by Jim Shepard
“You mind if I show it to some other people?” she asks.
“Like who?” I go.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “Like Mr. Davis. Maybe Mrs. Pruitt.”
“I just saw him at lunch,” I go. I close my eyes. I’m so tired. I spread out again on the cot. Big see-through plates bang around behind my eyelids.
“I’ll let you rest,” I hear her say. Then the door shuts behind her.
“Don’t call me, I’ll call you,” Flake goes when the buses are getting ready to pull out. He’s holding out his two bandaged fingers and flexing them, like he’s getting ready for action.
“More stuff to do, huh?” I go.
He heads off without answering. That’s all right with me. When I get home I get five dollars from my money dish and bike to the drugstore. They have Gus’s football but in a different color. I ask the guy and of course they don’t have one with his color in the back. I go back and forth about it. “Hey, kid, it’s a Nerf ball,” the guy finally goes. “You’re not picking a college here.”
When I ride back up the driveway Gus is playing in a scuffed-up area around some tree roots. He’s got a metal airplane without wings and he’s swooping it around and crashing it into the roots. “You get my ball?” he goes.
I pull it out of the cardboard inside my knapsack and hand it over. He looks at it. His was purple. This one’s pink.
“This one’s pink,” he goes.
“Yours was pink,” I go.
“Mine was pink?” he goes.
“Yours was pink,” I go.
“Mine wasn’t pink,” I hear him go as I head into the house.
“Oh boy, is your dad having a bad day,” my mom goes when I pass through the kitchen.
Gus follows me in. “Mine wasn’t pink,” he tells my mom while I head upstairs.
“What, honey?” my mom asks. I shut my door.
I sit on the bed. By this time tomorrow everything will be different. Everything will be over. It doesn’t feel like that.
I have to get stuff together. I have to get organized. I don’t even know what to organize. I should make a list, I think. I pull a piece of paper and a pencil off my desk and write on my thigh. I write: List:
“Was his ball pink?” my mom calls up the stairs. “He says it wasn’t.”
“It was,” I call back down. “He’s losing his mind.”
“He says it was, honey,” I hear her tell Gus in a low voice. He starts whining. “I like the pink,” I hear her say. “You don’t like the pink?”
“Jesus God Almighty in Heaven,” my dad says from his room. He must have his laptop in there.
I can’t sit still. I get off the bed, walk around the room, sit on the bed again.
I call Flake. His mom says he’s out. “Hold on,” she says. “He just came in.”
“You’re blowing me off?” I say when he gets on the phone.
“What do you want?” he goes.
“I wanted to know if you wanted to come over,” I tell him. I look out my window. Gus is booting the Nerf around the back. Over in our neighbor’s yard their golden retriever is standing at their fence, watching him like he’s dinner.
“Maybe we could have one more game of mosh volleyball,” I go.
“Mosh volleyball,” he goes, like he’ll never do that again. Then I think he probably won’t.
“You all right?” he asks. “You’re panting. You sound like a dog.”
“I’m scared,” I finally tell him.
He’s quiet a second. “Don’t wuss out on me,” he goes. “ You hear me?”
“I’m not wussing out on anybody,” I go.
“Are you crying?” he goes.
“No,” I go.
“Jesus,” he goes.
“What?” I go. My mom comes up the stairs and into my room. She sits on the bed and puts a hand on my side.
“Are you gonna make it?” he goes. “Do I have to come over there and sit with you?”
“No,” I go. “I just wanted to see if you wanted to play volleyball, that’s all.” I look at my mom. She looks sympathetic.
“We got a lot to do tonight,” he goes. “How soon can you come over after everybody’s asleep there?”
My mom still has her hand on my side. She smoothes it up and down like she’s rubbing a dog’s coat.
“I don’t know,” I go.
“One? One-thirty?” he goes.
“Yeah,” I go.
“Which?” he goes. “One?”
“No,” I go.
“One-thirty?” he goes.
“Yeah,” I go.
“All right. Come to the garage,” he tells me. “Don’t forget your stuff for the capsule.”
“The what?” I go.
“The thing we’re gonna bury,” he goes.
My mom smiles at me. She notices the piece of paper with List: on it and smiles again.
“You gonna be all right?” he goes.
“Yeah,” I go. He hangs up.
“You having a fight with Roddy?” my mom asks when I hang up.
“Sort of,” I go.
“It’ll be all right,” she says.
“Thanks,” I go.
She gets off the bed and opens my dresser drawers.
“What’re you doing here?” I ask her.
“I’m helping you pack for tomorrow,” she tells me.
Around midnight Gus has a bad dream. I creep out of bed with my clothes on and stand by his door.
“Edwin,” he moans.
I wait, in case he’s going to wake up. I go back to my room and get under the covers in case my mom comes up to check on him. He doesn’t make any more noise. Across the room on my chair is the little suitcase she packed for the beach.
At one-twenty I go down to the living room and listen. The stairs make noise but my mom and dad don’t. I give it a minute and then leave.
There’s nobody on the streets. Suppose you disappeared? a voice goes. Suppose you never made it to his house? My sneakers make rubbery noises on the pavement the whole way over.
“In here,” Flake says, in one of those whispers you can hear a block away when I turn into his driveway. He’s standing in the garage in the dark.
“What’re you doing with a hockey stick?” I ask when my eyes get used to the dark.
“My dad’s taping up his team’s sticks,” he goes, like that answers my question. He puts the edge of the stick under my chin and flips it up.
“Ow,” I go.
“Shhh,” he goes.
“What’re you doing?” I go. I’m holding my chin with one hand.
“Imagine when a real hockey player does it,” he goes. I hear the clunk when he sets it back against the wall with the others. The dog next door starts barking even though he’s in the house.
“Asshole dog,” Flake says to himself.
He leads me into the house. At the back door he turns and puts his finger to his mouth, like otherwise I’d go in talking. On the stairs we try to walk together so it sounds like one person.
We’re halfway up when his father goes, “Roddy?”
We both freeze.
“Yeah?” Flake goes.
“What’re you doing?” his dad goes.
“Getting some water,” he goes.
“The water upstairs no good?” his dad goes.
We look at each other. “It doesn’t get cold enough,” Flake tells him.
We don’t hear anything for a minute.
“Don’t get up again,” his dad finally says.
After we shut the door and turn on his desk lamp he widens his eyes and tilts his head, like, that was close.
He’s got the gun duffels from inside the cases under the bed. He pulls out the edge of one to show me. Then we sit facing each other on the blanket without saying anything. He watches the clock. I get sad thinking about the little suitcase my mom left on the chair.
When he’s satisfied with the time, he gets on his hands and knees and pulls out the duffels and zips them
open. We start with mine. I show him I can release the safety.
“The clip release is this thing here,” he whispers.
“How’d you get them out of your dad’s closet?” I whisper back. “Aren’t you worried he’s gonna see they’re missing?”
He shakes his head. “I locked the cases back up,” he says. “I left the pistol.”
The release is a black metal thing in front of the trigger and behind the clip. Neither of us can work it.
“You’re supposed to use your thumb,” he goes.
“I’m using my thumb,” I tell him.
He takes the gun out of my hands and braces the stock against his belly and works his thumb up under the thing. It’s hard with his bandaged fingers. There’s like a flange that’s bent at a right angle. That’s the release.
“When’re those going to come off?” I go, meaning the bandages.
“The guy said he’d look at them next Thursday,” he goes. He wedges one thumb behind the other and pushes.
“I think they made this with a pair of pliers,” I tell him.
“Well, the Russians. You know,” he says. He turns it to try to get more leverage.
“No, I don’t know,” I go. “I don’t know any Russians.”
“Ha ha,” he goes, and there’s a snap and the clip falls onto the bed.
We snap it back in and try it again. We pretty much get the hang of it.
“How much is in a clip?” I go.
He peers inside one.
“You can’t tell like that,” I go.
“When did you become the expert on automatic weapons?” he goes.
“I know that much,” I go.
“Shhh,” he goes.
I ask how we’re going to carry the extra clips. It turns out that his plan is to have them in the duffels with the guns in our lockers.
“You got pants with pockets big enough to hold a few of these?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Cargo shorts,” I tell him.
“There you go,” he says.
I measure the clip width with my finger and thumb and try to remember how wide the pockets are. I heft the gun. “This is heavy,” I tell him.
“Yeah, it’s really heavy. Hold it farther up with that hand,” he tells me.
I swing it back and forth around the room without the clip in it.
“Wanna trade?” he asks.
“Lemme see yours,” I go, and he hands over the carbine. It feels much lighter. “Maybe,” I go.
“Well, decide,” he goes. “I don’t want us arguing about this tomorrow.”
I take the Kalashnikov in one hand and the carbine in the other. I can’t decide. I start sweating all at once. “I can’t believe we’re really going to do this,” I go.
“I know,” he goes. He locks a clip into the carbine and then ejects it. He sights down the barrel and then lays the gun down on the bed. “You want a Go-Gurt?” he goes. “I brought two up.” I shake my head. He tears off the corner of a Go-Gurt and sucks on it. We have to stay close on the bed so we can hear each other whispering.
“We’ll probably shoot all the wrong people,” I go. I try to make it sound like a joke.
He slurps his Go-Gurt and lays his hand on the barrel of the Kalashnikov.
“You worry about that?” I go.
He does his constipated-monkey thing. Inka inka inka inka.
“Guess you don’t,” I go.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he says. He pulls out two packages of little rubber plugs. “Earplugs. My dad says you can’t believe how loud they are.”
He wants to play something from his Great Speeches CD that he says will psych us up, but he has to keep it turned down so low that I can’t make out what the guy’s saying even when we have our ears right up to the speakers. He keeps asking if I can hear it and finally gets mad and turns it off.
“You know what I think about?” he says once we’re back up on the bed.
There’s a noise downstairs. We both stop.
After a minute, we gather all the clips and slide them into the duffels, then angle the guns in after them and slide both duffels under the bed.
We listen again. A car goes by.
“You know what I think about?” he asks again.
I shake my head.
He rubs his face. “The way when something terrible happens somewhere there’s all these flags and flowers and candles, pictures of the people who died and pages of sayings and poems. I don’t think about my picture in the papers or on TV. I think about that stuff.” He’s looking down at his crotch. “What’re you looking at my dick for?” he goes.
“That’s where you were looking,” I go.
“You ever think about stuff like that?” he goes. “All those flowers and shit lined up for months and months?”
I shrug. “I guess,” I go.
He gives me a look.
The look gets me pissed off. Why am I always the pussy? I think.
“Let’s do it,” he tells me.
It’s easier if we put one duffel on top of the other and grab both handles. It takes us about a block and a half to figure this out. We lug the things along worrying about cars, but we only see one that’s heading in the wrong direction.
We circle the school out in the athletic fields to avoid the lights on the building, then hustle the bags over to the back stairs and dump them underneath where it’s dark. We both stand around with our hands on our thighs, breathing hard.
I can hear Flake feeling around in the dark. “They never fixed this?” he goes. The window opens and I hear him sliding through.
He calls for the bags. I pull them over and he drags them through. When I climb in I forget how far the drop is and lose my balance and knock him over against the bags.
“It’s all right,” he goes.
The corridors are narrow so we each have to carry our own. We put them on our backs and hunch over while we walk. We sling the handles over our shoulders. He gets out his little flashlight and holds it in his teeth. We go through some doors and then up the stairs. The door at the top is locked.
He sits down. He’s still got the flashlight in his teeth, and it’s shining on part of the stair railing.
“What do we do now?” I go.
He sits there. A minute goes by.
“Remember that guy in the SUV?” he goes.
It takes me a second to figure out who he’s talking about. Plus it’s hard to understand him with the flashlight in his mouth. “The old guy?” I go.
“Yeah,” he goes. When he nods the light slides up and down the railing. “The guy that followed us.”
The cement’s cold on my butt. He’s waiting for me to say something. “I know who you mean,” I tell him.
“He followed me again last week,” he goes. “At like four in the morning.”
I slide my duffel around so it’s not hurting my hip. “What were you doing out?” I go.
He ignores the question. “I got in his car,” he goes. I can see him watching me. “He gave me a blow job.” The light in his mouth moves a little. “You hear me?”
“Yeah,” I go. “Why’d you let him?”
He shrugs. “I wanted to know what it felt like.” Then he gets up and hoists the duffel higher on his back. “Come on.”
“Where’re we going?” I whisper.
We go back down the stairs and along some corridors and turn a different way. That leads to another locked door. We turn back and go up some other stairs. The duffels are heavy.
At the top there’s another door. He hesitates, and then puts his hand on it. It opens. “The door down to the art storeroom,” he goes. “I figured they’d leave it open.”
It’s two hallways to Flake’s locker. He opens it and stuffs the duffel in standing up. It barely fits and we have to tuck in part of it so it doesn’t catch on the door. The next hallway over we find mine. Flake holds the flashlight while I work the combination. Of course I can’t get it to open.
“Gimme that,” he finally sa
ys. “What’s the combination?”
It works on the first try for him. We go back out the way we came.
We don’t talk until we’re off school property. “You forgot your shit for us to bury,” he tells me.
“Yeah,” I go.
“I won’t bury mine, then, either,” he goes after a minute. “They’ll find it anyway.”
When I get home I stand outside my house in the front yard and look at it. The moon’s out. The trees make black patterns over one side with their shadows.
It’s four o’clock. I think about Flake in the car with the old guy.
I head down my driveway. My sneakers are still making those rubbery sounds on the pavement. I look at our bushes. I look at the garage. I look at our mosh-volleyball court.
I stand in the back porch for a minute, getting used to the indoor darkness. My feet are wet from the grass. I get a drink of water and go upstairs. I stand around in the upstairs hallway and then peep into Gus’s room. He’s on his back with a hand above his head. He’s holding his new Nerf against his side with the other hand.
I put a finger near his face on the pillow. When I go to leave, he says, “What’re you doing?”
“Shhh,” I tell him. I come back to the bed and get down on one knee beside his head.
“Is it dark out?” he wants to know.
“Yeah, it’s still dark,” I whisper.
“Is Mommy up?” he goes.
“Mommy’s sleeping,” I go.
“What’re you doing?” he goes.
“I’m just going to sleep,” I tell him. “You go to sleep, too.” I pull the covers up to his chest. “You like your Nerf ball?” I go.
“Yeah,” he goes.
“This one’s pink,” he tells me.
I clear my throat. One of his shoes is on the windowsill for some reason.
“Don’t be sad,” he tells me.
“That’s what everybody says,” I go. “Why does everybody say that?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“I just get so mad sometimes,” I tell him. I get mad just thinking about it. I make a fist and push it as hard as I can into my hip.
He holds up his ball and I tuck it back under the covers. “How’s your ear?” I go.
“It hurts,” he says.
“Does it hurt now?” I ask him.
