It was a gift certificate to the Skylark. Twenty-five bucks. “For me?”
She smiled. “Treat your family to lunch.”
“Thank you. I didn’t do it for—”
She waved me off. “You’ve got a good heart, Alistair. Good hearts deserve rewards. Last time we talked, you asked me if I worry about kids. The thing I worry about most is friendships. At your age they go in either direction. Charlie thinks the world of you, you know?”
“Maybe.”
She shook her head. “That wonderful short story Charlie wrote for the Sutton Bulletin a few weeks ago? There’s a reason he named the hero after you.”
The Sutton Bulletin was a weekly paper that covered sports and politics and human interest stories. Occasionally they’d print poems and short fiction by locals. My parents had canceled our subscription at least a year before, when they realized they were shelling out a dollar a month for what amounted to unused papier-mâché supplies. So I had no idea what Braugher was talking about. My response was thus a neutral one. “Charlie does what Charlie does.”
“And, it appears, he does it quite well.”
I didn’t know Charlie wrote stories, let alone submitted them to local papers. Since he didn’t brag about them, I assumed it meant they weren’t very good. Braugher seemed to believe he had talent, and my curiosity about this outweighed any fear I had of embarrassing him by reading something he clearly didn’t want me to see. After school, I headed straight to the library.
Ms. Linqvist showed me where they kept copies of the Sutton Bulletin. They were in the study room, hung on a rack of wooden rods like they were towels left out to dry. I took the five most recent issues to a nearby table and flipped through them. I found what I was looking for in the October 14 issue.
ALIENS OF THE SEVENTH GRADE
A story by Charlie Dwyer
There once was a boy named Alistair, and he was in the seventh grade. He was a regular boy with regular problems. There were kids in his class who weren’t regular. The day that he found out that these kids were aliens was the day that everything made sense …
Character names had been changed, the title tweaked, but this was “Sixth Grade for the Outer-Spacers.” Word for word.
Sickness stood in for anger. Last spring, I had given Charlie a copy of my story fresh from the computer printer. He took it home and read it that night. The next morning he delivered his review over the phone: “Don’t quit your day job. You’ll end up starving.”
Looking down at the newspaper, at Charlie’s baffling act of plagiarism, I felt like I was starving. Sourness filled my stomach. My throat lurched. For a moment I was tempted to rip the paper up, stuff it in my mouth, and swallow it. It was a weird temptation, but an honest one. I wanted to drown the existence of such a thing. Drown it in acid.
Better senses won out, and I pushed the paper away and stood up from the table. Without saying a word, I sprinted out of the library.
The two miles I ran from the library were probably the most I’d ever run. It was still early, but little kids were already out, walking hand in hand with their parents. There were princesses and firemen and gypsies and hobos and every sort of cute animal. Probably half the kids donned cheap store-bought costumes with plastic masks that were held on by rubber bands and pressed cockeyed against their faces. When I was younger and my mom was making all of my costumes, I envied kids like this. They got to be the latest movie icon or popular toy. They were quietly and instantly recognizable, while I always had to explain.
I was still in my school clothes—jeans, a jacket, a sweater, a turtleneck—not exactly the attire of a runner. Parents exercised caution, guiding their children out of my path as I dashed by. They must have taken me for both types of mad, and I guess they were right. By the time I reached Charlie’s house, I was also exhausted. On his front porch, I doubled over and tried to cough myself back to normal. The sourness in my stomach had gotten worse. I was having trouble remembering my stomach without it.
When I finally brought my head up, I saw that the front door was open and Charlie was standing there in his pirate attire.
“So what’s your costume?” he asked. “Tuberculosis?”
I gulped back my nausea and said the title. “‘Aliens … of the Seventh … Grade.’”
That was all it took. Charlie stared at me for a moment and scraped his hook against the doorjamb. I was a bit surprised he didn’t have a canned response. Surely he knew this day was coming.
“Let’s face it, Alistair,” he finally said. “You were doing nothing with that story. If it wasn’t for me, no one else would have seen it. A thank-you might be nice. For getting people to actually read your writing. And for saving your life.”
I could have punched him right in his smug face. I could have kicked him square in the crotch. I could have watched him writhe in pain, and I could have told him that he was no friend of mine, that I owed him nothing, that he owed me everything, for all of the years I’d indulged him, for all of his crap I’d endured, from the morning with the wasps to the night with the sleds and any number of incidents I don’t have the time or energy to delve into now. I could have done a lot of things.
I chose to walk away.
HALLOWEEN
PART II
My doorbell rang at a quarter till seven. Mike and Trevor, darkly clad and wearing backpacks, waited on my front steps. Ski masks clung to their brows, but they hadn’t pulled them over their faces yet. On the street behind them, things were under way. A trio of girls dressed as M&M’s sprinted by, the orbs that encased their bodies exploding into red and blue and yellow as they passed beneath a streetlight.
“We’re giving you five minutes,” Trevor said. “Ninja now or ninja never.”
“Whatcha got there?” I asked.
Mike took his backpack off and opened it up. He pulled out rolls of toilet paper, a carton of eggs, and a can of shaving cream with the nozzle melted down so the opening was nothing more than a pinprick. “Good times,” he said.
Weaponry like this was suddenly irresistible. My encounter with Charlie had left me ravenous for revenge. I imagined the eggs flying at his face, breaking on his cheekbone, and oozing down his neck.
“I’m in,” I told them.
I didn’t have a lot of dark clothing, so I had to make do with a navy blue long-underwear top and black dress shoes and dress pants—the same ones I wore to the wake. Instead of a ski mask I found an old wool hat and I used the tip of an umbrella to spread the stitching and create two eyeholes. When I pulled it over my face, it only reached down as far as my chin. Ridiculous, but it concealed my identity. It would have to suffice.
“Ninja, huh?” my mom said when she saw me tiptoeing to the door. “Please tell me my son is more creative than that.”
“I’m twelve,” I reminded her. “I’m sorry if I can’t go as a bunny rabbit anymore.”
“Keri is dressed as a cat,” she countered as she poured a bag of miniature candy bars into a glass bowl. “Wasn’t so hard to put together.”
“Really, Mom? Are you really saying this?”
She grabbed a bar, tore it open, and took a bite. She winked. “Have fun. Keri gets until ten, so you get until ten, but only tonight.”
I met the guys in the yard, where Mike loaded up my backpack with my share of the supplies. “First things first,” he said. “Heard that 167 Maple has a basket of full-size Snickers sitting on the front porch with a note that says Please take one.”
“We’ll be taking more than one,” Trevor informed me. I had assumed as much.
A divorced college professor owned the house. I didn’t know his name, but my parents referred to him as Dr. Leadfoot because he tore around the neighborhood in a little blue sports car, rarely even slowing down for stop signs. He was never out for a stroll, never participated in the block parties or the neighborhood garage sales. The windows of his house were almost always dark.
They were dark when we got there, and as we darted across the
lawn toward the door, Trevor pulled his mask over his face and a pillowcase out of his backpack. “I’ll take ’em all and we’ll divvy ’em up later.”
Mike and I nodded our approval, and Trevor assumed the lead. He leapt over the front steps and onto the porch. As promised, the basket was there, and he snatched it immediately, but when he got a look inside, his head dropped. He tilted the wicker to show us the contents: broken eggs.
“We’re too late,” Mike said.
“You’re right on time, actually,” someone responded.
An egg pelted Trevor on the side of the head. As he recoiled, a water balloon struck him on the arm. Liquid smacked his chest. Attackers were somewhere on the porch, but we couldn’t see them.
“Freakin’ gross!” Trevor howled, and he sprang back over the steps and hit the ground running. Mike and I fumbled through our bags, desperate for retaliation. I grabbed the first thing I found—a rotten banana—and threw it toward the porch. It struck a support beam and splattered.
“It was pee! Oh god, I think it was pee!” Trevor yelled as he sprinted toward the road.
Meanwhile, Mike was dispatching long thin ribbons of shaving cream, waving his arm in a haphazard figure eight. The cream flew at least fifteen feet, but the porch was more than twenty feet away. The grass and bushes took the brunt.
A water balloon exploded at my feet and unleashed an acidic stench. I couldn’t be sure what the liquid was, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “They’ve got pee balloons!” I screamed to Mike, and that’s all he needed to hear.
Seconds later we were both following in Trevor’s wake, packs over our shoulders and eggs and water balloons raining down around us like mortar shells.
“Keep goin’! Keep goin’!” Mike squealed to Trevor. There was a certain amount of glee in his voice. This was exactly the type of night he had been hoping for.
We made it across the street and kept going until we were out of range of the streetlights. Shielded behind a tree, we assessed the situation.
“Who was that?” Mike asked.
“I’m guessing Ken Wagner and Sanjay,” Trevor said.
“Sanjay is such a tool,” Mike added. Then he sniffed Trevor’s shoulder. “Oh god, it really was pee, wasn’t it?”
“Probably vinegar,” I said. It made more sense. It would take a lot of pee to fill up multiple balloons.
“It’s gross, whatever it is,” Trevor said, peeling off his top layer. “I knew I should have brought another sweatshirt.”
“Get that pee-smock outta here,” Mike commanded.
Trevor did the contrary. He thrust it at us. “Lap it up, doggies.”
Mike grabbed for a sleeve and yanked it away. “Buh-bye,” he said as he swung it like a lasso and tossed it into the bough of a tree.
“I’m gonna get frostbite!” Trevor protested, folding his arms. He was down to only a T-shirt. It was close to freezing out.
“Really?” Mike asked. “You’d rather stink?”
“I’d rather keep moving,” Trevor said. “Come on. Let’s take down one of our targets.” Trevor bolted again, and our only choice was to tag along.
The little kids had gone home by this point, and our classmates had completely taken over the neighborhood. Bands of three to six roamed up and down the streets and huddled in yards to plot. Many of the costumes were uninspired—girls in football jerseys and eye black, guys in rubber monster masks—but everyone had at least one can of shaving cream at the ready. Trees and cars and signs were all caked with the gunk. I could taste it in the air.
We snaked and dodged, wielding our cans with fingers on the nozzles so that any potential foes would know we had the drop on them. It was exciting, and for the first time in weeks I was smiling, genuinely. I hadn’t forgotten about Charlie, but I knew he was out there alone, while I had two guys with me who didn’t care how good I was at video games, who didn’t steal my ideas, who wanted me as a friend because they thought I was fun.
“Better run, ya pansies!” someone yelled, and Mike pointed his nozzle back over his shoulder and let loose with a stream of shaving cream as he ran. It looked like the exhaust from a jet.
A burst of red and blue lights tipped me off to a police car down the street, and I shouted to Trevor, “Cops! Hang a ricky!”
Trevor got the message, making a sharp right turn into the O’Haras’ yard. We hustled past their aboveground pool, over a chain-link fence on the other side, and kept going for a while, running from yard to yard, trying to stay buried in the shadows.
We were a couple of houses away when I realized we were heading straight for Fiona’s. Trevor was leading again, and I considered asking him to shoot back across the street, but any excuse to pass by Fiona’s—if only to see if the light was on in her window—was a good enough excuse for me.
As soon as we reached the border between the Andersons’ and the Loomises’ yards, Trevor stopped and said, “This is it, I think.”
“This is what?” I asked.
“Fiona Loomis’s house,” Mike said.
“Yeah, so?”
“It’s one of our targets,” Trevor told me.
“Target for what?” There was only one second-floor room with the light on. I was pretty sure Fiona’s room was on the second floor, but from our angle I couldn’t tell if the lit one was it.
“TP. Eggs. The whole shebang,” Mike said. “We’re messing this place up good tonight.”
“Uh … why?”
“Because,” Mike said.
“Because of what?”
“She’s a pig,” Trevor said.
A pig? He called her a pig? I couldn’t believe it. He might as well have karate-chopped me in the Adam’s apple. I started to talk, but my windpipe sealed up and I could only whisper a short reply. “She’s…”
They weren’t listening anyway. By that point they were already digging into their backpacks and removing the ammo.
I took a deep breath and tried again. “She’s … What did you call her?”
Trevor put his thumb to his nose and started snorting and oinking.
“Naw,” Mike said as he hurled a roll of toilet paper at the nearest tree. “Her nose is all twisted. It’s more like one of those monkeys with the nasty old honkers.”
“Shut up,” I said. “What are you…? Just shut up.”
Trevor looked at me sideways. “Don’t you know Fiona Loomis? She’s weirdness squared.”
“Of course I know her,” I said. “She’s my…”
I stopped short, but not because of embarrassment. It was Trevor’s cheeks. I could see them rising beneath his ski mask. He was smiling.
That was all it took.
I reared back and jumped forward, drove my shoulder into Trevor’s stomach, and wrapped my arms around his body. It didn’t knock him over, but it knocked the breath out of him. He wheezed and coughed, and I could feel his hands pawing, trying to grab at my belt loops. His fingernails found the exposed skin of my lower back. He scraped and I clenched my teeth.
“What in the…?” Mike said.
Pushing Trevor forward, I tried to get a good foothold, but the grass was wet and my shoes didn’t have enough traction. I slipped backward, and as I fell, he fell, and soon we were on the ground wrestling.
“Knock it off!” Mike yelled.
While we squirmed, my hat twisted over my face, blinding me. I kicked and clawed but couldn’t tell if I was winning or not. I tried to grab Trevor’s arms, but now that he was in short sleeves there was nothing to get a grip on. My rib cage felt the pressure of his knee and I struggled to breathe, but it only made me fight harder. Blood rushed everywhere. My face was piping hot.
“What’s … wrong … with you?” Trevor grunted.
I yanked my hat off so I could finally see my opponent. I swung my arms, trying to land a punch, but ended up elbowing the ground and his thighs. I twisted my body to get a better angle, and that’s when I came nose-to-nozzle with it: Mike’s can of shaving cream.
He sprayed
it right in my face.
I howled and I spat the cream off my lips. Letting go of Trevor, I rolled away.
“You’re crazy!” Trevor yelled.
I ran an arm across my face to wipe it clean and looked up to that window with the light on, hoping to see Fiona. Instead, looking down on me was Dorian Loomis. He raised a hand and gave a single sharp wave. If our fight was anything more than a curiosity to him, he didn’t let on.
I closed my eyes and screamed, “You don’t ever say anything about her! You don’t ever do anything to her! You don’t even think about her! Or I’ll kill you! I swear, I will kill you!”
When I opened my eyes, Dorian was no longer in the window. Trevor and Mike, grass-stained and dumbfounded, were standing a few feet away, staring at me.
I scrambled to my feet and ran into the street. Mrs. Carmine, holding a bowl of Smarties, watched me from her front steps and shook her head.
HALLOWEEN
PART III
I washed my face with frigid water from our garden hose, ditched my hat in the bushes that lined our yard, and fetched my bike from the garage. It was barely past eight o’clock. Riding my normal speed, I could get to Gina Rizetti’s by eight forty-five. As far as my parents were concerned, I was still out trick-or-treating with Mike and Trevor. I had until ten. It was possible.
On the streets the battles were still raging, so I pedaled as far from large groups as I could and rode on grass when necessary until I reached the bike path on the south end of the neighborhood. This was a risk. The bike path went for miles—under train trestles and near the banks of the Oriskanny, past nature trails and county parks—but there were no lights along it and I had never ridden it at night.
The stars cast only ten feet of visibility in front of me, and to my sides the brambles and shrubs were impenetrable. If someone was hidden in them, I would never have known. So I didn’t even bother looking around. Eyes ahead, I hummed to myself and rode as fast as I could.
My legs were aching, but I couldn’t stop them moving. I couldn’t think about anything other than my anger. The humming was supposed to calm me, yet it only provided a sound track to the feelings. The song I was humming was one that Fiona used to play from the tape recorder on her handlebars. It was the same one she had taped over when she recorded her message for me. I didn’t realize that right away, but when I did, I hummed louder and I pedaled faster.
The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) Page 13
