by Crystal Chan
“Find what?” Sam asked.
“Yesterday. In my backyard, sunning, of all things,” Jello said. “And I’ve been dying to tell you ever since.”
“What was sunning?” Sam asked. He put down the bag of chips.
“How’d you capture it?” I was curious, despite myself.
Jello shrugged. “A box. And a shovel. I put the box over it, slid the shovel underneath, and sloop!—turned the box over and that was that. Captured.”
Sam stood up. “What did you capture?” he asked loudly, crossing his arms over his chest.
Jello looked at Sam for the first time. “Who’s he?”
“Nick Caldwell’s younger brother,” I said. “He hangs here sometimes.”
Jello nodded approvingly. “Good. We’ll need two people for the photo shoot anyway—you’re both in?”
“Sweet Jesus,” I muttered.
“Photo shoot of what?” Sam asked.
“I need two people to hold the python,” Jello said.
Sam’s face lit up.
“You’re a freaking crazy freak,” I said.
“That’s cool,” Sam said.
Jello smiled at Sam. “I need two people to hold the python while I shoot it. Right now it’s in a box, and it’s all curled up—you can’t get any sense of its size when it’s like that. So I need two people to hold it out. It’s big, you know.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
“It is,” Jello insisted.
“I absolutely believe you,” I said.
Jello turned to Sam. “At first I was thinking that we could curl the python around Ronney—you know, loop it around him to let people see how big it is—but holding it out with two people is much better.”
“Much better,” I repeated. “Especially since a python looping itself around an animal means it’s killing it.”
“Right,” Jello said. “So we’ll have each of you take an end of the python, and there’s going to be some great pics. I just know it.”
I turned to Sam. “We’ll flip for it,” I said. “Heads or tails?” I gave Jello a look. “You do realize that you’re asking us to hold a living, pissed-off python.”
“I didn’t say it’s pissed off,” Jello said.
“That’s because you don’t speak python,” I replied. “I’m sure the python is completely happy being in that dark box right now, tame as a sleeping dog.”
“Huh.” Jello paused. “I have some leather gloves you guys could use. I’ve heard that a lot of animal bites don’t go through leather.”
“You’re so right—of course cows have hides of steel. That’s why that tiger hasn’t killed any of the cows. In fact, I don’t think anyone has ever killed a cow. They’re indestructible.”
“Shut up, Ronney. You know what I mean,” Jello said.
“I’m afraid I do,” I said.
“Are we going to do it now?” Sam asked.
“No time like the present,” Jello said.
“There are worse ideas than handling a living, pissed-off python,” I said. “I just can’t think of them.”
“We’re not directly handling it. I have gloves,” Jello pointed out. “Come on, R-Man.”
It strangely felt like this was the third time he’d asked. “Well, I suppose,” I said.
“I don’t like it,” Dad said.
I spun around to see Dad standing behind us on the porch. “What?” I asked, stunned.
“I don’t like it,” Dad said again, his eyes lingering on Jello’s face.
Jello looked away.
“Since when do you come out of your room so much, O intrepid trekker?” I asked.
Dad ignored me. “Those animals are dangerous.”
“So are guns, some would say,” I said.
Dad’s lips puckered. “Pythons too.”
“Since when do you care so much?” I snapped at him. “You haven’t cared so much in, oh, two years. My heart is beating wildly in my chest with all of this caring that you’re doing.”
Dad gripped the porch railing hard.
“Anyway, pythons don’t really even bite. They kill by squeezing,” I said, shooting a look at Jello, “and we’ll just be holding it out. With leather gloves. At arm’s length.”
“You are planning on holding a python.”
“Come on,” I said to Jello and Sam. “Let’s go.”
Jello didn’t move. He looked at Dad.
“Ronney. You will not go,” Dad said.
“You’re not going to stop me,” I said. I met Dad’s eyes and stared him down. “We’ve been doing just fine without you, animals or no animals. And anyway, if you’re ignoring the doctor’s orders and not doing your stupid arm exercises, how can you possibly tell me what to do?”
I could feel him shrinking in front of me. But now I was on a roll. “Do I tell you to change out of your pajamas every day? Does Mom tell you that you can’t spend the entire day in your room? Do I tell you to get out of the house and do some actual grocery shopping? Or pick Mina up from school? Or, when she hugs you, to fucking hug her back?”
The determined look on Dad’s face started to waver. He ran his hand through his hair, twice, and his shoulders slumped.
“No, we don’t tell you any of this. We let you do your shit. So let me do mine. And let me remind you that two months ago when the car broke down with the four of us in it, you let Mom flag down a stranger to help us and do all the talking, all the while you sat in the passenger seat with your eyes closed. Did anyone tell you to help her? Did anyone tell you to deal with the auto mechanics instead of making her do everything? Does anyone tell you to take out the garbage when it’s spilling onto the floor—”
At that point Dad’s face twisted up, and before I could react, he snatched a potted plant from the railing of our front porch, raised the pot over his head, and smashed it on the sidewalk below. Then he went inside the house, letting the screen door slam behind him.
That terrifying feeling came over me again, and again I pushed it down.
A thick silence fell over the three of us. Jello shifted from one foot to the other. Sam looked at the ground. “Let’s go,” I said to them, and my voice was thinner than I expected it to be.
“I don’t think your dad is actually letting us do this,” Jello said slowly.
“You saw him leave, didn’t you?” I snapped. “I don’t know about the two of you, but I’m leaving for Jello’s. We’ve got work to do.”
First, though, I stopped to pick up the broken pot shards and put them in the trash. I didn’t realize how shaken I was until I felt pain on the palms of my hands, I was gripping the shards so tight.
• • •
Truth be told, I wanted Dad to put his foot down and end the stupidity, but he couldn’t do it. I was pissed at him for backing off but then also pissed at myself for challenging him when I really wanted to shout Fuck no, Jello. Dad says no! and now here I was stuck in Python World.
I mean, why couldn’t I just have listened to him? That’s what I was wondering as we biked to Jello’s house. And then I realized: I wasn’t going to follow orders from a loser dad, someone who was just going to walk away. That’s no way to live.
I found myself wishing for a full-time dad again, and I was stunned because I could have sworn that thoughts like that had died long ago. Just then I realized what that strange, terrifying feeling had been, twice now: hope. An awful pain crept into my chest. I’m not going to let myself hope and be hurt again, I thought. I can’t. I knew from personal experience that the pain would grow until it near consumed you, unless you had a way to go numb or shut it off somehow. Or bury it for good.
So I decided to shut it off by thinking about the python, which wasn’t all that hard with Jello and Sam prattling along beside me.
Jello was keeping a python in his garage. I didn’t know just how fast a python could move, but I did know that its entire body was freaking iron muscle. If we held it and it didn’t want to be held, how would it wrap itself around us? And h
ow could we get it off? A box cutter would be too small. Maybe a butcher knife?
I did a quick mental check: It wasn’t Thursday. There, at least, was that. And I had to admit that even a really bad idea could be exciting once you put your mind to it. In a bad-idea kind of way.
“So,” Jello was saying, “gloves. We need gloves.”
“Smart,” I said.
Jello went to his closet and pulled out a pair of leather gloves.
I looked at him. “You’re giving the two of us one pair of thin leather gloves.”
“We only need one pair,” Jello said, “for the person holding the head, right?”
“Right,” Sam said. “Can I hold the head?”
“No,” I said, and I grabbed the gloves from Jello. My stomach knotted up. “Ski masks?” I asked.
“For what?” Jello said.
For if it lunges at our faces, I wanted to say, but then I realized how much of a loser I sounded, so I stopped. “What about a butcher knife?” I asked.
Jello looked at me blankly.
“If that thing is around one of us, we’re going to need a way to get it off,” I said.
Jello looked thoughtful. “Good idea.” He grabbed at the pile of dirty dishes by his computer. “Here’s a steak knife.”
“A steak knife is not a butcher knife,” I said.
“It’ll be fine,” Jello said.
“A steak knife is a toothpick to a python,” I said. “Where’s your butcher knife?”
“We can’t use it. It’s my mom’s. She’d kill me if she found out. And anyway, we probably won’t even need a knife.”
“Probably,” I said.
Jello checked his camera gear. “I think we have everything,” he said. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Sam said.
“I guess,” I said.
“R-Man, you don’t have to do this—” Jello said.
“Shut up,” I said.
We climbed back out through the window, although that was pretty lame-ass, since we had to haul the gear through the window too, and we could have just used the door.
We trudged to the garage. Jello looked at us and smiled. He put his hand on the doorknob. His face was a billboard of excitement. “This is going to be so awesome,” he said.
“Yeah,” Sam said.
“Yeah,” I said.
Jello rubbed his hands together. “So we’re going to go in, and I’m going to open the garage door so we get more light,” he explained. “Ronney’ll tip the python box over, and the two of you will pick up the python, one at each end. While you’re figuring that out, I’ll adjust the side lighting and then be shooting the whole thing. I’ll also be letting you know where to stand to get the best angle. You guys shouldn’t be holding the python for more than a minute or two, tops.”
“Easy,” Sam said.
“Splendid,” I said. Then I thought of something. “What are we going to do with the python when we’re done?”
Jello adjusted his camera strap around his neck. “We could call it in, I guess. Or we could dump it in the woods.”
“That would be cool,” Sam said. “Maybe it’ll kill a deer.”
My stomach didn’t feel too good. “Tell me again why you want these pictures so badly?” I said to Jello.
Jello sighed. “Because, my dear Ronney, I’ll turn around and submit them to National Geographic. How could they say no?”
Jello turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. The garage was pitch black. Jello went in, and Sam and I followed him. Jello hit the light switch, and the garage was suddenly filled with a tinny, fluorescent light.
“It’s probably sleeping,” Jello said, and he sounded like a Discovery Channel commentator. “The python’s been in the dark for almost twenty-four hours.”
That was precisely when we noticed that the python box was tipped over on its side, lying on the ground, empty.
“Uh-oh,” Jello said.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Wow,” Sam said.
We inched closer to each other in the middle of the garage, scanning the ground.
“You didn’t put a lid on the box, did you?” I asked. It was more of an accusation.
“I did too,” Jello said.
“Was it a locking lid?” I asked.
“No,” Jello said. “It was a piece of cardboard.”
“Did you put something heavy on top of the lid?” I asked.
“I didn’t think of that,” Jello said.
We looked in every corner of the garage. There was no python.
“It mysteriously disappeared,” Jello said. He scratched his arm. “How could it do that?”
“Here,” I said. I pointed to a space beneath the work bench: There was a mouse hole. I looked back at them. “Good-bye, python.”
Jello swore.
“Darn,” Sam said.
My stomach felt better. Kind of.
Jello was quiet for a moment. Then he stalked around the garage until he found a flashlight and peered into the mouse hole.
“It’s dark,” Jello said, on his hands and knees.
I couldn’t think of anything a friend would say right then, so I shut up.
“I thought the garage was secure,” Jello whined.
“That’s a bummer,” Sam said.
“Really too bad,” I said.
Jello started pouting at that point—and watching Jello pout is as much fun as having my leg inserted into a wood chipper. So Sam and I left Jello to mope and stare at the mouse hole.
I was about to have Sam and me bike back to my house, but Sam had other ideas. “This way,” he called over his shoulder, and took off. We biked across town until we came to this area that was starting to be developed, where new houses didn’t dot the land and trees and stuff grew. We ditched our bikes by an old, fallen tree, partially covered in long grasses. Beyond that was a wooded area, the kind of place where a tiger would live, but I pushed that thought aside.
“What’s this? You going back to nature or something?” I asked.
“Shh,” Sam said, and it felt right: I was being too loud.
We hiked through the bramble. The woods kept going back for a ways, and the trees glowed like some cool-ass movie. It reminded me of a time when Dad and I were hiking in this forest, in a state park pretty far away, and we got our asses lost. The trails kept branching, and there were no signs or anything. I was starting to panic when Dad said, “Ronney, just look at these trees. They’re glowing.” And sure as shit, there it was, this whole crazy forest of glowing light in every direction I looked. Pure magic.
That’s what these trees were like too, except we weren’t lost, which was nice. Sam kept going deeper into the woods, and I followed him, shivering as the wind picked up. After a while a little creek stretched out in front of us, and some big stones sat in the middle of the stream. Sam plopped down on one stone, and I took another.
“Not bad,” I said.
Sam smiled faintly; I could tell he was pleased.
We sat there for a while on those rocks, not saying much of anything. The sunlight was warm.
Suddenly Sam turned to me. “This is where we went.”
Now, that made sense. “How often?”
“Pretty often.” Sam dipped his hand into the creek, grabbed a handful of stones, and began to throw them, one by one, into the water. I had the feeling that he did that a lot. “Nick would always sit on that rock too,” Sam said, nodding to the rock I was sitting on. “He would teach me how to catch minnows, or we’d mess around with the mud, or sometimes we wouldn’t do anything at all.”
“Don’t need to,” I said.
Sam’s face brightened: I got it. “And one time, Nick and I played hide-and-go-seek, and I hid in this pile of leaves and he couldn’t find me,” Sam said, leaning back to catch some sun. He smiled. “He was starting to get all worried, and he was standing right next to me! So I jumped up and the leaves went flying everywhere and Nick screamed like a girl—though he made me promise not to
tell anyone about that, ever.”
“Your secret’s safe with me,” I said, trying to imagine a deep-voiced Nick screaming like a girl. I smiled.
“One day I skipped school and came here,” Sam said.
“Was that the day of the shooting?” I asked.
Sam startled. “Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Mina said you weren’t in class that day.”
Sam paused, then nodded. “Yeah, I was here. I . . . I just missed Nick.” He stuck his feet in the water, shoes and all.
“You picked an awesome day not to go to school.”
“My parents didn’t even know, because with the shooting, the teachers were so panicked no one remembered to call.” Sam smiled faintly.
“Nice work.”
Sam’s smile disappeared. “And this other time, Nick showed me his hiding place for—you know. When he drinks.”
“Really.”
Sam squirmed on his rock. “He’ll never come home,” he said, and he kicked at the water.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“I just know,” he said. He looked away.
“Hey,” I said.
Sam looked at me.
“You gotta be ready for everything,” I said, and I was surprised at how firm my voice was.
“I know,” Sam said quietly.
“And everything means he might come back.”
Sam’s face brightened. “Yeah, right?”
“Right. You never know what’ll happen,” I said, but I felt kind of disgusting right then: I knew better than to get the kid’s hopes up. God knows what happens when they fall for good.
18
IT WAS A THURSDAY WHEN George approached me in the school hallway. We were between classes; I was going to biology, and I knew she was heading to art class. She came up to me excitedly and said, “Hey, guess what?”
I looked away from her. “Hey,” I mumbled, and tried to veer to the other side of the hallway.
She tagged behind me. “Ronney,” she said.
I stopped and turned around, my heart thumping wildly in my chest. “What?” I said.
Her breath caught in her throat, and her face immediately flushed. “Um,” she said. It was clear that she hadn’t expected me to respond.
I peered at her. I’d never seen George taken off guard.
