Project X

by Jim Shepard

  I scream for him to quit it when I can, but he doesn’t and finally I’m able to twist around and get him on the side of the head with my fist. Once he’s off I keep using my right hand and he blocks it with his arm but not completely because he’s trying to protect his finger. He straight-arms me in the mouth with the heel of his palm. Then we both go nuts.

  His mom runs upstairs and separates us. It takes her some time, and she ends up with a scratched face. We’re screaming at each other and she’s screaming at us. One of his fingers is bleeding through the bandage.

  “Fucking maggot,” he keeps screaming.

  “Suck me,” I scream back.

  “Stop it, both of you,” his mom screams. We still won’t stop trying to beat on each other, so finally she drags me downstairs by the collar. “Don’t come back here, you fuck,” he yells down the stairs. “Fuck you,” I yell back up. “Stop it,” his mom yells, shaking me so hard that she almost breaks my neck. She shoves me out onto the driveway and slams the back door.

  She calls my parents while I’m walking home.

  “I hear you and the Nightrider thought you were in the Thunderdome,” my dad says when I walk in the door.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I go.

  “Are you all right?” my mom wants to know. I look in the mirror in the bathroom. My teeth are bloody and there’s dried blood on my chin and some on my shirt. My back hurts where he was jumping on it. My lip’s cut up again. Otherwise I’m fine. I feel like I’m going to cry, but that’s out of frustration.

  “It’s all right,” my mom says when she sees my face once I finally come back out of the bathroom. I stand there in the middle of the kitchen like I got a load in my pants. My dad knows enough not to say anything.

  “Want me to help you with your face?” she goes.

  “Yeah,” I go. And start crying.

  “It’s okay,” she goes. She comes over and puts her arms around me.

  “Fucking asshole,” I go, barely able to understand myself. I hang on to her for a minute.

  “Hey,” my dad says, about the language. My mom tells him to shush. Gus is up in their bedroom watching videos and misses the whole thing.

  I don’t call Flake or hear from him for a week. He wanders by in the hall a few times at school. I get up in the morning, get my stuff together and head for the bus. I come home, go up to my room and dump my stuff on the floor. I do homework. I do better than the teacher expected on a social studies quiz.

  My dad asks a few days into this if I want to play catch. The next night my mom calls up the stairs that there’s a special on about naval firepower.

  After I’m supposed to be asleep I walk around the house without turning on the lights. I take the Bible out of their downstairs bookcase and read it in the afternoons. I think about copying down parts but never get around to it. I like Leviticus and Revelations. I look at the pictures in African Predators. There’s one of a leopard that got ahold of a baboon. The baboon’s face is being squeezed shut by the bite.

  “So now you’re not eating?” my dad asks after a while.

  Gus comes into my room and sits with me sometimes, then goes out again.

  “Can I tell you something?” my dad says, another time, at dinner.

  “No,” I go.

  Finally, after a week and a half, I call Flake’s house. The phone rings and rings and no one picks up.

  In the mornings when I look in the mirror to comb my hair it looks like I have two black eyes.

  My dad sits there while I have breakfast. He asks how I’m sleeping. I tell him I have no idea.

  Hermie starts hanging out with me before the homeroom bell rings in the morning. He doesn’t say anything about Flake. At first he doesn’t say much at all.

  “Listen, you gotta help me get back at Budzinski,” he finally goes.

  “Who is this kid?” I go.

  He points across the playground but there’s like forty kids where he’s pointing.

  It’s about the third day he’s been hanging around, and we’re both watching other kids have fun. A bunch of them are seeing how many it takes to clog the tunnel slide for the grammar school. They’re falling out and getting stuck and everybody’s screaming.

  He scratches his back through his SCREW THE SYSTEM shirt.

  “You ever wash that?” I ask him.

  “My mom does,” he goes. “You ever wash those?” he says about my pants.

  Near the window where Flake and I broke in I can see the girl who was crying three straight days last week. She’s creeping around trying to sneak up on a pigeon. The pigeon keeps walking just out of her reach.

  “You don’t look so good,” he goes. I make a face and he drops the subject.

  Two other girls are standing there making fun of the one who’s creeping around after the pigeon. Every so often she looks over when she doesn’t think they’re looking. She’s the kind of girl who follows along with all the conversations and smiles whenever she gets noticed. The sun comes out and the whole playground gets warmer.

  “So would you help me?” he goes.

  “Help you what?” I go.

  “With Budzinski,” he goes.

  “I’m not gonna help you beat up some sixth-grader,” I tell him.

  “I don’t want you to help beat him up,” he goes. “I just need help with a plan.”

  “A plan,” I go. “Just hide behind a bush and hit him with a stick.”

  “That’s a plan?” Hermie goes.

  “He’s a sixth-grader,” I go. “Take his candy. Push him down in the sandbox.”

  This pisses him off so much he shuts up for a while.

  “I went after him with a stick,” he finally goes.

  “You went after him with a stick?” I ask him.

  “He took it away and hit me with it.” He looks ashamed.

  This is what my life has come down to. I’m talking to sixth-graders about who beat who with a stick.

  Hermie’s tearing up, just thinking about it.

  “Hey, it happens,” I tell him.

  “No it doesn’t,” he goes. “Not to anyone else.”

  “I get my ass kicked all the time,” I tell him. “Are you kidding?”

  He wipes his face and looks at his feet. He has an expression like getting compared to me isn’t a help.

  The bell rings for homeroom.

  “Somebody’s gotta do something,” he goes as we stand up and head inside. We get shoved aside by everybody who’s more anxious than we are to get in.

  “I’m gonna get the gun,” he tells me the next day before homeroom. “Let’s see what he does then.”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “Let’s see what he does then,” he goes.

  “What, you’re gonna get your dad’s gun and shoot him?” I go. I have this whirling in my stomach. I even put my hand on it.

  “They’ll know they can’t fuck with me,” he goes.

  “Of course they can fuck with you,” I go. “You’re like two feet tall.”

  He looks out over the playground like it’d be hard to stop with just Budzinski.

  “Don’t talk stupid,” I tell him. I don’t know what else to say.

  “I’m not talking stupid,” he goes.

  “It sure sounds like it,” I tell him.

  “No it doesn’t,” he goes.

  Two fat girls are two steps down from us on the front stairs. “Which is better, an A or an A minus?” one goes.

  “What’re you talking about?” the other one goes.

  “I got this,” Hermie tells me. He shows me a knife inside his backpack. It’s one of those knives you use to clean fish.

  “What are you doing?” I go. “Are you fucking nuts?” He puts the knife down at the bottom of his pack and pulls out one of his school folders. “Are you fucking nuts?” I ask him again. “Bringing that to school?”

  He starts pulling papers out of the folder, looking for something, spreading everything out so he can see.
Some slide down the steps.

  I stop one that’s about to blow away. “You can’t just get a gun,” I tell him.

  He keeps looking for whatever it is. He’s not making much progress.

  “You hear me?” I ask him.

  “Leave me alone,” he goes. He’s crying again. Then he slips and the whole folder dumps open. Assignments and worksheets slide down the cement. They’re filled with X’s and red marks. The homeroom bell rings. He’s scrambling around trying to get everything before the stampede reaches the stairs. I help with some papers right around me. A kid who’s running past doesn’t see him bending down and decks him. They both go flying. It’s a big hit with the kids who have a view of it.

  I help him up and he shakes loose and gets the rest of his papers and carries them into the building in a mess under his arm.

  He doesn’t show up the next day once I’m off the bus and hanging around. That night it occurs to me while I’m patrolling the house that we could be in real trouble if this nimrod takes out a gun and waves it around at school. That could be the end of our plan. Though I don’t even know if our plan is still on. This occurs to me while I’m sitting in the living room in the dark watching cars drive by down the street.

  I get like one hour’s sleep. The next morning I circle the playground, but Hermie’s not there and neither is Flake.

  In English we all have to sign a poster that covers a whole cabinet wall and says “English 8: In Our Own Words.” The last four sentences at the bottom are

  I want to succeed in high school, but I know it will be a challenge.

  I am not a loser. (Somebody’s already crossed out the not.)

  I will be a nobody to most and a somebody to a few.

  In 8th grade, I am a nervous student.

  I find a clear spot and sign “F.U. Verymuch” so only I can read it. Bethany, the girl Flake was talking about, comes up to me after class in the hall and hands me a folded piece of pink paper. When she lifts her hand her wristwatch always slides down practically to her elbow. She’s carrying a zebra-skin pencil case.

  “What’s this?” I go.

  “It’s for you,” she says, and her friends watch and giggle.

  I read it on the way to math.

  I’m pissed that I was excited there for a minute because a girl was giving me a note. I almost ball the thing up and throw it away, but I don’t.

  Bethany and her friends follow me while I’m reading. It makes me paranoid. I spend two periods thinking about what to do with it. Finally, since I’m alone again at lunch, I fill it out. I write “with” after “hot sex” and draw an arrow to “fruit.” I write “with” after “good talks” and draw an arrow to “big gloppy desserts.” I draw an arrow from “girls” to “$$$$$$$,” and just leave “boys” and “good friends” blank.

  I give it back to her when I go to bus my tray. In line I can see her and her friends leaning over it like it’s a treasure map.

  “You are so weird,” she says to me later in the hall.

  In seventh period the teacher’s late and all the guys sitting around me are talking about hard-ons.

  After school when I get home I call Flake again. This time he answers the phone.

  “We got a problem,” I tell him after he says hello. He hangs up.

  I look at the phone and beat on the cradle part of it with the receiver.

  “What’s going on down there?” my mom wants to know. She’s up in Gus’s room getting him up from his nap.

  I wait another day before calling again. “Don’t hang up, fuckhead,” I say when he says hello. I don’t hear anything after that. “Hello?” I go.

  “I’m still here,” he says.

  “We got a problem,” I tell him.

  “So I hear,” he goes.

  “You already know?” I ask.

  “You just told me,” he goes.

  I’m quiet, thinking about hanging up myself.

  “So what’s the problem?” he asks.

  I imagine pulling the phone off the wall and beating it flat with the mallet my dad keeps in the basement. Living by myself for the rest of my life, and having no friends. “Our pal Hermie says he’s getting a gun to go after that kid he hates,” I go.

  Flake laughs.

  “I don’t think he’s just bullshitting,” I tell him. It sounds like I just wanted an excuse to call, which pisses me off more than it should. “He had a knife in his pack on Thursday,” I add.

  “What kind of knife?” Flake wants to know.

  “A big one,” I go. “The kind you use on fish.”

  “On fish?” he says.

  “His dad does have a gun,” I tell him. “And Dipstick knows where it is. And he’s a crazy fuck.”

  “Well, that’s true,” Flake admits.

  “I’m thinking he’d screw it up for us,” I tell him.

  Flake’s quiet, thinking about it.

  “Hello?” I go.

  “Maybe he would,” he goes. “That’s certainly the kind of shit that always happens to us,” he adds after a minute.

  “So?” I go.

  “So what’d you tell him?” he asks.

  “I told him not to talk stupid,” I go.

  He sneezes. “What else you tell him?” he asks. I hear him wiping his nose.

  “I told him he couldn’t just get a gun,” I go.

  My mom comes into my room and sits down. No knock, nothing. I wave her out. She shakes her head. “We have to talk,” she whispers, exaggerating her mouth movements, I guess so I can read her lips.

  “What’d he say?” Flake wants to know.

  “He didn’t say anything,” I tell him.

  “Hmm,” he goes.

  “Who’re you talking to?” my mom mouths.

  “I think we gotta talk to him,” I go.

  “I’ll talk with him, all right,” Flake goes.

  “I gotta go,” I tell him.

  “Think he’d really do it?” he asks.

  “I gotta go,” I tell him again.

  “What’s the matter?” he goes.

  “Is that Flake?” my mom asks in a regular voice.

  “Is that your mother?” Flake goes.

  “Yeah,” I go, to both of them.

  “She been listening this whole time?” he asks.

  “No,” I tell him.

  “Jesus Christ,” he goes, like there’s no end to my stupidity. “Call me back, asshole.” He hangs up.

  It turns out my mom wants to talk about my dad. She’s worried about him because he’s worried about me.

  I listen to her outline the problem for a while. The whole thing depresses me.

  “You have anything to contribute?” she finally asks.

  I shrug, which is not what she was looking for. She gives me a look and tells me more stuff about how sad he’s been. He hasn’t been sleeping either, or working on his book.

  “I’m sorry about that,” I tell her. Because I am.

  “I realize it feels like you have a lot to deal with right now,” she goes.

  Feels like? I think: I shouldn’t get mad.

  She says she has a proposal. The family should go somewhere for Thanksgiving, somewhere cool. Have Thanksgiving somewhere else, for once.

  “Does that sound like a good idea?” she wants to know. She pulls her hair back behind her head and holds it tight with both hands. She doesn’t let go.

  “It sounds good,” I tell her. She asks where we should go.

  I don’t have a lot of ideas right there and then.

  “Where would you like to go?” she asks. “Wherever it is, it’d be nice to surprise your dad.” She has this look on her face like she’s carrying something that already spilled.

  “The beach,” I tell her. “Somewhere warm.” I have no idea where that came from.

  “The beach,” she says, surprised. I can see her already thinking about it. “All right, the beach.”

  I’m still amazed by what comes out of my mouth sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. By
Thanksgiving, everything’ll have changed.

  “We had a good talk,” I hear her tell my dad. They’re downstairs with the TV on, and she keeps her voice low.

  “Remember the summer we went to Six Flags?” Flake says, instead of hello, when he calls back. “My parents took us?”

  “Yep,” I go. It’s eleven o’clock on a school night, and I’m dripping. I was taking a shower because I was bored. I can’t decide whether to wash the rest of the soap off or consider the shower over.

  Toward the end of the day we got stuck on the Ferris wheel about twenty feet off the ground. It just stopped turning. Some guys came to work on it below us. We were up there so long the sun started to go down. We could see some girls from our grade, including Bethany, in the car across from us. Flake had had a shitload to drink and had to piss superbad. He waited as long as he could and then grabbed a big cup on the floor of the car and let go. The cup filled up and he was still pissing. “Take it, take it,” he said to me. “No fucking way,” I said back and finally he had to stand up, still pissing, and throw the cup. It got all over both of us. The people in the car below us screamed. The guys working on the Ferris wheel yelled up at us that they were going to kill us once they got us down. The girls told everybody they ever knew once we got back, and then those people told everybody they ever knew.

  “Why you bringing that up now?” I go.

  My dad comes up the stairs and looks at me in the hall. He turns around and goes back down. “Your son’s standing around balls naked dripping on the carpet,” I hear him tell my mom.

  “What were we, in fifth grade?” Flake asks. “I always think about that day.”

  “Why?” I go. I can think of lots of days that were equally bad.

  “I don’t know,” he goes. “I don’t know what it is about it.”

  My mom comes to the bottom of the stairs and looks at me for a while. “Your brother’s sleeping,” she tells me.

  I don’t know why I’m still in the hall. I go into my bedroom and shut the door.

  She comes upstairs and opens the door a crack. “Get something on,” she says. “You’re gonna catch pneumonia.”

  “Is it because Bethany was there?” I ask Flake.