Stick

by Andrew Smith

  I imagined being in one of those science fiction movies where the entire world has been destroyed, and I was the lone survivor who’d hidden away inside some lucky underground vault.

  I checked for any sounds coming from the pipe. I even climbed up and looked through the window, across our lawn to the driveway and the little trail to the wellhouse where I last saw Mrs. Buckley the evening before.

  Nothing.

  I opened my door and crept upstairs to the house.

  * * *

  It was like everything had been turned upside down. Dad’s chair was tipped backwards, as though someone would sit in it just to stare at the ceiling. And everything that had been hanging, framed, had been knocked down or broken. There were fist-size holes in the wall, like empty eye sockets; and I had to be careful, as I tiptoed around, of the shattered glass that was everywhere.

  The only thing that hadn’t been knocked over was the narrow table where Dad’s ashtray still sat, perfectly centered, full.

  But there were no sounds at all.

  I walked lightly down the hallway toward the stairs that led up to Mom and Dad’s room.

  The Saint Fillan room stood open, empty. Untouched.

  I stepped across to Bosten’s room. His door was shut. I waited in the hallway for a while, but I couldn’t hear anything inside, so I quietly opened the door to my brother’s room.

  It was empty, too.

  Everything in it was perfect.

  * * *

  Finally, I worked up the nerve and floated, soundlessly, up the stairs to Mom and Dad’s room. I kept my feet wedged against the side wall as I moved, so the planks on the staircase wouldn’t creak.

  The door was open.

  I saw Dad inside, twisted up in the covers of his bed, sleeping.

  He must have felt that I was looking at him. Dad rolled over and sat up straight. He still had all his clothes on. He just looked at me. Neither of us said anything for the longest time.

  “What do you want?”

  “Where’s Bosten?”

  Dad lay back down.

  “He left. Who knows? Maybe he’s off with his fag friend.”

  I went back down to my room.

  * * *

  I was alone in the house now.

  Bosten was gone.

  LAST:

  bosten

  EMILY

  Both cars sat in the same worn spots they always occupied. Water dripped from the bumpers and wheel wells where the dew had collected and run down during the night.

  Everything looked the same from the outside.

  But things were different.

  I tried to make a plan, but it was like standing in a road that didn’t just fork—it writhed like the snakes on Medusa’s head—and every one of those twisted choices in front of me was terrifying. No matter what Bosten believed, I knew I wasn’t brave.

  I felt like Dad was looking out from the upstairs window, so I never turned back one time. Not even a little. I followed the path down to the highway and crossed it. I ducked through the barbed wire that ringed the cow pasture on the Lohman property.

  Once I had squeezed through the wires, I stood, watching for something—anything—across the highway, the tilted mailboxes, the driveway that led to my house that was now obscured behind a row of pines.

  I screamed.

  I screamed as loud as I could. It felt like the flesh in my throat would tear open. The same word, over and over, so that it went in there and stayed in my head forever.

  Bosten

  Bosten

  Bosten

  * * *

  I didn’t go to their house.

  Emily came looking for me because I missed breakfast, and I’d promised to be there. It was nearly noon when she found me. I was still standing at the barbwire fence, looking out across the highway, waiting for my brother to come.

  “Stark McClellan.”

  It was like she woke me up. Emily stood, her hands on her hips, in the pasture behind me. I guess she’d been watching me for a while.

  “Something happened.”

  “What?”

  “Bosten’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone? Where?”

  That was the first time I ever really thought about it. I mean, I couldn’t get it out of my head that my brother was gone, but thinking about the where made everything that much more uncertain; and scarier, too.

  I glanced out across the road. Emily came up and put her hand on my shoulder, but it was almost like I couldn’t feel it anymore.

  “You need to tell me what happened, Stick.”

  “I know.”

  * * *

  I told Emily everything.

  I tried to be brave.

  I told her about Bosten and Paul Buckley first. I carefully watched her eyes to see if she’d show any sign that maybe she thought Bosten was sick, or bad or something—or maybe even if she’d look at me and wonder if I was gay, too. And maybe she did think that, anyway. After all, we’d taken baths together. She’d seen me naked more than once, and I know she felt how I pressed against her when we lay in bed holding on to each other; but I never tried anything beyond those couple French kisses we shared just two days before; and those kisses weren’t about sex, anyway, they were about something else.

  I know that now.

  Then I told her about my dad, and how he’d beat us, usually every week or so. I told her about the Saint Fillan room. And I told her about the time Dad came home drunk and found me there; and how he’d thought I was Bosten and he started grabbing me.

  Touching me.

  Emily just watched me while I talked. She didn’t say anything but kept her eyes on me, like she was letting me know it was okay for me to say whatever I needed to tell her. And it began to feel like I was letting all this poison out once and for all.

  Like all the words could finally come out of my head.

  “So, I don’t know for certain, but I’m pretty sure my dad’s been doing bad things to Bosten. Worse than just beating us up once in a while. Bosten started to tell me once, but I didn’t want to hear it.”

  I thought about the night we stole away and drove to Bremerton and ate hamburgers at a diner called Nico’s.

  And I didn’t even notice it until after I’d finally said that one telling thing about my dad and me and Bosten; but Emily was crying.

  “Please don’t cry, Em.”

  I put my hands up and wiped her face with my thumbs. Then we held on to each other and stood there by the fence.

  Two cars drove by on the highway.

  We didn’t say anything.

  We just held on.

  “Um. I love you, Emily. Do you know that?” I wasn’t ashamed or afraid to say it. “So please don’t cry, okay?”

  “Of course I know you love me. Do you think I’m dumb?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Well, I love you, Stark McClellan.”

  “I know.”

  And then I said, “You want to try to ride your stupid cows?”

  And for some reason, Emily started crying really hard when I said that.

  I didn’t understand.

  But just like that, everything became a big deal for her.

  Just like that, I guess.

  * * *

  We walked through the woods toward the beach. Emily and I sat down on the bank, holding hands near the same spot where we’d shared our first kiss.

  “If he doesn’t come back, I’m going to have to do something,” I said. “I can’t live there alone.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “If Bosten doesn’t come back home by Tuesday, I’m going to go look for him.”

  “Where would he go?”

  “I think I know.”

  “Well, I’m going with you then.”

  “We’ll both get in trouble. I don’t want your mom and dad to get mad at me.”

  “Then I’ll ask them to let me.”

  Emily was always like that.

  “N
o. Don’t say anything. Please?”

  “Maybe you should try calling Paul Buckley from my house.”

  I thought about how Mrs. Buckley looked the last time I saw her; how Bosten told me she said for him to get the fuck out of their house.

  “Maybe I could try that.”

  But I was already making my plan. I had to decide which snake to follow if Bosten didn’t come home. I still had his wallet and driver’s license, packed in the suitcase under my bed, from the time he made me drive for Mexican food with Evan and Kim. And we had long before paid Mr. Lohman the ninety-nine cents he charged us at his little store to grind a spare key for the Toyota. Bosten kept that key in his wallet, too.

  Now it was mine.

  I’d give him two more days. Then I’d have to do something.

  So I needed to get ready, because, deep down, I knew Bosten was never coming back home again.

  * * *

  Emily took me back to her house, and eventually I worked up the nerve to dial Paul Buckley’s phone number. And I knew it was bound to happen, that his mother would answer. I knew them well enough to expect that Paul would not be allowed anywhere near the telephone after what Mrs. Buckley caught him doing. She sounded cold, like a stranger to me, and simply told me that her son was “unavailable.” It made me feel terrible, hearing that tone in her voice, so filled with hurt and anger.

  “Mrs. Buckley? Did I do something wrong?”

  I waited. And in that time, I thought I probably did do something wrong. Because I knew what had been going on between Bosten and Paul, but kept quiet about it. It wasn’t something that needed to be told, anyway. For me, it was a no-win situation; but I still didn’t ever believe there was anything wrong about what they did.

  How could it be wrong to be in love with someone who is your equal; who you respect and trust?

  I could almost feel Mrs. Buckley thinking about my simple question.

  “No. You didn’t do anything bad, Stark.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry if I did.”

  “Things will be all right.”

  “Mrs. Buckley? Bosten’s gone. You don’t know where he is, do you?”

  “No.”

  “If you see him, will you tell him he needs to come home?”

  “All right, Stark.”

  “And will you please tell Buck I said hi?”

  Then she just hung up.

  I wondered what she really thought about me.

  * * *

  Emily begged her mother to ask Dad if I could stay over for dinner. It wasn’t difficult, because Mrs. Lohman knew there was urgency in Emily’s request. I believed she most likely thought it had something to do with my parents’ breakup.

  It pretty much had nothing to do with that.

  But she told Dad she’d drive me home by seven so I wouldn’t have to cross the fields in the dark; and my dad didn’t seem to care one way or the other, anyway.

  * * *

  When I got home, the house was completely dark. Dad’s car was gone.

  “Are you going to be okay, sweetie?” Mrs. Lohman put her fingers on my shoulder, stopping me for a moment as soon as I opened the car door to get out.

  “I’ll be okay, Mrs. Lohman. Thank you.”

  “Oh, Stick, I just feel terrible about all this.”

  I glanced back at Emily with a look on my face that I knew she’d understand: Please don’t say anything about Bosten.

  Emily nodded at me.

  Then Mrs. Lohman hugged me and kissed the top of my head.

  “See you at the bus stop, Em.”

  I got out of the car and walked into the mudroom. Alone.

  * * *

  It’s hard to explain, but the house smelled like broken things. Maybe it was the dust from the fractured wallboards, the stillness of the air, the stale cigarette smoke, the kitchen garbage pail that had gone untended for days now. I don’t know.

  It just smelled broken.

  I went downstairs, closed myself inside my room, and got my things ready for Monday morning school. I climbed into bed, and, lying there, looked up at my little window. I could see stars, and I pressed my ear to the pipe, but no sounds came at all.

  I woke after two in the morning. Dad had come home. I could hear him moving around the house above me. I knew exactly what he was doing. He went into the two rooms in the hallway. Through the pipe, I heard him call my brother’s name.

  “Bosten?”

  Nothing.

  Then I heard slow and heavy footsteps, going up the stairs to Dad’s room.

  * * *

  I made some toast and left for school before Dad woke up.

  Emily could see by my expression that nothing had changed in the night. We met, like we always did, at the bus stop. I wore my Steelers cap for the first time since taking it off at Aunt Dahlia’s house.

  We hardly said anything to each other all morning. We held hands on the school bus, but I could sense her nervousness like electricity pulsing through her skin. It wasn’t at all an Emily way of acting. I could tell she was doing the math; that she knew I meant what I’d said about going after Bosten if he didn’t come home by Tuesday. And Tuesday was just hours away.

  I had everything ready.

  I even packed clothes for my brother. And our wetsuits, too.

  * * *

  Over the Easter break, Ricky Dostal had been liberated from his stitches; and he returned, whole but scarred, to Mr. Lloyd’s gym class. In the boys’ locker room, while we changed into our PE clothes, he and Corey Barr made it a point to talk crap about me, obviously thinking it would goad me into some kind of rematch with them. But I was too preoccupied with thinking about other things.

  We were only allowed four minutes to get our uniforms on, anyway, so how much crap could they talk?

  Well, a lot, as it turned out.

  Living in Point No Point, it was impossible to have an entirely private life, even if Mom and Dad had always been pretty good at making the McClellans seem so perfect and normal. So, of course, everyone at school knew about my parents’ splitting up. In Point No Point, divorces were as commonplace as waking up and finding a unicorn grazing in your yard.

  And it bothered me a little that Ricky and Corey tried to pick on me about it. What annoyed me most was that they somehow had the idea that my parents’ breakup mattered to me, when it didn’t matter nearly as much as other things. I tried ignoring them, but as I pulled my ice-cold gym shorts up over my bare legs, I was already thinking about which one of them I’d punch first, if it came to that.

  I guess everything had changed.

  “Oh,” Ricky said, “and everyone’s saying how your faggot friend, Fuck Fuckley, tried to cut his own wrists or something. There were police and an ambulance at his house last night. Did you even know about that, retard? Fuckley’s so fucking dumb, he used scissors to do it. I heard he almost fucking died.”

  That stopped me cold.

  “What?”

  “Ha-ha!” Ricky elbowed Corey. “You didn’t know? Sorry to break it to you,

  retard. Your boyfriend’s in the psycho ward. Hope you and your fuckface brother aren’t too broke up about being the last dipshits on the planet to know.”

  Corey laughed.

  At least they didn’t know anything about Bosten vanishing. Yet.

  And calling Paul a faggot? That was just what all boys in eighth grade called other boys, even ones they liked. As far as I could tell, nobody had any idea about Paul and Bosten being gay. I’m sure I would have heard all about it if they did. I was even more certain that Mr. and Mrs. Buckley would never tell anyone the truth about their son.

  Ricky farted and slid his hand down inside his jock to adjust his balls.

  I sat down on the bench in the middle of the aisle of lockers and pretended to tie my shoes while Mr. Lloyd stood at the open doors with his blue book of records, shouting, “Let’s move it, girls!” and all the boys dutifully and uniformly filed out toward the gymnasium.

  The day seemed to s
tretch and expand. Minutes passed by like wintry weeks. And I couldn’t stop thinking about poor Paul Buckley, and how hopeless and impossible everything must have seemed for him to try killing himself. I wished I could say something to him, but I had the feeling that I’d never get to see Buck again. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got at Mrs. Buckley. There was nothing wrong with Paul. He was gay, not suicidal. At least, not until his mother flipped out about the whole thing, threatening to call the cops on her own son just for being in love with another boy.

  And it scared me to think about what Bosten was doing, especially if, somehow, he’d heard about what happened to Paul. So I felt even more resolved about my decision to leave.

  I tried to imagine what it would have been like, if I could have seen and heard what actually happened upstairs between my father and him, the night Bosten disappeared.

  I could wish, fantasize, about my brother fighting back against Dad, just like he’d punched that asshole Ricky Dostal.

  * * *

  Emily sat on the aisle, and I leaned my chin toward the window. We held hands.

  “Stark?” She put her face to my ear and whispered. Still, the bus was so noisy I could barely hear her.

  “What?”

  “I would like to kiss again when we get to our stop. Just like we did the other day.”

  “Okay. Um. Right there on the side of the road? In front of everyone on the bus?”

  She pushed my hand. “Don’t be dumb.”

  Emily laughed.

  “Can you come over to my house for a little bit?”

  “Is your mom home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I guess we can’t take a bath or lay down in bed together again.”

  I felt kind of guilty about how hard my dick was getting, thinking about doing those things; how close Emily’s hand was to my fly.

  “I bet my dad’s not home. We could do it at my house if you want.”

  I honestly was hoping she’d say she wanted to.

  “You know we better not do anything like that now.”

  “I know.”

  Of course, she was right.

  Everything was different, and everything was a big deal now, for both of us.

  * * *

  We kissed in the woods beside Emily’s house until the muscles in my jaw were sore and I was all-over sweaty and felt wet inside my underwear. Emily’s face was red and she breathed in shallow hiccups and couldn’t talk.