Page 49 of Badd Ass

“Jesus fuck. What happened to the kids who did it?”

I laughed bitterly. “Not a damn thing. I never saw them…nobody saw anything. I mean, never mind the paint on the back of my car where they’d hit me, or the fact that everyone knew exactly who it was that hated Isaac so much. But yeah, there wasn’t even a real investigation. A sort of cursory, ‘Oh no, this kid nobody liked died, how sad, guess it was an accident. Someone from out of town, probably.’ And that was it. His parents moved, and I wanted to quit school. Mom wouldn’t let me, and so—I finished, got my diploma, and joined the Army.”

“Goddamn, Mara.”

I shrugged. “Yeah. It was…it was bad. What really gets me is that the bullying only got that much worse when we started dating. I know—I know it’s not directly my fault, but I’m still partially responsible. I mean,theydid it, they killed him. But they hated him even worse for daring to date me…I’d been pretty popular, you know? In the inner circle of the cool kids. So when I started dating Isaac, they looked at it as Isaac stealing me from them, tainting me, somehow.”

The movie was starting, but neither of us was paying attention, and neither was the teenage couple, so our conversation wasn’t disturbing anyone.

I hesitated, and then let out another sigh. “So, that’s Isaac. What else is relevant and important? Um…I was date raped while I was in the Army. He drugged me and I woke up naked and sore in an alleyway. That was fun. Of course, in that case the guy that did it failed to realize how close we were in the medical unit. My entire unit found the guy, and…uh, curb-stomped him, I guess you could call it. Shitty part of that was it wasn’t the first date I’d gone on with that guy either. I’d been seeing him sort of casually for like a month. We’d even slept together once. And then he put GHB in my drink and raped me. Sort of soured me on guys, you might say. Sort of hard to trust anyone, you know? After Isaac, and then Chad, yeah…dating seemed stupid and dangerous and pointless, so I stopped doing it.”

Zane was quiet for a while, staring at the screen but obviously not watching. “I don’t know what to say.”

I took his hand. “You wanted to know, and I told you. That’s all part of what makes me tick.” I squeezed his hand. “Nothing you need to say. You’re listening, and that’s what’s important.”

“I’m sorry you went through all that, Mara.”

“Me too. I mean, I can’t change it, and it made me stronger, but it’s why I’m having a hard time getting myself to open up to you.” I sat in silence half-watching the movie for a few minutes, sitting beside Zane, and yet there was only one thing on my mind. Or…one person. “You want to hear about my dad?”

Zane twisted in his seat to look at me. “Of course, but only if you want to talk about him.”

I lifted a shoulder. “I mean, I’ve told you about Isaac, and I told you about Chad, so I might as well tell you about Dad.” I nodded my head at the red-lit exit sign. “Want to get out of here? I’m not really feeling the movie.”

Zane stood up and led me out of the theater without hesitation. We found a nearby bar, slid into a corner booth, and ordered some drinks. When we were settled in, Zane sitting beside me, I began peeling the label off my light beer.

“Uh oh,” Zane said. “You’re peeling the label. That’s not good.”

I shook my head. “Nothing like what happened with Isaac or Chad. It’s just…complicated.” I spent a moment or two thinking. “My dad was a normal guy, a normal dad. He worked a nine-to-five job selling insurance, went to all my piano recitals and theater productions, played with me in the backyard. Drank Budweiser sitting on the front porch after work, watched wrestling and NASCAR, kissed my mother when he left in the morning. He was just…Dad. But then, when I was twelve, he bought a Harley, sold his insurance agency, and left.”

“Midlife crisis?”

I shook my head. “No, not really. He was only thirty-five. It wasn’t a crisis, and it wasn’t as random as it may have seemed. Then, to me, at twelve, it was the most unexpected and shocking thing in the world. I just came home from school one day and Dad’s F-150 was gone and there was a motorcycle in the driveway. He had a backpack packed, and he was wearing leather chaps and a leather jacket. Mom was screaming at him, and he was just taking it. Which wasn’t Dad, you know? They bickered as much as any married couple, but nothing crazy. Mom never screamed, and Dad never yelled, but he also wasn’t passive. I didn’t understand. He gave me a kiss on the cheek, told me he’d send me letters, and that he’d see me soon, and then he got on his bike and rode away.”

“Just like that?”

I nodded. “Just like that.”

“How is that not random?”

“Well, do that math. He was thirty-five when I was twelve: he was twenty-two when Mom had me. Mom was born in town, but not Dad. He was a drifter, I guess. Blew into town one day on a motorcycle, met Mom at a diner…and then ended up falling in love and staying. Mom had me, and he sold his bike, got a job selling insurance, and ended up owning the agency. Mom thought he was content, he had her, he had me, and he had a good job that paid well. We weren’t the richest people in town, but we were pretty well off. Then, out of the blue, he decided he’d had enough domesticity, and left.”

“You ever hear from him again?” Zane asked.

I nodded. “Yep. But not for a solid year. He didn’t send a letter, didn’t send a birthday card, nothing. He sent Mom cash in an unmarked envelope every month, but that was it. She wrote him off, and so did I. Then, about a month after my fourteenth birthday, right at the beginning of summer break, I was reading a book on the front porch and I heard motorcycles. I knew it was him. He rolled up on his Harley, wearing a vest with a bunch of patches on it, new tattoos on his arms, a big beard—he was different, but it was Dad. And there were about twenty other bikers with him, all in the same club. I didn’t understand it then, of course, I just knew that there was a whole shit load of big scary tough looking guys on motorcycles, with a bunch of hard-looking women behind them, or on their own bikes.”

“He took you?”

I bobbed my head side to side. “Yes, and no. He didn’t kidnap me. He came up and asked if I wanted to spend the summer with him. I was a fourteen-year-old girl and I was still mad at him for leaving, but I also just missed my Dad. And I was curious. Like, what was it that was so much better out there than here at home with me and Mom? So I was like, sure. He told me to pack everything I could fit into a backpack and leave a note for Mom.”

Zane made a face. “You didn’t.”

I nodded. “I did. Stuffed a bunch of jeans, underwear, socks, and T-shirts into my backpack, threw on a hoodie, and left. I wrote Mom a note, that I was spending the summer with Dad and that I loved her, all that kind of thing.”

“I bet that went over well.”

I laughed. “Oh yeah. We made it maybe ten miles outside of town before about six state troopers showed up with lights and sirens going. The whole gang pulled over and the troopers went in guns drawn like I’d been snatched. Not an outlandish assumption to make, especially since that’s what Mom had told them.”

“What happened? Cops versus bikers never goes well, from what I understand.”