A Drop of Hope

by Keith Calabrese

  Fortunately for Lizzy, Chelsea’s fashion intervention would have to wait. Aunt Patty interrupted to tell them that Lizzy’s mom was here to pick her up. It was slow at the hospital and her mom had knocked off early.

  Upon seeing Lizzy, her mom betrayed a quick look of shock, but didn’t say anything about it on the ride home.

  Lizzy wasn’t sure what to make of her mom’s silence, except that it made her angry. How could you not say something about this? she wanted to yell. I look like an idiot! I look like the Joker’s inner child!

  But her mom just drove them home, humming to herself like she was in her own little world.

  Maybe she was too tired to care, Lizzy thought. Or worse, maybe she thought it wasn’t that bad.

  OUT OF THE WOODS

  Sooner than expected, the trail opened up on the far side of the park. Ryan hid it pretty well, but he was relieved to have found their way back out. “You can get yourself home from here?”

  Ernest nodded. “Sure you don’t want that ride?”

  “I’m sure,” Ryan said. “Thanks, though.”

  Before Ernest could respond, Ryan turned and started walking the opposite way. A few minutes later, he doubled back to the vacant lot. It was kind of out of the way now, but he figured he had to check.

  As expected, Tommy wasn’t there anymore. Odds were that he’d be waiting for Ryan somewhere along their walk home. It was a good two miles from North Side Park to Ryan’s block. By the time he’d made it to Mrs. Haemmerle’s house, though, there was still no sign of Tommy, and Ryan started to nurture a seedling of hope that maybe …

  “Where you going, Hardy?”

  Ryan had to stop doing that to himself.

  “I wasn’t ducking you, Tommy. I had to …” Ryan began, then stopped. Tommy didn’t care. “I wasn’t ducking you.”

  Tommy squinted at him. “I believe you,” he said.

  Ryan looked around. They were standing on the sidewalk directly in front of Mrs. Haemmerle’s bay window. If she saw them fighting, she might freak and literally have a heart attack. He was about to ask Tommy if they could move it down a few houses when Tommy said, “Why’d you get in my face like that? Because your dad works for Wilmette’s dad?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. You ever do something and not know why?”

  Tommy looked surprised, both by the nature of the question and that a question was actually asked of him. Ryan supposed Tommy didn’t get many questions. The only conversations he had probably consisted of adults yelling at him or kids begging for mercy.

  “I guess so,” Tommy said. “Don’t let it happen again.” He turned around and walked away without saying another word.

  Ryan made his way to the curb and leaned up against one of Mrs. Haemmerle’s empty garbage bins as he waited patiently for his knees to stop buckling.

  LIZZY AT THE WINDOW

  Lizzy had been sitting by her front window for over half an hour. She’d been there since the fifth minute she and her mom got home, hoping to catch sight of Ryan. (She spent the first four scrubbing off the pounds of makeup her cousin had spackled onto her face.) Before she’d climbed into Aunt Patty’s SUV, Lizzy had caught a glimpse of Ryan leading Ernest into the woods behind their school. Lizzy had been relieved at the time, but she was too smart to kid herself that Ryan was out of the woods, so to speak. She had already spotted Tommy loitering across the street from Mrs. Haemmerle’s house.

  Lizzy finally saw Ryan come around the corner. When he got to Mrs. Haemmerle’s, Tommy crossed the street, blocking Ryan’s path on the sidewalk.

  Though Lizzy wouldn’t tell at school, at home was a different matter. At home she had options. Her mom was in the other room, on the phone, and if anything happened, Lizzy could go and get her. Tommy wouldn’t cross Lizzy’s mom—she had set his arm for him when he broke it falling off a utility pole three summers ago.

  Though Lizzy could see the boys talking, she was too far away to make out what they were saying. It was a brief conversation, noteworthy because at the end of it Tommy walked away, leaving Ryan visibly shaken but otherwise upright.

  Lizzy could hardly believe her eyes at this borderline miraculous turn of events. Consumed with a giddiness that practically made her squeal with delight, she went to find her mom.

  “Mom,” she called, running into her mom’s bedroom. “Hey, Mom!”

  Her mom, still on the phone, was startled. “Lizzy, are you okay?”

  Lizzy realized she was interrupting. “Oh, sorry. It can wait.”

  “I’ll be out in a couple of minutes,” her mom said, blushing a little as she covered the bottom of the phone with her hand. Lizzy nodded. Her mom closed the door gently as Lizzy returned to the living room. Most days, Lizzy’s keen eye for detail would have picked up on her mom’s curious behavior, but she was so relieved at Ryan’s lack of pummeling that she failed to notice.

  ERNEST TRIES AGAIN

  Ernest’s dad was still at the factory when Ernest got home. He and his mom had leftovers. The house felt empty as they ate, their silverware loudly clinking against their plates.

  After dinner Ernest went up to his room. He wondered if Ryan was right about trying to make friends with Winston. Ryan saved his butt today. Twice. Because Ernest had stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. Maybe there was a lesson there.

  Probably there was a lesson there.

  Either way, Ernest couldn’t simply forget about what Winston had said at the well. Maybe you couldn’t become somebody’s friend just because they needed one. But what if you could? If there was a chance …

  Ernest’s gaze drifted across the room. Leaning up against his desk, under an umbrella of light from his desk lamp, was the art set he’d taken from Grandpa Eddie’s attic yesterday. Ernest had spent much of the day in fear for his life, a distraction that had made him forget all about the art set.

  But now, like before in the attic, it seemed to beckon him. Only this time Ernest knew what to do. He picked up the art set and put it in his backpack.

  Maybe he could show it to Winston at lunch to break the ice. Ernest was awful at art. He could ask Winston for pointers or something.

  It wasn’t a terrible idea.

  A BRIEF STUDY OF LOCKERS

  Every student at Rod Serling Middle School was afraid of Tommy Bricks.

  Tommy knew as much. How could he not? For a time, during the first couple weeks of school, Tommy had even tested the waters by walking down the halls and giving hard looks to all the biggest kids, challenging them, calling them out with his eyes. He figured someone would do something.

  But they all looked away.

  Tommy knew why. They expected him to be like Wade or his dad. The truth of it, though, was that Tommy didn’t enjoy making people afraid of him. It wasn’t fun, and it didn’t make him feel good. But it felt better than having people look down on him. Or feel sorry for him. Nothing was worse than that. Tommy wasn’t like Wade or his dad: He wasn’t mean. That said, he’d rather have everyone hate him—he’d rather hurt them all—than have one person ever feel sorry for him.

  Yesterday had been different.

  Because yesterday he really had been mean, and he didn’t know why. Tommy had nothing against Winston and actually thought his drawings were really good. Taking Winston’s tablet, saying those things—it’d just started happening, and Tommy hadn’t known how to make it stop.

  Then that Wilmette kid had stepped in. Something about that kid, the way he looked at Tommy, got him really mad. Mad in a way that scared him. At first he’d thought Wilmette was looking down on him, but it wasn’t that. It was more complicated, like he had looked inside Tommy, had seen who he really was.

  It had set something off in Tommy, something he didn’t think he could control. If Ryan Hardy hadn’t stepped in …

  And that’s when it hit him, hard like a kick to the chest. He knew now why Sam had to leave. Tommy understood. When everyone expects the worst from you, sooner or later you’re going to give it
to them.

  And yesterday, Tommy very nearly had.

  Which, of course, made what he was doing today all the more stupid. What he had in his backpack this morning could get him suspended, even expelled.

  If anyone caught him they’d probably call the police, say he was bringing weapons to school. And technically, they wouldn’t be wrong. The things he had in his backpack could be, strictly speaking, considered weapons.

  They weren’t weapons, though. They were tools.

  Sam’s tools.

  One day, a little over a month ago and just a couple of days into the new school year, Tommy noticed something while throwing his books in his locker.

  As the books crashed into the back wall, they made a sound that was just a little bit different, a little bit off. The sound he heard was too metallic, had too much tinny echo behind it. Tommy stuck his head into the locker and tapped lightly in several different spots. As he suspected, they made roughly the same sound, and he knew why.

  Over the next week, Tommy listened as the other kids nearby worked their lockers, and he heard pretty much the same thing. None of the other kids heard it, but that wasn’t surprising. Tommy’s ear was trained to hear when things didn’t sound right. At home, he was the one who fixed the squeaky hinge, the leaky faucet. He was the one who stopped the washer from making that high, whirring sound during the rinse cycle.

  Well, he and his brother Sam.

  Sam taught him how to fix things, how to use tools. His brother had an awesome set of tools and could fix anything. Tommy picked the lessons up fast. But while Sam was obsessed with how things worked, how pieces fit together and operated, Tommy’s imagination kept looking for different things to do with all the parts and pieces, ways to put them together to build something new.

  Tommy had a hunch about the lockers. At least halfway down the hall, he figured, there was nothing solid behind them, no concrete, no drywall even, just open space.

  And it gave him an idea.

  Tommy had refused to say goodbye to Sam on the day his brother left for the Marines. Sam had been with Wade the night Wade had gotten so drunk that he’d started beating up a bartender who wouldn’t give him any more to drink.

  Sam had tried to stop his brother, but in the end it had taken two policemen and their billy clubs to bring Wade down.

  Wade had been charged with two felony counts of assault. Sam had signed up for the Marines the same day Wade was sent to prison, which only added to the misconception that he’d been sent away, too. That the Bricks boys were all no good.

  Tommy hadn’t understood why Sam had to leave. It wasn’t fair. He’d run away, leaving Tommy behind.

  Tommy wouldn’t look at him when they dropped Sam off at the bus station, not even when his dad threatened to give him a smack if he didn’t drop it already. When Sam hugged him goodbye, Tommy didn’t hug him back.

  “My tools,” Sam whispered in his little brother’s ear. “I put them in your closet. Take care of them for me?”

  Tommy didn’t turn to look at Sam, but he couldn’t help nodding at this request.

  That was near the end of summer vacation, and Tommy hadn’t thought much about the tools since. Then, a few weeks ago, he came across his dad rummaging through the garage. It was late afternoon, around the time when his dad usually left for the bars.

  “You seen your brother’s tools?” he barked at Tommy.

  Tommy shook his head. His father scowled and went back to searching the garage. When he came up empty, he stormed away and stayed out all night.

  Tommy’s father had never fixed anything in his life. If he wanted Sam’s tools, it sure wasn’t to use them. It was to sell them, for beer money.

  That was why Sam had hidden them in Tommy’s closet, why he’d asked Tommy to take care of them. Sam knew that sooner or later their dad would be looking to hock his tools.

  And while Tommy’s father was not a particularly smart man, he was a crafty one. If Tommy wanted to protect those tools, he had to get them out of the house.

  Last week Tommy had brought Sam’s punch kit and nibbler shears to school and tested his hunch about the locker. At the end of the day, he waited in the bathroom for all the kids and teachers to leave, and for that old janitor to finally pass by with his push broom. Then he went to his locker and carefully carved out a clean, two-foot rectangle from the locker’s back panel. With a penlight in hand, he poked his head into the hole and looked around.

  Just as he had suspected, there was a long pocket of dead space, wide enough to stand in, spanning the length of the hallway.

  He taped the rectangular plate back over the hole. Then the next day he installed a top hinge, creasing the edges of the back plate and the locker’s side panels so that it swung open neatly and smoothly, like a little doggie door.

  Tommy had originally planned to bring one or two of the tools to school each day, but if his father found some of them in the meantime, then he’d know Tommy had hidden the rest, which would be very bad for Tommy. No, Tommy would have to start moving the tools in bulk, a backpack full at a time. Starting today.

  It was risky, especially after yesterday, when he nearly took that Wilmette kid apart. If Wilmette had gone crying to his rich daddy after school, then it was a sure bet that today Tommy would be yanked into the principal’s office the second he set foot on school property.

  Nevertheless, he decided to chance it. He was still mad at Sam; Tommy wouldn’t answer the letters his brother had been writing him, twice a week, since he left. But at the same time, he’d made a promise.

  Tommy slunk into school and dropped the bag in his locker without incident. Unfortunately, once at his locker, he realized that actually stashing the tools inside the dead space would be harder than he thought. The bag was too big to just shove through the doggie door; he’d have to remove the tools and slide them through a few at a time.

  That would be conspicuous and time-consuming.

  Tommy milled around his locker for a while, hoping the hall would clear of students before the first bell rang, but it seemed like everyone was dragging this morning. The Wilmette kid, especially, was just standing around by his locker with a stupid, confused look on his face.

  Frustrated, Tommy slammed his locker and marched to the bathroom, backpack once again on his shoulder. His only play would be to wait for first period to start, return to his locker, unload the tools, and then take a tardy.

  LEFT BEHIND

  Ernest Wilmette knew that bringing the art set to school was the thing he should do.

  However, as soon as he opened his locker, Ernest grew anxious and confused. Maybe this whole thing had been a dumb idea. Maybe Ryan was right all along.

  He was jolted from his thoughts by the loud, angry slam of a locker. He startled at the sound, but that was nothing compared to the sheer terror he felt when he looked up and saw Tommy Bricks barreling down the hallway with murder (or, at the very least, grave bodily injury) in his eyes.

  The small part of Ernest’s brain that wasn’t presently consumed with his imminent annihilation couldn’t help but wonder why now? Ernest and Tommy had both been at the lockers for a good five minutes, and Tommy hadn’t seemed to notice. Perhaps, Ernest pondered, people like Tommy remembered rage the way someone like Ernest might remember to return a library book. Oh, yeah. Silly me, I meant to beat the snot out of the Wilmette kid. Better get on that …

  But then, just at the moment when it was time for Ernest’s life to start flashing before his eyes, Tommy marched right past him, down the hall, and around the corner.

  Ernest noticed that Tommy’s locker hadn’t shut; he’d slammed it so hard the door had bounced back before the latch could catch. Not that it mattered. No one would dare steal from Tommy’s locker.

  Ernest’s heartbeat had nearly returned to normal when the warning bell for first period rang. He quickly closed his locker and hurried to class … leaving the art set out on the floor at the foot of his locker.

  TRUMAN THE CUSTODIA
N

  Truman the Custodian had been a fixture at Rod Serling Middle School for generations, not so much hired as installed, along with the lockers and drinking fountains. Extremely tall, extremely thin, and extremely old, he spent most of his day slowly pushing an industrial broom down the center of the halls while listening to NPR and big band music on the iPod his grandchildren had given him for Christmas. Whether the broom was actually collecting dust and debris or merely moving it from one end of the school to another remained open to debate.

  In any case, that was precisely what Truman the Custodian was doing on this particular morning as his broom gathered and pushed Ernest’s recently abandoned art set halfway down the hallway before the old janitor noticed it coasting along the floor at the end of his broom’s soft bristles.

  He stopped in front of Tommy’s open locker and regarded the wooden box. Slowly, he bent down and picked up the art set, examining it briefly and with little interest. If Occam’s razor is the theory that the simplest answer is usually the correct one, then Truman the Custodian’s razor would state that the solution requiring the least effort was good enough for him. So Truman tossed the art set in the closest open locker before rising (again, slowly) and slamming the locker shut.

  TOMMY FINDS THE ART SET

  When Tommy returned to his locker ten minutes later, the hallway was empty. He opened his locker and crouched down to find his secret compartment. The back plate was cracked open an inch, which struck Tommy as odd. Maybe there was a draft in the dead space? He made a mental note to install a hook and latch to keep it closed in the future.

  Tommy didn’t notice the wooden box right away. When he loaded the tools in, he first reached as far as he could down into the shaft of dead space and then worked his way closer to center. So it was only after he’d loaded all of Sam’s tools from the backpack that he discovered the art set.

  Tommy took it out, confused. It looked like an old set. Maybe it had been sitting in the dead space behind the lockers for decades. Sam had worked construction all through high school and always came home with stories like that. Things getting lost during construction, things being discovered during demolition. Usually it was something you’d expect, a tool or lunch box or hard hat.