The Other Side(6)

When I jab the key in the lock to Johnny’s apartment, I’m praying he isn’t here and that Cliff is asleep.

Johnny’s bedroom door is open and he’s not in it. A reprieve. The same cannot be said for Cliff.

The stench of burnt microwave popcorn is an unwelcome guest in the kitchen. Cliff’s bedroom door is open. His TV is blaring and he’s watching me. I can feel his beady eyes like tractor beams.

“Did you get any?” he calls out crudely.

He’s talking about sex. He asks a variation on the question at least once a week. Not as if he’s living vicariously through me, but as if it’s a link of camaraderie he and I share.

I don’t dignify the question with an answer. I never do. I grit my teeth instead.

“Applause finally got Sid and Nancy.” Applause is the video rental store down on Colfax. Cliff’s been stalking it for weeks trying to get his grubby mitts on the story of his hero.

I can’t help my shock. “They rented to you?”

He was banned from further VHS rentals until he pays late fees he racked up when he kept a movie ten days past its return date.

Pride twists his lips into a smirk and I know before he says the words that they didn’t. “Stole it.” He sings the reply, he’s so proud of himself. “They’re not getting this one back. She’s mine.”

I raise my eyebrows, more to acknowledge my body’s pleas to get it into a swift state of slumber than to congratulate his thievery.

“Watch. If you want.” His words are flippant. His tone isn’t.

He wants me to watch it with him. He really wants me to watch it with him. He’s a Sex Pistols zealot and he wants to baptize me with their debauchery by watching the true story unfold on film.

“I know how it ends.” Both of them drug addicts. Both of them dead. I read articles on microfiche at the library last week. I’d been listening to the band and was curious. When I’m curious, I read everything I can. I get obsessive. Ask me anything about the Sex Pistols, I can probably answer it.

“Sid Vicious is a legend,” he says it knowingly, the camaraderie in his voice again.

I shake my head and mutter, “Legend is the last word I would use to describe him,” and shuffle past his door to mine and unlock my padlock. Cliff needs a new role model.

Door shut behind me in my room, I toe off my shoes and shed my sweatshirt and jeans. There’s no window, no light, so I crawl into my sleeping bag by feel. Then I replay the events of the evening after Jessica and I left Dan’s until I drift off to sleep.

And I dream nondescript dreams about nothing important.

No nightmares.

No voices.

It’s beautiful.





Chapter Two





Present, February 1987

Toby



I’m a creature of habit, a fan of routine.

Today is Sunday and Sunday means one thing: a trip to Mile High Comics.

It’s early; Cliff and Johnny must still be sleeping because I haven’t heard their bedroom doors open. I’m in the bathroom. I tend to linger when I’m in here because it’s my favorite room in the apartment. I know how weird that sounds, especially when it’s a bathroom shared by three guys, two of which are pigs. I’ll let you guess where I fall in that equation. And I’ll be offended if you choose incorrectly. But the bathroom is spacious, has a window, and a lock on the door. Privacy paired with hot water, fresh air, and sunlight. I’m not claustrophobic in my bedroom, but I can’t deny that my time in the bathroom feels like an escape. It’s also the place I try to chase away the images that race through my nightmares. The steaming water loosens my tight muscles but does little to loosen the tightly wound tormenter (aka my memory) inside my skull. I can’t escape it, blood stains for a lifetime.

After a long shower, I shave, brush my teeth, and comb the tangles out of my wet hair—it’s getting long and hangs in my eyes, I need a haircut.

I return back to my room in a towel wrapped around my waist, pull the string that hangs in the middle of the space to turn on the single bulb in the ceiling overhead, and shut the door behind me. The illumination is weak. The bulb burned out last week and I replaced it with the only one I could find in the basement supply room. It’s twenty watts, basically a nightlight. A candle would probably give off more light. Hanging the towel on a hook next to the door to dry, I turn to see what I have in the way of clean clothes.

Shelves line one wall and I like to keep them orderly. My life is divided into compartments: clothes, school stuff, an old boom box I filched when Johnny evicted the tenants in 2A last year, three cassette tapes, drawing stuff, comics, more comics, my skateboard, my backpack, and a small box of Nina’s stuff. The opposite wall is covered in my drawings. I rotate them out continually. It’s not that I’m a self-absorbed admirer of my work—I don’t have a window, so the change of scenery is welcome. The narrow space between those two walls is about five feet, just wide enough for my sleeping bag and the two-inch pad of foam it’s lying atop, a pillow, a desk lamp, and a pillowcase in the corner that I use as a laundry bag. I do laundry once a week, the bag is full.

Dressed, I grab my backpack and skateboard before exiting and securing my bedroom door with the not-Cliff-proof padlock. I’m two steps away from the door when the phone rings. I sigh, because I was seconds away from freedom, and answer it. “Hello.”