Stick

by Andrew Smith

  * * *

  On Sunday afternoon, we were going over to the Buckleys’. When the dads got home from fishing, we would have dinner and then the grown-ups would drink and smoke and play cards until we had to go home.

  Mr. Buckley smoked a pipe.

  When I was small, even before I talked much at all, I thought Mr. Buckley’s pipe was magic, because it always made smoke and never seemed to go out.

  I liked those nights.

  Nobody cared at all about what we boys did.

  It was like the bugs had escaped from the bottle.

  Mom made potato salad in the kitchen.

  I stole into the living room and quietly dialed Emily’s number on the telephone next to Dad’s chair. On the seventh ring, her mother answered.

  “Hello, this is the Lohman residence.”

  “Oh. Hello, Mrs. Lohman. It’s Stark.”

  I felt guilty just talking to her. I felt myself going pale.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  Mom stood in the doorway. She held a knife in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  She didn’t like me talking on the phone. She said it was a bad habit for boys my age to get into. I guess she probably believed that telephones were like gateway drugs to jacking off.

  I could have set her straight on that.

  For boys, oxygen is a gateway drug to jacking off.

  “Um. It’s Mrs. Lohman, Mom. I was calling to speak with Emily.”

  “Stick? Do you want to speak with Emily?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mom shrugged and spun back into the kitchen, trailing smoke like our UFO behind her. “I want you off that phone in two minutes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Lohman couldn’t tell I was talking to Mom.

  “Is everything all right, Stick?”

  How could I have done that to her?

  Mrs. Lohman was the nicest person in the world.

  “Yes, ma’am. Everything is fine.”

  “Emily said you two had a great time together

  yesterday.”

  I almost felt like I would throw up, thinking how much of a goddamned liar I was.

  “We had fun.”

  “We love having you over, Stick.

  I hope you know that.

  Maybe for Easter vacation, you

  can come over and

  spend a couple of nights here at our house.”

  “That would be nice. Thank you, Mrs. Lohman.”

  “I’ll talk to your parents about it. Ask them for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You hang on, sweetie, and I’ll get her.”

  I chewed my lip. I think it started to bleed.

  Finally, Emily came to the phone.

  “Hey, Stick.”

  “Em.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Uh. I just wanted to say hi. ’Cause I can’t come over today, since we’re going to the Buckleys’ house.”

  “You sound weird. Are you weirded out again?”

  “No. Really. It’s just I felt bad talking to your mom is all, and I felt bad about Bosten getting in trouble because of me. Dad whipped him pretty bad. And I mostly really wished we could hang out together today.”

  I could hear Emily cupping her hand around the mouthpiece of the phone. And she whispered,

  “I bet I know why you wanted to hang out today.”

  I sighed. “That’s not why.”

  “What time are you leaving?”

  “Mom has to make potato salad. We’re on potato salad time. I think that’s probably an hour and a half.”

  “Good. We went to Poulsbo last night to see a movie, and I

  got something for you.”

  “You did?”

  “I’m bringing it over.”

  I felt myself turning red. It was different for me. Emily never made me feel like this before. Maybe I was weirded out.

  “Time to get off the phone,” Mom called from the kitchen.

  “Uh. I got to hang up now, Em.”

  “I’ll be there in, like, ten minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  Bosten knew something was up when he saw me getting my shoes and jacket on in the mudroom.

  “Can I wear your cap?” I asked.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Meeting Emily at the road.”

  “Can I come, too?”

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  I didn’t want him to. I felt like if he saw us together, he’d know we did something bad.

  But what could I do? By the time I was out the door, he had already returned with his cap and started following after me down the gravel drive.

  “Don’t you want this?” Bosten trotted up behind me, waving his DWHS ball cap.

  “Oh.”

  I brushed my hand over my hair; resisted the urge to sniff it and see if the smell of Emily’s conditioner was still there. I knew it couldn’t be, anyway. Everything in our house smelled like cigarettes.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Is something wrong?” Bosten asked.

  “No. Em said she got something for me.”

  Bosten said, “Oh.”

  But the way he said “oh” wasn’t just an “oh.” It was a whole soliloquy.

  So I said, “Yeah.”

  We saw her coming through the gate by where the mailboxes sat, crooked on rotten posts. I noticed Bosten slowed down, dropped a few feet back, when we got closer.

  She was holding something black in her hand.

  I said, “Hi.”

  “Hey. Hey, Bosten.”

  I turned around and saw Bosten nodded at her.

  “Well, here,” she said. “I got this for you. I know you guys probably got to leave soon.”

  She held out her hand to me. She had a Pittsburgh Steelers wool beanie.

  “I thought you would like this.”

  It was amazing.

  “That’s the coolest thing ever, Em. Thanks!”

  Well, I thought, it wasn’t the coolest thing, not compared to what we did the day before.

  “I figured you’d need a new one.”

  “You heard about that?” Bosten said. He took his cap from my head and put it on.

  “I would have paid to have been there and seen Ricky get punched for that.”

  I put the beanie on, pulled it down over my ears. It felt so good. “You couldn’t have been there, Em. It happened in the boys’ pisser.”

  Emily smiled.

  “And we left him there, on the floor, laying in a puddle of piss and blood,” Bosten said.

  Emily looked at Bosten. “Why don’t you teach him how to punch like that?”

  “He knows how to punch,” Bosten said. “Believe me.”

  “Well, it looks good on you, Stick,” she said.

  I felt myself going red again. I wanted to kick something for being so dumb. I looked back at my brother, and I could see he felt awkward being there, too, which made me feel even more flushed.

  “Thanks, Em. I’ll see you at the bus stop tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  And as I turned around and started heading back up to the house, she called out, “And it does look good on you.”

  On the way back up the drive, Bosten walked right beside me. One time, he bumped his shoulder against mine and said, in that same tone that meant he knew everything without me or him saying it, “Oh.”

  And then he said, “Sorry for getting in the way with you and Em, Sticker.”

  But Bosten would never be in the way.

  * * *

  Mom and Dad gave me things on birthdays and Christmas.

  But nobody ever gave me anything just to give me something before that day.

  * * *

  Mom sat up front, in the same spot where I’d gotten a boner two nights before looking at Dad’s jack-off magazine. She held a big orange Tupperware bowl of potato salad hammocked between her spread thighs in the sling of her parrot dre
ss.

  Her dress was blue, and had orange and red parrots and bright green bamboo on it.

  I wondered if parrots really lived in bamboo forests, or if, maybe, the artist in charge of Mom’s dress just figured parrots plus bamboo equals fun.

  She lit a cigarette with the same dashboard lighter that had last been used to burn Bosten and Paul’s joints the night of the UFO invasion.

  I swear the thing still smelled like pot when she pulled it out, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Bosten was stiff and slow getting in behind the steering wheel.

  He moaned when he sat down. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew he did.

  Mom couldn’t drive a stick.

  Especially with that bowl of potato salad sitting on the lap of her parrot dress.

  I could see how much it hurt him to sit down like that. His eyes were wet.

  “Are you going to be okay?” I asked. The car was already fogged with Mom’s smoke.

  Bosten started to say something, but it just came out as,

  “Eh.”

  “I could drive.”

  Mom turned around, but she couldn’t really look straight at me. I was sitting directly behind her. That was the only seat in the car where I could hear what was going on.

  I could see Bosten’s eyes in the rearview mirror. I knew what he was thinking.

  “Well. I’m tall enough. I’ve seen Bosten do it enough times. I’m sure I could do it.”

  “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to allow a thirteen-year-old child to operate an automobile.” And Mom turned around sharply, to accent her decision, but the bowl of potato salad nearly spilled onto Bosten.

  “It’s okay, Stick.” I could tell Bosten was nervous.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” Mom decided. “Stop being such a baby and drive.”

  Then she put her hand, softly, on Bosten’s shoulder. I knew she was trying to be sympathetic and kind, but she just wasn’t very good at it.

  She said, “And what’s that on your head, Stick?”

  I felt myself shrinking down into the seat.

  “Emily gave it to me.”

  “That was very nice of her.”

  Bosten glanced at me in the mirror.

  He winked.

  * * *

  The Buckley house was huge, and the surrounding property had a long bank of shoreline with its own dock where Paul’s father kept two boats—one for sailing, and the smaller one he and Dad took out that morning to fish on the Sound.

  The three of us hung out in Paul’s bedroom while our moms sat in the sunroom and smoked.

  “How bitchin’ is that?” Paul asked. He’d already pinned the clipping from the front page of the newspaper on the wall above his bed.

  “We are taking over the planet,” I said.

  “Ha-ha. You’re not taking over anything, Stick. You were sitting in the car looking at porn when me and Bosten lit that shit off.”

  I liked Paul, but sometimes when Bosten wasn’t around, he could be mean to me. Once in a while, like today, he made it obvious that he wished I wasn’t hanging around him and my older brother. And at times like those, Bosten kind of played along with it, too.

  I understood. I thought I knew what a pain it might be, always having a little kid hanging around. Especially one like me.

  “Lay off Stick,” Bosten said. “If he wasn’t with us, we probably would have gotten into a hell of a lot of trouble.”

  I gave Paul a dirty look. “And you need to give us that magazine back, by the way.”

  “Okay.” Paul said, “Why don’t I just give it to your mom right now, then?”

  I sat down on Paul’s bed like I didn’t care about anything. I knew he was full of it. So I said, “Because you don’t have the balls. That’s why.”

  Paul got down onto his hands and knees and reached between my feet, digging around under his bed.

  “Oh yeah? Just watch me.”

  Then Bosten said, “Real funny, Buck.” He jumped onto Paul’s back like he was wrestling an alligator or something and had his friend pinned, facedown into the carpet, in no more than three seconds.

  Paul laughed. “Okay. Okay. I wasn’t going to do it.”

  “Don’t have the balls to,” I said.

  Bosten looked at me. He tried to sound serious, but his eyes told me it was a joke, “How much more shit are you going to cause for me this weekend, Stick?”

  And I knew he was only joking, but it still made me feel bad.

  Jokes do that, sometimes.

  So I said, “Sorry, Buck.”

  “It’s all fun. It’s all fun,” Paul grunted. “You mind getting off me now, Bosten?”

  Then I heard Mom calling for me, shouting from down the hallway, in the Buckleys’ sunroom. That’s how they did things. They never came and got us, never came to us at all, only yelled when they needed us to do something.

  “Stick!”

  I took a deep breath. “Be right back.”

  I slipped my new Steelers cap off my head and stuffed it into my back pocket as I headed down the hallway to where Mom and Mrs. Buckley were waiting for me.

  The sunroom extended from the back of the house, surrounded by windows that faced out on the small harbor where the Buckleys’ neighbors all kept boats. The polished wood floor was slick under my socks, and I had to resist the strong temptation to skate on it.

  Mom and Mrs. Buckley sat beside each other on a short blue sofa. They drank coffee; and both of them had cigarettes, tilted and burning, resting in an ashtray. Mrs. Buckley looked so pretty that I actually was embarrassed and felt a lump in my throat when I saw her, thinking about how I got a boner when she put her hand on my knee at Paul’s basketball game.

  Something was happening to me.

  All of a sudden.

  Everything was changing.

  I didn’t think I liked it very much.

  Then she said, “Stark, I can’t believe how tall you’ve gotten! And to imagine all three of you boys will be in high school together next year. You should think about going out for the basketball team with Paul. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  I had thought about it.

  And I felt weak in my legs with Mrs. Buckley smiling, glowing, looking me up and down. I tried willing myself to not get an erection, but that kind of thinking always has a reverse-psychology effect on my penis.

  “I’m not good enough to,” I said.

  “Oh, of course you are,” she said, brushing my arm with her fingers.

  Then Mom took a last drag from her cigarette, and every word came out in a haze of smoke. “Joy said that Bosten told her a different story than what Mr. Dostal said to us about the fight with Ricky.”

  Dad never

  asked us what happened.

  He never asked at all.

  He was too busy

  beating

  the shit

  out of my brother.

  He didn’t care what happened.

  You held me there,

  with your hands pulling my hair so I wouldn’t look away.

  You are

  both so angry at us.

  Why would you care

  what we had to say?

  As long as we’d

  stand

  still.

  “Uh. I don’t know what Mr. Dostal told you,” I said.

  Then Mrs. Buckley looked at me. Her eyes were so soft and blue. “Bosten said Ricky started the fight in the bathroom.”

  I shrugged. I thought, how long could these people live here and think Ricky Dostal wasn’t the one who was always starting fights? “Well, Ricky did. Bosten would never start a fight with no one.”

  Then I kind of got mad, and looked directly at Mom and said, “Dad never asked us what happened. Neither one of you did.”

  And Mom said, “Don’t get that tone with me, young man.”

  I glanced at Mrs. Buckley. I could tell she felt uncomfortable, and I was certain I’d hear about my “tone” later, after we got home.<
br />
  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  She pressed her lips together and took in a breath through her nose.

  “I left an extra pack of cigarettes in the glove box. Run out and get them for me.”

  And I was relieved to be out of the spotlight for the moment. I spun around on my socks.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Paul and Bosten took the opportunity to play Ditch Stick while I was in the sunroom. When I got back to Paul’s bedroom, they were gone.

  They did that kind of stuff all the time, and Paul’s property had so many hiding places I almost always lost the game.

  “Screw you both,” I said to the empty room. “Let’s see who drives home next time you guys decide you want to get stoned.”

  And for just a moment, I thought about looking for Dad’s magazine under the bed, but I was afraid of the disgusting stuff Paul Buckley was probably hiding under there, how I might touch it with my bare hands. So I snuck out through the side door and headed down toward the boat dock to look for my brother and him.

  It was a false-spring day, the kind of day where boys in Washington would play outside shirtless, as though all that pale, winter-bleached skin could act as some kind of magic charm to turn the seasons. I even considered taking my own shirt off as I walked out onto the Buckleys’ dock and checked around their sailboat for my brother and Paul. Out at the entrance to the harbor, I could see the small aluminum boat coming back in from the Sound, with Dad and Mr. Buckley riding in it, bouncing up and down on the troughs of the chop as they got nearer.

  I turned and headed out along a deer trail that led into the woods.

  * * *

  I wandered around the property for about twenty minutes and was about to give up looking for Paul and Bosten, when I caught a glimpse of them through a break in the trees. I noticed them because they had their shirts off, and the whiteness of Paul’s skin was like a spotlight shining in the woods.

  Bosten was standing under a bare dogwood tree.

  They were kissing each other.

  Not just kissing—Paul and Bosten were making out. They had their mouths open and their jaws pumped, opening and closing like they were chewing on each other’s tongues. It wasn’t a trick or a game, either. I could tell it wasn’t, by how lovingly Bosten stroked his hand through Paul’s hair.

  I’d heard about stuff like that. Boys constantly teased about it at school, but until that day, I never honestly thought it was real, or that I’d ever know any other boys who actually wanted to do things like that with each other.