Trowbridge

By Dominic R. Gabriel

After the murder-suicide of his parents, Calvin leaves Hame (the poor Detroit suburb he grew up in) to go live with his aunt in Hillside (the wealthiest city in Michigan), where he will begin his junior year of high school. Only a couple days into the new school year, one of Hillside High's students commits suicide by jumping off the nearby Trowbridge. According to local legend, long ago five teens all jumped off this bridge, one every thirty minutes, until the final jump was made at midnight. They all lay dead on the ground below.

A day after the suicide, Calvin meets a new group of friends in school, one of whom is obsessed with this bridge and becoming famous. No more than one month into the school year, Calvin and each of his new friends experience inescapable conflicts that will ruin their lives forever, which leads them to make a pact to reenact the legend on Trowbridge and take their own lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543980677

Dominic R. Gabriel

Dominic R. Gabriel is an award-winning actor and member of the Screen Actors Guild under the name Dominic Ryan Gabriel. He was recently nominated for Best Actor for his performance in the feature film Some Are Born, at the 2015 Eclipse Awards. Dominic was born and raised in Michigan, specifically in the metro-Detroit area. Throughout his childhood he loved writing short stories and screenplays, especially in the horror genre, and he loved watching them on screen just as much, especially the original Halloween. After graduating from Roseville High School in 2008, he decided to go to school to learn how to write screenplays professionally and learn the art of film directing. In 2010 Dominic graduated from the Motion Picture Institute of MI in screenwriting and directing. During his time in film school, he wrote two screenplays, one of which would eventually be his first novel, Concealer. After being nominated for Best Actor at his school’s film festival for his short thesis film, Nostalgia, he decided to pursue a career in film acting. In 2013 he moved to Los Angeles. He starred in four feature films, including American Bred, which he and the rest of the cast won Best Ensemble Cast at the March LAIFFF, and Days of Power, which is due for release in 2016. He is currently working on his second novel and is going to star in the new feature film Bomb City. When he’s not working, Dominic loves to play and write music on his guitar, spend time outdoors, watch old movies starring Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Al Pacino, and listen to metal, Metallica in particular.

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Copyright 2019

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-1-54398-066-0 (print)

ISBN 978-1-54398-067-7 (eBook)

Contents

Hame: The Late Orphan (Summer of ’06)

Hillside

Junior Year (Day 1)

Day 2

Wes

Friday

September’s End (three weeks later)

Homecoming

Flashbacks

The Pact

Jumpers

Chapter 1

Hame: The Late Orphan (Summer of ’06)

TWO SHOTS!

Two shots were all it took to change my dallied plans of summer. The shots were the beginning of the end to everything... including my life.

One bullet entered my mother’s stomach, where it remained; the other passed through the side of my father’s head. The two shots were only for their dead ears—for I was not there. Still, I was not surprised to come home to see their bodies, lying unresponsive, coated in the most wicked black blood.

It was an almost ridiculous sight: my father’s brain matter sticking to the newly painted wall. What was he thinking painting the living room in such a silly color (peach... really)? The desiccated blood looked amusing on a peach-colored wall. Had it been white, that blood would have popped and scared me back to infancy.

I wanted to cry—cry for my mother’s touch, for nourishment and assurance, but all I could do, all my heart allowed me to do, was stare. I could not bring myself to embrace their bodies; I did not want that awful color staining me, but inside I was already dead with them.

I looked at my mother sprawled across the plaid ’70s style couch. My grandmother (her mother) had given it to us before cancer took her. My grandmother had loved that couch and so did my mother. They spent many nights there watching Three’s Company on its itchy surface. It makes sense why my mother chose to fall there, as it was meant to be.

Their deaths occurred in the dark ages of 2006. This was just before the iPhone and Facebook took over the world, when we had MySpace, MapQuest, and flip phones (I always wanted a Razor). It was early August and I remember an entire week of rain. But on this morning, the rain had ended and the sun had returned, casting Godly rays upon their dead faces. They almost looked beautiful. I would have preferred that the rain continued.

I had just turned sixteen, too old to be called an orphan, too young to be emancipated. But at that moment, standing in the midst of that grisly silence, I had been transformed from a reckless, free-spirited teenager to a motionless body of angst.

What have you done?

***

We lived in the city of Hame, neighbors to the infamous Detroit. Hame was the third largest city in Michigan with a population of over 134,000 people, and it was a dump. The average household income was under $40,000 and it showed. We were famous in the state for having the highest rape percentage. We even had a Hame police officer rape a teenage girl I went to school with. Later on, after he was convicted, fellow inmates in the cafeteria of the Macomb County Prison stabbed him to death.

My family and I lived in a modest 1,000-square-foot home with white aluminum siding on a side street called Gloede Drive, just off the 616 highway. Up to that point in my life, that was the only place I had ever lived. Others looked at our house as unpleasant and eerie, but for my parents and me, it was our home and it was all we needed (all I needed) to stay happy.

The cement pathway leading up to our brown, wooden front door had one lightning bolt crack, starting at the sidewalk and ending under the welcome mat. The grass in the front yard was green all year long but faded brown toward the backyard due to the large pine tree in the center of the yard blocking any light from entering, as well as threatening to fall onto the house and crush its occupants. Our backyard was vast with no immediate neighbors on either side. A chain-link fence ran along the back of our yard, dividing us from the residents living on Bounoff Street. Despite the five other homes on Gloede, our house stood largely alone.

Everything else was industrial. There was a Ford assembly plant right across the street from our house, and the closest neighbor to us, on the right side, was an oil research facility at the corner of Gloede and Barber. Unlike the other buildings in the area, this one had a newly paved parking lot with no cracks and thus no weeds peeking out from underground. The outside landscape was, likewise, well maintained throughout the spring and summer. At least someone on the street was trying to present themselves as decent people.

Other than that, our town looked like something out of The Deer Hunter. Utility poles and power lines lined up like soldiers, rats ran through the fields and decomposing parking lots, and blue-collar men loitered their low-paid, mediocre existences. I promised myself I would never end up that way.

The street came to a dead end on both sides, the closest side backing into my old high school’s athletic field where I and a couple of buddies used to smoke weed. No big deal. Like every other teenager in the area, we smoked our shit out of pop cans, making the hits harder and the evidence easier to get rid of. Hame Tower High: Home of the Red Chiefs... I fucking hated that place! My best memories were when my friends and I skipped and got chased by the phys-ed teacher. We always escaped through the doors next to the gym, but the guy was so fat that by the time he got halfway down the athletic field, he’d already been out of breath and crawling on his knees back to the school. What a pathetic excuse for a gym teacher.

Yeah, I had my fun, but I was failing because of it. Too many absences, too many missed lectures. I had no idea what any of my teachers were talking about. When I passed a class, it was only because I had common sense or because my good friends let me copy their notes. I mostly passed with Cs, but not in geometry and biology. Fuck no. Those classes landed me two Fs and a summer back in school. The worst part of it all: my father had to pay for it.

Could I have been a part of the reason?

I did not have it in me to tell him about how I had been a fuck-up this past year. It is not like I was ever a straight-A student, but I also never failed a class and then I had two under my belt—that’s what scared me. I was not afraid he would hit me—no, my father never laid a hand on me, nor did my handicapped mother.

Maybe I would have turned out better if they had.

I was afraid he would be disappointed, and I knew how tight money was. My mother broke her ankle and her work dumped her, leaving her no insurance and no pay throughout her recovery.

My father was embarrassed; cleaning shit-filled toilets decorated by children and teachers did not leave him fulfilled. Working as a custodian ruined him. He could have been a rock star. My father had an attractive chiseled jawline, and at one time, beautiful curly hair. At twenty-five he went bald, though even that did not hurt his looks; his face still looked good, especially when he grew a little facial hair.

I was never ashamed of my father. He tried and that was enough. He was nineteen when I was born. Mother was eighteen. They met in high school toward the end of his junior year and her sophomore year, but they were anything from the typical high school sweethearts. Once I was old enough to understand, my dad told me the truth about him and my mom. This talk happened about a year before I found them dead. After he was done with his three beers, he told me that around the first year they started dating, he loved her.

He said, That first year was amazing. Just like any young love, anything new is exciting!

But the amazing year passed; it passed and his feelings were diminishing. He wanted to feel excitement again. He said after the year she became boring. Her personality dimmed once she gave herself to him. I believed every word he said because even to me she held back affection, but I did not realize this before he told the story. He could have had any girl in the school but he stayed loyal to Mom because she was pregnant. I knew he was telling the truth. I could tell by the sincere tone of his voice and the genuine glow in his eyes.

I could not accept that he had wasted his talent; it could have led to riches, had he not given up so quickly. He was only thirty-five and he was extraordinary at playing guitar. My mother could not stand when he played, always complaining about the distortion, which she referred to as noise. I think she was jealous, or mad because he did not make anything off his music. He played like Randy Rhoads—even had his signature offset V guitar downstairs. Dad could play anything and he was self-taught.

He could have been a star, and this shit would have never happened! I took it away from him; I should have never been born!

The guitar never left the room he played in. He never got up on stage. His playing was heard and appreciated by only me. I wanted to be just as good, or better. He taught me how to play when I turned thirteen. The first song he taught me was Smoke on the Water. It was nothing of a challenge. I caught on quick and then we went straight into Iron Man, which took me a little longer to learn. On his weekends off, we would sit in this small, unventilated room. The room was patched by white-faced paint, with nothing more inside other than two steel fold-out chairs, a small starter combo amp (which I played on), and a blue Ibanez that came with it. The room became my cell. Sometimes when I was stuck on a riff or scale, I felt like going crazy. I wanted to snap the guitar’s neck, smash the body against the amp, and then throw it out the window. It would have been fulfilling, only for the moment, but the pain kept me wanting more—the love, hate, and something more. I wanted to stay; through the burst-blood-blisters on the tips of my fingers, through the exposed flesh hitting the nylon, I wanted to stay through it all. There were days that led into nights and I continued strumming. The only difference at night was that I played unplugged so my mother would not go berserk. I was doing this for us all. For my father to live his dream through me and for my mother to worry about something else, other than money.

Then the TWO SHOTS came.

The day I found them I became terrified of the room. Their bodies were nowhere near it, but it scared me more than seeing them lifeless and painted red because I could hear the sounds of something too familiar: a famous song most would know. Looking down the hall, I noticed the door to the room had been cracked. Had he played one last song before it happened? The room had the ruins of his past, the what ifs, the regrets, everything that destroys, and then the good—the somber escape. It was where I saw my father free. There, he became a teacher, a poet, and an artist. Inside the room he was far from reality. The pain of life calmed. Even if there was no stage, inside his mind, he was full.

I believe he still sits there and releases his sorrows, but I could never enter again because I knew I’d see him happy, and I wouldn’t want to be a distraction like I had been when I was born.

Your music will forever haunt me.

As the unearthly guitar continued, I took a seat on the tan-colored carpet adjacent to them and sat Indian style. I examined their dead faces. Dad was lying on his stomach with one side of his face pointed in the opposite direction of where I sat and his hands were sprawled out. The gun was still in his grasp and he was wearing his work uniform: black cargo pants and a dark blue button-up, tucked in. His boots were still on; must have killed her minutes after his arrival. The exit wound pressed against the carpet, and his blood left a large halo-like appearance around his head. I looked left to the far end of the room and saw where the bullet had escaped. There had been a large hole in the wall about a foot away from the window, next to where the sofa ended; the sofa where my mother sat dead. Her eyes were closed. I do not think I could have stared had they been open, but I was happy that she looked at peace.

How I miss all the times we could have spent together.

We only get one mother. A mother’s beauty never fades. She died overweight, in a yellow tank top, sweats, and her left ankle in a cast. She wore the cast for what felt like a year but was really six weeks. My eyes were fixated on the plaster and all the writing from coworkers, as well as her one good friend, Jan, and from my father and me. It was like a mural had been drawn on her cast. Jan was a local artist and a rather good one. In large graffiti writing, she wrote GET WELL SOON and wrapped a large red amaryllis around the words (they are supposed to represent worth beyond beauty). But I was staring at what I had written, on the other side of her cast, at the very bottom, just above her toe.

I love you, Mom. I hope you get better soon.

Love,

Calvin

What pisses me off is that my dad and she tried to cover up the reason for this outcome. Did they really think I was that naive? I knew all along. I have been fucked up since I saw her kiss the other man!

I have no clue where or how she met him. She had no association with people who had money other than her modest, rich sister, but at that point in her life, they did not keep in touch. Her sister was quiet, fit, and successful—three things my mother was blind to and inexperienced in. Her entire life spent on Earth was around the poor and needy—reasons why my aunt opted out and made a life for herself. Somehow my mom found a way to manipulate and have sex with a man with more money than my father. Occasionally, I would visit her at Walmart where she worked. The store was close by to Cliff’s house (a good friend of mine whom I knew from elementary). I saw how she talked to her customers and how she tended to flirt with the men. She stuck her chest out and smiled seductively whenever an attractive single man would come to check out at her register. That was when I began to wonder about her morals...

***

My dad’s cell had gone off late one night at around one or two in the morning. His ringtone at the time was Mr. Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne. When I heard the synthesizer start, I immediately woke up—which was unheard of because on most nights I slept like the dead. It was because of how I saw my dad just before I went to bed, in some weird trance, as he watched the eleven o’clock news. His eyes were gray and empty. Beer cans lay on the ground beside him. It was a Saturday night, and on most Saturdays, Mom worked the night shift. But that night, she didn’t leave us dinner like she normally would. Before her departure, she applied a whorish amount of makeup and put her hair in curls. She wore her regular work clothes: blue jeans and an off-brand polo that had buttons starting at the abdomen. Typically, she would button the first three and leave the last two buttons undone, but this time, her cleavage was exposed. I imagined the managers at Walmart would have a problem with their head cashier dressing like a whore. But my father made no mention of it as she left; I think it all hit him later after a couple of beers on an empty stomach. But that song, Mr. Crowley, I can no longer stand it; it’s the song I heard playing from the room when I entered and saw their corpses. Over and over, the song played.

They continue to haunt me.

Before the call, he had still been up. The news was over and reruns of M*A*S*H were on. He was still Dad. But after the call, my father turned into a man I no longer knew. He answered the phone and said, Where? I did not have a chance to see what the matter was. By the time I came into the front room, he had already left; I caught his white truck reversing out of the driveway and then pushing forty down Gloede Drive, then taking a right down Barber. I thought he was heading toward the 616. All I did was wait. An hour passed, and the curiosity was eating at me, so I called him, but the call went straight to voicemail. He must have still been on the road and did not want to answer the phone while driving (or so I thought). I waited ten minutes and tried again, but still no answer.

The noise was killing me; the sound of Adult Swim on the television was raising my anxiety. I grabbed the remote and turned off the television. The time alone was better quiet. I stared out the window at the driveway, hoping he would be back soon. Just as I had begun to drift away to an undesired sleep, I remembered as a child, seeing the man kissing my mom in the driveway. My subconscious had answered all my questions and awakened all my past fears. I began to feel like a child again. The empty house had swallowed me whole and taken me back to a time when I felt forgotten, sitting and waiting for my parents to arrive from work, no money for a babysitter and no grandparents living. I was there, all alone, outside a world filled with wandering life, all of them strangers, glaring at the child looking through the front window.

I fell asleep on the floor of the living room, with a puddle of drool hanging from my mouth. The time was 4 a.m. when I woke up to the cold. My father opened the door softly to not disturb me, but it was nearing the end of June and the summer breeze invited itself in. I got up and wiped the drool from my mouth. What happened?

Dad looked like a man who had just experienced defeat. He stomped the dirt off his boots and removed his baseball cap, twisting it in his grasp. He took a second to choose his words wisely. Without looking at me, in a sibilant voice, he said, Your mother, she’s in the hospital. She messed up her ankle pretty bad at work.

How?

She slipped off the ladder, while she was stocking, and it shattered. She’s in surgery right now. His eyes were red and puffy like he had been crying just before entering the house.

I could see right through his lies. That’s who called you, her work?

Her manager called me. They transported her to St. John’s over on 12 Mile. Sorry, I missed your call. I barely had service while inside.

"Is she okay? When will she be home?

She’s doing fine. The hospital will call me in the afternoon and let me know. She’ll be coming home soon, but not for a few days. He then shut the door, without taking off his boots, went straight down the hall to their bedroom, and shut the door.

He was a changed man. Like a stranger out of my past. From then on, all I saw were the beginnings of his heartache—which would be passed down to me. His sorrow resonated through the hall and found its way inside me, like a virus. But there was more than just the blank stare; I could feel the stench of hate burning from inside him. The air was tainted. Something big was approaching, something life-altering, and all I could do was wait for the time to come and experience the next step in my life as an orphan.

Hell cannot be this vicious. If there is a Heaven, please, God, be gentle.

***

Four days went by until I saw my mother again. The days were long, and mentally they destroyed me. I was stuck in summer school from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m., and to make things worse, the teacher kept the air conditioning off. I put my hair back in a ponytail and wore a sleeveless Ride the Lightning shirt and basketball shorts with the same black DCs I had had for over two years. Still, I sweated profusely. It must have been eighty degrees that entire week, but inside the school, it felt like a hundred. With the heat and my mother on my mind, it was almost impossible for me to concentrate. I had so many unanswered questions, and I became a skeptic of my own scenario. Why had I immediately jumped to the conclusion that she went to go see the other man? It was possible she could have fallen at work; that would have made more sense. How could she have broken her ankle seeing a man? If he had hurt her, the police would have been at my house by now, questioning my father and me. So much was unanswered.

After summer school on Wednesdays, I would go over Darryl’s house and jam to some originals we had written, then smoke a joint or two after, but I had to go home first because that day I knew my mother would be home from the hospital.

After school, I ran straight home through the back of the athletic field. Once I got to Gloede, chills overtook me. I saw her blue, rusted minivan parked in the street; Dad’s truck was parked in the driveway. My breathing intensified. The walk home felt like an eternity. Once I entered through the storm door, my heart sank. There she was, sitting on the plaid couch, watching Food Network in a white T-shirt, neon shorts, and that damn cast wrapped around her ankle, resting on the wooden table in front of her. She looked exhausted; her face was pale and without makeup. I observed her other leg and noticed scabs covering her entire knee and bruises running down her shin. She looked at me with guilt and shame. I tried my best to stay positive and tell myself, It all happened at her work; it was all just an innocent accident. My dad was in the kitchen making grilled cheese; he had hardly said a word to me ever since the night he returned from the hospital.

I shut the door behind me; as much as I wanted to choke her, my love as a son was greater than any hatred, which had consumed me. She opened her arms for a hug. I approached her, with tears streaming from my eyes. I sat down beside her and embraced her. She could barely turn herself to embrace me back. Her hair smelt of cheap shampoo. I could feel her tears dripping on the back of my neck.

I’m sorry, hon’. she said. I love you, with all my heart. You’re my everything. I wish she wouldn’t have spoken. Her words only made me cry more, and boys don’t cry; I never really did, not until that year. The smell of the shampoo was making me sick. I moved my head away from her hair and took a glance at her neck. It was mostly concealed by her long, brown hair, but I could see enough of her neck to make sure what I was looking at was real and not something I had imagined. On her neck, placed like a whore’s stamp, was a hickey the size of a dollar coin, looking as fresh as the scabs on her knee. I was certain there was more, but her hair was in the way. I lost all thought process and my arms let go of her. I looked away from her neck and saw my dad standing in