by Jeff Strand
But there was something in his tone, something disturbing that I couldn’t quite identify. I got the sense that, given a chance, Darren wouldn’t just shoot a bird; he’d break its legs and twist its head off. Maybe he’d even press the tip of his tongue against its neck, to get a quick taste.
The remaining weeks of the semester passed, and I made no effort to get a hold of his journal. We spoke more often, usually about schoolwork or TV shows, but we never really crossed the line from roommates to friends. He just made me feel kind of creeped out.
One day I swore I saw him brush a feather off his shirt as he walked into the residence hall, but I searched the entrance for several minutes and couldn’t find it.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, sweetie. I can’t talk long, we’re on our way out, but how are you doing? Are you studying hard?”
“Pretty hard.”
“Do you still like it there?”
I’d never actually told her that I did like it here. “It’s okay.”
“That’s good. Are you getting along with your roommates?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you decided what you want for Christmas?”
“There are some books I want.”
“Well, write them in a letter and I’ll make sure we get them for you.”
“I will.”
“I love you, Alex.”
“I love you, too.”
“Is there anything else?”
“No. I was just calling.”
“So, Alex…what if we weren’t able to pick you up for Christmas?”
I didn’t respond.
“Alex…?”
“What?”
“We might not be able to pick you up for Christmas. Would you be really disappointed?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can tell me if you would be.”
I blinked. A tear trickled down my cheek.
“Why can’t you?”
“We’re going on a trip, but we won’t be back before you start school again.”
“I could start late.”
“That’s not a good idea. Don’t you have friends who are staying there for the holidays?”
“I don’t know.”
“They said there are arrangements for students whose parents can’t come get them. But we don’t have to go on the trip if you don’t want us to.”
“I want to come home.”
“We were going to get you a really big present this year. Maybe we’ll even come see you before we leave. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll talk about it later. I love you, Alex.”
“I love you, too.”
Chapter Four
“Randolph the red-gunned cowboy, had a very shiny gun, and if you ever saw it, you would drop your pants and run…”
Jeremy was singing Christmas carols while he and Peter packed for their two weeks at home. It was painful to watch them, and I had to keep dabbing at my eyes with my index finger when nobody was looking. Darren, who also had to stay at Branford over Christmas break, didn’t seem to mind.
“Why aren’t your parents coming to get you?” I asked him.
Darren shrugged. “Why should they?”
“…then one foggy Christmas Eve, the sheriff came to say, ‘Randolph with your gun so bright, won’t you shoot my wife tonight….?’”
“What are you guys gonna do this whole time?” asked Peter.
“Probably nothing.”
While two weeks of homework and tests would not have surprised me, it was actually going to be supervised free time, with some group activities. Nearly forty kids were staying. I wondered how many of their parents just didn’t want them around.
Peter’s parents arrived first. His dad looked exactly like him, right down to the crew cut, except that he was taller and chubbier. “Tell Killer Fang ‘grrrrr’ for me,” I said, as they walked out the door.
“Actually, Killer Fang’s in the car,” said his dad, eliciting a whoop of joy from Peter. I went down with them, got my face thoroughly licked by the cocker spaniel, and wished them all a merry Christmas. Jeremy’s parents came to get him an hour later, leaving me alone with Darren.
The first day, we spent most of our time hanging out in the library. Two kids we sort of knew from the first floor, Steve and Terrence, sat at a table with us and played Go Fish. Or, more accurately, Steve’s variation of the game, where certain cards functioned as automatic weapons or grenades that blew cards out of the other player’s hands. The sound effects got us shushed a few times, and from a game design standpoint this rule variation could have used some more play-testing, but it certainly provided us with plenty of entertainment value.
Though lights-out was moved back to 11:00 p.m. in celebration of the holiday spirit, I went to bed at half past ten and was asleep within five minutes.
I woke to the sound of Darren’s footsteps. At first I thought he was coming into the room, but the glowing green digits of Jeremy’s alarm clock read 12:17. My second thought was that he was simply on his way to the bathroom, but as he opened the door and dim light from the hallway illuminated him, I saw that he was fully dressed and wearing his jacket. He left the room, very slowly closing the door behind him.
I lay there for a while, wondering when he’d return, but fell asleep before he did. When I woke up at 6:30 the next morning, Darren was in his bed.
The next night, just before midnight, he did the same thing. This time I woke up when he returned around three, but pretended to still be asleep. His breathing was heavy as he got undressed and climbed into bed.
Where could he possibly be going that was worth the risk of getting caught?
The next night, December 23, he got up again. I watched him slip on his jacket, pick up his journal, and slowly walk toward the door. I quickly closed my eyes as he glanced over his shoulder at me.
Silence.
“Alex?”
I kept quiet.
“Alex? You awake?”
I could hear his footsteps as he walked toward my bed. I felt his presence as he crouched down beside me.
“Alex,” he whispered.
Go away, I silently pleaded.
Maybe he had a knife.
No, that was stupid. He wasn’t going to slit my throat.
I could feel beads of sweat beginning to form on my forehead as I tried to sustain the deep, even breathing of somebody who was fast asleep and not desperately praying for his roommate to leave him alone.
Maybe the blade was slowly moving toward my…
I opened my eyes.
“I knew you were awake,” Darren said.
“No, I wasn’t,” I said, trying to make my voice sound groggy, like I was still half asleep. “You just woke me up. What do you want?”
“I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“You’ve got to come see.”
“What is it?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s outside.”
“We’ll get in trouble.”
He shook his head. “Nobody will know. They don’t care if we go or not, at least not until school starts again. Get dressed.”
I pulled the blanket up over my mouth and nose. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said in a muffled voice.
Darren grabbed a handful of the blanket and tugged it away. I told him “Knock it off!” as he yanked away the rest of the blanket and threw it onto the floor.
“You’ll love this,” Darren promised. “It’s the coolest thing ever.”
“You just wanted to see my underwear.”
“Yeah, those yellow stains make me want to sing a happy, happy song.”
It was clear that Darren wasn’t going to take a whiny “no” for an answer, so I got out of bed and slipped into my jeans and a blue T-shirt. “This better be good,” I said, putting on my jacket.
“It is, I swear to God.”
We opened the door, made sure nobody was in the hallway, and
quietly snuck over to the stairwell. We silently but swiftly moved down the stairs, into the lobby, and out the main entrance. The school grounds were well lit by street lamps, but there was nobody outside.
“See? We didn’t get caught,” Darren said.
“They can still catch us, easy.”
“Nah. Nobody’ll be out here this late. It’s pretty far, though, so we’ve gotta hurry.”
We broke into a run. It took us less than five minutes to reach the main gate. We easily slipped through the bars and began jogging down the sidewalk along Branford Street.
“How far?” I asked.
“It takes me about forty-five minutes.”
“I can’t run for forty-five minutes.”
“Once we turn off this street we’ll just walk.”
“What if they check our room?”
“Why would they check our room? Don’t be such a baby. Even if we do get caught, this will be worth it, I promise.”
Four blocks later, at a railroad crossing, we walked off Branford Street and followed the train tracks. The tracks were poorly lit, and I stepped carefully to avoid the countless broken beer bottles.
It didn’t seem like a very safe place for a pair of twelve-year-olds to be walking in the middle of the night. Of course, Darren had made it back alive walking on his own, so it couldn’t be too dangerous.
“How many times have you been down here?” I asked, stumbling a bit as I nearly stepped on a nail protruding from a piece of wood.
“Eight or nine, counting tonight. I’d come back every night if I could, but they’ll start guarding our building again once school starts back up. Maybe I’ll find another way out, who knows?”
A group of kids, probably college age, were standing behind a brick building. A couple of them glared at us, but returned to their conversation and their cigarettes without saying anything.
“Did you ever hear that if you put a penny on the track, you can make a train derail?” Darren asked, picking up his pace.
“I think so.”
“It doesn’t work. You just get a flat penny.”
We walked for another thirty or forty minutes, then left the tracks and came up a small incline about thirty feet behind a small building with a Dumpster in the back. A red lightbulb illuminated the whole area over the dented rear entrance.
Darren knelt down and began carefully brushing the dirt on the incline. “We’re here.”
“It stinks.”
“That’s just the Dumpster.”
“You brought me out here to see a Dumpster?”
“Shhhh. Not so loud.”
I knelt down next to him. “They have Dumpsters back at school that we could look at.”
“Make sure there’s no glass on the ground,” Darren instructed, lifting a scary-looking shard between his fingers and tossing it aside.
He obviously wasn’t ready to reveal the purpose of our little field trip, so I brushed at the ground next to him, getting several splinters in my palm. After we were both satisfied that our area was free of glass and hypodermic needles, we lay down on our stomachs. From this position, we were just able to peek over the incline at the building.
“Isn’t this great?” asked Darren. “We can see them but they can’t see us.”
“So what are we doing?”
“Have you ever been to a strip club?”
“This is a strip club?”
Darren nodded.
“No way!”
“Yes way.”
“We’re not gonna sneak in there, are we?”
“Nah, there’s no way we could do it without getting caught. But we don’t need to sneak in. They come out that door every once in a while to empty the garbage or smoke a cigarette.”
“The women?” I asked.
“No, not the women. Some sweaty guy who coughs a lot. But sometimes you can see them walking around back there when he opens the door.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“What’d you see?”
“Twice I saw this lady’s tits, and the second time she was standing next to this lady who was wearing this thing that almost let you see her whole butt.”
“No way!”
“I saw tits, I swear to God.”
I looked over at the door. “How often does he come out?”
“I guess whenever he needs to smoke or they fill up the garbage bag. Not very often.”
I frowned. “What kind of garbage do they make at a strip club?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably really gross. Probably used underwear and stuff.”
“How long can we stay here?” I asked, glancing at my wrist before realizing that I’d left my watch at the room.
Darren checked his own watch. “At least two hours.”
“Cool.”
We lay there in silence for several minutes.
“How did you find out about this place?” I asked.
“I forget. I came here a few times during the summer.”
I shuddered. Considering how unpleasant the Dump-ster aroma was in late December, I couldn’t imagine what foul odors lurked in this area during the summer. But, hey, if there were boobs to be seen…
I adjusted my position a bit to make myself more comfortable. It might be a long wait, but with the possibility of such a glorious reward, I could be patient.
We talked off and on during the next half hour, mostly speculating about what sights we’d be seeing if we were blessed with X-ray vision. Darren knew countless synonyms for each major component of the female anatomy and wasn’t afraid to use them, though I suspected that he’d made up a lot of them himself. While my own vocabulary wasn’t as impressive, I made up for it with sheer imagination.
All we needed was X-ray vision, invisibility, and/or the ability to walk through walls, and it would have been the perfect evening.
Then Darren nudged me, roughly, and we both stared, transfixed, as the door handle turned with a loud squeak.
The door opened.
The single most grotesque human being I had ever seen in real life stepped through the doorway. His hairy beer belly protruded from underneath his white T-shirt as if seeking fresh air. He was mostly bald, had an uneven mustache and goatee, and looked to be covered with at least a quart of sweat. Though I knew that I couldn’t really smell him from my hiding spot, at least not over the Dumpster odor, the stench in the area did seem to increase by at least 25 percent.
He coughed, twisted his neck around to wipe his nose on his shoulder, and headed for the Dumpster with his small sack of garbage.
This guy got to spend all night looking at naked women. Life wasn’t fair.
I realized with horror that I’d been watching the ugly, sweaty, smelly guy and not the open doorway. I quickly gave it my full attention. Red lighting inside, just like outside. No boobs visible.
The guy flung the garbage bag into the Dumpster. For a split second I wondered if he could see us, but I forced that thought out of my mind and focused on the doorway.
Still nothing.
The guy coughed again. “Shit,” he muttered. I thought I could see him scratching his ass in my peripheral vision, but it wasn’t a sight worth looking away from the doorway.
He headed back toward the building. Only seconds remained before the doorway was shut, perhaps for the remainder of the evening. I furrowed my brow, trying to send brain waves toward the door to entice one of the women to walk into view. There had to be at least one of them in there who wanted to see the ugly, sweaty, smelly guy scratch his ass.
He stopped in the doorway, coughed again, repeated the word “shit,” and then entered the building, shutting the door behind him.
“Aw, man,” moaned Darren. “What a rip-off!”
“So what do we do?”
“We wait for the next time.”
“How long is that?”
“I dunno.” Darren checked his watch. “We may have to head back before then.”
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn.
Crap, damn, crap.
What if we waited for another two hours and our only visual treat was watching the guy scratch an alternate cheek?
But what if the door got stuck the next time and they couldn’t close it again? Or what if one of the women came outside? What if that happened mere seconds after we left?
“There’s something else we could do,” said Darren.
“What?”
“Knock.”
“We’d get in trouble.”
“Not if you ran fast enough. Just knock and hurry back here. They won’t catch us.”
“Why don’t you do it?”
“I’ve already seen inside.”
“Right, so it won’t matter if you don’t get to see it while you’re running.”
“You’re the one who wants to see in there,” said Darren. “Don’t worry; I’ll make sure you don’t get caught.”
“How?”
“I just will. I promise. C’mon, go up there and knock.”
Since Darren had dragged me along to this place without telling me where we were going, there was a definite flawed logic to the whole “you’re the one who wants to see in there” line of thinking. I also had very serious doubts about his ability to make sure I didn’t get caught, considering that he would be hiding thirty feet away. I tried to express both of these arguments, but somewhere the line of communication between my mouth and brain was disrupted, and my response was far less articulate than I would have liked: “Uh-uh.”
“Fine,” said Darren, pushing himself up to a kneeling position. “We’d probably better get going anyway.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, unwilling to back down.
Darren looked over at the building and shook his head sadly. “Biggest tits I ever saw,” he said, and then started to walk toward the railroad tracks.
He was bluffing. He was definitely bluffing. There was absolutely no question in my mind that he was bluffing…at least for his first two steps. Then I decided that he wasn’t bluffing at all and that if I didn’t act quickly I’d rob myself of this golden opportunity.
“Okay, okay,” I said. Darren looked back over his shoulder at me and smiled. Not the excited smile of a twelve-year-old who might get to see a naked stripper, but the smug smile of somebody who’d convinced his friend to do something against his will. It was, truth be told, a little bit unnerving. But then the smile vanished and his expression turned serious. “All right, I’ll watch your back,” he said, returning to his spot on the ground. “Just knock a few times, loud, and then run back here.”
