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Shawn woke up to an empty house.
He sat up in bed and took a deep breath. He could hear- or more accurately not hear- the silence around him and knew that he'd go into the main space of the trailer and there'd be no one there. That he'd go outside to walk to Cory's house and he'd see his dad's half broken pickup and his mom's busted two seater both gone. It happened more often than not, being alone. He hated it. He hated the waiting. But he was used to it.
Shawn finally willed himself to get out of bed, and he walked out of his room.
There was no note, but ten dollars were left on the kitchen table. Enough for either dinner or lunch for the next week or so. He had to make a choice. He chose dinner. If he got hungry at lunch, Cory would share. He always did.
Shawn got ready for the day, and started his trek to Cory's house and then school. He hated walking to school, but since he lost his bike during the whole cherry bomb incident, he hadn't been able to get another one.
At the Matthews' house, Mrs. Matthews offered him one of the muffins she had just put on a plate for the rest of the family. He ate one. He reached for another, before stopping himself. He was always so greedy, his mother said so. Mrs. Matthews put another muffin in a brown paper bag and told him to take it as an after school snack. It's like she Knew. He took it. Lunch, he figured.
Cory stopped riding his bike to school a few days after Shawn did. Shawn felt shitty about it, he really did. He even asked Cory why he didn't bike to school anymore, and Cory said he preferred walking, he was less likely to fall. Shawn saw the look in his eyes and knew it was bullshit. He didn't say it though.
The two boys walked to school, Cory in his new sneakers and Shawn in his too-small goodwill boots. He had gotten used to the pain of too small shoes, he didn't even limp about it anymore. So it was fine.
In his classes, Shawn acted out like always. Feeny gave him a note to bring home to his parents. Shawn said he would give it to them when they got home from work. Then he stifled a laugh. It wasn't funny, but it was either that or crying. He never cried. He hadn't cried in years.
At lunch Cory looked at Shawn's brown paper bag and asked what Shawn's mom packed him for lunch. Shawn said nothing and just started gingerly picking apart the muffin and eating it, watching the crumbs fall over the lunch room table. He finished eating it, and his stomach still hurt. Cory gave him one of his two sandwiches. Shawn asked why he had two sandwiches, and Cory just said he was going through a growing spurt so his mom insisted, but he totally wasn't going to eat it anyway. Shawn didn't believe that. Cory knew and Mrs Matthews Knew. But Shawn ate the sandwich anyway, because he was greedy and selfish and consistently took advantage of his best friend's family.
Cory wanted Shawn to go to Chubbie's with him after school, but Shawn said he couldn't, his mom wanted him home to help her do laundry. Liar.
After school, Shawn walked to the grocery store, stocking up on TV dinners. When he got to the checkout lane, he kept his eyes downcast. He saw Eric one lane down, bagging groceries. Eric saw him too. When Shawn finished paying and grabbing his bags, the teen who bagged his groceries questioned the lack of tip. Eric called the kid an asshole. Eric knew, Shawn was sure. He wasn't an idiot.
Shawn carried the bag of groceries all the way home, tripping occasionally when he couldn't see the ground below him. Part of him wondered how he'd react if he tripped and dropped everything he just bought onto the highway. He'd probably pick it all up and still eat them. Dirt on the box doesn't hurt anyone. Another part of him wondered how he'd react if he tripped onto the highway himself. Maybe he'd just lay there. Maybe he'd scream. Maybe it would be his own parents' cars that hit him. He kept walking home.
Trying to unlock the door while holding the bag of groceries didn't go well, and one of the boxes did spill out of the bag into the mud. Shawn opened the door and put the bag down inside before grabbing the fallen box and throwing it inside like it had offended him. It had.
He put everything he bought into the freezer, right next to the flour and sugar that were put in there to keep the bugs out but were never used. Shawn's mom didn't bake (she did, however, get baked. More often than Shawn thought was cool, just kinda sad).
He put one of the TV dinners into the microwave and let it cook. It was one of the ones with the brownie, something to make him feel a little normal. He was just having a little home cooked meal of salisbury steak and a side of corn and a brownie for dessert that his mom made special for him. He wanted to choke on that brownie.
While dinner cooked, Shawn took his math homework out of his bag. He couldn't remember how to divide fractions. Even if his dad were home, he probably wouldn't know either. His mom wouldn't care.
The silence in the room was suffocating him. Just the slightest buzz coming from the fridge and the yelling from the trailer next door. That made it worse, Shawn decided. Knowing that the world was alive outside his home. It was just dead in there with him. He wondered if he got sick and couldn't move from the couch, how long it'd take for someone to realize to rescue him. He threw up in his mouth a little.
The brownie was dry but Shawn still ate it first like he always did like a stupid little kid. He forgot to buy plastic forks like a dumbass so he washed one of the forks in the sink and used that before tossing it back in after. He'd wash it again tomorrow.
He tried to do his homework again, but he was still completely and totally lost.
His feet hurt. He wanted to take his shoes off, but he had stepped on glass shards hidden in the rug one too many times and knew better than to take his shoes off before he got to his room.
When Shawn got a headache after looking at his math homework for too long, he went to the kitchen cabinet where they stored the medicine. By medicine, that meant a single bottle of ibuprofen and all of the alcohol in the house. Shawn took two pills with some stale coffee from the day before because it was the closest thing he had to drink. It was so gross he immediately gagged and spit it into the sink. Then he poured a cup of water and took the pills again. He wondered what would happen if he took the whole bottle. He wondered what his obituary would say. Twelve year old screw up overdosed on ibuprofen of all things. Pathetic.
He gave up on the math homework. He knew he was an idiot, his grades said so, so he figured he would just fail the class again. He'd live (supposedly).
At bedtime, Shawn laid in bed awake, staring at the ceiling. He wondered what he did this time to drive both of his parents away. He wondered if this time it was for good.
His mom always came back and tried desperately to be a normal mother for two days before giving up again. His dad would act like he hadn't been gone at all and Shawn would continue to clean up after the messy drunken man. And each time Shawn desperately wanted nothing more than for them to tell him what he did wrong. So he could make sure it didn't happen again. It would anyway.
He felt like just an empty, broken shell of a boy, desperately clinging onto the stained white sheets and moth eaten comforter. He tried to calm his racing heart and sooth his upset stomach but he had long decided that he was unfixable.
So he just stared at the ceiling. And if there were tears streaming down his face, he'd deny it. If his sobs were so visceral they shook him to his core, he'd deny it. If he ended up lying on his side, curled up and hyperventilating, clutching at his sides like a violent hug, his nerve chewed nails leaving imprints on his skin, he'd deny it.
He'd be thirteen in three days, he needed to stop being such a baby.