Like a Charm

by Karin Slaughter

  The more he danced, the more we laughed.

  Even Anthony.

  It wasn't any fun to beat up Anthony, incidentally. He would just fall down, never saying anything, never begging or squealing or giggling like Lamar. Funny thing was, I remember seeing Lamar really give it to Anthony, so I guess he got a kick out of it. Lamar would punch his poor fat friend in the same place in the arm that we punched him, but Anthony would just rub it with his hand, a look of stupefaction on his stupid, fat face. Lamar called Anthony Fat-Boy, Fatty-Boomba-Latty, Fatty-McFat-Fat, the President of the Fat States of Fat-merica.

  This made Benjamin crazy.

  I can say this now – if I had said it then he would have beaten the crap out of me – but Benjamin was kind of fat himself.

  'You wanna pick on someone just because they're fat?' Benjamin would say to Lamar, defending Anthony. 'You wanna make fun of somebody just because they're a little bit overweight?' He punctuated each word with a hard punch to Lamar's arm.

  'You do it,' Lamar would say.

  'I' – punch – 'do' – punch – 'not' – punch.

  'Stop it.' Lamar twisted his body and fell to the ground.

  'It's all right,' Anthony said softly. 'He was just joking.'

  We were on the school playground, on the swings.

  'Shut up, faggot,' Benjamin said. 'Just because I'm beating up Lamar because he called you fat doesn't mean I won't beat the crap out of you because you're a faggot, you faggot.'

  So Anthony and I waited until Benjamin got tired of beating the crap out of Lamar.

  Then, as they walked away, Lamar rubbing his arm, Anthony a few steps behind, Lamar turned around to Anthony and sang, 'Fatty fatty fat-butt! So fat you ate the cat's butt!'

  From where I was on the swings I could see Anthony's face. I could almost feel the hot tears exploding down his cheeks.

  Infuriated, Benjamin took off after Lamar, chasing him across the soccer field, over the pedestrian overpass, and into the vacant lot behind the Safeway. I ran behind Benjamin, Anthony huffing and puffing behind me. I thought the whole thing was hilarious, to tell the truth. Benjamin was fat, and Lamar had found this weird, indirect way of saying it. Lamar jumped up on a rock and held his tight little fist in the air, smiling hugely, like he was about to say something magnificent. But Benjamin just crashed into him, grabbing him around the waist and pushing him into a huge pile of trash. 'It's not nice' – punch – 'to call someone' – punch – 'fat' – punch.

  'I didn't call you fat,' Lamar said.

  'I didn't say I was fat,' Benjamin said, punching him again. 'Are you saying I'm fat?'

  Lamar squirmed and tried to twist away.

  Benjamin reached for the nearest thing, which happened to be a rusted tin-top to an old can of something, and held it to Lamar's throat.

  Me and Anthony were standing on the rock looking down.

  'You better go ahead and do it,' Lamar said. 'Because one day I'm going to—'

  'What?' Benjamin said. 'You're going to do what, fag fucker?'

  Anthony's eyes were huge, and he was out of breath. 'One day,' he gasped, 'he's going to kill you.'

  Benjamin and I just laughed.

  'He will,' Anthony looked around, even more surprised. 'He's crazy.'

  Benjamin laughed so hard he actually rolled off Lamar into the heap of trash. 'Crazy?' He went into hysterics. 'Lamar?'

  Lamar got up and brushed the filth from his clothes. 'I'd kill you now,' he said, giggling hysterically, 'but these are my good pants.'

  There was a party at Clarista Siedbetter's once. Her family had an above-ground backyard pool. Everyone was there. Even Lamar and Anthony showed up, Lamar in a pair of tight red swimming trunks and a Scooby-Doo towel wrapped around his skinny shoulders, Anthony in his dad's plaid boxer shorts and a minuscule green and white towel that had been stolen from a Holiday Inn. Lamar and Anthony climbed up on the platform and were about to get in when Clarista said, 'Oh I'm so sorry, Lamar, but the law only allows eleven kids in the pool at a time.'

  'The law?' Lamar lifted an eyebrow.

  'You know' – Clarista had it all worked out – 'safety regulations.'

  I gave the pool a quick count.

  There was me, Benjamin, Clarista, Billy Elliman, Tiffany Engleton, Todd Skrillitz, Sheri Bristol, Jonathon and Bobby Bintliff, Kelly Fritz, and Parker Townsend.

  Eleven.

  Sheri Bristol, who was already one of the prettiest girls in our neighbourhood, offered to get out so Lamar could swim. 'I don't mind,' Sheri said.

  But Clarista gave her this look. It was like in Star Wars when Darth Vader strangled that guy without even touching him.

  Sheri just shut the fuck up.

  The sunlight that day was a narcotic; morphine light mixed with the heavy chlorine in my eyes and I saw a film over everything – blue, green, yellow, like I was looking through sheets of plastic. Everything seemed slo-mo, far away, disconnected. 'It's all right.' Lamar, smiling as always, wrapped his Scooby-Doo towel round his shoulders, and climbed down from the platform. Anthony remained a few steps behind. 'We have a hose in our backyard, and my dad just bought me a Slip-n-Slide.'

  Benjamin laughed. 'Yeah. Go play with your Slip-n-Slide!'

  It seemed like time folded in half. It seemed like I saw myself from above.

  The sun heated the blue water and glanced off the tanned faces of the neighbourhood kids.

  Clarista swam directly over and kissed me. I was twelve, two weeks from thirteen. She tasted like cigarettes.

  At home that night I considered giving Clarista the charm bracelet I had stolen from Lamar. I took it out of the drawer and examined it. It was pretty old, I guess, with a tiger, a little train that had actual moving wheels, a saxophone, little ballet slippers, and even a monkey.

  But for some reason I decided to keep it.

  Fuck Clarista, I thought. And then I actually thought about fucking Clarista.

  And that was weird.

  Two weeks later it was just me and my sister. No other kids. No party. My mom had made a chocolate cake, and we were sitting around after a dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, my favourite, picking at the bones, when we heard the doorbell. Answer the door,' Jean said.

  'It's my birthday. You answer it.'

  By that time my mom was already opening the door, revealing Lamar and a brightly wrapped package. 'Happy birthday!' He wore that usual sideways smile.

  I got up.

  The package was tied with curly red ribbons and silver bows.

  'Come in, Lamar.' Mom was speaking to Lamar but looking at me. 'Isn't that nice?' she said. 'A birthday present.' Whenever there was a stranger in the house, my mother started using her June Cleever voice.

  'Hi, Lamar.' I walked over to the living room, and Lamar stepped inside.

  'Would you like a piece of birthday cake?' my mother asked. 'I'll bet you'd like a nice big piece of chocolate birthday cake.'

  Lamar gave me that look, all sideways and smiley.

  'Yeah, Lamar,' I said weakly, 'have some cake.'

  'Open it,' he said, holding the package forward.

  'What is it?'

  My sister rolled her eyes. 'Open it, moron.'

  I took the package, sat down on the living room floor, and carefully slid the ribbon off, then I tore some of the wrapping away.

  'It's an ant farm.' Lamar was standing above me.

  'An ant farm?'

  'You better keep that thing out of my room,' Jean said. 'I don't want ants crawling all over my stuff.'

  The paper torn back, I could see the box cover. In big, yellow words it said ANT FARM! The fun, scientific way to learn about the insect kingdom!

  My mother looked at me. 'What do you say?'

  I looked at Lamar. 'Thanks, Lamar.'

  My mother was standing behind Lamar, and she was about to touch his shoulder, but for some reason she stopped herself halfway through and disappeared into the kitchen.

  I remember seeing Lamar through the picture window
of his house. He would stand on a chair and look out at us when we were playing. He had a way of pushing his chest forward and holding his hands up in front of him, his fingers moving slowly, like he was strumming a harp.

  What a fucking freak.

  The subdivision of our neighbourhood was organized around a series of alternating blocks and cul-de-sacs. There was a block, and going into the middle of each block was a street, at the end of which was a circular drive. Organized around the circle was a series of houses, each of them pretty much the same. Some had grey roofs; some had black. Some of the houses were made of red brick; some had coloured siding. Our circle, which was called Galaxy Court, was the last part of the development and butted right up against the turnpike. On the other side of the pike was the Andromeda Shopping Plaza, which included the Safeway, Dart Hardware, Hallmark, 31 Flavors, H & R Block, and 7-Eleven. Behind the Safeway was a vacant lot. There were a bunch of large, flat rocks, big enough to stand on, a couple of rusted out dumpsters, and a fascinating glacier of trash.

  I can't tell you how many times we beat the crap out of Lamar back there. Or threw him into one of the dumpsters. Or covered him with garbage.

  Anyway, for the past couple of weeks I hadn't seen Benjamin around much. I had seen him with Clarista Siedbetter's brother Eddie once, who was fifteen. They were getting into some other teenager's car. I had thought to call after them, to see if they were going to the mall, but I was pretty sure Benjamin had seen me. I had even seen him smoking inside the concrete tube with Clarista, and I didn't think it was just a cigarette, and he had his arm around her. So, since I had nothing to do I went over to the Safeway lot and just sort of poked through the trash.

  Anyway, I was jabbing a stick at a super-gross dead rat when I heard a voice say, 'You're going to catch a disease.'

  I turned around. 'Hey, Lamar.' It was a Sunday morning, I remember, and I was surprised to see him because Lamar's family was usually in church on Sunday mornings.

  He came up beside me and sniffed. 'My father said you shouldn't play with dead animals, that you can get diphtheria.'

  I pushed the stick under the rat and flicked it towards him. 'He's right.' It grazed his bare leg.

  'Stop it.' He rubbed his hands over the piece of skin the dead rat had touched. Then he said, 'You want to play something?'

  'Like what?'

  'I don't know. Make-believe?'

  Make-believe was a game I was trying to leave behind. I had just turned thirteen. 'You mean like Star Trek?' I said. 'Or war?'

  'That would be cool.' Lamar nodded. 'Or what about religion?'

  'What do you mean, religion?'

  'We could have our own religion,' he said, 'and we could be gods.' He jumped up on a rock and pointed down at me. 'We could pretend this rock is a mountain, and that there's an entire civilization down there in the trash. You know, countries and cities. And sometimes we can be nice gods and give them good weather, and other times, for no reason whatsoever, we can smash everything in sight.' Lamar was smiling his maniac smile.

  'And they have to worship us?' I said. 'They have to get down on their knees and pray to us, like, three times a day?' I climbed up on the rock next to him. 'Because if they don't—'

  'Yeah,' Lamar said, 'if every single person doesn't worship the heck out of us three times a day' – he jumped down from the rock and started smashing imaginary cities – 'we'll kill everyone.' I was feeling like a regular Mahatma Gandhi for not punching Lamar, and was also a little surprised by the vividness of his imagination. 'Except for this little family,' he went on. He picked up an empty box of kitchen matches and placed it gently on top of the rock. 'A devout family of four, who always worships us every day. They get to live and to be the founders of a new, futuristic civilization.'

  'Nah.' I stepped on the matchbox, grinding it beneath the ball of my foot. 'Fuck them.'

  I looked at Lamar's face. He was biting his lip and for once his smile had disappeared.

  Over the course of my childhood Benjamin and I had broken, mangled or destroyed pretty much every toy this kid ever had. We took away his baseballs, snapped the arms off his GI Joes, slipped his Tonka Toys into our pockets and told him we didn't know where they went. I had never felt bad about it. Not once. But now, for some reason, after stepping on an empty matchbox . . . 'I'm sorry about that, Lamar.' I reached down and reconstructed it.

  Lamar released his lower lip and smiled. 'So this family that worships us can be the beginning of an entirely new civilization.' He placed the now-smashed-but-pathetically-reconstructed matchbox on a flat part of the rock, then went to the trash glacier to find other items. 'The first thing they build,' he said, 'is a temple in our honour.' He found an empty orange juice carton and placed it next to the matchbox.

  'Oh, man,' I said, suddenly excited. 'Check out this temple.' I selected an empty bottle of Sprite and placed it on the rock.

  'OK,' Lamar said, smiling full out, 'OK. So maybe that temple can be in your honour, and this one' – he grabbed another soda bottle, placing it at the end of our imaginary civilization – 'can be for me.'

  'And they become rivals,' I said, 'and one part of the world starts to worship me and the other half starts to worship you, and they start to have wars and crap.'

  'An excellent idea, Mr Watson.'

  We played silently for a while, going back and forth from the trash glacier to the large flat rock and placing imaginary houses, schools and temples in a grid pattern. The cities grew, side by side, and I couldn't help but notice that Lamar's civilization was somehow more clever than mine, that the way he placed his bits and pieces of trash actually resembled a metropolis as though seen from an aeroplane. We completely covered the rock, and then I felt it was time. I flicked a white plastic bottle cap towards Lamar's city. It struck and toppled a milk carton.

  'What are you doing?'

  'My people have been secretly amassing weapons,' I said, 'and now they're ready for battle.'

  'All right.' I saw Lamar's smile, wide and white. He grabbed an old pen and flung it towards my biggest temple. I laughed and picked up a flattened Coke can, skimming it off Lamar's city. We went back and forth a few times this way until Lamar said, 'And now the gods themselves are called upon to fight.' We started walking over our cities, smashing everything with our feet, kicking down the schools and auditoriums, the city halls and restaurants. We shattered and scattered all our work until the entire civilization was reduced to rubble. 'And now,' he said, fully absorbed in the game, 'it is time for me to send my only son to live among the people.' Lamar knelt down on the rock and placed a red twisty-tie that he had fashioned into the shape of a cross in the middle of all the rubble.

  For some reason I felt my face turn hot. I said, 'That is ridiculous bullcrap.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'You're just repeating some crap they told you in church.' I was repeating my father, actually, who hated everything about religion and went into a tirade whenever it came up.

  'OK,' he said, 'forget it.'

  'I've already forgotten,' I informed Lamar, walking away.

  'We could play Star Trek.' Lamar got up and came after me. 'Or war. You could be Spock.'

  I turned round. 'I don't feel like playing Star Trek.'

  'Do you want to watch TV?' he said. 'You could come to my house.'

  I punched him. He rubbed the patch of skin I had punched and kept walking beside me. 'We could build up the civilization and smash it down again.'

  'I don't think so.'

  'We could—'

  'You never know when to shut up, Lamar,' I said, 'do you?'

  We walked back across the pedestrian overpass, crossed the turnpike, me angry for no real reason and Lamar with his head down, and continued that way until we came to our houses.

  Then, right before I walked into my yard, I punched him in the arm so hard he fell on the ground.

  I was in the driveway, listening to music on an old transistor radio I had found in my dad's closet, when two police
cars drove up next door, one black and white, the other a plain sedan. The policemen got out, went to Lamar's house, and knocked. Lamar's mom answered. She wore a beige pant suit. I turned the radio off and went to stand by the fence to hear what was happening. I remember her saying, 'What?' I remember Lamar's sister, Estelle, coming to the door. She'd had her hair done. I turned round from the fence and saw my mother standing at the door of our house. She had a package of Kraft macaroni and cheese in her hands. I heard one of the policemen ask for Lamar. Then the two policemen in suits went inside and the other two waited for a while on the front lawn.

  One of them turned his face towards the sun.

  A couple of minutes later I saw Lamar come out. His mother was right behind him. They went to the police car and one of the officers opened the door to the back seat. They got in, and the plainclothes policemen got in the front. They started the car up again and drove away, leaving me standing in the yard holding the transistor radio, Estelle in the door of Lamar's house, and my mother behind me. When I turned to look at my mother's face I saw something in it, some delicate movement along the jaw.

  'I want you to tell me what happened.' She sat me down at the kitchen table.

  'What happened to what?'

  'What did Lamar do?'

  'Lamar didn't do anything.'

  'Why did the police come for him?'

  I remember this: I was crying. I didn't know why. I felt like an idiot. Thirteen years old, and I was crying.

  'If you know something,' my mother said. 'If you know anything, you have to tell me . . .' Her voice was shaking. She was thin and tall, with short curly hair. It occurred to me for the first time just then that she was a person.

  A local girl – it was Tiffany Engleton, I found out later – had discovered the body of a boy in the vacant lot behind the Safeway supermarket on the turnpike. The police suspected that a fight between two neighbourhood boys had gone too far, and for the time being they were calling it an accident.

  It was Benjamin, I realized. Benjamin was dead.