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The air was thick with the heavy humidity Indiana summers often brought. The heat, as sweltering as it was, Billy could handle; winter on the other hand, he had yet to get used to. It was a good thing he would only have to suffer through one more before he could get the hell out of Dodge. His birthday was only a few months away and he could almost smell the california air that awaited him. But for now he was here, in bumfuck nowhere Indiana, sitting on the hood of his car and looking out on the calm water of the quarry. The night sky was clear and the moon was full; it shone upon the water and gave Billy a decent source of light, not that there was much to look at. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there. He had been chain smoking cigarettes to pass the time and his carton was only one cig away from empty, so one could venture he had been there awhile. In all honesty, he didn’t know what he was waiting for. He could easily be doing this in the comfort of his bedroom. Max was spending the night at some friend’s house and his father and Susan were gone for a romantic weekend in Indianapolis. He should be taking advantage of the empty house.
Billy sighed and let out a breath of smoke along with it. He reached absentmindedly towards the pendant hanging from his neck and began to play with it. It was a gift from his mother, a devout catholic. Billy had attended a few services with her when he was younger, but eventually they stopped going. He knew it was because his father wasn’t of the faith. Billy didn’t believe in any of it now either, but sometimes he would think of his mom and it would bring him comfort to believe, even for just a moment, that there was a reason his life had panned out like it did, like there was still a reason for him to be here. But what kind of God would give a young mother cancer?
It had started out as breast cancer when he was ten, by eleven it had become lung cancer as well, and at twelve he was watching his mother be lowered into the ground. He remembers holding back tears as they drove away from the cemetery, if only to prevent his sister from crying again. She was only six, he didn’t think she really understood what it meant. That they would never see their mother again, that they were stuck with Neil from now on. But they helped each other through it. Cassie started watching episodes of Columbo with him, even though it was pretty obvious she preferred cartoons, but she knew that was his and mom’s thing. Billy learned how to braid Cassie’s hair like his mother had. He walked Cassie to the salon his mother used to go to and asked one of the stylist if she could teach him. They spent an hour braiding her hair until he got it. That night was the first time his father hit him. They had come home to Neil standing at the kitchen counter drinking a glass of water. He was still wearing his work clothes, even his loafers were still on. He seemed confused when they came in the door, but that was quickly masked with anger. Cassie was sent to her room, but Billy wasn’t as fortunate. He didn’t understand why his father was so angry, it seemed like he hadn’t even known they were gone. It was only a harsh slap and some manhandling that night, which it usually was. The beatings came few and far between, and those only started after Cassie was gone.
Billy had time to prepare for losing his mother, but Cassie was gone much more suddenly. There were six people in the car… six… and five made it out alive. It was the neighborhood carpool for the elementary kids and Mrs. Thompson was driving that morning. The report claimed it wasn’t her fault, but Billy could never look at her the same after that. Her kids had made it out alive, Mrs. Thompson had pulled them out of the totaled car, but not Cassie. She sat there, bloody, trapped between two hunks of metal with the Scooby-Doo lunchbox Billy had packed that morning held in her lap. When they buried her next to his mother’s grave, he was almost jealous. It was less than a year after his mother died and he missed her more and more every day. And now the only person who even came close to reminding him of her was in the ground with her. When they got home, Neil took any and all photographs of the two and put them into a box that he then stored in the attic. He even took the frame Billy had in his room of him and his mother on the beach. She was wearing a scarf over her head and it was clear that she had recently been through chemotherapy, but they both wore huge grins. It was his favorite photo of her. He waited for his dad to fall asleep before he snuck into the attic to steal the picture back. He folded it up and kept it in his wallet, lest his father think he was disobeying him. On nights his father was away on business, he would sneak up to the attic and look through old albums his mother had put together. There were a lot of them, all filled with polaroids and keepsakes from their childhoods. Sometimes looking through them ebbed the pain, helped him feel closer to them, but other times it made him realize how much had been taken from him.
It was another year before Neil met Susan. At first Billy thought she would be good for his father, maybe she would balance him out like his mother had, but that was not the case. It became clear to Billy that Neil held all of the control in their relationship after just one encounter with Susan. She was docile and easily taken advantage of. How this woman raised a daughter like Max, he did not know. They got married in the spring at the courthouse and their families moved in together shortly after. Most of the time, Max was at her dad’s and Susan wasn’t much more than a semblance of a housewife. She rarely spoke to Billy, in fact she didn’t make much noise at all.
When the topic of moving to Indiana was first brought up Billy was adamant he wasn’t going anywhere. How was he supposed to leave the only home he ever knew, the only place that had memories of his mother, of his sister. And most importantly, how was he supposed to move thousands of miles away from them.
After a few months of this talk, it became clear that Billy was not going to win, so he decided to run away. He packed his bag in the dead of night and headed north. He had no one to go to and his father hadn't cared to take him to get his license yet, so he hitchhiked his way up the coast. He got about three counties before police picked him up. As he was a minor, he was taken to the station and released back into the custody of his father. It was nearly three in the morning and they had a few hours on the road before they made it back home. His father white-knuckled the steering wheel and kept his mouth in a firm line while he drove. He looked constipated, and Billy would have laughed if he wasn’t the source of his anger. About halfway through the journey, Neil exited the freeway and entered a small town, where he found an even smaller alley way to pull into. Billy got the beating of his life that night. He was bruised and bloodied when he got back in the car and he immediately passed out. He woke up to the crunch of gravel under the tires as they pulled into the driveway. When they entered the house Susan was sitting on the sofa waiting for them. She gasped when she saw Billy’s appearance, Neil excused it away as Billy getting caught up in some street fight when he was trying to find a ride. Susan easily believed the story even though she could see Neil’s cracked, bloody knuckles.
Moving got put on the back burner for a few months, but it wasn't long before it came back up. They put the house on the market and began browsing for homes in Indiana. In the time before they moved, Billy fixed up his mother’s old Camaro. He had used his father's truck to get his license a few weeks prior, but he knew he needed his own car. The camaro had been sitting untouched in the garage for the past three years. With the little knowledge he had gained from shop class and the library, he got to work. It took eleven weeks and three trips to the mechanic to get it in good shape. It was that fall that Billy drove it to Hawkins. He stopped by the cemetery one last time on his way out of town to say goodbye to his mother and sister. The drive wasn’t as bad as he had anticipated, but the town he arrived in was his worst nightmare. Bars and clubs were nonexistent in the small town and everyone looked like they came off the pages of a Sears catalog. There were no beaches or boardwalks or even a decent shopping center in the hellhole they called Hawkins.
Billy tried to make the best of it, but it was hard. Nothing was in walking distance like in California, so he was Max’s appointed chauffeur. Everyday he drove along the forest lined roads he longed to go to the beach. But he would get there, only a few more months before he would be reunited with his hometown.
Billy kicked off the hood of his car, stubbing out his final cigarette and making his way to the driver’s seat. He quickly pulled away from the quarry and followed the roads back to his house.
Laying in bed that night, Billy dreamt of warm, sandy beaches and two girls whose laughter sounded like heaven.