Burn Scars by Eddie Generous (best novels for beginners TXT) 📕

“When?”

“Next week, the week after, minimum. I can take a couple vacation days and drive—”

“Tonight. Tomorrow. No later, it can’t wait for later.”

Mr. Beaman chewed his bottom lip, nodded once, and then said, “I can’t drive you, but I can call to see if you’re on the guest list. It won’t be tonight though and you’ll be more than lucky if tomorrow. Maybe you can get on the call list if he didn’t want to add you as a visitor, but, I’ll do my best to make this happen.” He then burst from the Tempo and bolted across the parking lot in a clumsy penny loafer sprint.

—

Rusty watched the clock hands spin, impossible to keep up to the seconds, barely able to fathom the minutes as they turned into history. At the end of the third period, the bell rang and as if he were a programmed robot, he moved from one room to the next—did not make his regular pilgrimage to across the street from school property for a smoke. He found his seat. Around him, the students were busy with life, part of him couldn’t understand how they could exist so simply in a world where revelations hit with breathtaking severity, dropped on heads one after another like baseball-sized hail.

He wanted to scream at them to sit down, to shut up, didn’t they get it? didn’t they see?

Mr. Beaman ran into the room and headed straight for Rusty. He knelt before his desk and spoke low. “Your father has been putting you on his visitor’s list for years, I guess, but your address was good to have with it. Since you were little, he’s put you on the list. You can go tomorrow. You were approved to see him all along. You can go first thing and they’ll fit you in tomorrow.”

Rusty blinked. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that?” Rusty was terrified.

“Yes.” Mr. Beaman was nodding, he looked as shaken as Rusty felt, almost.

“Okay.”

“I’m so, so sorry. If I were older when it happened—”

“Man. Man.”

A student stood behind Mr. Beaman had a folder in her hands. She stepped in close around his side then cleared her throat to get his attention. He turned and said, “What?” He almost shouted it.

“I finished my essay,” the girl said, sheepish.

“It isn’t due for three weeks!” Mr. Beaman said.

“I am passionate about Jane Eyre,” she said. “It is truly a masterwork of English storytelling, and a pioneering work of feminist literature.” It was painfully obvious that she’d practiced the speech.

Rusty made a pained face, she was about to catch some collateral debris from the shit storm of his life.

Mr. Beaman snatched the folder and pulled out the clipped pages. “You practiced that, didn’t you? I’d prefer if you spoke simply and honestly.” He then waved the pages at the student body. “Please, just a staple in the upper left corner; no folders or excessive bindings on essays. There’s no marks for presentation and one person doing too much makes it physically irritating to handle the workload.” He handed the folder over and began picking at the heavy purple clip.

The girl stomped toward her seat with the discarded folder in her hands.

“Alissa,” Mr. Beaman said. “You forgot your clip.” He held it out and waited for her to come back and retrieve it. Which she did, eventually, though she was not happy.

 16

The polystyrene packaging squeaked with every bump, no matter how small, sounding like mice crowded into a rubber cell as Rusty rolled behind the wheel of one of the store’s vans. A white moon was out while the sun lingered pink on the horizon. Dwayne was ecstatic when he informed Rusty of what had to be done. The company who’d built the condos where Dwayne’s mother lived had called Logic—Dwayne took the phone himself so as to avoid doling out any unnecessary commission. They needed six units outfitted with TVs, DVD/VCR combos, and wireless landline telephones. Kind of cheap items, but all carried fantastic retail mark-ups.

Dwayne loved selling telephones, usually there was no delivery, no installation, and people paid triple what he’d paid to put them on the showroom floor. They were a smart item that the customers, for whatever reason, didn’t feel dumb about paying big money to own. “Just wait, there’s this thing called Bluetooth, everybody in town’s going to want to replace their phones,” Dwayne had said, but Rusty wasn’t listening, could only focus in a very minor sense on the job and what Dwayne was saying.

At least Dwayne only followed him as far as the van and didn’t want to ride along to visit his mother. Rusty rolled down the window as he departed the lot and kept it rolled down, smoking one after another, warm coffee in the cup holder, all the way to Chelsea.

Life’s mounting elements had put Rusty in a shocked fog, but his hands and legs knew what to do. He installed and hooked-up the purchases, accepted a ten-dollar tip, and even managed to thank the greasy, red-faced, tired-looking contractor when he left. The whole business didn’t take three hours and he arrived back at Logic Appliance in time to clock out—most days, the short shifts hardly seemed worth it, but he’d never complained about them out loud.

“Hey,” Christine said and grabbed his jacket sleeve as he made for his car.

He turned and said, “Oh, hi.”

“You all right?”

To tell Christine or not? To let her in on the fact that it was her father and not his father that had torched his chance at a proper family, emotionally stability, hell, maybe even high school graduation.

No, not yet. He loved her and that made the situation tricky. He had to spare her something and he had to know for sure first. The current overwhelming point of anxiety was just another element to