by Lee Child
As I went down the hall, I heard Ms. P say, “You’re too buttoned up in all this. You deserve something for you. A warm little something on the side.”
But Momma just gave a giggle and said, “I can barely remember.”
I went into my room and closed the door, which made me sad because I couldn’t have their voices keep me company, but a closed door was part of the guest rule. So I played for a while and then read Batman until I got to the Joker, who always scares me too much because he smiles all the time but he’s not happy. And someone like that you can’t trust. And that’s an awful thing.
After a while, I heard the front door close and then I heard Ms. P’s car drive off and then Momma came in my room and stared at me and said, “You look ridiculous. Where’d you get that lipstick?”
The next night I walked home after school alone. The fourth graders followed a few blocks like they sometimes do and threw rocks, but they didn’t mean anything because they threw little pebbles not like the real bullies. The fourth graders were just jealous because they weren’t in the special class. At least that’s what Mrs. Connelly says. And they never throw real rocks because they know if they do I’ll sit on them and they don’t like that very much at all.
I got home and ran into the kitchen and checked the micro wave, like I always do first thing. But it was bad news. There were numbers punched in already, which meant that Momma was working a night shift and she wouldn’t be home until after dinner. That made my stomach go all achy, but not big achy like when I ate all those hot dogs and threw up in the back of Ms. P’s Mustang named Coop.
The doorbell rang and I ran over, excited, and opened the front door even though Momma always tells me not to. A guy stood there. He wore overalls with stains on them and he had big shiny arms and black tangly hair down over his eyes. A silver pen stuck up out of the bibby part of his overalls. In front of our house was a beat-up brown truck.
He said, “Is your dad home?”
And I said, “I don’t have a dad. I live with Momma.”
And he smiled a real toothy smile like in the soap operas and said, “I fix driveway cracks. I finished the house up the street a bit early today and I noticed you had some in your driveway. Cracks.”
I said, “I didn’t do it.”
He stared at me sort of funny, then said, “Is your mom home?”
I said, “No.”
He ducked his head a little to look past me into the house and said, “It’s just you and your mom living here?”
I said, “Can I have your pen?”
He pulled the shiny silver pen from his overalls and turned it so it caught the light. It sparkled a bit. He said, “This pen?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “This one right here?”
I said, “Yeah.”
He said, “You won’t tell your momma I gave you this pen?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “No sir.”
He handed me the pen and walked back to his truck. After a few tries, his truck started and he drove off.
I went into Momma’s room and played in her closet. She’s got this one shirt that I like to pet that’s all shimmery like snakeskin. I took it a few times but she always notices right away so I don’t take it anymore. I wasn’t supposed to touch it neither but Momma wasn’t home and what was I supposed to do? Next I took the lid off the shoebox and looked at the rows of green bills. Momma gets paid a lot in cash—her tips, she calls it, but the tips of what?—and if she keeps it in the shoebox instead of a bank then she gets to keep more of it instead of the damn government stealing it, which is weird because I thought it was harder to steal from a bank. It’s the only time Momma says “damn” except when she’s talking about her damn life insurance which she has so she’ll know I’ll be taken care of if something ever happens to her. The damn life insurance costs her an arm and a leg and I don’t even know where to start with how many ways that doesn’t make sense. If something happened to Momma she’d go to heaven and I’d go to the home where some of the other kids in Mrs. Connelly’s class live and they get movie nights and chocolate ice cream if they earn points by behaving well. If I behave well I don’t get any points. But every Wednesday Momma buys me a comic book so I guess that’s something.
A couple nights later, Momma came in my room. She was wearing her shimmery snake shirt, and makeup, which was weird since it was her day off work.
She said, “Tommy, listen. I have someone coming over for dinner, and I’d really like it if you could behave.”
“Is she a waitress, too?”
“It’s a he, actually.”
“I don’t want him to touch my comics.”
“He won’t touch your comics.”
“Can we have pizza?”
“Sure. We can have pizza.” She stopped in the doorway and her eyes looked a bit tired, even with the makeup. She said, “This is important to me, Tommy,” and I wasn’t sure what that meant so I didn’t say anything.
I read Batman again, but still couldn’t get past page eleven where the Joker comes in smiling that smile. So then I read one of my Wolverines and that calmed me down so much I didn’t even notice Momma was at my door until she said, in a stiff voice, “Tommy, I’d like you to come meet someone.”
So I got up and followed her down the hall. Who do you think was there but the guy in the overalls who’d given me the pen! Except he wasn’t in overalls now. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a leather jacket and he smelled like cologne.
Momma said, “Tommy, I’d like you to meet Bo.”
I remembered about the pen and about how Momma wasn’t supposed to know, so I said, “Nice to meet you, Bo.”
And he shook my hand and said, “Good to meet you, Tommy.”
He came in and was all nice to me, slapping my knee and asking if I like football (no) or baseball (no) and saying he betted the girls were just crazy about me at school (no). Momma watched and smiled except when I said, “no,” then she stood behind him and gave me that angry scowl, which was weird because Momma always taught me not to lie. But she also taught me not to talk to strangers and now here she was wanting me to lie to a stranger. It was very confusing.
The doorbell finally rang and Momma said, “Oh, that must be the pizza,” and got up.
Bo said, “No, please, let me,” and he pulled a cool wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket. The wallet was leather with pretty Indian-looking stitching on the back that showed a sunset, the sun all yellow and wobbly going down into the ocean. Bo took out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Momma and she bit her lip and smiled at him then went in the other room.
I said, “I can eat eight slices.”
Bo said, “I bet you can, chief,” and then Momma came back in with the pizza.
Momma put the pizza on the kitchen table and said, “Thank you.” Then she looked at me and said, “Say ‘thank you.’ ”
I said, “Say thank you.”
Momma hates when I do that but I pretend I don’t know any better. She smiled at him and said, “He doesn’t know any better.”
He said, “I completely understand.”
We ate. I ate a lot. Momma excused herself to the bathroom. Bo got up and looked around a little, peering through the door to the garage and into the closet door and the little den, checking out the rooms like he was gonna buy the place. When the toilet flushed, he sat back down in a hurry.
Momma came back in. She said, “I just need to clean up and read Tommy his story before bed. Unless . . .”
And Bo said, “What?”
Momma said, “Unless you want to read him his story. Then we could be done quicker and, you know, alone.”
Bo smiled extra-wide and said, “I’d love to.”
I went back and got in my jammies and he watched me while I changed, and smiled but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was like the Joker’s smile.
The water was running down the hall in the kitchen and Momma was humming to herself.
I climbed i
nto bed and I said, “I want The Hardy Boys. The one about the missing gold. Momma and I are on chapter three.”
Bo said, “Tough luck, retard. I’ll read you Goodnight Moon.”
I think he picked that one because it’s the skinniest.
I said, “Goodnight Moon? You think I’m a baby?”
And he said, “No, I think you’re a retard.”
I told him he was jealous, but he just laughed.
He read it real fast, not even turning it so I could see the pictures. Then he put the book down on his knee. I could hear Momma putting the dishes away in the cupboards. He said, “This is a nice house. A real nice house.”
I said, “Uh-huh.”
He said, “I could get used to living in a house like this.”
Then Momma walked down the hall and leaned against the door and said, “How sweet.”
And he said, “It was nothing at all.”
He walked out and she stayed behind and whispered, “Remember the guest rule.” And then she closed my door.
But I didn’t want to sneak down the hall and listen to them. I didn’t like listening to him the way I liked listening to Ms. P.
The next day at breakfast, Momma said, “Do you like Bo?”
I said, “He’s mean.”
She said, “He’s not mean. He read you a story, didn’t he?”
And I said, “He’s mean.”
She said, “You’re just jealous.”
I said, “He’s jealous.”
She looked at her coffee cup for a while, maybe checking for cracks. Then she said, “Sometimes grown-ups keep company for different reasons.”
“Than if someone’s nice?”
“Yeah. You know when you get lonely?”
“No.”
“How lovely,” she said, and got up to go to work.
That night when I walked home from school I saw Bo’s truck outside. But when I went in, the numbers were punched into the microwave anyway, so that meant they were going out to dinner. They were sitting on the couch together and Momma’s hair was wet, which was weird since she only showers in the morning. They were all smiley and their faces were red. Bo pretended to be nice to me but I went back to my room to read comics.
I heard Momma say, “Let him go.”
They went out. Momma came in to give me a kiss first and she held my head and said, “You know I love you, right?”
And I said, “Me, too.”
I ate alone. They got home late. I was watching TV. Momma opened a bottle of her pink wine so I hid in my room because when Momma drinks her pink wine she gets louder and her voice sounds different. She never gets mean, but I don’t like her voice getting different. It’s sort of like this one time when Wolverine was in the plane crash and it burned away all his skin and, well, you get the idea. I went to bed and got up later to pee and I heard them kind of grunting in Momma’s room and I thought they were moving the bed because Momma likes to redecorate sometimes.
At Mrs. Connelly’s the next day I drew a big pumpkin head with a mean, fake smile like the Joker’s. Or like Bo’s.
Momma was supposed to work because it was Tuesday, but there weren’t any numbers on the micro wave when I got home. I stood there for a long time, staring at the blank micro wave, getting that hurt feeling in my stomach when I think there’s no food. A toilet flushed. And then Bo came out.
He held out his arms like a scarecrow. “I’m your babysitter to -night,” he said. “Your mom’s working the night shift. Ain’t I a nice guy?” And then he laughed but it wasn’t like he thought something was funny. It was a Joker-smile kind of laugh.
I stayed in my room until I got too hungry and then I came out and said, “Will you make me a sandwich?”
He was watching a football game and he didn’t look over at me. He just said, “No.”
So I got the Salisbury steak TV dinner from the freezer and said, “Will you punch the numbers into the micro wave?”
He said, “What numbers?”
And I said, “I don’t know.”
He said, “Retard,” then he got up with a groan and shoved the box in the micro wave and hit some buttons and after the ding went off the steak was all rubbery. I ate it anyways.
I didn’t see Momma that night, but I saw her the next morning, dressed for work again. Bo was there, too. I think they had a sleepover. Momma’s mouth got the way it did when I was supposed to leave the room, but I think Bo got it that way, not me, and besides, I wasn’t done with my Corn Flakes.
They kept talking in quiet voices like I c ouldn’t hear but I was sitting right there.
Momma would say, “It’s too soon.”
And then he’d say, “It could save you some money, too, having me help out.”
And she’d say, “Not in front of him.” Or, “He doesn’t do well with change.” When she said, “Plus, we’re still getting to know each other,” he frowned and Momma looked like her stomach hurt.
Then he said, “Maybe that’s how you feel.”
She said, “I’m off at two. He doesn’t get home until three. We’ll discuss it then.” And she went to put her hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.
When I got home from school, the lamp by the couch was knocked over and that made me stop inside the door and scrunch my eyes shut. I was pretty sure I didn’t do it, but you never know when you’re gonna get blamed. In the dark, I said, “Momma?” but she didn’t answer me.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that Bo’s leather jacket was hung on the back of the kitchen chair. I went over and looked at it. It felt smooth and had lots of neat hidden pockets and stuff.
I said, “Momma?” again, but no one answered me. That almost made me forget how hungry I was.
I walked down the hall past my room and checked the bathroom. No Momma. I went in her room.
Momma lay on the floor with her mouth open. I thought she might be dead.
I said, “I want a sandwich.”
But she didn’t say anything back. Then I held out my toe and shoved her shoulder and she moved a little, but stiff, all at once. It was like the hamster babies in Mrs. Connelly’s class, who also went to heaven.
When I turned around, Bo was standing in the doorway behind me. He looked at Momma, then at me. He said, “What’d you do?”
And I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what I did.
He shook his head and made a tut-tutting sound. He had a book in his hand. He said, “You like stories, right?”
I nodded.
He said, “Come on, let’s get out of here. Away from what you’ve done.”
And we went in my room. He pushed me onto the bed and sat in the chair like he did last time when he read me Goodnight Moon. He took out this skinny book and said, “Here’s a book about a guy like you, retard. He’s a stone-cold killer.”
He read some then skipped a bunch of sections because there were no pictures and he probably got bored, too. There were these two guys who talked funny and one was tall and then there was a huge imaginary talking rabbit and someone died in a barn. That’s all I figured out. I would have rather watched Pokémon.
He closed the book when he was done. “Did you get it?” he asked.
And I nodded because people get mad at me when I don’t get it. And he said, “Every story has a moral. And the moral of this story is that people like you can’t be trusted.”
He walked out into the other room. After a while, I followed. He was wiping off doorknobs and the glasses in the sink with a rag.
He said, “People tell you you think different, right?”
I nodded.
Now he was wiping off the kitchen chairs. “I’m not really here, retard. I’m in your imagination, you hear? You ever seen Pinocchio?”
I said, “I want to be a real boy.”
“That’s right. I’m like Jiminy Cricket. Or like that big rabbit in that book. I don’t exist. I’m a voice in your head. Got it?” He put on his leather jacket and walked out, using the rag to open the fr
ont door and close it behind him.
I stood there for a while. I went back into Momma’s room and looked at Momma. There was blue around her eye. Then I went in my room and read Batman again, up to page eleven. I checked the microwave but there were no numbers and I wasn’t sure how I would eat so I called 911.
The cops came in and looked in Momma’s room. Then they patted me down like Momma does at the diner after her shift when she’s looking for salt and pepper shakers. They sat me down on Momma’s bed and asked me some stupid questions. Then another guy showed up who I knew was a cop from the shiny badge on his belt even though he was too lazy to wear a uniform.
He came into Momma’s room, looked up, and said, “Holy Christ.”
I said, “You’d better not say that in front of Mrs. Connelly.”
He said, “Who’s Mrs. Connelly?”
And I said, “She’s Irish.”
He said, “Let’s get him out of here, Eddie.”
Eddie said, “Okay, detective.”
He and Eddie took me into the living room and I sat on the couch. Other cops were putting dust all over the glasses and the doorknobs and using makeup brushes to wipe it off, which didn’t make sense because why put it there in the first place? They kept shaking their heads. I didn’t blame them.
Eddie said, “Why’d you kill her?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
And the detective said, “What were you feeling?”
I said, “I wanted a sandwich.”
Eddie said, “There’s our headline.”
I said, “I don’t know why I would’ve killed Momma because I love her and she makes me sandwiches and I’m real hungry.”
The detective said, “Aren’t you sad?”
I said, “She’s in heaven now.”
And he said, “Well, there’s that.”
Eddie said, “You’re gonna go away. To a different place.”
I said, “I’m in a different place now. I ride a van to school and sit in a different classroom.”
Eddie frowned and said, “Not like that, exactly.”
One of the other cops stopped in my doorway and said, “You never know with these types.”
The detective said, “I guess not.”
