I know my mom and Pop would call me stupid for keeping that postcard, so I’ve always kept it at school. I found it when I was seven, in one of my mom’s old jackets, way back in the closet. The same closet as the gun.
The day I found the postcard I was digging for a clean pair of shorts, and I found a bag of my mom’s old clothes buried underneath some papers. I rummaged through the bag of clothes; it was all stuff from when she was skinny. In other words, pre-me. And I found an old jean jacket of hers. I tried it on to see if it would fit, and inside one of the inner pockets was a postcard of the beach. OCEAN CITY, NEW JERSEY . . . WHERE FAMILIES GO TO THE BEACH! There was handwriting on the other side. It said:
Leslie,
I’m not ready to
be a dad. I want
you to get rid of it.
—Steve
A man of few words, my dad.
I also need the computers at school to do research about jail time and other stuff. I’m definitely moving forward with Operation Freedom. The other decision I make is to not look Pop in the face anymore. I don’t do it too often anyway, but now I really can’t look into his eyes. I’m afraid he might see through me and know what I’m planning.
Yesterday, when I woke up . . . let me rephrase that. Yesterday, when he woke me up by grabbing my ankle and dragging me across the room, screaming that there was no goddamn food in the goddamn apartment, I landed in a weak, crumpled ball. I tried to play dead, but he yanked me up and we were eye to eye. I swear, when I stared into his eyes with murder on my mind, he knew it. And for probably the first time in my life, I felt power over him. He didn’t say anything to me. He just shoved me hard into the wall, knocking the wind out of me. And as I caught my breath I could tell he knew that I wanted to kill him.
Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know. I could just tell.
I walk through the halls of my school and kids move out of my way. No one wants to look me in the eyes, either. I notice this today. I guess it has always been that way, but since I’ve got eyes on the brain, I really notice every kid dropping their gaze.
I’ve always really liked that kids are piss-their-pants afraid of me. One time, in like second grade, I made Victor eat pavement, and then he pissed his pants. I literally scared the piss right out of him. It was awesome. No one talked to me for a while because they were afraid of me. But I got back into the recess games eventually.
I figured out pretty quickly that my life wasn’t made for having friends. I was never allowed to go over to anyone’s house, not that there were tons of invites or anything. Those dried up in, like, kindergarten. And you don’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out that I’d never invite anyone over to my apartment. Ever. So, yeah, my life isn’t made for friends. I don’t need friends, not when my life is so full.
So full of shit.
Study hall is the perfect place to work out the kinks of Operation Freedom. Back at the cemetery, I played around with a crapload of other names before I decided on Operation Freedom.
Operation Payback.
Operation Pop-less.
Operation Smackdown.
They all sounded stupid and mean. So I went with Operation Freedom. It makes the whole plan sound necessary and important, and not awful. I really need it to not sound awful in my head.
The first search I do is on the amount of time a juvenile could get for murder when it’s in self-defense. I click on an article that says two teenagers got thirty-three years for a double murder they committed. Thirty-three years is a long time. I do the math in my head. I’d be forty-nine when I got out of jail. Only eight years younger than my pop is now. I search again.
Next article I click on is about a sixteen-year-old white supremacist that shot a fifteen-year-old in the back of the head while he was sitting in class. That kid was tried as an adult and got fifty-three years to life. Fifty-three years is twenty years longer than thirty-three years. I’d be an almost-seventy-year-old geezer when I got out.
Fuck. Operation Freedom is squashed like a roach.
Victor
I CHOOSE A NEW CORNER IN THE CAFETERIA TODAY, and I decide to sit with my back to the wall. I don’t want that idiot sneaking up on me again. Facing out into the room full of people gives me a whole new feeling.
Dread.
I watch tables, crowded with teenagers, laughing, shoving, giggling, smiling, eating, flirting, and talking. That’s a lot of ing. And I’m not part of any of it. And I never have been. I feel queasy. The only thing I can get down is my chocolate milk, each sip an FU to mom. I push my tray of food away from me and take it all in.
If I never came back here, never walked these halls again, never ate in this caf, there isn’t one person in this entire school who’d be affected. Even my math teacher would get over it. I’m just a feather in his cap; he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know anything about me. All he knows is that I’m smarter than he is when it comes to anything math-related because all we’ve ever talked about is math.
Now, I realize I am not the most approachable person in the world. I sit here, in this corner or that corner, on purpose—so I don’t have to interact with anyone. I drop my eyes, put my earbuds in my ears, and make myself fade away. I walk straight home. I don’t stop at the store, or ride my bike to the park, or invite people over, or go anywhere, with anyone, at any time. I get all that.
Wow. I think I just blamed myself for being a nobody. Yep, I did. I blamed myself. How perfect. My crap life is all my fault.
My pity party lasts almost the entire lunch period. The sound of laugher snaps me out of my daze. I look to my left and see Patty Cullen across the way, and she’s laughing. She sees me see her, and we stare at each other. Maybe it’s the sunlight streaming down from the window behind her, but I swear that she looks like an angel. The dust particles float and dance in the light like glitter; everything seems to be in slow motion. I wish I had the guts to walk up to her table and tell her how pretty her hair looks with that headband and how nice her smile is. “Guts” is the wrong word here. Balls. I wish I had the balls to compliment her.
No one at her table notices us noticing each other. After a few seconds Patty raises her eyebrows and smiles at me. I raise my eyebrows and probably look like I just had an accident in my pants. The bell rings and the room full of ing-ers head out. I get up to toss my lunch tray, and when I turn around to head to class, there she is, smiling in all of her headbanded glory.
“Hey, Victor, are you okay? You know, from Friday?”
Balls, guts—neither one is making an appearance at the moment. “Yeah, fine.”
“Good. I thought about you over the weekend. I was wondering if you were really okay.”
She thought about me? Over the weekend? Me? I can’t believe she thought about me over the weekend. She thought about—
Patty interrupts my inner astonishment with: “Okay, well, I’ve gotta run to French.” Her mouth curls into the most adorable grin and then she blows me a kiss. “Au revoir.”
That is that.
I take a deep breath and try to inhale her kiss. I want to feel it in my lungs, kissing me from the inside. I want to, but I can’t. Instead my lungs fill with the fried stench of the cafeteria, and I instantly feel like an asshole. Who wants to be kissed on the inside?
I have a crazy thought. A stupid, crazy thought. Maybe she’d notice if I never came back. Maybe she’d care.
I huff. “Yeah, right,” I say out loud.
The bell rings, and even the custodian sweeping the floor ignores me.
“Yeah, right,” I repeat.
Bull
I AM NOT SPENDING MORE THAN A DECADE IN JAIL. Not even to get rid of Pop. I can’t do it. I guess that makes me a real turd. I guess I deserve the beatings coming my way. I reach down and cup my balls. Yeah, they’re still there. I’ve got balls. It’s just that my balls are only good for punching dorks in the back.
But I am not weak. I’m not.
It must be the quiet in here that’s maki
ng me get all psychological and shit, but I’m wondering . . . am I a murderer? I’ve never thought of myself as a person capable of real murder. I stare over the top of my computer, watching kids silently walk through the library, and I almost say out loud, So, could I really have shot Pop? As in dead. Blood-gushing, brain-splattering dead? I could’ve always closed my eyes when I pulled the trigger. Yeah, I wouldn’t have seen the mess, but I would have known what I did. In a complete dick kind of way, my heart would’ve known.
I reach up and rub my skull with both hands. I wish I could just freaking disappear right now because my head is clogged up with dirt and muck and shit.
Two girls walk by the table, whispering about what bikini will make their boobs look better, and a thought smacks me right in the forehead: School is out in four days; summer is here. Maybe I’ll just spend the whole summer working at Salvy—bump my hours to the max—and stay the hell out of Pop’s way. I only have two more years at home and then I’m out of here. Two more years. Of beatings.
I can’t do it. I can’t take two more years of his shit. I don’t know what to do. And I have to get to work.
Victor
MY MOTHER PICKS ME UP FROM SCHOOL ON THE second-to-last day of school. She has taken the day off from her job as the vice president of a bank so she can get ready for Europe. She says she needs my help lifting things into her SUV. What she could possibly need my help lifting is a mystery to me. I don’t ask. I just do as I’m told.
On the way out of town, we sit at the light by the Salvation Army building, and she gasps.
“Oh my God, there he is—the animal that tried to kill me.”
I look out my window. Bull Mastrick is unpacking some old guy’s trunk.
“Do you see him, Victor?”
In three seconds a whole series of thoughts fly through my head. It is the weirdest thing. One thought leads to another, then another and another, and before I know it, in, like, light speed, I have this whole new thought.
First I think of how much I have to pee, and then of peeing myself on the playground, which leads me to when Bull shoved my head against the wall at the urinal, which goes to me walking Jazzer when she has to go, which makes me think of my mom calling Bull an animal just now, which makes me wonder who named him Bull, because he is an animal and he tried to kill my mom, which makes me laugh, because we both got bullied by the same jerk, and I think that’s hilarious. Like I said, it’s weird.
And I laugh. At the worst possible moment.
The light is still red. We’re sitting there, with Bull no more than fifteen feet from our SUV. He doesn’t see us because he’s too busy working. But I see him, and I am laughing like I’m being tickled. Which makes me laugh even harder, because my parents have never tickled me. The only person who’s ever tickled me was my grandfather, and he died when I was six. I only remember him tickling me once before my mother made a scene and practically accused him of child abuse right there in our living room. I still remember how it felt though, the tickling, and the laughing so hard that my sides hurt.
That’s how hard I’m laughing as my mother asks, “Do you see him, Victor?” Her mouth is open and her eyes are wide, as if someone has put a spell on her.
The car behind us honks with a friendly beep beep. I’m still hysterical. She’s still gaping.
Honk! Honk! The car behind us is no longer polite.
Bull looks toward the honking, toward us. He sees me laughing. His face changes from curiosity to anger in no time at all. I know he thinks I’m laughing at him because of where he works. And that here I am, sitting in my mother’s $85,000 SUV, while he gets paid to take donations from people who have more money than he’ll ever have.
His hand shoots out with a gesture of anger, followed by his other. I’m getting double flipped off.
My mother guns it, and I stop laughing. But I’m still breathing heavy. It takes me a minute or so to calm down. In that minute my mother takes a wild right turn and parks in front of the pet store. And so begins her moment.
“I’m calling the doctor when your father gets home, do you hear me? I will not allow my son to be on drugs. I will not! Oh my God, what people will think! What are you taking? Dope? Pills? Let me see your arms. Are you using needles?” She reaches over and grabs my arm. No tracks. She takes her seat belt off and reaches for my other arm. Drug-free too.
I say with as much composure as I can, “I’m not on drugs, Mother. I promise you.”
“Then what is the matter with you? Are you hearing voices? Are voices telling you to do things? I’m still calling the doctor. I won’t have you ruin this trip for your father and me with all of this craziness.”
“I’m not crazy, Mom.”
“Well, what do you call what just happened back there? That monster tried to kill me, and you laugh? How insensitive can you be, Victor? We’re talking about my life. Do you think me dying is funny? Is that it? You think it would have been funny if that animal actually got me?”
She’s crying now.
I don’t know what to do. My father always handles my mother, and he’s still at work. I ask myself what my father would say to calm her down, but everything sounds too lovey-dovey. So I don’t say anything.
I want to tell my mother why I was laughing. That we both had been bullied by the same kid. How Bull had gotten to both of us and he didn’t even know it. That we must have big red Xs on our backs, or it must be in our genes, or something.
But I don’t tell her. Because she wouldn’t understand. I know she thinks she’s better than me, and it would make her so mad if I put us on the same level. It would make her yelling worse. I stare out the window as birds take flight off of the pet store sign, flying up higher and higher into the bright blue sky, and I have to close my eyes. It’s too normal, too beautiful to look at.
“Well, you just sit there and be quiet. You’ve ruined the day, Victor, you selfish, selfish boy.” With that, she pulls away from the curb and drives home. We don’t speak. I turn my head and pretend to look out the window. But I don’t want to see the world, so I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my jaw the entire ten-minute drive. I know if I ease up and release my face, the tears will come. I will not give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry.
I will not.
When we pull into the driveway, she tells me to get out and go up to my room, like I’m five. I get out and she drives away. Thank God.
Jazzer isn’t in the window when I get to the door.
Bull
THAT PRICK IS LUCKY I DIDN’T HAVE MY GUN WHILE he was sitting at the light. Figures his mother is the cow that snapped her fingers at me. I swear, the next time I see him, I’m going to mess him up. Thinks he’s better than me with his golf shirts and expensive car—they make me sick.
I’m still pissed when I get home after work. I’m mumbling shit to myself as I triple-lock my bike, when I hear Pop and Uncle Sammy through our kitchen window. They’re going at it. Loud enough that I swear some of the bricks are gonna rattle themselves loose from the house. I walk around front and the dad from the apartment underneath us is out on the front porch having a smoke. The dude doesn’t speak English—he’s from Mexico—which is fine by me, because I’m in no mood to explain what the hell is going on up there. He rolls his eyes at me—the universal language for What the hell? I reply with a roll of my eyes. He nods. Best conversation I’ve ever had.
With clenched fists, I climb the stairs to our apartment. Before I put my hand on the doorknob, I take a deep breath and roll my head around on my shoulders. I’m sure I look like a boxer about to enter the ring. I guess I am.
I hear Pop yell, “You’re cleaning this shit up!”
Then Uncle Sammy yells, “Just shut up! Shutupshutupshutupshutup!”
I hear a loud crash and open the door. The apartment is a disaster. It looks like one of them took every bag out of the closet and shook each of their contents all over the apartment. Crap is everywhere. And I mean everywhere. My pop is standing in the kitchen wit
h a beer, and my Uncle Sammy is crawling around the floor throwing linen napkins and old shoes up in the air.
Welcome to the nuthouse.
I know what he’s looking for right away. Now it all makes sense. Why I never saw that brown bag before. Uncle Sammy must’ve tossed it in the closet sometime when I was at school. What he wants is not here. I won’t tell either of them that, but it’s not here.
My uncle looks up from the floor, sees me, and pounces like a jaguar. I’m jacked up against the wall, and he’s got the craziest look in his eyes.
“WHERE IS IT, BULL?”
I play dumb and ask, “Where’s what?”
“YOU KNOW WHAT!” he spits out, literally.
He’s got me by the shoulders, so my hands are free, and I reach up and wipe my face.
“Where did you put it, Bull?” he asks through clenched teeth.
Pop decides to chime in now. “Just tell him where it is, Bull. Sammy’s in some trouble.”
I continue playing dumb, so I say forcefully, “I don’t know what you guys are talking about! Let me—”
My uncle’s palm is on my forehead, and he smashes my head against the wall and gets nose to nose with me. His breath smells like he snacked on roadkill soaked in beer, and he sneers. “I’m. Not. Asking. You. Again.”
One good thing about people who are drunk, or on drugs—or, as in Uncle Sammy’s case, both—is their lack of judgment. He never expects my knee to fly up into his crotch, but it does. I’m instantly released from his grip. I give him and Pop the finger, then I’m back down the stairs in seconds.
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