Collateral Damage Read online

  Ty looked around the room, his gaze landing on a smiling Malayeka.

  “Alright,” said Ty, “his pills.” He counted on his fingers. “He’s takes one before dinner, then—”

  “Use the alarm on his cell phone,” interrupted a girl named Queen. “If he takes one at three o’clock, set the alarm for three and use the text feature to tell him what medication it is.”

  A grin grew slowly across Ty’s face. “You’re kiddin’ me?”

  Mr. Gomez took over. “It’s an easy solution to a hard problem. But it works.”

  “He takes five meds,” said Ty.

  “So set five alarms,” Queen said.

  Ty thought. “But what if he’s nowhere near his phone?”

  “Phone belt,” said Alicia, a cute white girl with spikey red hair. “My mom made this thing out of a cell phone case and a belt. My dad always has his phone.”

  Ty laughed, “You guys have thought of everything.”

  “We’ve had to,” said Alicia, although she wasn’t laughing.

  Ty checked himself. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just, I never would have thought of that myself.”

  Alicia continued. “Are meals a problem?”

  “How’d you know?”

  Mr. Gomez smiled. “That’s why we have the support group. To share—share emotions, frustrations, ideas.”

  Alicia continued. “Sunday night, Mom and I make meals for the week. We freeze them in containers with labels so he knows which container to use on which day. For snacks, we keep peanut butter sandwiches in the refrigerator.”

  “Wow,” said Ty.

  “And we set the alarm for when he’s supposed to eat. Some brain damaged people don’t even know when they’re hungry.”

  Ty felt punched in the gut. He’d thought of his father lots of different ways: athlete, coach, Army sergeant, hero, struggling injured vet. He wasn’t “brain damaged.” Was he?

  ***

  Ty took the bus home from the Vet Center. Everyone on the bus was in their own little world full of problems, although Teen ACHIEVE showed him he wasn’t alone. After the group, Mr. Gomez had shared handouts with more ideas and invited him to the next group. As for Malayeka, she had left him with a smile and, “Hope to see you again, Ty.”

  Once home, he found his dad watching a Bruce Lee movie.

  “Great. You came in at the best part,” he said.

  “Where’s Mom?” asked Ty as he sat on the couch, Mr. Gomez’s handouts in his hand.

  “Your mom? Here, watch,” his father said, pointing at the screen. “This is the first time Bruce fights the bad guys.”

  “He’s always fightin’ bad guys, Dad.”

  “Not in this movie.”

  Ty watched the first few kicks, then looked down at the handouts and read. Post Concussion Syndrome: What Is It? 10 Tips to Better Caregiving.

  On the screen, Bruce Lee had just knocked out a bad guy and then sat on his body.

  “Dad, where’s Mom?”

  Ty’s father lifted the remote to lower the volume, but accidently turned it up instead. The sounds of kicks and punches filled the room. Ty grabbed the remote and paused it.

  His dad looked at him. “Your mom, she wants to take some time away. It’s a stressful time for her, so she left.”

  Ty jumped up. “What do you mean, left?”

  “She’s staying with a friend.”

  Ty felt like he was on the receiving end of a Bruce Lee kick. “She’ll be back, right?” More silence from his father. “Dad?” Ty asked.

  His father stared at the screen and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not the husband I used to be.” He looked at Ty. “I know I’m not the father I was, either. When it gets to be too much, for survival, it’s fight or flight. You either fight or get out of there. Your mom has to decide what she wants to do.”

  Ty looked around the room, shocked that his mom just up and left.

  “Don’t worry, Son. We can do this. We’re fighters, right?”

  Ty dropped his arms to his side.

  “Look, I have good news.”

  With that, his father gripped hard the arms of his wheelchair and slowly lifted himself up. Once out of the chair, he took six steps. “What do you think? They picked me up for physical therapy today. Said I should be at twenty steps next week. Before you know it, we’ll be playing one-on-one again.”

  Ty glanced at the screen, at Bruce Lee, the fighter. He looked at his father, the sergeant who called the steps in battle, now fighting to learn to walk again.

  “Yeah, we can do this,” Ty said, making fists with his hands, “’cause we’re fighters.”

  10

  JANUARY 20 / TUESDAY, AFTER SCHOOL

  WARREN HIGH SCHOOL GYM

  “Ten more minutes, Tyshawn!” Coach Carlson yelled over the sound of the ball bouncing off the backboard, away from the net. Ty missed the shoot-around at the start of practice, late again. His dad had called in a panic, needing Ty to take the school bus home. When Ty got home, his dad forgot why he’d called.

  Ty gassed up the Ford with a fistful of change and drove back to school for practice, but he was too late. Coach greeted Ty by making him run the bleachers and then stay longer for shooting practice alone.

  Another shot, another miss. Ty thought, If I don’t get my game together, I’ll be sitting on the bench like some civilian.

  Coach Carlson shook his head as he tossed loose basketballs from the gym floor in Ty’s direction. From just outside the three-point range, Ty launched three quick shots. The clang of the balls hitting the rim echoed through the empty gym. That’s my life now, Ty thought, the sounds of clanging backboards, Coach’s complaints, and beeping machines. He missed the sounds of nothing but net and Shania’s whispers. Ty gripped the round, orange ball tighter and shut his eyes tighter still.

  “Don’t overthink it. Trust yourself.” Coach Carlson patted Ty on the back.

  “Balance, that’s what I need,” Ty said, his father’s words ringing in his ears.

  Ty took a deep breath and exhaled as the ball sailed through the air, Ty and the ball making the same swishing sound as Coach Carlson applauded.

  ***

  “Not much of a date,” Shania said as she put the last grocery bag in the trunk.

  “Sorry,” Ty mumbled. Shania wanted more of his time than he could give lately, taking care of his dad. Add in school and ball, and twenty- four hours in a day didn’t cut it anymore.

  “You’ve been saying ‘sorry’ a lot.”

  “Sorry.” Ty laughed, but Shania narrowed her eyes like a sniper taking aim.

  “How’d you do on Murry’s quiz?” Shania asked as they climbed in the car. She’d loaned him money for gas. He’d been more scared asking her for that than asking her to prom last year.

  “C.” Another mumble.

  “I got an A,” Shania said, rubbing it in like she wanted to punish him for ignoring her. “If you’d study more with me, you wouldn’t be getting C’s.”

  Ty said nothing as they drove to his house in silence, sticking to the speed limit. Not too fast, not too slow. Just follow the rules. Balance. Balance.

  ***

  Ty sprinted for the house when he saw smoke pouring from the front window.

  “What’s going on?” Shania called from the car.

  Ty didn’t answer as he fished in his pockets for his keys.

  “Ty, what’s wrong?”

  Ty opened the door and ran inside, following the smoke to the kitchen. His dad sat calmly at the table as smoke from the microwave filled the room. “What happened?” Ty asked.

  Ty’s father said nothing, just pointed to the smoking microwave. Ty opened the door and more smoke poured out. Inside were the remains of something wrapped in foil.

  “Dad, I told you not to—” Ty started, but Shania’s gasps cut him off.

  “What’s all of this?” Shania asked as she stood at the kitchen door, her eyes scanning the room covered in yellow Post-it notes.
r />   “He can’t remember things.” Ty opened the front door to let more smoke out.

  “What kind of things?” Shania asked in a tone Ty didn’t like or need.

  Ty stared outside, wishing he was anywhere else. “Anything.”

  11

  JANUARY 22 / THURSDAY EVENING

  WARREN PUBLIC LIBRARY

  “So are you going to ask me?” Shania asked Ty in an almost angry whisper.

  Ty didn’t like her tone—she’d used that ticked-off tone a lot lately—but was glad she finally spoke to him. Libraries were supposed to be quiet places, but Shania was taking it too far. When Ty showed up late for a study session, she’d frozen him out worse than a Detroit winter.

  “Ask you what?” he countered. She still had her earbuds in; he could hear the bass boom.

  Shania shook her head, smacked her gum, and buried her face back in her algebra book.

  “Ask you what?” Ty repeated.

  She didn’t look up, blink an eye, or move a muscle.

  Ty reached over, ripped the buds out of her ears, slammed the book shut, and pushed it off the table in the small study room. It landed on the floor with a thud. “What’s your problem, Shania?”

  She stood up and fixed Ty with an icy glare. “You.”

  “Me?”

  Shania pushed past Ty, tears streaking her face, leaving her books and bags behind. Ty knew he should say something, maybe run after her, but he couldn’t move. It felt like the walls of the small study room had closed in on him.

  Ty picked up Shania’s book, put it back on the table, and used it as pillow. But before his eyes shut, his phone rang. Not Shania, but his dad. Again.

  Before he picked up, Ty steadied himself like he was on the foul line with the game on his shoulders. Every minute of every day felt that way since his dad had come home. Or rather, since the man who used to be his father took over his house.

  “Hey, Dad.” Ty’s hello was clipped, the tone familiar. It was the one Shania had started using with him.

  “When are you coming home?”

  Ty laughed to himself at Shania’s vacated bags and books. He fished in his wallet for his bus pass since Shania had driven them to the library. “Sooner than I thought.”

  “The alarm on my phone won’t stop going off.”

  Like he’d learned in Teen ACHIEVE, Ty had programmed his dad’s phone to remind him when it was time to take a med. Every med was laid out, labeled, but even that was too much. He’d shown his dad over and over how to turn off the alarm.

  “It makes my head hurt.”

  “I’ll be home soon,” Ty said with a sigh. Again, he’d disappoint one person to help another. Balance, he thought. But Ty knew this wasn’t the kind of balance he needed in his life.

  After hanging up with his father, Ty tried Shania, but she wouldn’t pick up. He texted her, asking her to come back to the room, but she didn’t reply. He tried to study, but the numbers and letters in the algebra book were squiggles on a page that made no sense.

  Frustrated, angry, and more than a little scared, Ty gathered his things and started out of the room, but Shania was waiting for him outside, leaning against the wall.

  “You were supposed to ask me to the Valentine’s Day dance, Boo.” Ty could tell by the scratching voice and red eyes she’d been crying. “Or maybe you don’t want to go.”

  “I forgot. I’m sorry.” Ty reached out for Shania, but she turned her back.

  “You can’t treat me like this.”

  “Look, with my dad home, there’s a lot to do. You saw my dad, the notes. You saw what my house looks like.” He’d tried explaining it to Shania before. She’d just nod her head, saying she understood, but he knew she didn’t. Couldn’t.

  “I have to go.” He reached for Shania, but she dodged him.

  Ty glanced at his phone and wished he had a contact for Malayeka. She would understand, Ty thought. Like me, she’s collateral damage of the war.

  12

  JANUARY 24 / SATURDAY EVENING

  SOUTHFIELD HIGH SCHOOL GYM

  “Henderson, get up!” Ty heard Coach Carlson yell from the bench, even over the cheering of the Southfield Chiefs’ crowd as they applauded another Warren Wildcats turnover.

  The buzzer sounded like a laser as Rondell Henderson ran onto the court, all smiles. “Nice game, Tyshawn,” Rondell said as he passed Ty to replace him on the court. Ty offered a high five, but he couldn’t tell from Rondell’s tone if he was sincere or sarcastic. Given that Ty had more turnovers than points, the only person who thought Ty had a good game was probably the Chiefs’ coach.

  Ty took a towel from the bench, a bench he wasn’t used to sitting on for longer than a few minutes, but with his game broken, he knew that more splinters in the butt were in his future.

  “Let’s work out there!” Coach Carlson yelled. The rest of the team shouted encouragement, but Ty couldn’t bring himself to fake enthusiasm. Just months ago, he’d been a hero with his dad’s image up on a big screen. Now, he sat at the end of the bench, his dad’s needs looming like a dark cloud over his life.

  ***

  “Tyshawn, I need you! Come here!” Ty hadn’t even closed the front door all the way before his dad yelled for help. On the bus from Southfield, Ty sat alone, pushing away Arquavis, Rondell, and even Coach Carlson. He needed time to process what he’d lost: his minutes on the court, his grades, and hours upon hours of sleep. If he didn’t get it together, he could add lost time with Shania to the list.

  “I’m busy!” Ty shouted as he raced downstairs.

  “No, I need you to—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!”

  “Tyshawn, what’s wrong?”

  Ty answered his dad by slamming the basement door hard enough that a basketball trophy toppled from a shelf to the floor, breaking in half. “Leave me alone!” Ty yelled at his father. He wanted to shout it at everybody else who wanted more than he could give.

  But Ty’s father wouldn’t back down. He pounded on the door over and over. “Tyshawn, I need you.”

  “I need—” Ty stopped. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. More hours in a day? Fewer responsibilities? To go back to how things were before?

  The pounding on the door grew louder then suddenly stopped. Ty opened the door and saw his father staring down, massaging his hands. “It hurts too much.”

  Ty looked down.

  “I’m sorry this is all on you,” his dad said.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I was on point,” his dad mumbled. “It was my fault.”

  “Don’t say that. It doesn’t help anything.”

  “A man takes responsibility, Tyshawn.” He continued to rub his hands.

  Ty put his right hand on his dad’s shoulder. “I’m not on point anymore. I lost my job to Rondell. I’m sorry I let you down. I can’t concentrate anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I worked all these years to start, and I lost it. It’s not fair.”

  “Fair?” Ty’s father said. “Come with me,” and he wheeled into the living room. Ty obeyed.

  Ty took the couch while his father pulled a DVD from a drawer below the TV, loaded it into the player, and turned the TV on.

  “One of my therapists in the hospital in Germany gave this to me. To help me remember.”

  AFG:ISAFKUNAR:8/18/13 appeared in bold letters on the screen.

  “What’s that mean?” asked Ty. He leaned forward on the couch.

  “This is footage from Afghanistan, ‘Afg.’ I was part of the International Security Assistance Force or ISAF in the Kunar province. The numbers show the date.”

  Then came grainy, black-and-white footage of soldiers, walking a street, guns drawn.

  “We had intel that as many as forty insurgents had gathered, and we had to find them. We did a house-to-house search with drone backup, eyes in the sky.”

  At 2:12 into the footage, Ty’s dad paused the
scene, “See that big cloud in the corner? It was a booby-trapped door, and I opened it. That cloud is from the bomb that made me what I am now.”

  Ty was stunned. “Why didn’t you show me this before?” he asked.

  “Because it’s too hard to watch, Ty. But you needed to know the truth tonight.” Ty saw tears in his dad’s eyes.

  “You don’t need to be left alone to struggle, Ty. Whatever happened tonight, you got tomorrow to make it better and the day after,” his dad said. “I hope nothing in your life will ever be as bad as that cloud was to me. I’m giving you a gift, Son. It’s called perspective.”

  13

  JANUARY 31 / SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  VETERANS CENTER, DETROIT, MI

  “You haven’t been creative in a while, have you?” asked Malayeka.

  Ty stared at the box of crayons and bottles of glitter glue. “But this is like kindergarten, man.” If it was kindergarten, Ty thought, at least there would be naptime.

  Mr. Gomez overheard. “Not quite, Ty.”

  The circle of chairs for Teen ACHIEVE was now several tables, each with a box of craft items.

  “It’s art therapy,” said Mr. Gomez, “It’s a chance to reach inside ourselves for messages we can find no other way but through art.”

  “Reach inside for what?” Ty asked.

  Malayeka reached across the table and placed her hand over Ty’s hand. He wondered if she felt his pulse skip a beat when she touched him. She’d been gluing cotton balls to a page of yellow paper. “Usually, you don’t know until you try.” She pulled her hand away. “Trust me.”

  Mr. Gomez walked to another table where Queen and Tori had taken charge.

  Ty leaned in. “Listen, I’m on the outs with Coach, my grades are dropping—”

  “And you’re having trouble taking care of your dad, you told us.” Malayeka pushed the page of construction paper closer to him and finished his sentence. “Once you start this, you might like it.”

  Ty grabbed an orange crayon and started coloring on the page hard.

  “Not like that,” said Malayeka.