Bottled Up by Jaye Murray Page B

my back pocket was digging into me. I lit a cigarette, then took a look at the book.
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
    First line: “Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance . . .”
    Who’s Utterson and what the hell does countenance mean? I wondered. But I kept reading. What else was I going to do? Watch T-ball?
    Some guy in the book, Mr. Enfield, tried describing Hyde. “I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why.”
    More crap. I read a few pages of the book, but most of it didn’t make any sense to me. “He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone . . .”
    â€œDid you see me hit?” Mikey interrupted my reading, smiling all over his face as if it was Christmas morning.
    â€œNot bad,” I said, having no clue what he was talking about.
    â€œNot bad? It was a home run!”
    I hadn’t been watching and I didn’t need to feel like a shit about it either. Let his parents go to T-ball practice and yell rahrah. Hell, at least I was there.
    I’d smoked three cigarettes and almost finished the Coke. And I’d been reading the book and thinking the whole time. Wondering what this counseling thing was going to be like. Wondering how I was going to get the money to pay for my stash.
    I pulled Mikey’s backpack onto his shoulders and we started walking.
    â€œCan I have a sip?” he asked when he saw me take a drink from the can.
    I should have gotten him a Yoo-Hoo or something.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI’m thirsty.”
    â€œNo.”
    He put his hands around his neck, closed his eyes, and stuck his tongue out. “I’m real thirsty,” he whined.
    â€œWe’ll be home in a minute.”
    He grabbed my arm and the can spilled on me.
    â€œCut it out before I clobber you.” I put the can to my mouth and finished what was left.
    â€œI’m telling,” he said.
    â€œTelling who?” I crumpled the can in my hand and tossed it at a telephone pole.
    â€œHa ha. You missed,” he said.
    I should have brought him something to drink. I wasn’t thinking about him.
    All I thought about was getting to Slayer after school—getting some rum for my Coke.
    Hey, I needed it.
    Bugs didn’t.
    It was scary, though. First he eats my pot, then he tries to drink with me.
    I didn’t want to think about who this kid was going to be in ten years.
    A line popped into my head right out of the Jekyll and Hyde book: I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.
    He was heading there, all right. I just didn’t want to think about it.
    I want to know what to say to keep everybody off my back.
    Maybe there’s one word, one sentence. Hell, I’ll even sing a song if I have to.
    There was that song from when I was a kid about the monkeys jumping on the bed. I’ll change the words. “Ten little monkeys jumpin’ on my back. I pushed them off ’cause they didn’t know jack. I smoked up some weed to get me some slack—here’s more monkeys jumpin’ on my back.”
    When Bugs and I got home, my mother was lying on the couch.
    â€œI got to go somewhere,” I told her. She didn’t even turn around. All I saw was the back of her head and Mikey pulling on her arm, going on about his home run.
    She did the old that’s nice, that’s nice thing to him that parents do when they’re blowing you off. I had to get out of there. I’d done my job. I got him to T-ball. I got him home alive. Let him ask her a million questions about M&M’s.
    I stopped behind the deli. I had a couple of minutes to kill on my way to the counselor and needed some time to get myself right in the head. Hell, I was the best counselor I was ever going to have. I knew what I needed and I knew when. I needed a buzz. I needed something between me and the world, because the world was starting to feel like a pillow somebody was smashing into my