Outside In Read Free Page A

check the clock. Three p.m.—time to get moving. I want to surprise Birch and Haley.
    Oedipus Birch is my link to this whole new life. His band, Whiplash, played occasionally at a Saint Louis U bar where I used to stop after graduate classes. Teaching junior high for eight hours followed by evening classes and several hours in the pub made for a long day, and an even longer day after, but I needed something to make me feel like a normal twenty-eight-year-old.
    The first time I saw Whiplash, Birch and I struck up a conversation during one of their breaks and instantly became friends. His given name of Oedipus made me think that his mother either had quite a sense of humor or that she should’ve been committed. Either way, the more time I spent with him, the more I realized that the name was only a precursor to the tangled mess that lay within. When you’re searching, there’s something comforting about being around people who are even more twisted than you are.
    When I showed up the night of Barry’s death, Birch had heard on the news about it, but he didn’t know it was my classroom until I told him. I was beating myself up pretty bad. I couldn’t escape the thought that if I had let Barry go to the restroom or the nurse, things might’ve been different. Birch’s response to that was: “Maybe Barry would’ve died in a stall alone if you had.” Birch always has a way of flipping a situation on its head and seeing it from a different perspective. Another reason I love beingaround him. That night he could tell I needed to forget but didn’t know how. He said, “Why don’t you take some time off?”
    There was no way I would desert my students. I said, “What kind of example would that set? If the students have to be there, I should too. Besides, spring break is only a week away. We can all take some time then.”
    Almost as if it was his plan all along, he proposed, “Just come down to Key West with me and the band for spring break then.”
    Of course I had a list of excuses why I couldn’t go—no money, no reservation, too much schoolwork—but he had an answer for each one. By the time I left the bar, he had me convinced to work as a roadie, bunk with the band, and take my work with me.
    As to be expected, when I told my parents about this plan, my mom accused me of running away and blamed Birch for being a bad influence on me. She never has liked him. Thinks he’s a dreamer who needs to grow up and get a real job. It’s always easier to reproach the friend than address issues with the person closest to you.
    This kind of meddling was exactly why I moved out after my first year of teaching. I would’ve loved to live rent-free and save money, but most days I was just trying to survive the school day. I’m not going to lie; in that first year it was a difficult transition from the college quads to the corridors of a junior high. I would come home exhausted and frustrated, and all she wanted to do was talk about what had happened. If I did open up about how tough it was, she would get worried that I was planning to quit, and she reminded me how she wished she were lucky enough to have such a good job with full benefits, retirement, and holidays and summers off. Ever since I was a kid, I was never allowed to quit anything. If I started something, I had to see it through to the end.
    I know she meant well, but she has this remarkable ability to make every situation relate back to her and make me feel like shit in the process. Just like when I told her and my dad that thesuspected cause of Barry’s death was an overdose on his mother’s pain pills. She went to the sink, picked up a dishcloth, and dried a bowl in the rack that wasn’t even wet. She said, “Oh my—I can’t imagine how she feels. To know you played a part in your own child’s death must be unbearable. You’ll understand if you ever have children.”
    I didn’t need to have children to know that what happened was fucked up. But I kept my