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Anyone, anyone at all, would call this a typical day.
Anyone but Mr. Egbert.
When his 12 years old son John walked inside the house holding hands with a girl from his school, smile as wide as it could get, he felt a heart-throbbing happiness mixed with a worry deeper than most parents would ever feel for their sons. John rarely ever brought his friends home, and Mister Egbert knew why.
He got up from the couch and removed the pipe from his lips. John closed the door as the girl eyed the room curiously, and the boy nearly skipped back to the place where his father expected him to introduce him to the girl.
“Hi, dad!” he said, cheerfully as always. Mr. Egbert’s lips turned upright only slightly, but his eyes shone with pure glee. “Mel, this is my dad. Dad, this is Melissa! She’s a friend of mine.”
Of course she is, he thought to himself, remembering all the times John mentioned the girl’s name during meals or while watching TV. He eyed the girl, nodded, and handed out his free hand to shake hers. She took it and shook it, even if kind of awkwardly.
“Nice to meet you, Melissa. I’ve heard only good things about you.”
“Dad!!!”
The girl giggles behind her small hand, and John is already blushing to the tip of his ears. Mr. Egbert forces himself to hold back a small chuckle.
“Well, you kids go have fun. And in the meantime--” He looks down, tips his fedora like a true gentleman, and smiles at the little girl. “Would you like some chocolate cake, Melissa?”
The girl’s eyes simply lit up. John, on the other hand, wrinkles his nose and sticks out his tongue, as if already feeling the taste of cake in it.
“I would LOVE some chocolate cake, Mister Egbert!” she exclaims, bouncing on the balls of her feet a bit. John simply rolls his eyes, but in the next second, the smile is back on his lips as if it had always been there.
“Come on, Mel, let me show you my room!”
Mister Egbert freezes. The girl smiles back at John, all sincerity and glee and very expectant of what’s to come. She replies with a cheerful “okay” and follows him up the stairs, holding his wrist as he pulls her up and towards his bedroom. The man straightens his back after a second or two, watches as the two of them close the door behind them, and sighs.
It’s only thirty minutes later when a shy and a bit frightened girl approaches the man inside the kitchen as he cracks a few eggs inside the cake mix; she calls out for him in a very low tone, as shyly as humanly possible. Egbert turns around, already feeling his heart beating faster.
“Yes, my dear?”
“I’m, well, I have to, um, leave, Mister Egbert…”
His heart sinks. He feels sick to the stomach. The girl looks guilty.
“But why?” he asks her, though he already knows why. And by the look she gives him, she knows he knows too. “You just arrived. Are you sure you can’t stay for at least a piece of cake?”
She falters for a second, looks at the ingredients scattered around the kitchen counter, and it’s clear to him that she’s rethinking her decision. But after about ten seconds of silence, she drops her head and stares at her feet.
“I-I can’t. My, my mom called me. She, uh, asked me to come home, so I can help her with some… stuff.”
Mister Egbert sighs and washes his hands. “Very well. I suppose John will walk you to the door?”
“Um, actually… he’s still in his room. He…” but she stops, as if the words got clogged up on her throat. The man waves his head. “I think that, he, he got upset with me, I…”
“Don’t worry, dear. It’s okay. I’ll walk you.”
She nods, and Mister Egbert sees her off at the door. She tells him she lives only a few houses away, but he’s very insistent in walking her home until they both see her mother around the corner. He tells her goodbye, and that he hopes to see her again, and she nods and whispers to herself something that might have been the shyest farewell he has ever received or a very mumbled “sorry”. Maybe both. Afterwards, Melissa practically runs toward her mother’s embrace, and by the looks of her, he knows to expect a call from the woman later this week. No, scratch that; probably later that day.
Sighing heavily, Mister Egbert looks back, right into John’s bedroom window, and he sees the boy flinching when both their gazes meet. He flees in the blink of an eye.
Without giving it a second thought, he walks inside the house, towards John’s room, and knocks on his door.
“Son?”
“Go away.”
“John, please, let me in.”
The silence stretches. After a whole minute, Mister Egbert still doesn’t budge, and John knows it.
“…okay.”
And even though he hates it, dreads it even, the man turns the knob under his palm. Even the perspective of looking inside the room makes a cold shiver run up his spine, but he goes in anyway.
And, as sure as the skies are blue, there they are.
The walls are completely covered in horribly sordid pictures of scary clowns. He realizes with a profound grief that the most recent posters he bought are already ruined, even the ones John had been so excited about getting. He completely defaced the actors and added rude comments about himself all over them. Mister Egbert still doesn’t get it. He guesses he probably never will, and that he really doesn’t want to.
John doesn’t even turn from the computer screen when his dad walks in. Mister Egbert notices he’s chatting with his red-texted friend, and he is relieved that, well… someone still talks to him. It’s a terrible thing to be thinking, he knows it, but he also knows it’s true.
And it just breaks his heart.
“Why didn’t you walk Melissa out? She would’ve liked that.”
“The only thing she would’ve liked was to get the hell away from me as fast as possible. Nothing else.” He says, voice passive and expression morbidly serious. Mister Egbert doesn’t know how to reply.
“...what would you like to have for dinner?” he ends up asking, ashamed of his own weakness. Of his incapability of reaching the touchy subject at hand. John merely sighs and slumps in his chair.
“Can I have peanut butter jelly sandwich?”
“John. That’s not funny.”
“I know, sorry. But that’s what I feel like eating right now.”
And he resumes his typing, as if nothing had happened. Mister Egbert can see the hint of a frown now, and he doesn’t know if John said it because he really just felt like tasting the delicious sweet he never had, or if he merely wishes for something else. The thought frightens him to the depths of his soul.
That’s also something he doesn’t ever wants to know the answer to.
“What if we have pizza and ice cream? We can watch Con Air in loop until we both fall asleep on the couch.”
John stops and slightly turns his head towards his dad; now he really does look like he’s about to burst into tears.
“Really?”
The man nods. “Really.”
And when he hugs his son, he knows things will be okay, even if not for long.
That night they watched the movie together until both had pretty much memorized all the lines from every single character, and they made a game of repeating them before the actors even had a chance to talk. They both laughed and talked and ate a whole pizza together, then devoured half a carton of strawberry ice cream and talked with their mouths full and made fun of each other for it, and by the time it was three a.m. Mister Egbert tucked a very reluctant John into his bed. The little one fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, and his father truly felt like the boy was nine all over again. He doesn’t wake him up for school later that day.
He is also not in the very least surprised when he opens the door to his son’s bedroom around eleven and finds new scribbles on his wall, scarier and meaner looking than the ones before them.
It almost makes Mister Egbert want to cry.