Page 1 of Friendzone Hockey
Prologue
BEFORE THEN
Dash
Idon’t know if I can do it—dislocate my own thumb. Dirk and I watched a video about it because when we were ten, we thought we were gonna be real life James Bond. Yeah, I’m serious. If we couldn’t be hockey players, next on our list was secret agent. How delusional were we? But anyway, the man in the video had pointed out that most everyone thinks you’d dislocate the metacarpophalangeal joint when what you actually wanna do is dislocate the carpometacarpal, which is below the metacarpophalangeal, closer to the wrist. He also said it’s not easy to do. He said that most people can’t do it because their joints aren’t pliable enough. He said it’s easier for women to do than it is for men.
Dirk and I scoffed at what we considered the failures of others. We’d be able to do it. We’d be professional spies, and professional spies can do anything.
Well, guess what? Not James Bond. Nothing but a scared eighteen-year-old boy. Afraid of the pain, afraid I’ll only ruin my hand, afraid he’ll come back while I’m trying to escape, and I won’t be able to fight him with a messed up hand.
I rattle the cuff against the metal footboard. I think it’s metal, anyway. It sounds metal. I can’t see a fucking thing. It’s so goddamn dark. Even when he chained me to the pole, it was hard to see. There was only a scant bit of light from the doorway. I’m at the end of a bed, but the bed won’t move for some reason. I’m on the floor because Robin said this is where I deserved to be.
There’s a skittering across my bare flesh, over my calf. I thrash, batting at it, scratching at it. What kind of creepy-crawly is it? A bed bug? A spider? Maybe I don’t wanna know. But they’re on me, always crawling on me. Maybe that’s why it’s better I’m wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. I can feel them. I wouldn’t want something living in the folds of a sweatshirt so it could—oh god—crawl in my ear. Or my mouth.
I had been screaming. Robin didn’t come in here to stop me. I got the feeling—though he never said it—that the longer I screamed, the longer I’d be ignored. But it also means that no one can hear me. I’m on my own. I won’t be found. It’s up to me to get myself out of here.
In other words, I’m fucked.
Something’s brushing against my face. I flinch. There’s brightness too. I must have fallen asleep, but I don’t wanna open my eyes. I can’t look at his face. I trusted Robin. He’sbeen Mom’s boyfriend for years. I don’t know that I’d call Robin a stepdad exactly, but he looked after me. He hasn’t been the nicest, but even at his worst I didn’t think he was capable of this. Mom died when I was seventeen. I stayed with Robin. I trusted Robin. All that time passed, including a birthday, and things were fine. Not good, but fine.
Then one day he led me down here.
What’s that smell? It’s pretty and floral. It’s coming from whatever he’s using like a paintbrush over my cheek.
I take a breath and then let my eyes blink open. The lights are on for the first time since he handcuffed me here. The bedroom isn’t much. Just a bed, a dresser, and something that looks suspiciously like it’s meant for me to piss in. My gut curdles. Jolts of alarm—that are far too fucking late—scream at me to get out, get out, get out! But I can’t, and I let him do this.
You didn’t fight him. Didn’t even question him. How fucking stupid are you?
He tries to soothe me with the thing, the pretty-smelling thing. It’s a rose. A singular rose with all the thorns removed.
“Shh, it’s okay. This is temporary, remember? As soon as you learn to behave, you can roam free again. You have no one but yourself to blame. I told you to stop asking questions, I told you I’d take care of you, but you wouldn’t listen. You forced my hand, Dash,” Robin says.
Mom died. I felt a lot of things about it for months. Sobbed until I was hoarse, cried until my eyes were surely turning into raisins. And then I retreated. Got numb. I didn’t want to feel anything, so I shut down. What choice did I have? The pain was unbearable. And I’m not so much of a moron that I don’t know most people would have a hard time loving a mom like mine. She was addicted to drugs—plural. It wasn’t just the one kind, there were a few. People have nasty judgments and opinions about someone like that, someone who chooses getting high over theirchild, and I get it. It made me angry often enough. She did a lot that hurt me. But what they couldn’t see that I did was that life got her first. Life led her to Robin. Robin, who I thought was trying to help her, but turns out it was exactly the opposite.
If she hadn’t met Robin, would she have dug herself from the pits of depression before it was too late? I don’t know, but she would have had a fighting chance.
But that’s neither here nor there. She was addicted to something that released her from pain she couldn’t face, and it made my feelings about her death a whole lot more complex than simple grief.
Maybe that’s what made me follow Robin. He told me he’d take care of me. He told me he’d be the one I could depend on. I went with him like an idiot. I let him lead me to this house, straight down the stairs to the basement, and into this room. No fighting, no protest.
I trusted the devil.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“That right there. That’s the kind of attitude we need to cure you of. You’re more like your fucking mother than you think you are. Bet you’ll take to the cocktail I have planned for you just as easily, too. You’ll be just as pliable as she was once I have you hooked.”
“No. Please, no.” I want to play hockey. I want to lie on the grass with Dirk and dream about what we’ll do with our lives. I want to fall in love. I want to find my dad and tell him I’m sorry, tell him I love him.
I don’t want to be erased like he erased my mother.
The video—the one about thumb dislocation—missed some vital information. Thumb dislocation is hard. Under regular, everyday circumstances, it’s near-to-impossible. You’re not going to be able to do it because you want to escape handcuffs.
What you need is fear. Insurmountable fear eating away at you until dislocating your thumb is of no consequence. Until yanking on your thumb so hard that you dislodge it from its comfortable home, ripping all the associated ligaments, maybe irreparably, is insignificant by comparison to the hell that awaits you.
He forgot to mention that.
Someday, I hope I can tell Dirk.
