Stick

by Andrew Smith

  Cows don’t listen very good.

  Emily’s cow ran toward the woods as soon as she got on it, and I had a hard time getting my cow to put up with me. I ended up flopped over its back, and when it started trotting, before I could straddle it, I was on my elbows and butt in the wet grass, watching it poop, eat, and run away from me, all at the same time.

  “Stupid cow,” I said.

  Emily laughed.

  I watched her run across the field to where I was sitting.

  The cows disappeared. I guess they didn’t think jousting was so fun.

  Neither did I, actually.

  Emily pulled my hand so I could stand up. She was so much smaller than me, but for a girl, she was real strong.

  These were our Saturdays.

  We did nothing and everything at the same time.

  We walked along the barbed wire toward the road that led down to the pier.

  “Hey, Em.”

  “What?”

  “You take baths, right?”

  “Why? Do I smell bad?”

  “No. I mean, would you ever take a bath with someone else?”

  “That’s a weird thing to ask, Stick.”

  I told her about what I saw in the Penthouse magazine.

  “It looked kind of neat,” I said. “Would you ever take a bath with someone?”

  “Yes. I think I would.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Well, later, when my parents go for groceries, we can take a bath together at my house if you want. We shouldn’t do it if they’re home. They might get mad. You want to?”

  “For real?”

  “Sure.” She laughed. “It sounds like fun. It’s just a bath, anyway. Why? Are you scared?”

  I was scared. I never thought she would react like that, like it was completely no big deal at all for us to take a bath together. But that’s how Emily was. She never read anything into anything.

  Maybe that’s why things like my ear didn’t matter to her.

  “Of course I’m not scared,” I said. “I drive cars and blow things up at night.”

  I was really scared.

  * * *

  I left my shoes on the porch, my jacket and Bosten’s cap on the coat tree, and followed Emily upstairs. She stopped at the cupboard in the hallway and pulled out two big green towels.

  “Do you like bubbles or no bubbles?” she asked.

  I had to take a deep breath. I felt dizzy.

  “Bubbles,” I squeaked.

  She turned around and reached behind me. That was the door to the bathroom.

  Emily said, “You wait out here. I’ll tell you when to come in.”

  “Okay.”

  I stood there, leaning against the wall beside the door, listening to the sound

  of the water

  filling the tub.

  My knees shook, and my stomach felt like a galloping horse. But for Emily, it was nothing. Just a bubble bath with a friend.

  After what seemed like an hour, the water stopped.

  “Okay. You can come in now.”

  I’d been in that bathroom at least a hundred times, but never with Emily sitting there, naked in a bathtub full of bubbles and steaming water. The room was all white, lacquered walls, white cool tiles beneath my socks, sunlight streaming in through gauze drapes, just the slightest fog on the mirror, our towels laid out on the floor, and there was Emily, the bubbles frothing up to her chin, with her hair clipped up on top of her head. I think that was the first time I ever noticed her neck, how perfect it was.

  If I tried to talk, I know I would have gagged.

  It was like being in heaven.

  Or in a magazine.

  Then I noticed her clothes had been folded, so neatly with her panties on top, and left on the counter beside the sink.

  “You can turn on the radio if you want,” she said.

  My hand didn’t work so good.

  When the sound came on, the Kingston DJ was saying something about the UFO attack last night, and then he started laughing, playing “It Came Out of the Sky” by Creedence. I turned it down.

  “Was that really you guys?”

  I nodded.

  She asked, “Do you want me to close my eyes?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s really nice and warm,” she said. She didn’t look away.

  I took off my shirt and undershirt. I tried to fold them, but that wasn’t working out. I put them down next to Emily’s clothes. I took a quick breath and slid my jeans off. I just left them on the floor. Then my socks. They looked like dead white bunnies next to my jeans.

  Practically everyone I knew from eighth grade had seen me naked. Well, boys, I mean. It’s just how it was since we all took showers together in a really big, open locker room, every day after gym class. I had friends besides Emily, and they’d all seen me naked. So I just told myself it was no big deal, and this was just another friend.

  I tried to calm myself down, inhaled, and finally, I pulled down my underwear. I stepped my feet free of them and felt the coolness of the floor tiles under my naked toes. Then I just stood there, not really sure what I was supposed to do next.

  It didn’t feel sexy or nasty or anything else, because Emily was my friend, and that’s all there was to it.

  In fact, after I got out of my underwear, I felt totally comfortable and relaxed standing in front of her.

  In front of Emily, I never felt ashamed about anything.

  She watched me the whole time I undressed, and after that, too, when I just stood there like a dummy, wondering what to do.

  And she said, “I’ve never seen a naked boy before.”

  I shrugged. “Most of us have hair here.” I drew a circle in the air around my nuts. “I don’t yet. Just some under my arms. See?”

  I lifted my right arm and pulled a few strands of hair straight between my finger and thumb.

  “Are you going to get in the water, or what?”

  I took the two endless steps to the edge of the tub, and Emily scooted over for me. I got in the water and sat down beside her. Our feet touched. Our legs rubbed together. We couldn’t help it, and when I leaned back to rest against the deep side of the tub, my back pressed softly against her shoulder.

  And I felt the skin of her butt against mine.

  I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I just kept them cupped on my knees.

  “This is fun,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  What else could I say? I couldn’t even pay attention to the radio, my heart was beating so hard inside my skull.

  Emily moved.

  She began washing off my neck and shoulders with a wet cloth.

  I never felt anything as good as that in my entire life.

  “You have all this hair stuck to you,” she said.

  “I got a haircut today.”

  She kept washing me, squeezing out water that trickled down between my shoulder blades.

  “You should always

  take a bath

  after a haircut.”

  “I am.”

  She laughed.

  I said, “We are only allowed to take baths on Saturday and Sunday nights. That’s the rules, since we have to take showers at school every day, anyhow.”

  “Oh.”

  She had a small plastic tub, one that used to hold soft margarine. She dipped it into the water in front of my chest. “Close your eyes.”

  She poured the water, slow and warm, over my head. Then I felt something cold running through my hair. I jerked.

  “It’s just shampoo,” she said. “Relax.”

  It smelled like candy.

  “We don’t use shampoo,” I said. “Us boys don’t.”

  She began rubbing my head with her fingers. Both of her hands were on me, massaging.

  “That feels … smells so good.”

  “Close your eyes, I’m going to rinse.”

  “Okay.”

  She kept pouring the water over me, combing it through m
y hair with her hands. Then she said, “This is conditioner.”

  And something else, cold and thick, oozed over my head.

  “What’s it for?”

  “It makes your hair soft and smell good.”

  It felt like being a king in a palace.

  “There,” she said. “You look beautiful. Now, let’s go have lunch.”

  Just like that.

  That was Emily.

  I stood up, wiped the bubbles from my skin, and stepped out of the tub, dripping on the tiles of the floor. I dried myself as quickly as I could while Emily sat in the bath and watched me struggle at getting all my clothes back on, my shirt tucked in.

  I felt new.

  I looked at my hair in the mirror.

  It looked real nice.

  “Sorry about the water on the floor,” I said. “Uh … I’ll wait for you outside.”

  “I’ll clean it up,” Emily said.

  I opened the door, and she called out after me, “That was really cool, Stick. A great idea. We should do it again sometime.”

  I said, “Yeah. We should. Again.”

  I closed the door and waited for her in the hallway.

  * * *

  I was so confused.

  I wanted to tell Bosten about what we did, but I thought that wouldn’t be nice to Emily.

  It wasn’t anything like the stupid magazine, either.

  It wasn’t sexy at all.

  At least, not magazine sexy.

  It was something else that I never heard of before.

  * * *

  Mrs. Lohman always left a lunch prepared for us on Saturdays when they’d go to do their marketing in town. That Saturday, it was tuna sandwiches and apple pie.

  Emily sat to my left at the kitchen table, like it was nothing at all that we had just taken a bath together.

  I watched her as she bit into her sandwich. But I felt bad, like I had stolen something from Mrs. Lohman, and it didn’t feel right for me to be sitting there, eating her food, so I left it on my plate and watched Emily.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Maybe I should go home.”

  I never left Emily’s house this early on a Saturday.

  “I don’t know why you have to be so weirded out, Stick. We didn’t do anything bad. It was really nice, in fact. You take showers with other kids every day, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well?” she said.

  “That was the coolest thing I ever did in my life, Emily,” I admitted.

  “See? Now eat your sandwich.”

  “Uh … thank you for washing my hair. And the conditioner stuff. Nobody’s ever done that to me. Ever.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I picked up half of my sandwich. Mrs. Lohman always cut sandwiches diagonally. I liked that.

  “Did you mean it, Em? About how you think we should do that again some time?”

  “Not if you’re going to get all weirded out about it, ’cause it’s no big deal.”

  “I promise I will not get weirded out next time.”

  “Then eat your sandwich and let’s walk down to the beach.”

  BOSTEN

  The rule was I’d have to be home before the sun went behind the trees lining the western side of the gravel driveway that led to our house.

  It was the best day of my life.

  I ran my hand through my hair and sniffed it.

  In the mudroom, I took off my shoes and jacket. I carried Bosten’s cap in my hands and cautiously stepped into the living room. Everything inside smelled like cigarettes and salmon frying in the kitchen.

  Dad fished every weekend.

  He was watching television when I came in. He looked up at me, to make sure I didn’t have a hat on my head, then he pulled another cigarette out from his pack and yelled toward the kitchen, “He’s back.”

  I heard Mom cough or something, and Dad looked at me again, harder, and said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Huh? Oh. Nothing. Dad.”

  Sometimes, in our house, for me and Bosten, it was like being bugs in baby food jars.

  And I’d tiptoe everywhere. I couldn’t ever hear myself, but I wondered how noisy I made their world, them having two ears and all.

  * * *

  I slid around behind the television, still carrying Bosten’s cap. I glanced down the hallway, quickly, hoping Dad wouldn’t notice I was looking. The old key was sticking out beneath the knob on the door to the spare room.

  That meant Bosten was still in there.

  Just as I got to the top of the basement staircase, Dad said, “Get Bosten some clothes and tell him to take his shower before dinner. He can come out now.”

  “Okay.”

  Bosten’s room was the next door across the hallway from the spare room. Mom and Dad’s bedroom was on the top floor. We never went up there. When I passed the door to the spare room, I tapped my finger on it twice so he’d know I was coming.

  I left Bosten’s cap on his bed and grabbed clean clothes and a towel for him.

  I was happy for my brother. It seemed like years had passed since the game last night.

  I put all the stuff I’d grabbed on the bottom stair at the end of the hall. I looked back only once to make sure nobody was watching me, and then I carefully went up to Mom’s bathroom.

  It wasn’t anything like Emily’s bathroom. Mom’s smelled like cigarettes and the kind of flowery soap my English teacher used. There was a small blue jar of hand cream sitting beside the sink, with lots of other strange-looking women’s things scattered around, too. I didn’t have the first idea about what those things could be used for.

  I thought those were the kinds of things they should show women using in magazines, because the sex stuff didn’t teach me anything real at all.

  I stole her jar of hand cream. I slipped it inside my shirt, then buttoned it up and went back downstairs to get my brother.

  I turned the key and opened the door to the dark little room.

  Bosten was lying on the cot, covered by a sheet. He was on his side with his back to me, so I couldn’t tell if he was sleeping or not. The steel pail was on the floor at the foot of the bed.

  I put Bosten’s clothes and towel down next to his feet.

  “Hey,” I whispered. I kneeled down next to him. “Dad said you can come out now, and for you to take a shower before dinner.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll clean the room and take the pail out.”

  Bosten didn’t say anything.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me see. Okay?”

  I pulled the sheet down, away from Bosten’s shoulders, so I could see his back.

  We’d both been beaten plenty of times before. This was one of the bad ones. It happened every so often.

  “It’s pretty bad,” I said.

  From the middle of his shoulder blades, past his butt and onto his thighs, Bosten was streaked with purple welts. Some of the marks that were raised had actually bled; all of them, angled up like slashes, like fractions with no numbers.

  I whispered, lower, “Turn flat. I’m going to put something on it to make you feel better.”

  Bosten rolled flat onto his belly. He rested his chin on his forearm and stared at the wall at the head of the bed.

  “I hate them.”

  I saw a shadow from behind, in the doorway.

  Dad heard what Bosten said.

  I saw it in his eyes.

  Dad didn’t say anything. He pulled a drag from his cigarette and quietly walked back down the hall toward the living room.

  “He heard you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  I unbuttoned my shirt, remembered what I’d been carrying in my pocket all day.

  I unfolded the newspaper clipping and held it in front of Bosten’s face.

  “Look at this,” I said. “We have invaded. All Earthlings must surrend
er or die.”

  My brother looked at me and smiled.

  I said, “You know. You really are my hero, Bosten.”

  “Shut up.” Bosten turned his face back to the picture of our UFO, the story about the panicked farmer who snapped it with his Brownie camera. “But this is fucking cool, Sticker.”

  While Bosten read the clipping, I unscrewed the cap to Mom’s hand cream. It was cold and felt like lard between my fingers.

  “Does this hurt?” I began tracing the lines of Bosten’s wounds with the cream.

  “No. It feels good.”

  “I’m going to sneak it down to my room. I can put some more on after your shower.”

  “If Mom finds that, it’s going to be you in here.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m throwing it out in the incinerator tonight.”

  * * *

  While Bosten showered, I cleaned the spare room.

  Saint Fillan’s room.

  I had to replace the sheet and bedspread with clean ones, so that the room actually looked like a guest room—which it definitely was not—in case any visitors happened down that hallway. The door was only kept shut if someone was inside, and nobody ever stayed in that room in my entire life except for me or Bosten.

  I thought, my parents are very unhappy, but me and Bosten aren’t.

  Not yet.

  Sometimes I wondered about what made them that way, but Bosten told me that things don’t make people the way they are. He said it’s not like catching a cold or something.

  You just are.

  So Bosten said, “I did the math, Sticker.” And he figured that he was the first mistake that ruined their lives.

  “Look at me,” I said. “I am number two.”

  Now that’s math.

  * * *

  The pail always had to be emptied into the incinerator pit, then hosed clean with bleach and water. Then it had to be left, upside down, on the rocks beside our well house.

  That was how we had to do it.

  Then, after dinner, I’d have to go get the pail and put it back inside the empty closet in the dark spare room.

  I threw Mom’s hand cream in the incinerator, too.

  PAUL

  In the morning, Dad went fishing with Ian Buckley.

  He left before we got out of bed.

  Mom never cooked breakfast. Breakfast for Mom was a cigarette and two or three cups of coffee with sugar and half-and-half. Bosten and I ate toast with apple butter. Bosten couldn’t sit with his back against the chair. The night before, Dad got mad at him for leaning forward at dinner, so Bosten had to sit back.