Us Kids Know

by JJ Strong

  I tried to talk again, but my throat was tight. Ray took off the headphones.

  “The hell, man?” I choked out.

  “What?”

  “The hell you watching that for?”

  He shrugged. “It happened.”

  He turned back to the screen. A guy had stuck his coat on the end of a mop and was waving it out the window. My stomach turned. He thought someone could help him. Why wouldn’t he? How could he know? Eventually the heat or maybe the smoke was too much and he climbed out the window, trying to navigate down to the next floor. One hand slipped. He hung for a moment, and then the other hand went. This part had been edited into slow motion. This guy did, in fact, fall slowly. Arms and legs splayed out, he spun to the ground like a paper star.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I spun the chair around so he faced me. “It happened.”

  “So, I mean . . . don’t you think you should see it?”

  “Just because it happened? The hell’s the matter with you?”

  He rubbed a hand into his eye. The bell for first period rang. “I don’t know,” he said, yanking his backpack free from under the chair. He had a trembling energy that he tried to hold in—something deep down inside that he was trying to hide.

  I noticed a bruise creeping up from his collar—ugly and swollen, purple with spots of yellow. His hand went right to the welt when he saw me look at it.

  “You a fighter?”

  “Just some kid in my class.”

  “What happened?”

  “Before gym. We fought once. Look, I gotta go.”

  He tried to step around me, but I didn’t let him.

  “You fight back?”

  “Of course,” he said. A terrible liar. His whole body shrunk under the weight of it. “Why wouldn’t I fight back?”

  “Who’s the kid?”

  “Nick O’Dwyer.”

  “Yeah? Big dude. You land anything?”

  “Maybe, I don’t know. It was all a blur, I guess.”

  “Guy’s kind of a dick, huh?”

  Ray looked at me, his eyes lit up. “Yeah,” he said. “I hate him.” He said this second part with strength in his voice—the first thing he’d said that I knew he felt certain about.

  He tried to move past me again. This time I stepped aside, and he hurried into the hall.

  Earlier that week, once Bri was well enough to return to school, I’d surprised her at the field after practice, but she blew me off. I wasn’t so naïve to think that one innocent kiss in the woods between our houses would seal the deal, but I was still pretty stunned she’d tossed me aside so briskly. I’d watched her come out of the locker room with those same two blond girls from the dance. She glanced once in my direction but didn’t acknowledge me, so I called out to her.

  The three of them hesitated, eyeing me from across the lot. I waved. The two girls looked at Bri, waiting for her next move. One of them laughed.

  “Need a ride home?” I ventured.

  The one girl laughed again, and then the three of them walked off. Bri said nothing. Not even “No.” Not even “Why would I want a ride from you?” Just . . . nothing.

  But I wasn’t pissed. In fact, after processing the initial blow, I was grateful. Because what I wanted, above all else, was to know Brielle. And this was a lucky little glimpse into an essential truth: Brielle O’Dell was embarrassed of me. Brielle O’Dell actually gave a damn what all those needle-nosed girls thought about her. She believed she was just like the rest of them.

  But I knew better. I knew she had a strange, glimmering star exploding inside her. And I knew now how to get close enough to prove it to her.

  I chased Ray into the hall.

  “Hey!”

  He glanced back once and scurried away.

  “Ray O’Dell!” I jogged up next to him.

  “I can’t be late.”

  “What’re you up to later?”

  “I have to go to class.”

  “After school, I mean.”

  “Oh. I don’t know. Nothing?”

  All around us guys hurried to class, stomping, running, shouting, slamming lockers. I leaned in close to Ray.

  “Want to steal a car?” I whispered.

  Confused, but intrigued, he remained silent. I nodded at him. The second bell—the late bell—clanged out. Ray fidgeted, tugging on the straps of his backpack, tightening it.

  “Senior parking lot. Mine’s the Buick. Five minutes after last bell. Look at me.”

  He lifted his head.

  “Do not be late.”

  Ray

  I WAS STANDING on the front steps of the school watching a long line of yellow buses inch down the driveway, waiting for mine to arrive. I didn’t think Cullen was serious, but even still I had no intention of following through on whatever after-school activities this weirdo loner senior had in mind for me, whether they involved stealing a car or not. While I was standing there, though, he found me. He waltzed by on his way to the parking lot, tossing a glance my way, tapping the watch on his wrist.

  Amir Shadid was standing next to me, waiting for his own bus, and he gave me a funny look. “What was that about?”

  I shook my head and didn’t say anything. Amir was short—shorter than me, even—and he had to move to the top step to see over the bushes that bordered the stairs. He watched Cullen go.

  “You know that guy?” he said.

  “I guess. I don’t know.”

  “What’s the watch thing about?”

  My bus pulled up, brakes grunting as it stopped. The wonky accordion door folded open, and guys shuffled up the stairs. I took a step to fall in line with them and said—again, not even seriously, not at all like this was even remotely a serious possibility—“He asked me if I wanted to steal a car with him today.”

  Amir was in a lot of the same classes as me—honor classes, advanced-level classes. We were the only two freshmen in the sophomore math class. We saw each other a lot, but it wasn’t like we were good friends or anything. It’s easy to think if I’d made it onto the bus that day things wouldn’t have turned out like they did. But sometimes I think they would have turned out even worse.

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me away and said, “What?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He was probably just fucking with me. I don’t even get how, though. He’s a weird guy.”

  I stepped again toward the bus, but again Amir pulled me away, this time more forcefully, saying, “Come here.”

  “I gotta get this bus,” I told him.

  “Forget the bus.”

  “Amir!” I twisted my arm free. “What the hell? I need to go.”

  “What if he was serious?”

  “He wasn’t.”

  “But what if he was? What exactly did he say?”

  “I told you. He said, ‘Do you want to steal a car?’ And to meet him in the senior lot after school.”

  “Oh sick,” Amir said. “That’s so sick!”

  The bus inched forward. The driver muttered, “You coming?”

  Amir stared at me, bursting, so excited.

  I turned away from him and faced the bus. I didn’t step forward. But even as I watched the bus doors clap shut and the bus pull away without me, and even as I paced across the parking lot with Amir, who was ecstatic now, bopping his head to some beat I couldn’t hear . . . even then I wasn’t thinking about what a rush it would be to steal a car or, more accurately, to try to steal a car and, as I was sure would happen, definitely fail at it. What I was thinking was much simpler than all that, and it amounted to the obvious fact that hanging out with Amir Shadid and maybe Cullen Hickson too seemed infinitely more promising than yet again taking that stupid bus home, where I would sit in my room for hours on end trying, and failing, to figure out what it meant to be alive.

  So fiv
e minutes later I was riding shotgun in Cullen’s Buick that belonged to his grandmother and that was so big it seemed more like a boat than a car. We pulled into the empty parking lot of the Rosewood community pool, where the bottom of the deep end was covered with soggy autumn leaves and where, on the other side of the woods, a highway that could take you west to the mountains or east to New York City droned like a big machine.

  We left the car at the pool parking lot, twelve blocks from the center of town. I followed Cullen and Amir through side streets and back alleys, the three of us pausing behind a dumpster in the alley next to Franny’s Pizza. Amir looked like someone who carried a great treasure he’d been charged with protecting—like he’d somehow been waiting and preparing his whole life for this moment. Cullen eyed the road—Main Street on a Friday afternoon, busy with shoppers and strollers. I watched a team of twelve-year-old soccer players come out of Franny’s, bouncing their way through the parking lot, all happy with dirt, sun, pizza, and Coca-Cola. I recognized the guy with them as one of my own former coaches. He waved a lazy, coach-like signal my way. Cullen watched him watching me. I was supposed to be sticking by Cullen’s side and not getting spotted by anyone.

  From his jacket, with a casted hand, Cullen pulled a portable electric drill and a pair of needle-nose pliers. He’d told us during the ride that the guy he worked for at the gas station showed him how you could drill a half inch into a keyhole to destroy the lock pins and then turn the ignition without needing a key. It made enough sense to me, but then I wasn’t really thinking about whether or not it would work. I was thinking, now that this unreal feat had suddenly turned very real, about God. That I maybe could find Him by getting as far away from Him as possible. Wickedness is what St. Augustine called it. Because maybe you didn’t know the boundaries of your world until you smashed clear through them.

  Cullen, a whole head taller than both Amir and me, gazed down at us two freshmen, scratching the mustache above his lip. He handed us black ski masks and gloves. I lost my breath for a moment and tried to hide the shaking of my hands while I pulled on the gloves.

  “What about you?” I asked

  “Didn’t plan on three of us.” Cullen pushed a flop of greasy hair out of his eyes and looked at Amir, the late addition. Cullen had objected to him tagging along, but I’d said I’d walk if Amir couldn’t come—somehow Amir’s enthusiasm fueled my own, his confidence shrank my doubt. I knew I wouldn’t go through with this without him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cullen said. “I don’t need them.”

  He peered through the alley toward Main Street. “Okay?” he said.

  Amir nodded. I nodded. Cullen pointed to an old powder blue Oldsmobile parked across the street, standing out among the much newer SUVs and luxury sedans, every other one adorned with a “God Bless America” or “Never Forget 9/11” sticker.

  I followed them through the alley, into downtown Rosewood, dodging slow-rolling cars that were hunting for parking spots, across to the south side of the street. Cullen pulled a pinched-together coat hanger from the inside pocket of his jacket, but just as he did Amir picked up a fist-sized piece of loose asphalt from the gutter and, sprinting toward the car, letting out a wild, yelping war cry, hurled the rock right through the driver’s side window.

  The glass shattered. So loud.

  Cullen screamed, “What the fuck?”

  There was no car alarm, but everyone was looking at us.

  Amir shouted, “Let’s go!” and raced around to the passenger side.

  Cullen lurched in through the broken window, unlocked the door, and dove into the car. The drill sang as he sunk it into the ignition hole. It felt like whole minutes passed—those long kinds of minutes like when you’re watching the clock at the end of the school day. Cullen shoved the pliers into the ignition and, with a grimace, turned something in there that made the engine come alive.

  I was still standing on the street behind Cullen. I couldn’t move. Cullen screamed at me, “Get in the fucking car!” which finally I did, and I slammed the door, and Cullen gunned the thing, tearing off through the center of town, shouting at me, “Holy shit, Ray, what the hell was that? Who the fuck is this kid?”

  Amir was smiling, yanking his seat belt on, having the time of his life. “Amir!” he shouted. “My name’s Amir!”

  * * *

  I don’t remember the first time I met him. It seemed like before we even said one word to each other, he was always just around. Like the natural tilt of the universe had rolled us into the same dusty, forgotten corner, and so it only made sense that eventually we’d end up friends. There was one time, though, in theology with Father Joe, when he made me laugh like crazy.

  Father Joe was one of those great teachers you meet sometimes who speaks to you like you’re a real person. Just about everyone could get a word in during his class—even I ventured to jump into the conversations every so often. He was always encouraging us to talk out our questions about faith and catechism and all that, and so one day Sal DelViccio asked Father Joe if masturbation was really a sin, and do priests masturbate, and, if it was a sin, and if priests did masturbate, did that mean priests were all on the road to Hell with the rest of us?

  We waited to see what would happen next. Father Joe ran a palm across his brow, which was covered in freckles. “Well,” he started, “think of it like this: Imagine God puts you on the earth with a million dollars. Each sin you commit costs a certain amount, and if you spend the whole million, you won’t get into heaven. So, murder, that’s a big one. That’s probably the whole million. Stealing, let’s say that’s ten thousand. Lying, maybe a thousand. Yanking your own chain . . . in the grand scheme of things, probably be about a nickel.”

  We all laughed. Father Joe turned back to the board to continue with his lesson, and the class settled down. I, however, dug out my algebra II calculator and started doing the calculations. Next to me, Amir leaned over to see what I was up to. When I showed him the tally, he smiled like a little kid about to do something he knows he’s not supposed to do and raised his hand.

  I whispered at him, “Don’t!”

  Father Joe turned around, saw Amir’s hand, and called on him. No way, I thought. There’s no way he says it. Amir was a Saudi Arabian kid with a funny-looking bowl haircut who some kids called Toadstool, but who others had started calling Osama. It was such a stupid insult—not even the most basic attempt at being clever—but it was so easily accessible to everyone that it pretty much made it impossible for Amir to do or say anything without being subjected to immediate, crushing ridicule by anyone in earshot. So no way did I expect him to speak up right then.

  In a way, I was right. Amir didn’t say what I thought he was going to say. Nothing about the number on my calculator or what it signified.

  What he said was: “Ray has something he wants to tell you.”

  I lost my breath. It felt like my heart had stopped and that if I were made to speak in that moment it would never start up again. The entire class had turned around and was gawking at Amir and me.

  “No,” I managed to say. “No I don’t.”

  Father Joe’s eyes found me. He looked at me gently, curiously—like he was trying to tell me that no matter what Amir wanted me to say, I could say it. Somehow Father Joe reacted to everything in that same way—nothing ever surprised him. It was a big part of why we liked him.

  “What’s up, Ray?”

  Amir held back a grin, motioning for me to speak. I noticed for the first time that he had a pale scar cutting across his eyebrow.

  “Well,” I said. “I was just thinking that if, uh, masturbation costs a nickel, and assuming you never committed another sin . . . that means you could . . . masturbate . . . twenty million times before going to Hell.”

  Amir couldn’t hold it in anymore. He burst out laughing. And I did too.

  We dared to look at Father Joe.

 
; “Something like that,” he said.

  Amir giggled. “That’s pretty messed up, Father Joe.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Father Joe shrugged. “Just make sure you keep count. Years go by . . . things like that can add up quicker than you think.”

  Amir and I laughed and laughed. I mean . . . it was really funny. And if we’d been different kids—if we were good at sports, or had girlfriends, or were maybe a little bit bigger, or just somehow different in a way we would never really be able to understand—no doubt the rest of the class would have been laughing with us. But instead, all that happened was Matty Gearhart, the kid who sat in front of us, who had long hair and dirty fingernails and was always penning tattoos on the underside of his wrists during class, mumbled—low enough so Father Joe couldn’t hear, but loud enough for everyone else to hear—“Circle jerks cost extra, homos.”

  And, of course, that’s when the rest of the class erupted in laughter.

  * * *

  It wouldn’t be long before Amir was my favorite person I knew. But today he was the kid who’d just chucked a freaking rock through the window of a beat-up car that we’d stolen right in front of dozens of people.

  We sped out of Rosewood, into South Orange and Maplewood, where the blocks stretched into long avenues that snaked through hilly woods. Patches of trees smeared by like a finger painting in Thanksgiving colors. I heard the whine of faraway sirens.

  “You guys hear that?” I asked.

  Cullen nodded.

  “We need to get off the road, right?”

  Again he nodded. But he didn’t slow down. Did not pull over.

  Amir bounced in his seat, still bopping his head to that beat, turning to look at me, his eyes more alive than I’d ever seen in anyone, and just then, mostly subconsciously, I started to bop my head too. I started to understand why he’d insisted on going through with this adventure.

  Cullen navigated one curve, anticipating the next, never overcorrecting. He was really, really good. We screamed past a lumbering box truck. Swerved away from oncoming traffic. Fishtailed, recovered, straightened, sped on. I clutched the headrest of the seat in front of me, squeezing so hard my knuckles would be swollen and sore for a whole day afterward. Cullen checked the mirror. I flipped around to see, in the distance, the tumbling lights of a cop car. We wheeled around the next curve, and the lights disappeared briefly, then came back.