The Sonnet of Lochlan Doyle - [2]

September 10th, 2015 at 2:15 PM

"What's that mark on your face?" Aislinn asks, peering across the table.

“What mark?”

“That one. Right below your left eye. Did someone hit you? It looks like someone hit you.”

Lock raises cuffed hands to touch the wound, but still flinches when his fingers make a light graze. He drops his hands and sighs, glancing at the two officers before looking back at his sister.

“I fell.”

“Lock, seriously.”

“What? The officer who came in this morning scared the crap out of me, and I fell out of bed. That’s it.”

Her shoulders slouch. “If they’re bullying you or anything, you know you can tell me, right? I’ll ask them to take some measures and—”

“And what? You want to hold my dick when I piss too? Jesus, Ash. I fell. Drop it.”

All right.

Aislinn glances down at her fingers, wondering what the hell he had done so bad in his past life to deserve this. Lock is good—she can see that even if the rest of the world couldn’t. She knows who he is behind the bruises and the handcuffs and the anger. But does he? Did those guys? What were they thinking about while they were pounding him? Did they ever stop to think that he was a kid like them?

She looks at his face again, her jaw growing tight the more she stares at the purple gash under his eye. They didn’t care. The message is imbedded right on her brother’s skin.

“I made some friends, you know,” Lock says after a while. He smiles a little. “They fell too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, we didn’t exactly say that we’re friends. They don’t do that around here. It was sort of implied, you know? It’s like hey, we’re both in the same shit, so we might as well trudge in it together. I eat lunch with them. It’s pretty awesome.”

“Who are they?”

Lock sits straighter in his seat, excitement flashing in his eyes. “Okay, so the first one I met was Lee. That’s not his actual name, though. He told me some guys started calling him that when he was new. They were trying to be racist, but it kind of stuck.”

“He’s okay with it?”

He nods. “The next one is Gabriel. He doesn’t like it when you call him Gabe. I mean, I haven’t yet, but Lee clued me in. He’s a real burly looking guy but soft as hell on the inside. He’s pretty quiet. Doesn’t say much. Lee told me the guys try to get a rise out of him sometimes, but Gabriel’s a saint. I swear, the guy never gets mad.”

Aislinn smiles a little. “Saint Gabriel. It fits.”

“Sometimes he’d sit with Lee and me at lunch, or he’d sit with this other Mexican guy. They’d be so deep in conversation sometimes, and I always want to know what the hell they’re talking about, but it’s in Spanish. Maybe I should take up Spanish.”

“You can’t even speak Irish, Lock.”

“I could if I tried. But anyway, those are my friends. See? I’m capable of making friends.”

“And these friends, they both…fell? At the same time?”

His shoulders slouch at the question. He stares at the cuffs with this distant look in his eyes. They look a little glazed from where Aislinn’s sitting, and she can’t help wondering if he’ll cry. “Well, no,” he says. “Lee always…falls. He’s, well, you know. Riding the rainbow. I mean, I don’t have a problem with that, but in a place like this…people like that will always fall. He’s got so much shit on his body that it’s surprising he’s still—”

He takes a sharp breath of air and holds it, still looking down at his hands. He taps his fingers in a steady beat. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. His mother taught him that the first time he yelled at her. Just breathe in time with the beat. That’s all you need.

“He’s always smiling too, Ash,” Lock continues. “He’s the happiest bastard in here even though he’s falling all the time. Always fucking grinning like this is some vacation home.” He shakes his head and laughs. “He always gets me thinking about what I have to get back to, you know? I’ve got you and mom while he probably has nothing.”

She wants to touch him. Badly. She reaches across the table even though her arms aren’t long enough, hoping to at least graze some skin. But she can’t. She knows she can’t, so she puts her hand back on her lap.

“You’ll always have a place to come back to,” she says. “Even though it’s not the greatest, you’ll never have to stay alone. You know that, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

Here comes the silence again. The twins sit staring, each daring the other to look away. Their mother always accused them of sending signals to each other whenever they did that. Sometimes I want to know your secrets, she used to say. But I suppose I can’t. That’s why God gave me two of you, right?

“How’s the school thing going?” Lock finally asks. “Is college any fun? Did anybody haze you yet for being a freshman?”

Aislinn sighs. She’d rather not talk about school. She’d rather not talk about what’s happening at home at all. “It’s going,” she says. “I got a scholarship and the government’s giving me some money because of…you know, everything. I have to pay it back though, so I’m waitressing.”

“Damn,” Lock says. “You’re doing all that and taking care of mom? Why doesn’t she just croak so we can all have a breather?”

His sister stiffens. “Lock.”

“I’m serious. We can take care of each other, Ash. We always have. She’s just holding us back. You can’t even move on because of her.”

“Lock.”

“She’s going to die anyway. What was it called again? Creutzfeldt-what disease? I read somewhere that people usually die after a year of—”

“Lock!”

“What?” He studies her face for a moment. “You aren’t going to cry, are you? Come on, you were just laughing a second ago. Are you crying, Ash? For fuck’s sake. I’m sorry, okay? Just stop looking at me like that; it’s pissing me off.”

She doesn’t stop, which makes Lock look at anything but her eyes. The officers are still staring straight forward, and Lock swears he sees one shift from one foot to the other.

“You think you can spot me a smoke, man?” he asks one of them, but gains no response.

“What do you have against mom?”

“I just need one cigarette, man. I won’t tell anyone.”

“What did she ever do to you?”

He finally looks at her, the words at the tip of his tongue. She’s sick all the time. She threw Dad out. She’s making you work. She put me in here. She keeps apologizing, but she never tries to fix it. She never tried to fix me. He wants to tell her, but he can’t. He knows he can’t. So instead he says, “I’m sorry.”

He isn’t.

“Fucking hell,” he calls. “Will it kill somebody to get me a fucking smoke?”