Old Wounds Read Online Free PDF Page B

offered to pick me up for school the next day. I happily accepted, after reiterating that despite the great orgasms we’d given each other, we were not romantically involved. He agreed, saying his life was complicated enough without a girlfriend hanging on him.
    After dinner, and a nice soothing walk with the one-hitter, I barricaded myself in my room and waited for the morning to come when I had to go to another, boring day at Damascus High.

I woke up with the worst headache I’d had in a while, which wasn’t helped by David’s voice booming in the hallway, loud enough to cause the window panes to rattle. He was yelling at Jane to get out of the bathroom while pounding on the door with what sounded like his fist. I would never understand why he didn’t just make the short trip to use the bathroom downstairs.
    “And don’t think I can’t tell that you’re listening, Elliott. Get your ass up. We’ve got less than an hour before first period and I’m not going to be late because of you again.”
    I swore he was like the glue that held everything together around here. To the outsider at school, he probably looked like the one sane guy in the house of the loonies, but Jane and I knew different. Even our adopted father Stephen knew.
    David’s coping mechanism was being perfect at everything. He got straight A’s in every subject, on every paper, and on every test and quiz, and was Captain of every major sport at Damascus High. He was going out with Rebecca, the best-looking girl at school, and managed to be Vice-President of the student government. He’d probably be asked to be valedictorian when he graduated too. Everyone loved him, which was exactly what he was going for.
    Jane was a bit different. She wasn’t really popular like David. She was friends with Rebecca, but wasn’t a cheerleader like she was and most of those girls thought she was weird. Jane molded herself to be as likable as possible, to as many people as possible, so she made a lot of “friends.”
    But Jane had a harder time with keeping up the prefect façade than David. She had “dissociative episodes”. At least, that’s what Stephen and Robin called them. Robin was a licensed therapist as well as being Becca’s mother, and a friend of Stephen’s. Basically, the episodes were just periods of time Jane “zoned out.” Unfortunately, even with medication, they still occurred.
    As far I as I knew, there wasn’t a definitive trigger for Jane’s “episodes” and no real way to stop them. She would never tell me what went through her mind during that time, but I didn’t blame her for keeping it to herself. If it was something bad and the adults found out, she could go back to the institution and I knew how much she hated that place.
    “Elliott, I’m serious! Tick tock, I’m a clock and that means get your ass out here!”
    I sighed, knowing that if I didn’t move, David would attempt to open the door. That would not help my headache, so I swung my feet over the side of the bed, rubbed my hands down my face, pulled a shirt over my head, and stood up. Then I opened the door as I scratched my neck and cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t give me that look, Elliott.”
    I shook my head. “I h-h-have a heada-a-ache.”
    “Suck it up, dude. Take a hot shower. That’ll help.” He turned back to the closed bathroom door and started banging on it again. “That is, if we can get Jane out.”
    “I’ll g-go d-d-downstairs,” I mumbled, pulling my door closed. I always closed my door. My room was the only place that was mine, only mine, and no one else was allowed in unless I was dying. Stephen promised me that.
    The shower, toast, and coffee ended up relieving some of my headache, but the two Tylenol helped even more. As usual, David was behind the wheel of his old International Harvester Scout while Jane sat in the passenger seat, complaining that we never took her car. I sat quietly in the back as usual. There wasn’t much I ever really