Sort of a draft of a thing that I wrote before Frankie and all his running. I would write it different now. But I still want to shove it in your face and see what happens.
______
Bars of waning light stood pure and straight across statue and pew. A murmur, like the rambling story of a child, echoed secretively between pillar and beam. Quinn, a boy of uncertain nature, pushed open the heavy dark door and hesitated. He breathed unevenly and the scent of the ancient place lodged itself in his tired lungs. Stooping quickly before the altar, he sat down.
There was a discomfort about the place that he remembered well. Almost like he must dodge and stumble to avoid someone’s eyes; distract himself to avoid someone’s words. It wasn’t like the shame he refused with haughty swagger or turned up nose; however, it was obvious the feelings were related, just one of them had been bent and broken.
He ached at his fingers and behind his eyes. The subtlety was what caused him to think again; for he only knew the blatant, proud proclamations of those who shouted when they could whisper and hit when all they needed was to touch.
After some time, Quinn got up.
There was a building across the parking lot that was all brick on cracked pavement and it stated its business in faded silver letters: Parish Office. Quinn pushed the door open and was greeted by a musty smell of an old heater and the dry warmth of electricity.
“Hello, can I--” the receptionist faltered, eyes darting about like curiosity trapped “--help you?”
“Certainly, certainly. I want to know why you work here.”
Quinn flicked a smile and then caught it, dragging it back again. The girl looked away, frozen hair resembling a great dark ice-berg dipped in black ink and heavier than--
“I’m - I’m not sure I can help you with that.”
“You can or could but won’t? But that isn’t the answer I was,” he cleared his throat, “waiting for.”
“Is there anything else I can--”
“When is there a priest about? Do they just, like, wander around singing or is there some kind of…”
She glared at him.
“If you would like to set up an appointment I can certainly help you with that.” Her tone stung; he wondered what the beginning of her day had been like if his flippancy morphed her into a dragon.
“Like a meeting? Or more like a friendly chat? Wait, does that mean I have to confess or--”
“A meeting. But you will need a plausible reason.” Her spiky eye-lashes tore through the air and Quinn could almost hear its cries.
“My fingers hurt.”
“Then I suppose you need to see a doctor.”
“Okay, okay. I want to know what all this is.” He waved at the looming church to their right and then around the pert office. “And I don’t want to talk to you about it and I don’t want to read a book, I want to hear firsthand. From Jesus’ very disciples, you know?”
“You do know that the priests aren’t--”
“So, I’m free all the time, anytime. What day is good for Father…priest…guy?”
Quinn received another graceless glare before the sordid receptionist began typing lazily; heavy-lidded eyes racing across the glowing screen.
“Are you Catholic?” she asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Catholic. Were you baptized Catholic, raised in Catholic school, attending Catholic college -”
“I’m in Highschool. But, no. Well…maybe. Does it matter? I could always call my mom and --”
“Nevermind,” she snapped. “Tomorrow at six. Will that work for you?”
“Sure.” Quinn was only listening half-heartedly, his attention having shifted to a bloody depiction of Jesus’ disfigured corpse in the Virgin’s arms.
“Name?”
“Quinn Lancaster…Von Hildebrand,” he muttered, tearing his eyes away from the painting.
“You have two last names?”
“No.”
“Then which one -”
“I’m just messing with you. Quinn Lancast--”
“Thank you.” She scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to him. “Have a great day.” Her tone was almost malicious in its contempt and she might as well have asked him how he got to be so ugly. But Quinn filed her petty meanness away and took the paper, marching out of the office like a proudly injured soldier.
_____
Quinn’s attention was one of those disreputable, flighty things that you want very badly until you finally get it. His torpid lack of focus was the calm before the storm except that people can guess when a storm is coming. Of course they’re often wrong, but at least they guessed.
He was sitting against the wall in the dining with a bowl of cereal, blatantly ignoring the purpose of a table and chairs. Discarded bargain items littered the living room floor to his left and before him stood a woman in overalls.
“You didn’t go to school today!” she shouted, like it was the chant of a downtrodden protester.
“I didn’t!”
“You never go to school. You never, ever go to school. Ever.”
The woman was Quinn’s mother and she addressed him like a dormouse threatening a door; it was only frightening because of its incongruity. And then it wasn’t frightening at all.
“God, you would think I didn’t ever go to school. Something I aspire to.” He laughed and tipped the bowl accidentally, spilling milk to his left on the tiled floor.
“I’m kicking you out, Quinn.” Quinn’s mother ran a hand through her orange hair and yanked out the rubber band. “You’re completely irresponsible and I’m not going to let the school beat me to something I’ve been wanting to do my whole life.”
Quinn tried to imagine how his mother could have wanted to kick him out of the house before he was born and shook his head, only managing to forget the last time he had made sense of his mother.
“Get up! Get up, and get your stuff and don’t come back.”
Quinn finally looked up at his mother. She was a dark woman; not in a color but more in memory. Whenever he saw her in his head, it was always dim, shady or just black. But not like in a nightmare, that kind of dark was counterfeit and was more real than just a lack of light. His mom was just nothing. Even her words jumped up and down and fell back like scalded toes. She wasn’t anything more than an attachment to something that had disappeared long ago.
“Really? You might regret this. It’s hard to find guys like me just wandering--”
“If you’re here when I get back, I’ll call family.” Not much of a threat anymore. But she said it calmly, her eyes collected firmly in her head, and then walked through the living room and out the front door. The last thing he saw were the scratched elevator doors before the room was closed and empty again.
There was nothing particularly new about being kicked out. It had happened multiple times since his fifteenth birthday and it usually ended with his mother hearing from one of his sisters something horrific he had done and forcing him to come back. But, just to amuse himself, he stomped into his room and grabbed his wallet and a sweatshirt, only taking a moment to memorize where he left his most prized possessions before exiting the room.
Apartments tend to lean in an unholy direction towards refrigerators. When you live in a refrigerator, you have your own little section according to what you are. You get taken out, used, and then put back. After a while, your all used up and must be replaced. Quinn found this analogy so brilliant when he first created it that he told it to everyone he knew and not one of them heard a word of it. He grew accustomed to wide eyes and empty heads; it was something of a plague of his and he didn’t quite understand it.
Before leaving the apartment he tore down an ugly poster of Jim Morrison that his mom loved and spit on the dirty green couch. There was still milk on the floor and his bowl of cereal was sitting next to it, only half empty.
