Splinters

by Matt Carter

  A couple of Alexei’s students stood to one side, a little more than ten feet apart, tossing an empty water bottle back and forth. I tried to focus on it and wished, not for the first time, for a bit of Aldo’s mental exclusivity.

  “Really?” My smile was becoming painful. “I thought you were going to use Haley for that.”

  “Oh, no!” he said. “She is much too tall!”

  Such was the nature of Alexei Smith’s theatrical wisdom.

  “Oh.” I couldn’t think of a small talk reply to that.

  The water bottle hit the ground at our feet.

  “Twenty-five yet?” Alexei asked his students.

  “Nineteen,” a girl answered.

  At least it was a conversation starter.

  “Twenty-five what?” I asked.

  “Oh, twenty-five catches, of coooouuurse! You should definitely try. Twenty-five is the perfect number!”

  I didn’t ask what made it perfect.

  “He’s on in five minutes,” Aldo reminded me. “Are you going?”

  I’d added just one thing to my agenda for the day without my mother’s prompting. Billy’s band was playing from seven until eight, and I knew how glad he’d be to have at least two people there who’d cheer no matter how bad it was, even if only for the first half.

  “I guess so. Is it safe?” I muttered back to Aldo.

  Around anyone else, I might have been a little more discreet, but Alexei and his minions didn’t exactly have the upper hand when it came to acting normal.

  “Oh, it is very saaaafe, Meeenaaah! Look!” He picked up the bottle and tapped me on the head with it to show how harmless it was, as if he thought I might not have seen a plastic water bottle before.

  “Um, yes, that’s okay though,” I said, backing out of the booth toward the bandstand just across the way, my small talk successfully made. My goodbye might not have satisfied Mom if she’d seen it, but I was sure it was more polished than anything Alexei had ever done.

  Ben

  As we slowly made our way down the farmer’s market stalls, I caught a familiar face I’d rather not have. I sighed. I hated unfinished business.

  Haley was looking intently at a stall that sold handmade bead crafts. I asked her if she was all right for the moment, and then made as stealthy a path to Kevin Brundle’s Earth Brownies as I could.

  There was no line at his booth. I assumed the words “All-Natural,” “Organic,” and “Proceeds Go to Charity” written on the booth had something to do with that, or maybe it was the fact that his brownies looked more like granola bars than brownies. All the same, the guy had brought by three massive watermelons this afternoon and refused to let me pay him back. I figured buying a few brownies (even if I had to throw them away later) would even out our books some.

  He saw me walking up and smiled. “Ben, brother, what’s happening?”

  “Not much, just taking in the sights,” I said.

  “Enjoying our fair town’s hospitality?” he asked.

  Thinking about Mina and those people in the Town Council staring at me, I almost said no. Then realizing I’d be better off lying, I said, “Yeah.”

  Kevin nodded with a knowing smile, “I know it’s a small town with a lot of small minds . . .”—he waved at his nearly full display and nearly empty money jar for emphasis—“but it’s got its charms.”

  “Look, I just wanted to thank you for—”

  He held up a hand. “As I have said before and will say again if necessary, we’re cool. My fault entirely.”

  Okay, time to try a different approach, “Well, can I at least buy some brownies?”

  He brightened at that. “Certainly, brother.”

  He talked at length about how awesome and good for Mother Earth the brownies were, and I dutifully nodded as if I were interested. In the end, I bought a bag of six for ten dollars and took a free one “for the road” at Kevin’s insistence. To my surprise, they actually almost tasted like brownies.

  It was as he was packing up the brown paper bag that he finally asked, “So, does Haley talk about me much?”

  Again, figuring lying would be the best approach, I said, “Some, but not really in detail.”

  He nodded, a little sad. “I wouldn’t think so. We had something real good there for a while. I’ve made my mistakes, I’m not gonna deny that, but I’m not bad, not like everyone thinks. I would’ve taken care of her.”

  He sighed. “Be careful, brother. She’s one of the good ones. She knows how to make you feel more special than anyone in the world. If you lose that, sometimes, maybe, it’s better not to know what you’re missing.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  He shrugged and laughed slightly. “Because I want you to know what you might be getting yourself into. Because, despite all this, I don’t think I’m ready to give up on her. Call me a masochist, but I still love her. If you want your chance with her, I will not stop you, but if you don’t, I’m gonna try my best to salvage something.”

  There was no polite way to get out of there, not that I was sure I wanted to be polite to him at that point.

  “Thanks for the brownies,” I said, snatching up the bag and stalking away.

  “Anytime, brother,” I heard him calling behind me.

  I walked out of sight as quickly as I could and tossed the bag of brownies into the nearest trash can before catching up with Haley at the bead crafts booth.

  Mina

  I cheered appropriately hard at the first gap in the band’s music, though their tinny, staticky sound system and rudimentary understanding of harmony and rhythm made it nearly impossible to distinguish one “song” from the next. Billy winked at me from behind his drum kit, with their logo and name printed on the front of it. The Twist Endings, they called themselves. He was a very good drummer, though I wouldn’t have known it if I’d only heard him play with the rest of the band at events like this.

  I’d successfully smiled and applauded for nearly twenty minutes before I felt someone standing closer than was necessary behind me. I reached into my bag and secured my hand over a flamethrower before turning to check who it was.

  It was Aldo.

  We both hurried to hang up our phones before they could get close enough together to convert the awful music into even more awful feedback.

  “They’re far enough away?” I asked.

  “A seven minute walk with no reason to hurry,” he confirmed instantly. “And not moving, last I saw.”

  I double-checked the time. A seven minute walk made a collision acceptably improbable, under normal circumstances. With Ben involved, I would have preferred impossible, but I let it go, rather than try to find a reason he should make circumstances anything other than normal.

  After Alexei and the rest of Mom’s army of chosen contacts, Aldo was welcome company, but being close to him under the circumstances, knowing that he couldn’t see any farther away than I could, made me feel like I was trying to walk a tightrope with one eye covered.

  There was another gap in the sound at 8:29, and I was more than ready to run directly home from where I stood, even if it meant crossing the party’s outer curb before my promise was officially fulfilled. That’s when Billy took

  the mic.

  “This next one’s my personal favorite.”

  I might have done it anyway if he hadn’t been looking right at me when he said it.

  The beat of this song was a little more complex, probably the reason for Billy’s preference, but with the distortion of the speakers, it couldn’t help occupy my mind much. Without thinking, I brushed back my loose, distracting hair.

  The first thing I saw in my newly unobscured range of vision was a head of blonde hair jogging toward Alexei’s booth.

  No reason to hurry.

  Then another figure diverging from the path of the blonde one, wandering toward the bandstand.

  I leaned toward Aldo’s ear.

  “Run straight ahead. Don’t look back. Find a safe pl
ace. Call you later.”

  Aldo hesitated only a few seconds before stepping around me without turning his head and disappearing behind the next row of booths. The sudden movement drew attention.

  I’d planned to try ducking behind the bandstand, but Ben turned, looked, and recognized before I could move.

  He hadn’t seen Aldo’s face. I’d managed that much. Instead, he saw me standing there, looking at him, Bluetooth visible for a full two seconds before I remembered to cover it again.

  I saw him glance at it for a moment, wondering what sick stalker purpose it served, no doubt, and then he walked away as if he hadn’t seen me.

  No, not as if he hadn’t seen me. He was fine when he hadn’t seen me. He was much more agitated now. He turned back toward the theater booth, saw Haley engrossed in some kind of group theatrical exercise, and broke off in another direction. For a moment I thought he might just make a circle of the party until she finished, but he hadn’t learned to be nearly that sensible. Moving in a hurried, distracted pattern, he turned again and wandered straight out into the empty streets.

  I reached for my phone and opened the app to track his, but that couldn’t make him any safer. Even in the best case scenario where he was never separated from it, all it could do was tell me where they’d take him once they found him alone.

  That thought warranted a moment’s consideration. But only a moment.

  Moving, not in the woods, checking in within the hour.

  I sent the message to Aldo one-handed before reaching the curb, then pocketed the phone and ran after Ben.

  He was headed back toward the Perkins’s house. Not a good thing in that it was on the isolated, wooded edge of town. Not a terrible thing in that it was predictable and some distance uphill, so I wasn’t likely to lose him on the way. He wasn’t used to walking on an incline. I could tell by how far he leaned into it. There wasn’t much chance of going unnoticed, so I took advantage and let myself gain on him during the steepest parts. He kept walking and tried to ignore me for a while, and then changed his mind when the road started to skirt along the trees, closer to the house, as if I wouldn’t know where he was going as long as he didn’t lead me all the way.

  “Go away, Mina.” He was out of breath, but it didn’t soften his tone.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “You’re not safe.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  He stopped and turned around so that I had to stop, too.

  “I know what you think!” he snapped. “You told me! I listened! You got your say! Now you can leave me alone!”

  He didn’t seem to notice the ominous rustling in the bougainvillea in the yard behind him.

  A deer stumbled out of the yard onto the sidewalk, an enormous buck as tall as I was, taller, counting its impressive rack of antlers.

  “Ben,” I hissed.

  Ben turned and stared at the deer for a few seconds, warily and with what looked like suppressed awe. He skirted carefully around it and continued scaling the hill away from us both. I followed, but didn’t take my eyes off the deer.

  It took an unsteady step forward, as if it were still getting the hang of being a deer, even though it was full grown. On the next step, it tripped slightly, and there was an unmistakable ripple of unearthly shapes under its skin.

  “Ben!”

  I plunged my hand into my bag, but I hadn’t quite grasped anything useful yet when the deer lowered its head to charge, so I reached for the sleeve of Ben’s shirt instead.

  “Ben, look out!”

  8.

  What Was That?

  Ben

  You know, it’s amazing the things that come back to you when you think you’re about to die. In this case, staring at the massive buck that stood in the middle of the road, it was my Wilderness Survival merit badge.

  One of the main requirements involved describing in detail how to protect myself from insects, reptiles, and bears while surviving in the wild. Given the fact that I was something of an overachiever when it came to merit badge attempts, and the fact that I really, really had this thing about not being eaten alive by a wild animal when I was little, I studied up on how to avoid pretty much every animal in North America.

  Including deer.

  Generally docile deer will only usually attack if they believe you are a threat to them. If they think you are boxing them in, or might be after one of their young, they will come after you without hesitation. Bucks, like the one we were facing down, were generally more aggressive, but would only really attack unprovoked during rutting season. Since that usually runs from October to December, I hadn’t been too worried when I first saw it. Once it had lowered its head and begun grinding one of its front hooves into the pavement threateningly, I’d started to wonder if the wilderness textbook rules could be applied to the kind of deer that wandered willingly into suburban streets.

  Mina grabbed my shirt and cried out. I didn’t listen. I was trying to remember what to do in this situation.

  “Don’t run,” I said. She looked at me as if I were insane.

  “It’s not—”

  “I know what I’m talking about,” I said. “Don’t take your eyes off of his. Back away slowly with me, and make as much noise as you can.”

  “That won’t work,” she said vehemently.

  “Trust me,” I said, taking a slow step backward. I raised my arms, started hollering at the top of my lungs at the deer. Mina stood still and went back to rooting through that giant bag slung over her shoulder. I reached for her, ready to pull her back.

  Then the deer charged. For a split second I cursed the books I’d read for never actually mentioning how to deal with a deer that was actively running at you, antlers poised to gore. Then instinct took over, and I’m pretty sure I forgot what books were for a good five minutes or so.

  The deer could beat us in a flat-out sprint, and I was at least mostly sure that Mina didn’t have a hunting rifle in that giant bag of hers, so the best options I could see would either involve calling for help or hiding. The street was open with only a few parked cars nearby, and almost every house dark.

  There was a silver SUV parked on the street maybe fifteen feet away from us. It would have to do.

  The deer was upon us with frightening speed. I grabbed Mina by the arm and pulled her to the opposite side of the SUV, putting the car between us and the buck. The deer slammed into the side of the vehicle, rocking it back and forth violently. The animal was dazed, shaking its head slightly. We only had a few seconds. I had to make them count.

  “Get under the car,” I said, forcefully.

  Again, she looked at me like I was insane. “What?”

  “Get under the car and call the cops. It won’t be able to get you down there, and I’ll try and lead it away,” I said.

  “That won’t work, it’s not—”

  I cut her off, “Just shut up and let me try to get us out of this. You said you thought you could trust me, well, trust me on this!”

  The deer had regained its footing; it would walk around our crude barricade in no time. I was prepared to push her under the car if I had to, but for some reason Mina actually listened to me.

  One problem down. Now for the other.

  I’m a fast guy. Not an Olympian by a long-shot, though I could probably compete on a school track and field team if I really put my mind to it and trained. Looking down the darkened street, I figured I could maybe jump over one of the fences into the houses’ backyards. With any luck, there’d be enough protection to keep the deer from following. It’d lose interest, or the cops would come when Mina called, and this’d be just another Prospero story.

  It was a stupid plan, I knew, but since I couldn’t fit under the SUV with Mina, it was about the only plan that sounded like it might work.

  I turned on my heel and ran for the corner of the block, watching the few lights in houses blur past me, hearing only the wind whipping and my heart po
unding. For fear of my last sight on Earth being a set of giant antlers pointed at me, I didn’t dare look back until I’d made it as far as the end of the block. Then I turned my head slightly.

  I wasn’t being followed. In fact, the deer seemed to be trying to dig for Mina under the SUV, gouging its antlers into the side of the vehicle, trying to tip it over. I’d never seen anything like it, though, to be fair, I hadn’t really been around deer that much. I had to get its attention.

  I yelled. Nothing. There were a few rocks in the grass near me. I picked one up, threw it at the deer, hitting it in the side. This got its attention a lot faster than I would have liked, actually. It whirled on me and closed the distance in just a few seconds. I was able to turn around and take one long stride before I felt the searing, hot pain of its antlers digging into my back, and my feet lifted off the ground.

  It tossed me into a white picket fence, wooden stakes breaking around me as I rolled right through it. The wind was knocked out of me, my back felt as if it was on fire. With what strength I could muster, I rolled over, trying to avoid a killing blow that did not come.

  When my eyes cleared, I saw that it had gone back to the SUV. Mina stood near the front of the car, pulling out a large, red cylinder from her purse and . . . talking to the deer? Yes, she was definitely talking to it. The beast stared her down, ready to charge her at any moment.

  I grabbed one of the fence stakes that I’d knocked loose. It felt sturdy, and its end was pointed and sharp. It would have to do. Holding it like a spear, I ran toward the deer. Mina held it distracted, trying to start a lighter for some reason. It did not see me coming, not even as I thrust the fencepost eight inches deep into its side. The deer bleated and struggled, trying to pull itself free from the stake, yet still trying to pull itself forward to Mina.

  In some faraway place, I could hear her calling out to me, trying to tell me something. I knew that if I didn’t finish this, the deer would do everything possible to kill us both. With this grim thought, I ripped the fence stake from the deer’s side and thrust it in deeper.

  At that, the deer finally hobbled away from Mina and the SUV, letting out pitiful, painful bleats as it went. Blood dripped steadily from its muzzle and the wounds I had gouged in its side. I felt bad, no, terrible for what I