The Best American Short Stories 2020

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “Let’s keep all this between ourselves, okay, boys?” his father said to Ben and me, but we weren’t really listening, couldn’t respond. I put my shirt on inside out. My hands were shaking. “I’ll see that Kennedy is properly disciplined for this.”

  Ben helped me up off the bed, and the two of us stumbled through the house. I stepped on a plate and cracked it in two, but we just kept moving. When we got in the car, Ben locked the doors. We sat there. I put my head on the steering wheel and tried to breathe, but I couldn’t tell if I was actually breathing or not. I couldn’t tell if I was still alive.

  “Can you drive?” Ben finally asked me, but I didn’t respond. “Here,” he said. “Get in the backseat. I’ll drive us home.”

  I don’t remember the drive home. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Ben, who must have walked the half mile to his own house. I don’t remember talking to my parents, though I must have. I don’t remember doing my homework, but in the morning it was all done. I don’t remember taking a shower, how badly it must have hurt when the water touched those welts, some of which were trickling blood. I only remember that I woke up around two in the morning, the entire house quiet, and I turned on my Nintendo, and I played Super Mario Bros., running so fast, finding every single shortcut, just running and jumping, not letting a single thing touch me, running and running, until I’d finished the game. And then I just started over, kept running, until the sun came up.

  Kennedy wasn’t at school the next day. In art class we were making African ceremonial masks out of clay, and Ben and I sat alone at our table, not talking, not saying anything. At the end of the day I dropped Ben off at his house and then went home. I played video games. I let the pixels burn colors into my irises. I let my brain go away. I sat inside my room and made everything quiet.

  And Kennedy wasn’t at school the next day either, or the next, and with each day that he wasn’t there, I felt worse, this kind of dread building up in my stomach. I don’t remember much of those days except that Ben was not really a part of them, and how lonely that felt. It was worse than what Kennedy had done to us, the knowledge that Ben and I might not be friends anymore.

  On the third day my parents came into my bedroom and closed the door so my sister wouldn’t hear. “We’re worried about you, Jamie,” my mom said. “Something’s not right. We just got off the phone with Mrs. Nakamura and she said that Ben has been depressed, listless. We said we’d noticed the same with you. Now, here’s what we want to know. And we trust you, so we’re going to ask you this. And I hope you know how much we love you, and how nothing that you do will ever change that.”

  “Okay,” I said, slow to keep up.

  “Are you and Ben experimenting with drugs?” she asked, both she and my father leaning in, like I was going to whisper some secret in their ears. I’d never even smoked a cigarette. I was good. I was a good kid. I kept telling myself this while they waited for me to respond, that I was a good kid, that I was good.

  “We’re not taking drugs, Mom,” I told her, and they both let out this long exhalation, like they were so relieved and things could be normal again. “I’m just nervous, you know, about my grades, about school, about getting into a good college. Ben is too. It’s a lot of pressure.”

  Then they went on and on about how proud of me they were, how much they loved me, and how, no matter what, I was going to make something of myself, I was going to find a way to contribute to the world and make my mark. And it made me love them so much, I wanted to cry. But I also wanted them to leave, wanted them far, far away from me. Then they hugged me, and then they were gone.

  Only once I was sure that they were gone for good did I pick up a controller and start playing.

  The next day Kennedy was back at school, sitting at our table in the art room before Ben or I had even arrived. We stood frozen in the doorway until a kid behind us bumped into us and pushed us farther into the room. Kennedy had a spectacular black eye, and two of his fingers were taped together with a splint. And this made me happy. It gave me the strength to walk over to that table and sit down.

  “Long time no see, pussies,” Kennedy said, but his heart wasn’t in it. He looked sunken, sallow. He looked like a zombie.

  Neither Ben nor I said a word. We went over to the worktable and retrieved our African masks, which had hardened and which we were now painting. Mrs. Banks lectured Kennedy on how far behind he was and then plopped a lump of clay in front of him. After she went back to her recliner, he took a wire brush and simply stabbed the clay, over and over again, slowly.

  We worked in silence, only the sounds of John Tesh: Live at Red Rocks playing on the boombox.

  Toward the end of class, Kennedy leaned toward us. “I want you guys to come over again. Tonight. I want to show you something.”

  “No way,” Ben said. “Never again.”

  “You have to come,” Kennedy said. “If you don’t come, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

  I couldn’t even speak, couldn’t look at Kennedy. Ben said, “Never. We’re never coming over.” And I think if Ben wasn’t there that day, I would have gone over to Kennedy’s that night.

  “If you are not at my house tonight . . .” Kennedy said, but that was it. He just stared at us. He jabbed the brush into the clay and then walked out of the classroom, ten minutes before class was over. Mrs. Banks didn’t even notice.

  “We’re not going, okay?” Ben said to me, and he touched my arm. He held it there until I looked at him. “Okay?” he said. “We are not going.”

  “Okay,” I finally said, nodding. “Okay.”

  At the end of school we were certain that Kennedy would be standing next to our car, waiting for us, but he wasn’t there. We got into the car as quickly as possible and actually burned rubber getting out of the parking lot, the back of the car swerving for a few seconds until I straightened it out. As we drove I looked over at Ben, who was frowning.

  “Can I come over today?” he asked me, and I thought about it for a few seconds.

  “Okay,” I said. “Yeah.”

  We locked ourselves in my room and played Double Dragon, punching and kicking and whipping every cartoony thug that got in our way. We stood with our backs to each other and beat the living shit out of everyone that tried to hurt us. It was too easy to be therapeutic, but it didn’t make us feel worse. And a few hours passed, and my mom called us for dinner. “Are you okay?” Ben asked when I turned off the system.

  “Not really,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Me either,” he said. “But it’ll get better, okay?”

  “You’re my best friend,” I told him. I’m not sure why I said it. I guess I needed him to know it.

  “You’re my best friend too,” he said, smiling.

  At the dinner table, over meatloaf and green bean casserole, my parents asked us about our day, and we talked about the masks we’d made in art class, how Ben’s kind of looked like a fish-man and how mine was supposed to be a wolf but looked more like an anteater. And my sister talked about gymnastics, some tumbling technique she’d learned, but it was hard to picture it from her description. And then the phone rang, and I jumped up to get it, walking back into the kitchen for the phone.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hey, Jamie,” Kennedy said, and I felt my whole body go numb. I dropped the phone, and it swung there on its cord for a few seconds.

  “Who is it?” my dad asked. “Tell them it’s dinnertime.”

  I picked up the phone again, and there was silence on the other end. Finally Kennedy said, “Hello?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “You didn’t come,” he said, and he sounded sad, betrayed.

  “No,” I said.

  “I shot my dad,” he said. “I just did it. With a shotgun. While he was watching TV. It was . . . it was pretty horrible.”

  I didn’t say anything. I waited for him to start laughing.

  “I really did it. That’s what I wanted you
and Ben to see. I wanted you to see it. I wanted all three of us to be here. But you didn’t come.”

  “You’re lying,” I said.

  “I’m not lying, motherfucker,” he said, his voice finally taking on some kind of life. “I just called the cops. They’re sending someone over here. That’s why I was calling too. I wondered if your parents could get me a good lawyer. I need someone really good. I’m eighteen, Jamie. I’m an adult. I’m fucked.”

  “You’re lying,” I said, “to fuck with me and Ben.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. I heard sirens on his end of the line.

  “I wish you had come over,” he said. “I liked you guys. You and Ben. I thought you were okay.”

  “I have to go, Kennedy,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “They’re here anyways.”

  I hung up the phone and walked back into the dining room.

  “Who the heck was that?” my dad asked.

  I looked at Ben, and his eyes were so wide open.

  “Some guy in our math class,” I said. “He wanted to know what the homework was.”

  “Well, your food’s getting cold,” my mom said.

  I sat next to Ben, and we both pushed our food around, listening to my parents talk to each other, their voices happy.

  “Can Ben spend the night?” I asked them suddenly.

  “On a school night?” my mom replied.

  “Please?” I asked.

  “If it’s okay with his parents, then yeah, okay,” my mother said. Under the table Ben reached for my hand and squeezed it. He held on to it for the rest of dinner, and it steadied me. It kept me inside my own body, because I wanted to float away again.

  In my room, the door locked, I told Ben about Kennedy, what he said he’d done.

  “I don’t think he’s lying,” Ben said.

  “We’ll find out tomorrow,” I said. “I guess.”

  We were silent. And then I started crying and shaking. And Ben held on to me. “I hope he did,” I said. “I really hope he did it, and he’s not coming back.”

  “Me too,” Ben said, and now he was crying too, but not like me, not like I was.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ben said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too,” I said.

  What were we apologizing for? That we hadn’t protected each other? That we hadn’t kept each other safe? But I knew that he was sorry. And he knew that I was sorry. And he held on to me. And I held on to him.

  I think about that moment all the time. I wonder where Ben is now. I wonder what he’s doing. I wonder if he thinks about it. I miss him so much.

  TIPHANIE YANIQUE

  The Special World

  FROM The Georgia Review

  1. The Ordinary World

  Fly was alone. When his parents had dropped him off, they hadn’t come in like the other parents had done. He’d asked them not to, felt grown asking. Didn’t need their help with his one suitcase, half his weight, or with the backpack strapped to his body. He hugged his mom at the building door. Her eyes were furiously red, like she was witnessing the end of the world. Fly shook his father’s hand. His father held on and shook and shook, until Fly lurched away. His own palm sweaty and shaky. His father’s hand made a fist—​nonthreatening to Fly, but embarrassing all the same.

  Yes, it was good to leave his folks at the door. Fly walked in the dorm like he was from the place. Never looked back.

  He knew his room number by heart, but he again pulled out the piece of paper that had come in the mail: 504, it still said. He took the stairs, passing other freshmen hiking with their parents—​book boxes and mini fridges between them. On the door to 504, Fly’s government name was written in bubble letters on kindergarten paper. He took it off, crumpled it to a jagged ball. He wanted to eat it. Chew it down to paste and then crap it out. Instead he let it fall to the floor, roll sadly under the extra-long twin bed.

  There was only one extra-long twin bed. Sitting on that one bed in his new college home, Fly felt just like he had the night before. Nervous, and alone in that feeling. Wondering what his roommate would be like. If they would be cool with each other. Fly left the door open. Just in case. He wondered where the other guy would sleep. He guessed they’d have to roll in a cot.

  Within the hour the floor got loud and then louder. The parents who had stayed were leaving. The students were losing their minds with glee. Three girls tumbled out of the room from across the hall. They smiled at Fly with manic smiles—​like they were laughing at him. “He was cute,” he heard one say as they went, but she sounded hesitant. Like she was surprised. And maybe it wasn’t even Fly she was talking about. But no, Fly was sure it was him. That was something he had. The good looks.

  In this fashion Fly missed orientation that afternoon. Missed convocation that evening.

  His mom had packed him industrial amounts of pork-rind chips and beef jerky. They hadn’t been Fly’s favorite in years, maybe had never been his favorite. But there he was, lying on a quilt his grandmother had made for him, munching on a jerky stick, and staring at the ceiling. He was imagining his body floating five stories up, imagining that there wasn’t a bed or floor or five floors beneath him, because there wasn’t, not really; everything was connected, which meant that nothing really was keeping him from slamming to the ground but his own awareness of the bed and the floor and the five floors below him. He felt smart thinking metaphysical things like this.

  Then a freckled guy with hair so blond it was white leaned slowly into Fly’s doorway. The man floated there, at a slant, and then smiled. Fly froze, the jerky a sad flaccid meat hanging out of his mouth.

  “You must be . . . ?” The man asked this with his smile and his white eyebrows slanted up.

  But Fly didn’t answer. The man righted himself and stepped into the threshold. His legs were short and thick and Fly wondered if he was a dwarf.

  “You got the single,” the man said, and he said it so casually and happily that Fly realized that the man was young—​maybe not even a man-man. Though the guy, Fly now took in, had a full bushy blond beard.

  “So what are your allergies?” the other said. “Sorry, forgot my clipboard.”

  Fly felt his mouth open, but nothing came out.

  “Dude. I’m your RA,” the other said now, almost sternly. Cautiously.

  “What’s an RA?” asked Fly.

  “Oh, shit!” said the RA, regaining his smile. “It means I’m your dude. I’m like your big, uh, brother, or maybe brother is the wrong word, or whatever. But anyway. Resident assistant.” He high-fived the space on the door where Fly’s name had been. “Your name got lost. But anyway, I’m Clive. Look, we’ll figure out the allergies later. No worries. But we have a meeting downstairs, like now.” His grin went wonky for a second, but reset. He used his whole arm to wave Fly toward him.

  Fly spit the jerky out and followed.

  “Remind me your name?” Clive asked as they walked down the hallway.

  “Fly,” said Fly.

  At the meeting there was an actual adult. A grown-up. A white woman who also had a hint of beard. What was up with the hair on these people? She introduced all the RAs. Half of the RAs were black—​one of those was a guy who seemed girlie . . . but one was an actual girl. Dark-skinned and pretty. When introduced, the girl kept her arms at her sides but waved her hand like a shiver. Fly wished he was on that girl’s floor. But when she started talking there was no blackness in her speech to speak of—​nothing southern even. Just all “you know” and “like” and even a “yay!” at the end. Fly looked around to see if anyone else sensed her fraud. But no one met his eye.

  He was not going to survive freshman year. He was going to end up back home in Ellenwood before the week was out.

  But he didn’t. He got registered for classes. He started classes. Intro everything: American History, World Religions, World Music. Bare min. credits, because he still wasn’t sure he would stick, so why stretch. He started having lunch with the students fro
m Introduction to World Religions, because the class ended right around lunchtime, so why not. They would talk Judaism. Fly didn’t think he’d ever met a Jew in his life—​except for maybe his dad, who identified as black Jewish every now and then. But now there were a bunch of actual Jews. And they were saying things like “We’re not really white,” though they sure looked white to Fly. And also: “God as a concept is real. But God as a divine—​well, that is a social construction.”

  Fly started really reading; before he’d read books just for the sex scenes. But now there was still no roommate, so plenty of time. At the World Religion lunches, he would add things like “but for the black man, religion is the only safe route to masculinity. The secular black man as a man is too dangerous.” He’d never known he thought things like this before. It was his father who first spoke these narratives—​out loud during dinner, instead of dinner conversation. Now, when Fly spoke, the others would nod or shake their heads. Even the shaking heads were an agreement—​like “ain’t that something.”

  Walking out of the dining hall, Fly would pass a whole section of the cafeteria where the black and brown kids hung out. He longed for them. But how did those kids of color all know each other already in week two? There were only like one or two brown kids in his classes. Where were they all and how could he get in?

  2. Call to Adventure

  Fly didn’t actually have any allergies, but Clive kept asking. Clive would do his crazy lean in the doorway, and Fly would offer: “Strawberries?”

  “Nah,” Clive might say. “Can’t be strawberries. They don’t give a freshman his own room for that. They would just put you with someone else with a strawberry allergy.”

  “Peanut butter?” Fly tried again.

  “Nah. Same. It’s got to be epic. Like music gives you epilepsy or some shit.” Clive righted himself. His short legs now in the threshold. “You epileptic?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so either.” Clive had his clipboard; he looked at it and sighed. “So, classes good?” he asked Fly.