Into the Pit
To Be Beautiful
Count the Ways
The dead possum’s still there.” Oswald was looking out the passenger window at the gray, furry corpse on the side of the road. Somehow it looked even deader than it had yesterday. Last night’s rain hadn’t helped.
“Nothing looks deader than a dead possum,” Oswald’s dad said.
“Except this town,” Oswald mumbled, looking at the boarded-up storefronts and the display windows, which were displaying nothing but dust.
“What’s that?” Dad said. He was already wearing the stupid red vest they put him in when he worked the deli counter at the Snack Space. Oswald wished he’d wait to put it on until after he dropped him at school.
“This town,” Oswald said, louder this time. “This town looks deader than a dead possum.”
His dad laughed. “Well, I don’t guess I can argue with that.”
Three years ago, when Oswald was seven, there had actually been stuff to do here—a movie theater, a game and card store, and an ice-cream shop with amazing waffle cones. But then the mill had closed. The mill had basically been the reason the town existed. Oswald’s dad had lost his job, and so had hundreds of other kids’ moms and dads. Lots of families had moved away, including Oswald’s best friend, Ben, and his family.
Oswald’s family had stayed because his mom’s job at the hospital was steady and they didn’t want to move far away from Grandma. So Dad ended up with a part-time job at the Snack Space, which paid five dollars an hour less than he’d made at the mill, and Oswald watched the town die. One business after another shut down, like the organs in a dying body, because nobody had the money for movies or games or amazing waffle cones anymore.
“Are you excited it’s the last day of school?” Dad asked. It was one of those questions adults always asked, like “How was your day?” and “Did you brush your teeth?”
Oswald shrugged. “I guess. But there’s nothing to do with Ben gone. School’s boring, but home’s boring, too.”
“When I was ten, I wasn’t home in the summer until I got called in for supper,” Dad said. “I rode my bike and played baseball and got into all kinds of trouble.”
“Are you saying I should get in trouble?” Oswald said.
“No, I’m saying you should have fun.” Dad pulled into the drop-off line in front of Westbrook Elementary.
Have fun. He made it sound so easy.
Oswald walked through the school’s double doors and ran smack into Dylan Cooper, the last person he wanted to see. Oswald was apparently the first person Dylan wanted to see, though, because his mouth spread in a wide grin. Dylan was the tallest kid in fifth grade and clearly enjoyed looming over his victims.
“Well, if it isn’t Oswald the Ocelot!” he said, his grin spreading impossibly wider.
“That one never gets old, does it?” Oswald walked past Dylan and was relieved when his tormentor chose not to follow him.
When Oswald and his fifth-grade classmates were preschoolers, there was a cartoon on one of the little-kid channels about a big pink ocelot named Oswald. As a result, Dylan and his friends had started calling him “Oswald the Ocelot” on the first day of kindergarten and had never stopped. Dylan was the kind of kid who’d pick on anything that made you different. If it hadn’t been Oswald’s name, it would have been his freckles or his cowlick.
The name-calling had gotten much worse this year in U.S. history when they’d learned that the man who shot John F. Kennedy was named Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald would rather be an ocelot than an assassin.
Since it was the last day of school, there was no attempt at doing any kind of real work. Mrs. Meecham had announced the day before that students were allowed to bring their electronics as long as they took responsibility for anything getting lost or broken. This announcement meant that no effort would be made toward any educational activities of any kind.
Oswald didn’t have any modern electronics. True, there was one laptop at home, but the whole family shared it and he wasn’t allowed to bring it to school. He had a phone, but it was the saddest, most out-of-date model imaginable, and he didn’t want to take it out of his pocket because he knew any kid who saw it would make fun of how pathetic it was. So while other kids played games on their tablets or handheld consoles, Oswald sat.
After just sitting became intolerable, he took out a notebook and pencil and started to draw. He wasn’t the best artist in the world, but he could draw well enough that his images were identifiable, and there was a certain cartoony quality about his drawings that he liked. The best thing about drawing, though, was that he could get lost in it. It was like he fell into the paper and became part of the scene he was creating. It was a welcome escape.
He didn’t know why, but lately he had been drawing mechanical animals—bears, bunnies, and birds. He imagined them being human-size and moving with the jerkiness of robots in an old science-fiction movie. They were furry on the outside, but the fur covered a hard metal skeleton filled with gears and circuits. Sometimes he drew the animals’ exposed metal skeletons or sketched them with the fur peeled back to show some of the mechanical workings underneath. It was a creepy effect, like seeing a person’s skull peeking out from beneath the skin.
Oswald was so immersed in his drawing that he was startled when Mrs. Meecham turned off the lights to show a movie. Movies always seemed like a teacher’s final act of desperation on the day before break—a way to keep the kids quiet and relatively still for an hour and a half before setting them loose for the summer. The movie Mrs. Meecham chose was, in Oswald’s opinion, too babyish for a roomful of fifth graders. It was about a farm with talking animals, and he had watched it before, but he watched it again because, really, what else did he have to do?
At recess, kids stood around tossing a ball back and forth and talking about what they were going to do over the summer:
“I’m going to football camp.”
“I’m going to basketball camp.”
“I’m going to hang out at my neighborhood pool.”
“I’m going to stay with my grandparents in Florida.”
Oswald sat on a bench and listened. For him there would be no camps and no pool memberships and no trips because there was no money. And so he’d draw pictures, play his old video games that he’d already beaten a thousand times, and maybe go to the library.
If Ben were still here, it would be different. Even if they were just doing the same old stuff, they’d be doing it together. And Ben could always make Oswald laugh, riffing on video game characters or doing a perfect impersonation of one of their teachers. He and Ben had fun no matter what they did. But now a summer without Ben yawned before him, wide and empty.
* * *
Most days Oswald’s mom worked from 12 p.m. until 12 a.m., so his dad had to make dinner. Usually they got by on frozen meals like lasagna or chicken potpie, or on cold cuts and potato salad from the Snack Space deli that were still good enough to eat but not good enough to sell. When Dad did cook, it was usually things that just required boiling water.
While Dad got their dinner ready, Oswald’s job was to feed Jinx, their very spoiled black cat. Oswald often thought that he used about the same amount of cooking skill in opening Jinx’s can of stinky cat food as his dad used in his dinner preparations.
Tonight Oswald and Dad were sitting down to plates of blue-box mac and cheese and some canned corn his dad had zapped in the microwave. It was a very yellow meal.
“You know, I was thinking,” Dad said, squirting ketchup onto his macaroni and cheese. (Why did he do that? Oswald wondered.) “I know you’re old enough to stay home by yourself some, but I don’t like the idea of you staying by yourself the whole day while your mom and I are at work. I was thinking
you could ride into town with me in the mornings and I could drop you off at the library. You could read, surf the net—”
Oswald couldn’t let this one slide. How out of date could his dad be? “Nobody says ‘surf the net’ anymore, Dad.”
“They do now … because I just said it.” Dad forked up some macaroni. “Anyway, I thought you could hang out in the library in the mornings. When you get hungry, you could head over to Jeff’s Pizza for a slice and a soda, and I could pick you up there once my shift’s over at three.”
Oswald considered for a moment. Jeff’s Pizza was kind of weird. It wasn’t dirty exactly, but it was run down. The vinyl on the booth seats had been repaired with duct tape, and the plastic letters had fallen off the menu board above the counter so the listed toppings included pepperon and am urger. It was clear that Jeff’s Pizza used to be something bigger and better than it now was. There were tons of unused floor space and lots of unused electrical outlets along the base of the walls. Also, on the far wall was a small stage, even though there were no performances there, not even so much as a karaoke night. It was a strange place—sad and not what it had once been, like the rest of the town.
That being said, the pizza was decent, and more important, it was the only pizza in town if you didn’t count the kind from the frozen food department at the Snack Space. The few good restaurants in town, including Gino’s Pizza and Marco’s Pizza (which, unlike Jeff’s, had real pizza maker names), had closed their doors not long after the mill had.
“So you’ll give me the money for pizza?” Oswald asked. Since Dad’s job loss, Oswald’s allowance had dwindled to practically nothing.
Dad smiled—a kind of sad smile, it seemed to Oswald. “Son, we’re bad off, but we’re not so bad off I can’t spot you three-fifty for a slice and a soda.”
“Okay,” Oswald said. It was hard to say no to a warm, gooey cheese slice.
Since it wasn’t a school night and wouldn’t be again for quite some time, Oswald stayed up after Dad went to bed and watched an old Japanese monster movie, with Jinx curled up purring on his lap. Oswald had seen a lot of B-grade Japanese horror films, but this one, Zendrelix vs. Mechazendrelix, was new to him. As always, Zendrelix just looked like a giant dragon thing, but Mechazendrelix reminded him of the mechanical animals he drew when he stripped them of their fur. He laughed at the movie’s special effects—the train Zendrelix destroyed was clearly a toy—and at how the actors’ lip movements didn’t match the dubbed-in English. Somehow, though, he always found himself rooting for Zendrelix. Even though he was just a guy in a rubber suit, somehow he managed to have a lot of personality.
In bed, he tried to count his blessings. He didn’t have Ben, but he had monster movies and the library and lunchtime pizza slices. It was better than nothing, but it still wasn’t going to be enough to keep him going all summer. Please, he wished, his eyes closed tight. Please let something interesting happen.
* * *
Oswald woke to the smell of coffee and bacon. The coffee he could do without, but the bacon smelled amazing. Breakfast meant time with his mom, often the only time he got with her until the weekend. After one necessary stop, he hurried down the hall to the kitchen.
“Well, look at that! My rising sixth grader has risen!” Mom was standing over the stove in her fuzzy pink bathrobe, her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, flipping—oh, yum, were those pancakes?
“Hi, Mom.”
She opened her arms. “I demand a morning hug.”
Oswald sighed like it annoyed him, but he went over and hugged her. It was funny. With Dad, he always said he was too old for hugs, but he never turned down his mom’s open arms. Maybe it was because he didn’t get to spend much time with her during the week, while he and Dad spent so much time together they sometimes got on each other’s nerves.
He knew Mom missed him and felt bad for having to work such long hours. But he also knew that since Dad’s job at the Snack Space was just part-time, Mom’s long hours were most of the reason the bills were getting paid. Mom always said that adult life was a fight between time and money. The more money you earned to spend on bills and necessities, the less time you got to spend with your family. It was a difficult balance.
Oswald sat down at the kitchen table and thanked his mom when she poured his orange juice.
“First day of summer break, huh?” Mom went back to the stove to scoop up a pancake with her spatula.
“Uh-huh.” He probably should have tried to sound more enthusiastic, but he couldn’t muster the energy.
She slid the pancake onto his plate and then served him two strips of bacon. “Not the same without Ben, huh?”
He shook his head. He wasn’t going to cry.
Mom ruffled his hair. “I know. It’s a bummer. But, hey, maybe a new friend will move to town.”
Oswald looked at her hopeful face. “Why would anybody move here?”
“Okay, I see your point,” Mom said, piling on another pancake. “But you never know. Or maybe somebody cool already lives here. Somebody you don’t even know yet.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it,” Oswald said. “These pancakes are great, though.”
Mom smiled and ruffled his hair again. “Well, I’ve got that going for me anyway. Do you want more bacon? If you do, you’d better grab it before your dad gets in here and vacuums it all up.”
“Sure.” It was Oswald’s personal policy never to refuse more bacon.
* * *
The library was actually kind of fun. He found the latest book in a science-fiction series he liked and a manga that looked interesting. As always, he had to wait forever to use the computers because they were all taken by people who looked like they had no place else to be, men with scraggly beards wearing layers of ratty clothing, too-thin women with sad eyes and bad teeth. He waited his turn politely, knowing that some of these people used the library for shelter during the day, then spent the night on the streets.
Jeff’s Pizza was as weird as he remembered. The big empty space beyond the booths and tables was like a dance floor where nobody danced. The walls were painted a pale yellow, but they must have used cheap paint or only one coat, because shapes of whatever had been on the walls before were still visible. It had probably been some kind of mural with people or animals, but now it was just shadows behind a thin veil of yellow paint. Oswald sometimes tried to figure out what the shapes were, but they were too blobby to make out.
Then there was the stage that never got used, standing empty but seemingly waiting for something. Though a feature even weirder than the stage lay in the back right corner. It was a large rectangular pen surrounded by yellow netting, but it had been roped off with a sign that said DO NOT USE. The pen itself was filled with red, blue, and green plastic balls that had probably been brightly colored once but were now faded and fuzzy with dust.
Oswald knew that ball pits had been popular features in kiddie playlands but had largely disappeared because of concerns about hygiene—after all, who was going to disinfect all those balls? Oswald had no doubt that if ball pits had still been popular when he was little, his mom wouldn’t have let him play in one. As a licensed practical nurse, she was always happy to point out places she found to be too germy to play in, and when Oswald would complain that she never let him have any fun, she’d say, “You know what’s not fun? Pinkeye.”
Except for the empty stage and the ball pit, the strangest feature in Jeff’s Pizza was Jeff himself. He seemed to be the only person who worked there, so he both took orders at the counter and made the pizzas, but the place was never crowded enough that this was a problem. Today, like all other days, Jeff looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. His dark hair was sticking up in weird places, and he had alarming bags under his bloodshot eyes. His apron was stained with both recent and ancient tomato sauce. “What can I getcha?” he asked Oswald, sounding bored.
“A cheese slice and an orange soda, please,” Oswald said.
Jeff stared off into the distance a
s though he had to think about whether the request was a reasonable one or not. Finally he said, “Okay. Three-fifty.”
One thing you could say about Jeff’s pizza slices: They were huge. Jeff served them on flimsy white paper plates that were soon stained with grease, and the corners of the triangles always overlapped the plates’ rims.
Oswald settled in to a booth with his slice and soda. The first bite—the tip of the triangle—was always the best. Somehow the proportions of all the flavors in that bite were perfect. He savored the warm, melty cheese, the tangy sauce, and the pleasantly greasy crust. As he ate, he looked around at the few other customers. A pair of mechanics from the oil change place had folded up their pepperoni slices and were eating them like sandwiches. A table full of office workers clumsily attacked their slices with plastic forks and knives, so they wouldn’t drip sauce on their ties and blouses, Oswald guessed.
After Oswald finished his slice, he wished for one more but knew he didn’t have the money for it, so he wiped off his greasy fingers and took out his library book. He sipped his soda and read, falling into a world where kids with secret powers went to a special school to learn how to fight evil.
* * *
“Kid.” A man’s voice startled Oswald out of the story. He looked up to see Jeff in his sauce-stained apron. Oswald figured he had outstayed his welcome. He had sat in a booth reading for two hours after having bought a meal that cost less than four bucks.
“Yes, sir?” Oswald said, because politeness never hurt.
“I got a couple more cheese slices that didn’t sell at lunch. You want ’em?”
“Oh,” Oswald said. “No thanks, I don’t have any more money.” He wished he did, though.
“On the house,” Jeff said. “I’d just have to throw ’em out anyway.”
“Oh, okay. Sure. Thanks.”
Jeff picked up Oswald’s empty cup. “I’ll get you some more orange soda while I’m at it.”
“Thanks.” It was funny. Jeff’s expression never changed. He looked tired and miserable even when he was being extra nice.
Into the Pit Page 1
