Petty Rage by Thandiwe Mpofu
Chapter 14
NOAH
Past
ME:I want my jacket back.
Liar:Who is this?
ME:WTF? You know it’s me.
Liar:You told me to delete your number and fuck off. I did just that.
ME:I didn’t mean it literally, well the first part. That jacket costs $4K & I know you don’t have that kind of bank.
Liar:You’re right. So why don’t you go dig through last week’s trash for your $4K? I’m sure you’ll find your fucking jacket. Andwhich is it then? Make up your fucking mind. Your mood swings give every girls’ PMS a run for their money.
Liar:And also, GO FUCK YOURSELF! And delete MY number!
Present
“Mr. Montreal, sir.”
“Cut it out, Spider,” I mumble, swatting his fucking arm away. The dude salutes me like I’m his fucking captain or something.
“Well, you’re the man.”
“I know I’m the man,” I say cockily. He frowns.
“Well, you usually say something much vainer than that,” he says, watching me. “You doing okay?”
“We need to talk.”
“Well damn,” he whistles, eyeing me like I’m toxic waste. “Hold on, we need to go somewhere secure.”
“And here isn’t?” I look around the coffee shop. It seems normal enough, busy in fact. Spider is sitting in the corner booth with his back to the wall, the best seat in the shop as he’s watching everything and the other exit is right next to him. He has his laptop out, but the screen is blank. “What are you even doing in here?”
“Running a sting,” he says nonchalantly.
“Seriously?” I deadpan.
“What?”
“A sting?”
“Why not a sting? Have you not watched Rush Hour?” I stare at him, unamused. “Jackie Chan? Chris Tucker?”
“Ah, so you’re who? Chris Tucker then?”
“What? No way! There’s only one Chris Tucker, young blood. Who else could be friends with both the King of Pop and Jackie Chan at the same time?”
“Definitely not you.”
“Now you take that back, young man, or I’ll put you behind bars.”
I smirk. Spider is something else, but he’s also been the man I’ve been avoiding talking to for years now.
I’ve always known that Spider knew more about my brother’s last days walking this earth with thoughts of blowing his own brains out, but I didn’t want to ask him about it.
For a long time, I’ve never actually talked about Craig with anyone—apart from one other person and that was a fucking grave mistake.
I think I’ve done a fucking stellar job at trying to bury the thought of Craig, but one visit to some lawyer, and here I am in a tailspin.
But who’s keeping tally?
“Why come to me now?” Spider asks, growing serious.
Tick.
Tock.
“Why not now?”
See, I knew I should’ve come to him ten years ago, right after it happened, but then he was shipped off by Marie to some military school. When he came back, Astraea was back, and Kimberly was in my life. A lot was going on then. But after the fucking meeting with Mr. Briggs last week, I need answers.
“Why not now indeed,” he mutters.
“Seriously, man, I need answers.”
Spider studies me with a sharp, calculating gaze that sees everything.
He reminds me of Emmett sometimes with the way he quietly observes shit, but then he’s also like King, quick to anger. But most of all, he was my brother’s best friend—which is probably why I used to follow at his heels like a fucking baby duckling.
“I can see how serious you are,” he says after a moment. “Are you finally manning up?”
“What?”
“You’ve been running away from what happened ten years ago even though I’m pretty sure you wanted to talk to me,” he says, leaning in. “I thought maybe you were too afraid to ask me what I know or that you were not interested but I’ve seen the way you’ve been trying to deal and cope with Craig’s death these past ten years.”
“You were not here.”
“I’ve been watching out for you for years.”
“I know.”
“And you hate that.”
“Gee, I wonder why,” I mumble sarcastically, but he hears me.
“People watching out for you isn’t such a bad thing, Noah, but the thing with you is, you hate when people are being intrusive, butting into your private business, telling you what to do.”
“Well don’t we all?” I seethe. “Don’t tell me you like to feel Tom, Dick and Harry’s fucking noses up your shit.”
“Well, I know that no one likes being told what to do with their grief.”
I look away, staring at anything but him. Sometimes Spider was too observant and his words cut deep. I should’ve just fucking texted him. I could’ve saved myself this forced intrusion into my soul.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” I demand. “Why were you waiting for me to approach. You could’ve just showed up.”
“No, that’s not how this works and you know it. Besides, I was waiting for you to fucking grow up, Noah, and I have to say, at some point—including now—I was concerned that you wouldn’t make it.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to comprehend the meaning of those words. I guess he’s been asking Emmett about me. Fucking Emmett!
“Why? Because I drink too much?” I scoff, feeling annoyed.
“Careful, that isn’t a laughing matter and you know it.”
I clench my jaw, my nostrils flaring.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Spider continues while watching me. “And I know you think your relationship with alcohol…”
“Listen man, I didn’t come here to get a lecture about how I cope with my mess. I’ve never asked you about your… serial dater tendencies.”
“You do that, too.”
“I don’t make them promises.”
“Neither do I, but then again, I’m not the one completely in love with another girl.”
And there it is.
I don’t think there’s anything that happens in this town that escapes Spider’s notice but for him to say something so untrue, so fucking ridiculous and pathetic, it pisses me the fuck off.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I bite out.
“Yes, see,” he points between my eyes. “There’s that not so well-hidden rage you keep tucked in!”
I clench my jaw tight, breathing hard and fast.
“Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?”
“I’m trying to see if you’re fucking ready to ask those questions you’ve been running from, Noah,” Spider says. “Because if you have the right questions and you’re certain you want to hear the fucking answers, then I need to know how fucking decisive you are.”
“I am decisive.”
“Oh really?” he scoffs sarcastically. “Did you read the letter Craig left you?”
I sit back, in the chair, studying him.
“Well?”
“I shouldn’t bother asking you how you even know…” I trail off, waiting for an answer.
“Craig always said he’d leave everything in a place you’d find it when you were of age, which to him was his favorite number…”
“Twenty-three.”
“Bingo!”
Fuck!
So it wasn’t so much about his birth or fucking death day. It was about me.
It’s my birthday in a few weeks. I listened to Dave’s fucking message. The asshole was talking about meeting up with me to catch up for old time’s sake.
Fuck that! He wants something.
“Well?” Spider presses. “Did you read it?”
“No.”
“Just as I thought.”
He shakes his head as if in disappointment.
“It’s just a fucking letter. I’ll read it when I get the time.”
Spider looks straight at me with a look between disappointment and fucking curiosity.
“If it was just a letter, then why are you here, Noah?” he demands, his voice low. “You obviously went to great lengths just to find me.”
Yeah. I had to call up King to find this fucker.
“I want to know what happened the days before my brother killed himself.”
“And that’s your problem right there,” he seethes, looking so angry in that moment, I almost reel back but I catch myself.
“What?”
“Let me ask you this first,” he says, leaning in over the table. “You were the first person to find Craig in his den.” I force myself to nod, trying to stay in the present. “What did you see in that room?”
“Are you fucking shitting me?” I snap. “You’re going to ask me to recall what I saw like this is a fucking interrogation?”
“I’ll waterboard you right fucking now if that’ll help you remember!” he fires right back. “You saw the blood on the floor. You saw the lifeless body of your brother lying there, but, Noah, did you see the gun anywhere?”
I freeze.
My body, all tight and coiled with tension, grows incredibly still as I stare at my brother’s best friend and the man whose swagger and confidence I’ve always admired.
In a way, Spider was our big brother, our confidante, the guy you’d trust with your dirty laundry and could always count on to have your back. But now, he has my fucking balls over an open flame, forcing me to fucking remember the worst day of my life.
“The gun?” I echo.
“Yes. Did you see it in the room?” I try to search my mind, but I come up blank. “What else did you see in that day? Specifically in that room?”
“There was so much chaos, Spider, I don’t see how that fucking matters.”
“I’ll tell you what was there,” Spider grits out. “There was broken glass, ripped books and papers all over the floor. The furniture upended, Craig’s sketches were torn up to shreds. Now you tell me, does that sound like Craig to you?”
And there it is! The thing that has been nagging at the back of my head for years ever since I stepped into Craig’s messy room.
“You and I both know Craig could never stand wearing a shirt with a single wrinkle in it, and his den… that place was always immaculately clean, organized to help with…”
“His creative process,” I finish with a mutter.
“Exactly!”
That’s so fucking true. Spider spent as much time in our home as Astraea did—before she left.
“But see, that room was a fucking mess because the night before Craig and David—”
“They fought, yes, I know,” Spider bites out, looking hellish in that moment. “That fucker David broke Craig’s nose.”
“And I stopped the fight.”
“Yes, you’ve always been there for Craig and your mother. Always the temperate knight but now I need you to fucking man up and face the truth head on,” Spider grits out. “Before you broke up that fucking fight and tried to punch your father, did you hear what they were fighting about?”
Again, I grow still in my seat.
It’s like I’m taking a re-write exam.
I know the questions and I know that I have the fucking answers, but somehow, the answers don’t fit. They don’t make any sense.
I remember hearing the shrill sound of my mother’s terrified, body-chilling scream.
I remember distinctly hearing the sound of flesh pounding flesh.
But I definitely heard what David called my brother.
“David called him a faggot that didn’t deserve to have his name,” I bite out, each word excruciating and heavy on my tongue.
Spider looks away now, his face stone cold and troubled.
“Craig struggled with his sexuality for a while, but I knew from the time we were kids. One day we ditched school and decided to go play five seconds in Heaven with some girls in the empty gym,” he starts, his voice full of melancholy. “Craig was nervous—shit, we both were. First time kissing a girl and shit, but for him it was different. He didn’t want to kiss that girl. His level of discomfort was so severe that I just knew.”
I’ve never heard this story before. I stare at Spider in shock.
“What did you do?”
“What do you think I did?” he scoffs, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Started dissing everyone in that gym to make the entire game seem pathetic and redundant.”
Ah yes. When the cool kids declare something is stupid and lame, everyone falls in line.
It’s all nice and warm, thinking of the past until I see Spider reach for something under the folded newspaper beside his laptop. A gun. But before he gets up, he looks me dead in the eye.
“Craig was the firstborn of an entire generation, but unlike you and the boys, George, Alex and Emmett, Craig was alone. Now, imagine the weight of responsibility he had on his shoulders and the shit he was going through emotionally.”
“I get that! Life sucks if you’re one of the Blues, but I still don’t…”
“Noah, your father left,” Spider grits out. “With all the shit he was doing with no one the wiser, did he ever appear to you like he’s the type to just up and leave?”
No…
David was a crude, cruel sonofabitch. He hurt my mother, verbally and sometimes physically, but even then, he never left.
He cheated on her, had various affairs all over the world, but he stayed. We knew it, but no one else did.
“No.”
“So why would he suddenly decide to leave?”
“I think—”
“No, that’s for you to mull over when you finally read that letter,” he says in a rush. “On your birthday, the private attorneys the four families use will be coming to see you.”
“Wait, what?” I demand. “How do you even… you know what, never mind.”
“They’ll come and present you with a choice.”
“A choice?”
“Of whether or not you want to be the top dog of your family, Noah. Keep up!”
“But I’m the only heir.”
“No, you’re not,” Spider says seriously. “David is still alive, isn’t he?”
Fuck!
“What does all this even mean?”
My mind is racing so fast, I can hardly think straight.
“It means just that,” he says in a low voice. “You see, the problem here is you still think Craig’s death as just a suicide. Now, you’ve shown me that you want answers, but some things you have to see for yourself.”
It’s like a bomb just went off in the middle of the restaurant.
As I’m about to rip him a new one, he stands up so suddenly as the door behind him bursts open with an actual SWAT team.
Looks like the fucker was actually telling the truth. This is a sting.
But I’m not impressed. In fact, I’m not feeling anything at all as chaos reigns down around me.
All I can hear are the last words Spider just said.
“The problem here is you still think of Craig’s death as just another suicide.”