The Pricker Boy

by Reade Scott Whinnem

  We climbed up onto their raft to rest and wait for someone to kick us off their private beach. We got a look or two. Of course we would. We were illegal immigrants in cutoff jeans.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked Pete.

  “Richie,” he answered.

  “Richie Nunes?”

  Pete kicked up water with his feet. “Do you remember when he didn’t come back?”

  “Yeah,” I said. The Nuneses had a cottage down past the Patels. One spring they sold their cottage so they could buy one on a lake a little closer to where they lived. A new family bought it, but the kids were really little, so we never got to know them all that well.

  “I hated the start of that summer,” Pete continued. “I remember asking my mom what happened to Richie, and she said that he wasn’t coming back. Just like that. Like it was no big deal.”

  “My parents too,” I said. “‘Oh, by the way…’”

  “I guess because our parents didn’t know his parents, to them things didn’t change much. Richie was just one of the kids, and there were plenty of other kids, so what did it matter? But to me, well, I hated the beginning of that summer.”

  “It felt like something was missing. Like a car—”

  “With only three wheels, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But …,” Pete said, and then he kicked at the water a little more before going on. “By the middle of the summer it was like he’d never been there. Like he’d been erased. And the next summer, when his parents let him come and stay with the Patels for a week? It was weird having him back. It didn’t feel right. I felt better after he left.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. Richie wasn’t part of the summer that the rest of us were building that year, and trying to wedge him into it just didn’t feel natural.

  “It was like he was erased, and what scared me about it was that it was so easy. It just happened. At the beginning I wanted to keep him. Like water cupped in my hands. I wanted to hold it there, but … And then it didn’t matter anymore.”

  “If it doesn’t matter, then why does it bother you?” I asked. It seemed like a logical question. I was hoping that the answer was short, because the Noah’s Beach natives were starting to get restless. I heard one of them say, “I don’t know who they are.” I think they were trying to elect a border-control officer to swim out and send us back to where we came from.

  “I can’t believe that you haven’t thought about this,” Pete said.

  I shrugged.

  “If it can happen like that with Richie, then it could happen with any of them,” he said.

  Something cold crawled across the inside of my rib cage. I wished that I could get it out, but it was one of those thoughts that once inside would never go away.

  “Think about it. Ronnie, gone. Emily, gone. Vivek, gone. Someone new might move into one of their cottages, and in no time they would have taken their spot. Or maybe some old folks would move in, and we’d just have more old folks and fewer kids. And you and me, we’d just rewrite things like our friends were never here.”

  I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but I knew that he wasn’t. Richie had been there, and Richie was gone. He probably has new friends at his new lake. By now his new lake isn’t the new lake anymore. To Richie, Tanner Pond has become the old pond.

  “This isn’t going to last,” Pete said. “And you’ll never know when it’s coming. Ronnie’s grandparents might sell in a month—who knows—and then we’d never see him again. So maybe we should swim back, because who knows if today isn’t really the last day for them.”

  Pete hopped off into the water, and it was a good thing, because some guy had started swimming out, probably to find out what we were doing swimming in their personal water at their personal beach. I jumped in, and we started back. I didn’t know if we should swim faster or slower on the return trip. I wanted to go and see my friends, but part of me couldn’t bear to look at them, just in case.

  When no one is looking, I steal a canister of salt from the kitchen. I take a box of matches, a large candle, and a mason jar. I stuff these in my knapsack, then toss in a thick, misshapen ceramic bowl that I made in pottery class in middle school. I throw the knapsack out my bedroom window. I tell my parents that I’m going for a walk, grab my flashlight, and leave the house. I retrieve the knapsack. I go to the shed, siphon a pint of gasoline from the lawn mower into a water bottle, and close it off as tightly as possible. I wipe it down with a towel and wrap it in a plastic bag to keep the fumes away from the other things that I’m collecting. I walk around the house to Nana’s garden.

  The pond is black, but the moonlight on its surface is holy white, a flickering path across the water. I raise my hand for a minute, waving my fingers as if I can play the light like a flute. So long as the sky remains clear, that white will never leave the water alone, even if the wind were to pick up and try to peel it away.

  Robin is down by the pond. I thought she’d be in bed by now. They should all be in bed now, all of them fast asleep, getting the first good night’s rest they’ve had in a week. She’s wrapped herself in a blanket. It’s too warm for a blanket, but Robin has wrapped one around herself anyway, almost as if the sharp blacks and the whites on the water’s surface are too stark for her to bear.

  Her feet aren’t in the water. In fact, I don’t know that she’s been in the water all summer long. I thought that she had, back when the poison ivy was burning into us all, or perhaps with Nana on one of her early-morning swims, but now I don’t think so. I don’t remember her ever going in at all.

  Not that it matters to me. She has her reasons, and I have mine.

  I find that I can do my work without the aid of the flashlight. I can see every bush around me. The mugwort that Nana says brings dreams of future events. The sage, which Nana asked Ronnie to plant because it’s bad luck for a gardener to plant sage in her own garden. The mints, which have too many uses for me to remember. The yew bush in the back, whose every green needle is poisonous. Only the birds know how to eat the yew berries without killing themselves. When used correctly, they say yew can raise the dead.

  I pull Pete’s pocketknife from my pocket and cut handfuls of horehound. I clip the longest sprigs of rosemary that I can find. I place them carefully into my knapsack.

  “I couldn’t figure out why you lied to us.”

  I drop the pack, whirl around.

  It’s Ronnie. He’s standing about four feet above me on the slight hill that runs up from our yard to the Milkeses’. The moon is behind him, so I can’t see his face, just a black silhouette speaking from above.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” I ask. It’s more an accusation than a question.

  “Because I was thinking about your nightmare. Vivek was right. Your nightmare was pretty mild compared to ours. All of us standing around in a circle, putting this to rest? That’s a pretty convenient dream.”

  “Go home. Go to sleep.” I grab the knapsack.

  “Your nightmare should have been the scariest of all. Every one of your nightmares is.”

  “I said go home.”

  He’s persistent. “You lied, didn’t you?”

  “I guarantee that you’ll sleep well tonight.” I shoulder the pack and head up out of the yard. He jumps down into the garden and follows along behind me.

  “What are you up to, Stucks?”

  “You’re tired, Ronnie. Aren’t you tired?”

  “You didn’t even mention the pennyroyal or the morning glories in the story you told us about your grand parents. Robin had to do that. It was almost as if you didn’t want us thinking too much. You wanted it simple. Dusk, a quick burning, everyone goes home and goes to sleep. You even made up a dream that would tell us what we needed to do.”

  “How would you know what I dreamt?”

  “Because when I first told you about my dream, you said it was like being alone on Judgment Day. And there was something about the way you said it. Like you’d been seeing somet
hing just like it, and you were relieved that someone else was seeing it too. What have you really been dreaming about?”

  “I have all kinds of dreams, Ronnie.”

  “Come on, Stucks. What was your dream? What does the end of the world look like in your head?”

  I spin around. “Go home!” I shout, and then immediately curse myself for raising my voice so close to the houses.

  His voice is quiet, but I’ve never heard it more resolute. “No.”

  I march across the road. He stays on my tail the whole time, telling me over and over again that he’s not going to leave me alone. I pick up my pace, hoping that I can lose him. He probably knows where I’m going, but if I can move fast enough, leave him behind, he’ll get scared and go home.

  Except that he won’t get scared, and he won’t go home. I learned last year that Ronnie is a hell of a lot fiercer than I give him credit for.

  I’m nearing Whale’s Jaw. When I get there, I really will turn on him, really will start screaming, because out here no one will be able to hear me anyway. I’ll tell him what people really think of him. I’ll be as cruel as I can possibly be, even if I have to make things up. I’ll tell him that we never really liked him, remind him of times when we sent him home because we didn’t want him around anymore. I’ll point out that most people don’t want him around, even his own parents, and probably his grandparents for that matter. I’ll say whatever I have to say to turn him around and send him back home, send him crying if I have to. It doesn’t matter if I believe what I’m saying or not, so long as he leaves the woods tonight.

  But as I reach Whale’s Jaw, I see two other figures waiting for us there. I try to run past them, but Vivek grabs me by the arm.

  “Where you goin’, bud?” he asks.

  “Nowhere!” I shout, trying to shake him off. But he’s stronger than I am. While I struggle with him, Emily pulls the pack from my shoulder.

  “Give it back!”

  Emily hands the pack off to Ronnie. She walks up and pulls Vivek’s hand from my arm.

  “Go home! Please just go away and leave me alone!”

  Emily takes both my hands with hers, looks directly at me. In the moonlight, I can’t see the color of her eyes, so I fill in the blue from memory. “We’re not going anywhere, Stucks. And neither are you. That’s just the way it’s going to be.”

  “You’re in charge now?” I ask her.

  “If I have to be.”

  “Oh yeah?” It’s stupid, but I can’t think of anything else to say. She’s taken the fire out of me.

  “Yeah,” she says. And for her there is nothing else that needs to be said.

  I sit down on the edge of Whale’s Jaw. “You can’t be here. You just can’t.”

  “Well, we are.” Emily sits down next to me.

  They shouldn’t be a part of this. It’s too dangerous. If I can’t protect myself completely, then I can’t protect them either. They should be home. They should be in bed. They should be away from this place. That simple purge of their nightmares should have sent them off into the deepest sleep.

  “You have to let me go.”

  “Nope,” Vivek says.

  Ronnie starts sniffing my backpack. “He’s got herbs in here.”

  “And I’m guessing that he’s not going up there to make soup,” Vivek says. “I don’t know what the hell you’ve got planned. If someone explained it to me, I’m sure I wouldn’t understand it anyway. But I do know that I’m not going anywhere until I’m sure that you’re not going to … go up and make soup, or anything else.”

  “You all have to go home sometime.”

  “Nope,” Ronnie says.

  “Are you kidding me, Ronnie? You’re lucky that your grandparents even let you out after dark! You know that they’ll completely freak if you stay out—”

  “I don’t care,” he says. It’s dark, but I can see his eyes, and it’s the same look that he gave Pete last summer.

  Damn.

  “What about those … noises? The women? The coyotes? The things wriggling out of the fire? If those things come back?”

  “We don’t care,” Emily says, and she means it.

  Three hours later, and we’re all still here. Just my luck to have friends this stubborn. The moon has moved across the sky, but other than that nothing much has changed. I’m sitting in the dirt at the base of Whale’s Jaw. Emily is right next to me. She has a handful of cheese crackers that she’s pecking at, and to my surprise she offers me one. I accept.

  Ronnie is staring up into the sky, watching the stars.

  Vivek is balancing himself on one of the damaged lawn chairs. He’s trying to hum a song, a Beatles song I think, but he doesn’t know the tune. He tries to sing the words to help him figure out the tune, but he doesn’t know the words either. It’s a bit annoying.

  “Stop it,” I say.

  “What tune would you prefer?” he asks.

  “A very quiet one.”

  I don’t need some song stuck in my head. My head is full enough already with the noise of the night woods.

  I suppose I should be thankful. Their intentions are good. They’re putting us all in more danger, but they came here because they think that they’re saving me from something, so I guess that means that they’re good friends. All of them except Robin, of course. She’s back at the pond.

  “Let’s see,” I say. “Who showed up to ‘save’ me tonight? Ronnie!” I point at Ronnie. “Vivek!” I point at Vivek. “Emily!” She’s close enough so that when I point at her, my finger is an inch from her hand. “Who isn’t here? Let me see. Hmm …”

  I can see Vivek across from me in his lawn chair. He’s shaking his head. “Bud, you just don’t get it.”

  “What? It’s no mystery. I can’t stand her, and she hates me. I’m sure you guys have figured this out by now.”

  “Sure,” Ronnie says condescendingly.

  “You guys don’t like her much either. You can admit it. You know where she was when I left the house? Where she probably is right now? Down by the pond, staring out over the water. As if her life is just too dramatic for words. She’s all wrapped up in her own little world. She’s blind to anything that doesn’t have to do with her.”

  Vivek pretends to be alarmed. “She’s blind? Like Amelia Earhart?”

  “You mean Helen Keller, you idiot. And no, I don’t mean literally blind. She just doesn’t care about anybody but herself. If you were to break your arm, when you got back with your cast on she’d tell you all about the hangnail she had while you were gone.”

  Emily gives me another cracker, then asks, “You don’t know anything about women, do you?”

  I kick my feet in the dirt. If it were daylight out, they’d all see my face getting red. “Sure I do.”

  Ronnie laughs.

  “Well, I know more than you do!” I shout.

  Ronnie laughs again.

  “You really think you know something about women?” she asks.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Then why aren’t you holding my hand right now?”

  Ronnie goes back to watching the stars. Vivek joins him. Everyone is dead quiet for a full thirty seconds.

  “Why?” I finally ask. “Are you scared or something?”

  “Oh my God,” Vivek says. “Look, Stucks, I’m not too bright, so if I have to be the one to point this out to you, then you’re in deep trouble. You see, when a boy really likes a girl, and the girl really likes him, sometimes they start out by holding hands. And you should have started out a while ago.”

  Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Do I like Emily? As in like? And what does this have to do with Robin?

  I think another thirty seconds have passed, but I can’t be sure. Vivek is trying to hum the Beatles again, and this time I recognize the tune.

  “Hold my hand, Stucks.”

  I hold her hand. It feels nice. Vivek is right. I should have done this a long time ago. I’ve wanted to. I’m confused.

  Vivek
leans back in his lawn chair as he looks up at the sky. “Holding hands is fine,” he lectures us, “but don’t be getting all hanky spanky over there.”

  His hobbled lawn chair collapses under him. Serves him right.

  Emily’s hand is warm. No, not warm. Something different. Light. Touching her makes my fingers feel light. Weightless.

  She gently squeezes my fingers. “You hold on to information that works for you, Stucks. And the rest you just ignore. Polish the blemish away like it doesn’t matter. You erase it like it doesn’t exist.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Tell him,” Ronnie says.

  “Tell me what?”

  Emily places her other hand over the two that we’re already holding together. “Robin was in love with Pete. They were dating all last summer. They tried to hide it from you, but I don’t know how you never saw it. We all saw it.”

  I pull my hand away from her. I look at Ronnie, then at Vivek. Surely one of them is going to chime in. One of them is going to say, “That can’t be possible.” One of them is going to say, “No way, Emily.” But neither of them says anything.

  “It was hiding in plain sight, bud,” Vivek says.

  Of course. I’m so stupid. I saw it, but I didn’t want to believe it.

  “She was so deeply in love with him,” Emily says. “And she saw how that part of him that was always so angry was taking him over, how it was getting easier and easier for him to be cruel to people, and how he hated himself more and more inside each time that it happened.”

  Why didn’t he tell me? I’m not sure whether I just said that in my head or whether I said it out loud to them.

  “Come on, Stucks,” Emily says. “Do you think that you’re the only one who misses him? Do you think that you’re the only one who is hurting because he’s gone? He may have been your best friend, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other people who were crushed when he died.”

  And Emily is right about my ability to hold on to information that works for me and to erase the rest away, because just like that I erase away those last few sentences.