Unlocked
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to steal
my father’s
master keys.
As if she knew
I’d already been
thinking about it.
THE OTHER KIDS
* * *
Most of them thought
the gun was just a big
stinking lie.
No one brought guns
to school.
Maybe in Detroit
or that part of Miami
that’s pure poverty,
an area that’s smoked
enough crack to kill
itself twice over.
Our school was small.
Our school was safe.
Sure, our metal detectors
were terrific at belt buckles,
cell phones, and tongue
piercings, but if the hall monitors
were out for a smoke
or traffic jammed after
a quick Wendy’s run,
we didn’t funnel through—
we sidled right past the sensors.
Because our school was small.
Because our school was safe.
No one brought guns here,
most of us decided.
Though a few steered
clear of Blake.
Just in case.
They tugged their baseball caps
low over their eyes
as his shadow lurked
past, a stormy presence
that made us cower
like Coach Tom’s whistle,
or the tornado siren drills,
or Aaron looming down
the hall with that gonna-get-ya
look in his eyes.
WHAT I SAW
* * *
Riding past on my bike
toward the arcade one Saturday,
I saw someone moving atop
the second story of Jefferson High.
A copper pipe gleaming in his hand,
he brought it crashing
against an exhaust vent,
the noise scattering birds
all the way to the football field.
Then again. Again.
And again.
I paused, watching this
dark figure—Blake, I realized—
who paused too,
his shoes on the edge
as he eyed the blacktop below.
I shielded my eyes against
the afternoon glare
and wondered if this was
the moment before a wild leap,
testing fate, or faith.
Blinking, I realized Blake was gone,
and I told myself I’d imagined it.
Who’d do such a thing? I wondered,
but then I thought of ham-fisted Aaron,
the cheerleaders who laughed at “all those dumb geeks,”
and the sophomore backup QB
who called Blake “a big-time queer.”
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
* * *
I played it more
than I should’ve,
sometimes
all weekend,
especially
when Dad
took Mom
to see Grandma,
who usually
didn’t remember
to put in her
good teeth
and hasn’t
remembered me
since last July.
I just pleaded
asthma issues
so I could stay home,
then plugged in
for hours.
I killed wave
upon wave
of undead
warriors,
blasting them
to smithereens,
wondering
if Blake ever
played World
of Warcraft,
and if he did,
was he the type
to tiger-stalk
my gnome rogue
and slay him,
taking a pipe
to my head
like a two-handed
sword shrouded
in golden flames?
My shrink, Dr. Zigler,
once said games
were a “reasonable outlet
for pent-up aggression.”
I clicked the perfect
combination
and the screen
became an inferno,
its orange glare
too bright
to look straight at.
Ka-BOOM.
GRANDMA
* * *
Mom tried to see her
a few times each month.
She wished it could be
more, but it’s so terrible
to see someone wasting
away like they’re being
devoured from the inside out.
They cried a lot, both Mom
and Grandma, each unable
to voice the agony
that had become their lives.
They didn’t make me visit
any longer, as if that made
any of it less real.
WHEEZE
* * *
Between gym and English,
I felt the breath whoosh out
of my lungs. I usually forgot
my inhaler, but not that day.
I sucked down the medicine
and stood there, leaning against
the wall of lockers, watching
everyone stream past—
a river of kids heading every
direction but toward me.
If I went blue in the face
and lay gasping on the floor,
would anyone even dial 911?
PROMISE
* * *
Becky Ann
ignored me
for days and
days and forever,
so I thought she
must not have
meant it, or perhaps
I merely imagined
her breathy request
to see if Blake
really had a gun.
But then, like a boundless
dream bursting
to life, she cornered
me at the 7-Eleven
after school,
and I stood there,
a doofus holding
a sizzling bean-
and-cheese burrito,
my Big Gulp
spilling over
unnoticed
while her three
friends looked
through the magazine rack.
Becky Ann leaned in close
and purred, Do this for me,
I’ll do something
for you.
My throat shut
as I watched them
saunter into her
older sister’s
blue convertible.
They roared away,
laughing freely,
as loneliness stabbed
through me again,
a steel needle
pushed slowly
into my skull.
I’ll do it! I yelled
as I ran outside.
They were half
a block away
and moving fast.
I swear I will!
BELIEF
* * *
Most days,
I just wanted
to avoid
looking bad.
Sometimes,
though,
I wanted to
look good.
With Becky Ann
at my side,
it’d all have been
so different.
Like hitting
an earth-sized
RESET button
or getting
a bonus life.
What better way
to rack up a high
score than that?
; THE KEYS
* * *
Dad kept them
on a huge steel
ring at his hip.
The master keys.
They opened everything
at our school.
You could hear
him approaching
by their jingle.
Cling, clang,
Mr. Clean.
Cleans up soup,
Smells like poop.
Cling, clang.
Jing, jang.
Loop-de-loop,
Smells like poop.
And so on.
How many
other kids’ dads
had songs about them?
PETE
* * *
My father’s part-time help,
Pete, worked three hours each
morning and skipped out early
once in a while through
the band-room door.
My father wished he had
full-time help, which he needed,
even though our school
was a hundred and fifty less
than capacity. REAL full-time help,
my father muttered over a mop
after hours one day,
cursing the kids who
exploded ketchup packets
all over the cafeteria floors.
I’ll help, I said to him,
watching the keys on his hip
jingle on the thick D-ring.
He told me to concentrate on
homework so I’d never have
to worry about cleaning floors
or repairing rooftop exhaust vents.
I didn’t stare at x2 + 3 = 28
but watched those keys
wink at me, clink at me,
beckon as if they were made of pure silver.
BLAKE
* * *
A few of the science teachers
were crabbing about him
in the teacher’s lounge
while I waited for my father
to take me home. I sipped my Coke
in the corner, ignored again.
“Wack job,” one said.
This was how people talked
about him behind his back.
I started to really worry about
what people said when I
wasn’t around.
ME
* * *
I don’t know
if I really wanted
to see if Blake
had a gun
or whether
I just wanted
to impress Becky Ann
by having the guts
to go look.
Who knows what
the “something”
she promised
would be?
Remembering how
every day after lunch
she eased a single
square of strawberry
Bubble Yum
from the pack
and slid it
into her mouth
so slowly
made me think
of a praying mantis,
and how the females
leisurely devour
their mates alive.
Maybe I imagined
myself a hero,
saving the school
from a wack job,
though Blake
didn’t look
like a wack job—
just a hollow-eyed
kid whose father
never came back
from Iraq.
But I started
to wonder.
I’d only seen
a gun on TV,
never in person.
Maybe Nicholas
was lying.
Maybe there
was no gun.
Surely the teachers
would know
if a kid had a gun.
Surely someone
would do something.
Then I realized:
what if
I
were that
someone?
MATH CLASS
* * *
Instead of moaning
over memorizing
the rules of geometry,
I considered Blake
across the room,
how he slumped
in his second-row desk
and yawned, scratching
a giant into its face
with a set of keys.
Was that really him
I’d seen atop the school,
going berserk?
And even if so,
so what?
Kids busted up windows, spray-
painted fences, and broke streetlights
with rocks all the time.
I’d smashed up my share
of things and had even once let
the air out of Dr. Trimbourne’s tires
after two days of detention
for spitballs I didn’t shoot.
Blake wasn’t any different
from anyone else with
a dead dad, I decided.
I thought about Grandma
withering away upstate
in a hospice.
It’s not the same,
dying slow versus BOOM
being killed. But dead is dead,
and I tried to imagine
someone close to me
being gone forever.
Mrs. Cullerton, our neighbor
who bakes us rhubarb pies.
Grandma. My dad.
Would I act any differently
from Blake if I woke up
one morning and they weren’t
there? Would people make up
stories about me to make
themselves feel better?
LUNCH
* * *
Becky Ann’s brushing her hair,
but I’m unshirting her
again in my mind,
me and a half dozen other
kids with candy-glazed
eyes who no longer saw
cell phones and ice cream
sandwiches but simply
a bright orange brush
pulled through the rivulets
of her amazing hair.
When the guidance
counselor, Mr. Green,
said, Andy? Everything
going all right? I dog-paddled out of
the ocean of my desire,
saying, I’m fine I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be fine?
I read that every boy
between twelve and twenty
thinks of sex
every
seven
seconds.
Maybe Mr. Green
sensed this since
he is a guy, after all,
but I probably helped
skew that statistic,
thanks to Becky Ann.
MR. GREEN
* * *
We called him Mr. Green,
but he’s barely older
than my cousin Luke,
who’s on scholarship
for lacrosse at U of M.
Mr. Green meant well.
He tossed a Frisbee
and joked with us after school.
He wandered the halls
between periods.
He tried to get along,
talked Jaguars trivia with
the jocks, but he’s not
one of us, so no one tells him
anything. Not really.
Sure, he sat down with Blake,
whose father died this past June,
the explosion supposedly strong enough
to blow out windows a block away.
Sure, Mr. Green cared.
But Blake swore he was fine,
the same lie any of us would’ve told
to a counselor or a teacher
who didn’t know not to believe it.
No one breathed a word
to Mr. Green about a gun.
Mr. Green saw the world in bright
colors—he imagined people as good.
He didn’t notice the bullying,
the desk graffiti, the kids who
stank of smoke and beer.
Mr. Green truly meant well,
and that, at least, was something.
GOING AFTER THE GUN
* * *
You get an idea
like that in your head,
it’s pretty much impossible
to shake free of it.
HEALTH CLASS
* * *
Well-armed with sexual
jargon after the two-week
barrage from Mrs. Drummond,
the science teacher,
we still tittered over
scrotum and nipples,
watched encore videos
on self-examination
and the 72-hour life
of Mr. Sperm. Even
the teen pregnancy
scare tactics fueled
our desire instead
of dousing its flames.
No surprise that I,
ignoring well-deserved shame
over my 24/7 desire
for Becky Ann,
thought not of babies
and diapers, gonorrhea
or safe sex,
but of silk panties,
denim skirts, and silver-
painted toenails.
I knew then
I’d do anything
for the “something”
she promised.
I knew that gun
was going to be
the turning point
of my world.
My salvation.
And if Blake REALLY
had it, I knew
just how to find it.
SICK
* * *
Surrounded
by pale blue tile,
Dad lingered
in the tub,
his uniform
forgotten
on the floor.
And right there, too,
the ring of keys.
He couldn’t stop
coughing.
I couldn’t stop