Yesterday's Gone: Season One

discovered his entire block was as empty as his house, he was a few planets past the moon.  
    As he tottered down the street on his 12 speed, he stopped to knock at each house, considering its occupants and the offenses they’d committed against him over the years. He knocked on the bully Eddie Houghton’s house, remembering the time the fat red head made Charlie eat dirt in front of his classmates in sixth grade.  
    Good riddance.
    He stopped at Josie Robinson’s house, a girl he had a crush on since kindergarten, and who had been his friend until last year, before she started hanging out with Shayanne and the rest of the cheerleaders in the Bitch Clique. It was bad enough that she’d shunned him, but at one point, she called him “pizza face” in front of half the lunchroom. It was all he could do to keep from crying.  
    Bye-bye, Josie.
    Then there was that asshole, Mr. Lawrence at the end of the block. A short, creepy dude who once hired Charlie to go door to door and hand out flyers for his painting business. Mr. Lawrence had promised Charlie $40 for the job. But after Charlie spent the entire weekend canvassing the neighborhood with the ads, Mr. Lawrence claimed someone saw him dumping a box of the flyers in a dumpster at the Quick Stop (which was bullshit). So he refused to pay Charlie.
    Sayonara, asshole.
    Charlie laughed as he raced to the next block and repeated the process, growing more giddy with every empty house.
    “Goodbye, assholes! Fuckers! Motherfuckers!” he shouted from the top of his lungs. It was an amazing release, even if no one was around to hear him.
    For too many years, he’d had to bottle his emotions and take shit from everybody. He’d been the world’s doormat for most of his life, through no fault of his own. He just happened to be a bit geekier, a bit paler, and had a few more zits than everyone else in his class. If he didn’t have the zits, got tan instead of turned pink in the sun, and his hair was straight instead of a curly blond mop, maybe people would have seen him a bit differently.  
    All he wanted to do was get through adolescence under the radar. But ever since middle school, it was as if he had some sort of homing signal which seemed particularly honed to attract unwanted attention. And when you stood out, the wolves licked their chops.
    Growing up a momma’s boy had made him soft.  
    He spent the first 11 years of his life practicing ways to make his mother happy. She’d been depressed since his father died, so it was his mission to bring her smile back. He’d put on puppet shows, tell her jokes, and would even go to painting classes with her on weekends. While most kids avoided their parents, Charlie was best friends with his mom.
    But having no father figure in his life had made him meek and a magnet for the aggro assholes wanting to vent their frustrations and call him momma’s boy, faggot, and anything else their tiny intellects could muster.
    He might have been able to cope, if it weren’t for Bob.  
    Charlie’s mom met Bob four years back. They began dating immediately. Dating turned into an impromptu wedding. Everything was good for a few months. That’s when Bob dropped the mask and let his drunken, violent colors bleed into Charlie’s world. In a land of bullies, Bob was their king. And there was nothing Charlie could do. And nothing his mother would do .
    And for that, he was glad she was gone.
    Smell ya later, Mommy.

    **

    Charlie rode around a while longer until he circled back to Josie’s. He knocked again. When nobody answered, he tried the doorknob. To his surprise, it was unlocked.
    Hot damn!
    He opened the door and stepped inside “Hello? Josie? Are you here?”
    When nobody answered, he closed the door.  
    The house was cool, despite the loss of power. And it was well lit by all the large windows and open blinds. He hadn’t been in Josie’s house in three years, but it was as nice as ever. Her mother was in real estate, made good money, and routinely indulged in her premium tastes.
    Josie’s dad had left her mother a few years earlier, but the a-hole was an investment banker, so the monthly checks were fat.  
    Despite her family’s wealth, money didn’t seem to affect Josie all that much. In fact, she seemed embarrassed by her mother’s extravagance, which was probably the thing Charlie liked most about her, other than how she was cuter than an anime character. She didn’t act like the other rich kids in the school,