old after an incident with one of Misty’s boyfriends turned ugly, I never went back, but my younger half-brother, Rocky, and all the others remained. It was one of my greatest victories but also one of my deepest regrets. I’d unintentionally saved myself only to let my onlybrotherrot.
I couldn’t blame Shelby for her lack of parenting skills because she was a product of her upbringing just as much as I was. In fact, everyone who lived on the Perry compound was a product of someone else’s poor decision making skills –aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces, nephews, you name it, they all lived here, each one more screwed up thanthenext.
My great-grandma, Gigi, owned the property in a small town nestled up against the mountains in the Santa Clarita Valley in Northern Los Angeles County. Although it was flanked by prosperous and sprawling cities, this was a place left behind. Gigi’s land was as close to country living as you could get in the LA area. Neighbors were few and far between in these parts, mostly because so many houses had been abandoned after natural disasters like earthquakes and fires had damaged them beyond repair. But Gigi never let Mother Nature take her down and had stubbornly remained in her home since the1970’s.
That’s not to say her humble abode wasn’t marred like the rest of them; in fact, one look and you’d wonder how it was still standing. Gigi’s four-bedroom house stood at the opening to the fenced-in lot, giving the appearance of a single family enjoying a quiet lifestyle – but makeshift homes, none built to code, had gone up all over the land. Trees, overgrown brush, and an honest-to-god junkyard had kept the structures from being seen andcondemned.
My tiny niece, who was appropriately named Posy, tugged on my jeans. “Do the jumps, Indy,” she said,clapping.
“I can’t,” I responded in the high-pitched voice I reserved just for her. Posy was four years old and had the sweetest doll-face I’d ever seen. Her cuteness always robbed me of my manhood. “Your Uncle Indy hurt himself theotherday.”
“You don’t look hurt,” a tougher-looking six-year-oldchallenged.
“Well,Iam.”
