Us Kids Know

by JJ Strong

  “I don’t understand this generation,” Detective Clift said. “This is your idea of fun or what? What happened to stickball and shit?”

  At the bottom of the stack of papers, I found it: the first confession. Meticulously hand-written in perfect cursive. Handwriting I knew well. And the signature at the bottom: Brielle O’Dell.

  “Girl came in here couple days ago, says she was in the subway tunnel with the kid who got hit by the train. I say, ‘Okay, tell me about it.’ She knows what he was wearing. Knows what the gun looked like. Identified a couple standing on the platform who saw two kids jump onto the tracks. Couple reported they witnessed two males, but I figure, what the hell, maybe they weren’t looking that closely, right? Neither one of them could offer a reliable description of the other kid who jumped anyway. You should see the sketch—looks like it could be any kid in America—which, as you can see before you, turns out it is every kid in America.”

  “But it’s me,” I told him. “I was there! I pushed him!”

  “Write it down. I won’t stop you. But if you think I’m running this over to NYPD again, you’re crazy. I called in that first one—the girl. Expected them to whip on over here and pin a fucking medal on me. You know the rest.”

  “But I don’t! I have no idea . . .”

  “Well, whatever. Next day, three more confessions come in. Day after that, four more. So on and so forth. Every single one of ’em knows all the right details. They recite it like a prayer. What the Shadid kid was wearing, what the gun looked like, what the couple on the platform looked like. So you know what I gotta do?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair.

  “I gotta call these high-and-mighty Manhattan jerkoffs and tell ’em about all these bogus confessions. Tell ’em I’m the asshole getting fucked with by a buncha dipshit kids. You all picked a helluva time to be messing with NYPD, I’ll give you that. They got real police work to do over there these days, you know.”

  “And what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, what kind of work do you have to do?”

  He sucked something through his teeth and didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” I told him. “My name is Ray O’Dell, and Amir Shadid was my friend. He was my best fucking friend, okay? And I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And you can’t just . . .” I choked a little, because I was crying now. Because the whole thing was coming apart right in front of me. “You can’t just do that! You can’t just take this away from me!”

  The detective seemed to understand me this time, or at least sympathize. His eyes went soft, and he said, “Look, man. You ask me, he comes out okay in this. It was an accident. That’s the official call as of this morning. Accident. Not a suicide.”

  “Suicide?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would it be a suicide?”

  “You kidding? A kid don’t go running around a subway tunnel unless he’s got a death wish. So, like I said, you ask me, he comes out okay in the end.”

  I was about to respond, but just then the door behind me cracked open and a woman poked her head in.

  “Got another one, Pete. Want to double ’em up?”

  She opened the door wider to reveal the person standing behind her.

  Cullen threw a crooked smile in my direction. “I’d like to confess to the murder of Amir Shadid.”

  I turned back to Detective Clift. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows at me like What can I tell you?

  I was so mad, and there were so many things I wanted to say. To Cullen, and to the detective, and to Bri, and to all the kids Cullen had duped into being a part of his most recent, infuriating scheme. But I didn’t say anything—not in that moment or for five days afterward. I swallowed it all—the hate and disappointment and every other boiling-hot feeling erupting inside me. Choked them down like cough medicine. Cullen and Bri thought they were saving me when in fact they were doing no such thing. They were saving themselves. Scrubbing clean their own consciences. And I wasn’t about to give in to that same kind of vanity. That smug self-satisfaction.

  The whole of humanity by this point was disgusting to me. The planet a filthy nest of insignificant life. It was funny, really, when you thought about it in a big-picture sort of way. We were just these grubby little creatures who imagined ourselves blessed. I am large, Walt Whitman said. I contain multitudes. Which was such a load of bullshit. Everything we did—Amir and me included—was based on the irrational idea that we were special. That our own individual lives—no matter how short or painful or pathetic or whatever—that each one actually meant something. And of all the terrible things we did in the name of vanity—fought, stole, cheated, murdered, raped, whatever—the search for God was by far the worst. Because at least that other stuff was honest about its own vileness. The search for God was an illogical, childish way to make ourselves feel better. To turn away from the hurt and the gloom and the astounding meaninglessness of our own actions in order to warm ourselves in the make-believe glow of some imaginary creator’s loving gaze. To convince yourself there was a God was to deny the cold facts of being human, which had nothing to do with immortality or salvation or purity, and had everything to do, I was finally understanding, with death and cruelty and pain and an unending series of one devastating disaster after another.

  And no, Amir didn’t have a death wish. I knew exactly why he led me into that tunnel, and it didn’t have anything to do with suicide. He was giving me exactly what I wanted, because he knew that I wasn’t going to get that close to the edge on my own. He had brought me as close as you could come to finding the truth—to seeing through to the other side. To really, truly living. But it didn’t work. Because there was no other side. And now Amir was gone. And what a stupid waste of time it all was.

  So that was the moment—in that cramped detective’s office—that I stopped talking. Because talking was exactly what everyone expected me to do. The detective was waiting for more pleading, and Cullen was waiting for some manic outburst, and Bri was, no question about it, at home waiting for me to storm into her room and demand something as trite and clichéd as her minding her own business.

  But I wasn’t going to do any of that.

  I was finally ready to take control.

  * * *

  The mass for Amir, like all masses, was long and boring. We were supposed to be thinking about Amir the whole time, but it was impossible to keep something like that at the front of your mind every single second, even for me, one of the only people in the crowd who actually knew him. The seats of the old auditorium were cramped and hard, and guys squirmed and creaked in their chairs, unable to get comfortable for more than three seconds at a time. Some guys slept. Some guys whispered inaudible jokes to each other, chuckling too loudly. An altar dominated the stage; four priests sat in a line to the left of it. Usually Monsignor Murphy, our school headmaster, would say a mass like this, but today Father Joe did it. During the homily, Father Joe tried to sell us on the idea that loss and pain were side effects of love and awe, and that experiencing love and awe, loss and pain, was really a way of coming to know Christ, and that even though it may seem like Amir had been taken from us, what really happened was that God had welcomed Amir back into His heart. He then asked for volunteers to “say a few words” about our classmate.

  There was a horrible silence that went on forever. Nobody moved. Nobody laughed or cracked a joke about it. You could feel the whole room tighten up with a hot, heavy feeling. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but something like that. A feeling of wanting, above all else, for the moment to pass. For the pressure to be relieved.

  From the back of the auditorium came the squeaking of a chair. We all turned to see a row of students stand in order to let someone by. Of course it was Cullen. He’d taken off his blazer at some point during the mass and, realizing that he’d left it at his seat as he stepped into the
aisle, motioned for it to be passed down the row. He walked down the aisle, slipping into the blazer, flipping down the collar, straightening his tie, pushing strands of hair out of his eyes.

  His speech was short. People barely had time to react to it. He said, “Amir was my boy. He was smarter and cooler and better than all the rest of you. I wish he was still here. It sucks that he’s gone.” Then he took two steps away from the podium, but at the last moment he leaned back to the microphone and blurted out, “Ray O’Dell was Amir’s friend too. Maybe he has something to say.”

  He marched up the aisle toward the back of the room. He didn’t look at me, probably didn’t even know where I was sitting. Nobody else looked at me either. Hardly anybody knew who Ray O’Dell was, so nobody knew where to look. Except Father Joe. He saw me.

  My stomach flipped over itself. Father Joe stepped to the microphone. “Ray,” he said. “Would you like to speak?”

  I shifted in my seat, which squeaked loudly. The whole room was quiet now and watching me. Hundreds of boys. Nobody was asleep anymore. Nobody shifting in the creaky seats. Nobody bored.

  Okay, I thought. Fine. Fine! If they want me to talk, then that’s exactly what I’ll do.

  Once I was at the microphone, I said, “This isn’t a funeral. They already had the funeral. I didn’t go, but this isn’t one. This is . . .”

  I paused, reaching into the shelf within the podium and grabbing what I knew would be there. I flipped through the book until I found the passage I wanted—the one that had first given me the idea for the note in my pocket—and read: “Ecclesiastes 1:14. ‘I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.’”

  I looked up from the book and scanned the enormous room. “That’s all this is. Vanity. A striving after wind. Amir’s not even here, so how could it be for him? How can this be an ‘honoring of his memory,’ like some people want it to be? It’s just us trying to make ourselves feel better. Which is so dumb, isn’t it? I mean, it’s so dumb!”

  I said this last part like I was pleading with someone who I assumed would agree with me. I expected to see heads nodding, guys who also felt like me—but didn’t have the courage to say anything—agreeing enthusiastically. But nobody was nodding. Mostly everyone stared. Not shocked or surprised, necessarily. Not even amused. They just looked at me blankly.

  “There’s no sense in being here—like, on earth, I mean—if being here only means pain. Between pain and nothing, wouldn’t you choose nothing? Especially if the pain . . . I mean, it would be one thing if the pain meant something, wouldn’t it? If there was some point to it and all. But if it’s just this randomness, if it’s just pain all the way around, well, then . . .” And here I glanced at Father Joe, who was sitting next to Monsignor Murphy, who was motioning for him, it seemed, to come up to the podium and stop my speech. But Father Joe wasn’t getting up. He was looking past me with that same sad face he had shown me in his office.

  “Well, then Amir was one of the lucky ones. Because he got out. And you know what? I’m going with him. It doesn’t make sense to stay. Why would I not kill myself? Why wouldn’t any of us?”

  And now I felt a hand on my elbow and another on my shoulder, tugging me from the podium, gently at first, but then more forcefully as I fought against it. I grabbed the microphone as they yanked me away. “Give me one good reason!” I shouted. It was Monsignor Murphy, I realized now, and another priest—not Father Joe—who escorted me from the podium.

  “Okay now,” the one priest was saying. “Okay, son.”

  “Give me one good reason!”

  I flung my arm away violently and charged up to the microphone. “One reason we shouldn’t all kill ourselves right now! I dare you!”

  There were a lot of arms around me now. I was being lifted into the air and hauled away. I heard the auditorium erupt in applause and laughter. I stopped struggling and let it happen. My whole body relaxed. I felt my breathing ease up, and—very slowly—I felt a sense of absolute happiness wash over me. It was a feeling of surrender. Of calm. Of total, utter clarity. There was no good reason. That was the big secret. And knowing this made everything clear. It was so simple, in the end, that as I was carried over the shoulder of a priest through the curtains of the stage and into the dark wings of the auditorium—carried aloft to the roaring applause of the student body, like I was an all-time great football hero being treated to one final, rousing send-off—it was so simple that I had to smile.

  Cullen

  IN THE DAYS AFTER AMIR’S DEATH—before Ray went to the cops about it, and before the moment when he totally lost it in front of the entire school—I converted the basement into my new bedroom. I needed to occupy my mind with something, I suppose. Converted, though, is probably overstating it. Mostly it was the same basement that had been there before Dad died and Nana moved in to take care of me: some adult male’s half-assed version of a hangout spot with an oak bar across one wall, mirrors and tin signs and snuffed-out neon writing all celebrating cheap American ale, wood paneling, a thin green carpet thrown over the concrete floor, an old television set, and a dank, cobwebbed stairway in the corner leading to the hatch of twin cellar doors. The major additions were a waterbed I’d bought at a garage sale for $200—situated against the wall opposite the bar, under Dad’s black-light Led Zeppelin poster—and a PlayStation 2 hooked up to the TV.

  It was pouring outside the day Brielle came over. The rain drummed against the doors of the cellar hatch. The doorbell rang three times, and Nana called down for me to come do something about it, before I paused my game of NBA 2K and climbed the stairs. By the time I got there, Nana was sleeping in her La-Z-Boy. The bell must have woken her, and, after calling for me, she had slipped right back into sleep. I spied through the living room curtains to see a frigid, soaked Brielle standing at the front door.

  I had, prior to this appearance on my porch, resigned myself to never seeing Brielle O’Dell again. Which doesn’t mean that the resignation didn’t hurt. It did. Because I liked Brielle. A lot. And I anticipated a blowback to the initial subway-chase plan, of course. But convincing her brother that he’d killed someone when in fact he hadn’t was something I could work around. I didn’t have a blueprint for doing so, exactly. I just figured that eventually, someday, somehow, she’d forgive me for the Ray-killed-Malik stuff—not only for the plan itself but for not trusting her enough to let her in on it from the start—and we would go back to falling in love and living in a state of complete, uncompromising astonishment.

  The thing with Amir, though. Pretty sure there was no coming back from that.

  And yet . . . here she was.

  Thank God she was dripping wet when I let her in, because it gave us an immediate, awkwardness-squashing task on which to collaborate. I grabbed a towel for her, and she bent over and went to work drying her hair. Coming back upright, rope of damp hair smacking her back, wiping raindrops from her hairline, she was stunning. She was paler than usual and shivering and wearing no makeup, but she was Brielle O’Dell, and she was in my living room, and I could hardly stand it.

  “You want to take your jacket off?” I whispered. “I have like a button-down or something you could wear if your shirt—”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I can’t stay long. I need a favor.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a big one.”

  “Okay.”

  Nana shifted her in her chair, murmuring. She could sleep through any noise coming from a television—laugh tracks, gunfire, explosions, sirens, someone winning the jackpot on Wheel of Fortune—but the tiniest noise from an actual living human tended to shake her alert.

  I put up a finger to Brielle, asking her to hold on. I tiptoed over to Nana, slung the oxygen mask over her face, and turned the knob on the tank. I grabbed her plate of half-eaten apples and crackers, dumped them in the kitchen sink, and then motioned for
Brielle to follow me downstairs.

  She joined me on the basement couch—me at one armrest and she at the other, a full square of cushion between us. We sat like that and kept quiet for a long time, Brielle watching me.

  “So,” I said. “A favor?”

  “Is she okay?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Why?”

  She fiddled with the frayed edges of the couch fabric. “You take care of her?”

  “Sure,” I said. “When she needs it.”

  Of my many long-running lies, the idea that Nana took care of me instead of the other way around was maybe the biggest. Something I kept from everyone. When Nana’s health and mind started to slip, she’d covered up her inadequacies with a snarkiness that she brought to every public appearance. She’d shout to customer service at the market about the state of the produce, attend city council meetings as the only voice speaking up against new traffic lights and crosswalks and any other safety measures proposed for the town that she thought were a waste of her tax dollars when people should be capable of avoiding goddamn calamitous bullshit on their own. For a long time, even as she started to need me more and more at home, she was loud and present around town, so nobody bothered to question her ability to raise me adequately. Even when she finally stopped showing her face in public, stopped leaving the house altogether, nobody really thought to check in.

  Which was fine by me. And, as far as I could tell, fine by Nana too. I even thought that maybe she’d acted that way in public because she knew what was coming and knew that the two of us would be fine on our own.

  I didn’t think about this while Brielle stood in my living room, though. All I could think was that she was here and I wanted to be with her. Couldn’t wait to get downstairs with her, even if all she wanted was a favor. Yes, I thought at the time. A favor. Of course. Anything you want, whatever it is, I will do it.