The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(61)

Lance had told him once that when he felt like this, he should try to pay attention to his own breath and, like, watch it travel in and out of his body. At first Damon had laughed at this idea, like how did you watch breath that was invisible, but Lance had said, Just use your brain, picture it—like smoke. Damon had smirked at the smoke part but Lance was dead serious on this. Like red-hot smoke going out, cool blue smoke coming in. Hold it in your lungs. Ride it. Watch it. Now let it go. So now, on the trail, Damon tried it. Watched the smoke suck into his nostrils and lungs, caught it there, held it, then watched the smoke stream slowly out.

He kept on walking and watching his breath. And then he was ready to talk.

What he told Lance—which he’d never fully told anyone else—was the truth about what his father did to him.

Damon’s dad was a big shot. Big like Damon, with light blue eyes and light brown eyebrows and light brown hair cropped close to his head. A big-time corporate defense lawyer in San Francisco. He gave thousands of dollars to the school foundations and fire and police groups every year, and went to the charity auctions and bought paintings and spa packages and shit, and got his name printed up on all the little flyers. He was loud and funny and throwing bills and opinions all over the place, and everybody loved him or was scared of him or both.

The last time it happened was the night before Damon got arrested for Nick’s party.

When school got out that afternoon, Damon drove by 7-Eleven for a couple bags of Cheetos and Rips and some ninety-nine-cent AriZona Iced Teas. Then he went home, which was a mini-mansion tucked between the freeway and a hill where people let their horses graze. It was early, and his parents were both at work. So he dropped his backpack on the floor and sat down on the leather couch in the great room, emptied his Sevvies bag on the coffee table. He’d opened one of the Cheetos in the car and it was already down to Day-Glo dust. There was dust on his fingers too that he licked off and wiped on the couch. He sat back with his legs spread wide, stayed like that for a minute and ate, sprawled out, enjoying all the space.

When he was done, he grabbed the second AriZona and went upstairs. Got into his room and flicked the light off, shut the blinds, locked the door behind him. He turned on the TV and Xbox, and scooted his fat leather beanbag chair up to the screen. Then he grabbed the controller, upped the sound until it felt like he was sitting inside it.

The game he was working on was Call of Duty: Black Ops II. In the middle of the screen were two white hands holding a handgun. His hands. His gun. He started stalking through some farm that was on fire. All charred-out barns and shit and darkness. Jolly cowboy music echoed in the background. Then zombies started coming out of shadows to veer toward him, eyes blazing. One came too close, so he swapped his gun for a knife and stabbed its chest. It groaned and screamed. Then another zombo came toward him and he stopped it with three gunshots: pop-pop pop. Blood spurted out of the hole where its head was.

When his mom had got him this game, she’d asked him, Was it like Mario. He said Sure, but of course that was a jaws. In this game, there weren’t gold coins you got or anything. The only point was not to die.

The screen changed. Now he was in a town that was set on fire just like the farm had been. The air all dark and smoky. Ground torn up. Fancy burned-out cars and broken windows. Flames jumping up everywhere. Embers hanging in the air like fireflies, and horror-movie music swelling all around him. A girl zombo came at him waving its arms around like some hella fucked-up dance routine. He shot its face and blood washed the screen dark red. Another one got too close and swiped him. He fell on the pavement and dropped his gun and this cheery-ass song started blasting.

“Motherfucker!” he yelled. But it didn’t really matter. He got another life. Same busted town, but the zombos in this one started running at him. If he capped them in the head, they’d die faster. And sometimes the head exploded and shot fireworks of blood and bone into the sky and for a minute he felt hella raw.

Damon’s problem was, his dad was so fuckin’ loud he could hear him even with the game turned up as high as it would go. Whatever he did, there was always his dad pushing through, hollering the same old shit, like Get your ass downstairs.

Damon paused the game and went down.

His parents were waiting in the great room. His mom in an armchair and his dad at the foot of the staircase in black suit pants and a shirt the color of fogged-in sky. A glass in his hand—rye whiskey, had to be. His tie was off. How many had he had already? Two? Three?

“You want to explain yourself?” his dad said, pointing to the coffee table where there were crinkled-up Cheeto bags and cellophane, an empty AriZona can, little twisted papers from the Rips.

Damon shrugged.

“Don’t be an asshole,” his dad said.

“Fuckin’ chill,” Damon muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s right nothing. You better believe it nothing.”

Damon stuck his hand in his pocket. His Swiss army knife was there like always, and he flicked its small blade up and down, sliding his thumb against the steel. He said, “Yes, sir, Drill Sergeant, sir.”

“That’s all you have to say to me?”

“The fuck else do you want?”

“What do I want?” his dad said. “What do I want?” Then he started yelling shit Damon wasn’t tryna hear. How Damon was always pissing everybody off, how his dad had given him everything a kid could want and he’d done nothing, not one single thing, to deserve it. How he was the luckiest kid on the planet and he didn’t even know it. “And I want to know. When are you going to grow up? Learn to act like a goddamn human being?”