by Alex Flinn
“Yes, sir.” I follow them into Runnels’s office. I start thinking maybe I ought to ask for my mother to be there. I mean, I didn’t think there’d be cops. Are they supposed to question me without my mother there?
But I decide, nah. Why get her all involved? It’s just a prank. But considering it involves the homo, she’d be trippin’ if she knew. “Throw the book at him,” she’d probably say. I’m still hoping to get this over quick.
So I follow the two cops into Runnels’s office and sit down on another green plastic chair. One of the cops—the short guy who called me son—sits at Runnels’s desk. The other one, a tall, skinny guy, sort of wanders around the room. The short one looks familiar. I wonder where I’ve seen him before. Then I remember. He was one of Dad’s poker buddies back then. They used to come over our house Wednesday nights to play cards and drink beer. Couple times, Dad even let me sit with them and tried to teach me to play. Tried to teach me to cheat for him too. But I was too stupid to do it right. I was eight or nine. For years they did that. Mom hated it because they messed up the house. And this guy—they called him Junior—he and Dad had lots in common. I feel myself relaxing. It was the right thing, not calling Mom. Everything’ll be fine.
But it’s the tall cop talking now.
“I’m Officer Bauer, and this is Officer Reed. We want to ask a few questions. Okay? We’d appreciate your cooperation.”
I nod. I don’t say I’ll answer them. “Yes, sir.”
“You know a guy named Alejandro Crusan?”
“Sure. Alex. He’s in my trig class. Government, too. I’ve got to sit by him because our names both begin with C.”
Act casual.
Officer Bauer looks up when I say that. “You don’t like sitting next to him?”
“Well … look, they say he’s not a fag or nothing, though I’m not too sure. It’s just, you never know what you could catch, being around someone like that. I mean, what if he sneezes? Or bites someone?”
I figure now I’ll get some big lecture about how I can’t get sick sitting by him. Wouldn’t be the first time. Instead, the tall cop looks back at Dad’s friend.
Dad’s friend—Officer Reed—says, “Well, sure. I can see how you’d think that. I mean, it’s a real serious illness he has.”
“Exactly. It’s not that I don’t feel for the guy, just—”
“You don’t want to get sick.”
“Right. Or my family to get sick either.” I can tell Officer Reed is sort of seeing my point, so I keep going, trying to talk my way out of it. Lots of people agree with me. They’re just too scared to say it. “I mean, why should we all have to be exposed to that? They told us before he came here that you couldn’t get sick, just being near him. But I don’t believe it for a minute. I mean, what if he cuts himself? He doesn’t have those purple, blotchy things you always see on people with AIDS on TV. But still, there’s all these molecules and particles and things, junk in the air. And what about dust mites?” I remember once, they told us in science class that dust is all people’s skin and junk. Excuse me, but I don’t want that guy’s skin particles on me. “And did you hear about some people who say they got AIDS from a dentist? They said that couldn’t happen either. I figure better safe than sorry.” Okay, stop now.
I remember this time in grade school … well, I bite my pencils. And once this guy, Trevor Dornau, thought it would be funny to stick my pencils in his ears, so I’d be eating his earwax. What if Crusan thought it would be funny to spit on my pencils? Or even bleed on them? Could happen.
“Understandable,” Officer Reed says. “So you must think it’s a bad idea, them letting Alex go to school here?”
“Right. I mean, maybe if they’d put him in one of those plastic bubbles or something. I saw a movie like that once on TV—this kid went to school in a space suit. But they wouldn’t have anything that high-tech in Pinedale. Or maybe he could take classes at home, on television or something. Don’t they do that?”
Both cops are nodding.
“I mean, when you think about it, why’s he have to go to school anyway? He’s just going to…”
I stop. The cops aren’t nodding anymore. I guess it is kind of cold to say he’s just going to die.
“Anyway,” I say. “That’s what I think.”
I look at the bulletin board behind Officer Reed’s head and try to relax, so I think of Alyssa. I saw her yesterday after school, but from a distance. She had on my favorite shirt of hers, a pink one with these sort of thin sleeves you can see her arms through. Damn. I take a deep breath, and I can almost smell her. The perfume she wears is like the little white flowers on the bushes behind our house.
“And did you tell anyone else you felt this way?” the tall cop, Bauer, asks.
I snap to. They know I did. That’s why they’re getting on me. “Sure. I had to tell Mrs. Gibson, my Government teacher. I tried to at least get moved to a different seat.” Figures the two classes I have with Crusan are the only two where we sit in alphabetical order.
“Who else?”
“Mr. David, my trig teacher. Him, too.”
“And what did they say?”
“Mrs. Gibson was real snotty about it.” After I say that, I think I should have maybe put it different. But I remember how Old Lady Gibson looked at me, like people do when they think you’re stoooo-pid and they’ve got to talk slow so you’ll keep up. I hate when people look at me that way. “I mean, she said there was nothing to worry about. She blew me off. David was better.”
“What did Mr. David say?” Bauer asks.
I don’t want to get Mr. David in trouble, so I say, “He understood. He’s got kids that go here. But he said he couldn’t really do anything about it, and maybe my parents ought to talk to Runnels. I mean, Mr. Runnels.”
What Mr. David said, actually, is that he would take that little Cuban out himself, if he could. And he moved my seat.
“And did they?”
“Did they what?” I’m still thinking about Mr. David.
“Did your parents talk to Mr. Runnels?”
“My mom, she took their side in the whole thing. She’s like that. Liberal.”
“What about your father?” Officer Bauer asks.
I look down. “He didn’t say anything.”
I look at Officer Reed, thinking maybe now’s the time he’ll say something about how he knew my dad. But Bauer says, “So what did you do then?”
The way he says it, I bet he already knows about the notes I left in Crusan’s locker, telling him to get out of Pinedale. I did the notes on the computer. I didn’t think they could trace them, but maybe they did, somehow. And yesterday, after Melody got back from spending the night there and was talking about how she was going to go back again next week, I got a little crazy. I rode my bike over there and chucked a rock through the window. I didn’t think anyone saw me, but now I’m here, and I don’t know what’s up with the cops and everything. Are they going to make me pay for the window? Call my mother? I didn’t think of any of that when I did it last night. I was just upset about Mel. I wanted him gone, and no one was doing anything about it. No one could do anything, even though most people I talked to agreed with me, people like Mr. David, who said, “It stinks that one person’s rights interfere with everyone else’s. But that’s the way things are in this stinking country.”
But I look at Officer Bauer and say, “I didn’t do anything, sir. There was nothing I could do. I sat where I was told and tried not to breathe in too much. Ask anyone. Lucky, we only have those two classes together. I guess Crusan’s in the smart class for English. I tried to stay away from him, best I could. But other than that, I didn’t do a darn thing.”
Monday, 11:00 a.m., special ed counselor Joyce Taub’s office, Pinedale High School
DARIA
Mondays,
I wait
by the side of the road
for
Alex Crusan’s car.
Monday,
Mama says
I can go
if it
does not rain
and it did not
rain today.
I waited.
I like Alex Crusan’s car.
The headlights
look like
big eyes staring.
I like Alex Crusan.
He smiles at me.
The big eyes were there.
I hid
by the side of the road
in leaves
that
crunched and
smelled
like rainy dogs.
Alex Crusan
can’t see me
unless I
pop out.
I wanted to pop out.
I wanted to pop out
and say hello.
I wanted to surprise him.
The boy was there
in a blue letter jacket.
Wham!
Glass—smash!
Like ice
falling up.
Baseball bat,
blue letter jacket.
Alex Crusan
under the glass,
blue letter jacket.
Glass
like ice
falling up.
I could not run.
I ran.
I saw who did it.
I saw
the blue letter jacket.
I said it.
Monday, 11:15 a.m., Memorial Hospital
ALEX
I guess I must’ve dozed off for real because when I look up, Mom’s gone. Which is better, really. Sometimes I can’t take her crying on top of everything else.
But someone else is there. A candy striper in this dumb uniform that looks like it’s from the 1950s, pushing a flower cart. I’ve seen her at school. Jennifer… Something, a little mousy, but pretty blonde, curly hair. I’m surprised she’s here during school hours. She stands there, staring at me. I know what she’s thinking. People who first see me think I’m going to look like Tom Hanks in that movie Philadelphia, where he lost, like, forty pounds and was covered in lesions from Kaposi’s sarcoma. I don’t look like that … yet. I can’t think about the day I’ll look like that. At least, I try not to.
I’m about to say something rude, like hasn’t she ever seen anyone with HIV, working in a hospital.
Then I realize she’s looking at my face. It’s all bandaged, so I bet I look like a mummy. I go to touch it, but my hands are bandaged too. Nothing hurts. I must be doped up, which would explain why I’m sleeping so much. I feel tired right now, and I just woke up.
I say, “Jennifer, right?” It’s hard to talk.
She’s getting the flowers off the cart, and she practically throws the vase at me when I speak. But she recovers.
“Good save,” I say. It’s easier the second time.
She puts the flowers beside the others on the windowsill, then leans to get a roll of paper towels to clean the water she spilled. I get a pretty good view of her legs and … stuff. Good to know I’m not too doped up to notice that. Nice. Very nice. I have no illusions that a girl like that—or any girl—would be interested in me. But I’m still a guy.
When she stands, I repeat, “You’re Jennifer, right?”
“Jennifer Atkinson.” She doesn’t come closer, which is no shocker. She folds two paper towels to make a thick square, then leans again to dab at the water. This time she leans forward, and I can see down the front of her uniform. “You scared me. I thought you were asleep.”
She stands again.
“Sorry.” I gesture at my bandaged face. “I’m Alex. We go to school together.”
“I know who you are.”
And, since she doesn’t say it like go-away-and-please-stop-emitting-carbon-dioxide, I ask, “Who are the flowers from?”
“We’re not supposed to snoop in the cards.”
“It’s not snooping if I ask, is it?”
She looks doubtful. “I guess not.”
I back up. “If you don’t want to talk to me, just put the cards on the nightstand.”
So tired. Eyes … closing…
“No, that’s okay.” She steps sideways and stoops to wipe some more water. “They told us we can’t get sick from casual contact.” She looks at me, looking at her, and her face goes all red. “I mean…”
“You’re right,” I say quick. “That’s totally right—you can’t. Not many people around here seem to know that.”
“My mom’s a nurse. And I want to be a doctor. I got special permission to work here Mondays during school, and other days after. You can’t be a doctor and get scared of sick people.” She looks up and blushes redder. “I’m not saying this right.”
She reaches out and fumbles for the cards. I want to tell her I’m not sick, not really, that maybe I’ll never get really sick. But it’s the first normal, human conversation I’ve had with anyone my own age since we moved to Pinedale, and I don’t want to kill it by sounding like a public service announcement. So I say, “No, you’re right. That’s smart. But then, you must be smart if you plan to go to med school.”
God, I sound like a moron. She ignores it and opens the first card. “From Mom, Dad, and Carolina.” She pronounces Carolina’s name right, unlike most people around here who pronounce it like the state. She opens the other card. “And this one’s from Mrs. Adele Cole, Melody, and Clinton.”
She looks a little surprised, and I almost laugh myself. Figures. Melody Cole is Carolina’s best friend, but she’s also Clinton Cole’s sister. Weird that with all the things Cole and I don’t have in common, we have sisters exactly the same age. Mrs. Cole is one of those moms who always acts like she’s running for the title of World’s Best Person. I figure she does it to make up for giving birth to an asshole like Clinton. So while everyone else is giving us the evil eye at Winn-Dixie, Mrs. Cole runs up to Mom in frozen foods to ask if we need help finding anything. She lets her daughter play with Carolina when pretty much no one else will. I know I should be grateful. But I wish I didn’t have to be, you know?
“Well, I’m damn sure they aren’t from Clinton,” I say.
Jennifer looks at me funny, and I’m about to apologize for my language. Kids around here don’t swear like they do in Miami and on the rest of the planet. It’s possible she’s shocked by the word damn.
But when I look at her, she’s staring at the card.
She says, “I hope they throw that guy’s ass in jail for what he did to you.”
Monday, 11:15 a.m., principal’s office, Pinedale High School
CLINTON
“I didn’t do anything,” I say again.
Okay, so I threw the rock. It wasn’t a big rock, and I did it when no one was home. No one saw me. I knew from Melody that the Crusans go to Sunday night services at the Catholic church on Rolling Road. So that’s when I went, last night around seven when the house was mostly dark. I parked my bike a block away, in front of that little retard girl’s house. Then I hoofed it to the Crusans’ place. It’s a real fancy house with big trees and bushes, so I could sneak over under the leaves. I chucked the rock through the window and left. I didn’t think it was a big deal since no one was there. But now the cops are here, so they must’ve found out somehow. And my ass is grass if my mom finds out.
They can’t prove a darn thing.
“It would be understandable if you did something,” Officer Reed says. “If you felt sort of … powerless.”
“I was powerless. That’s why I didn’t do anything. There was nothing I could do.”
“Are you telling me the truth, son?”
“Scout’s honor.” Though, of course, I’m not a scout anymore. But I was one when I was eight. It was fun, till Dad said he couldn’t handle any more of that camping junk. Now the whole thing of the cops being here, and not just Runnels, is starting to hit home, and my heart’s thumping now, going oh-shit, oh-shit, oh-shit … till I think maybe they can see it through my shirt.
“Because there
was an incident this morning.”
Oh-shit. “This morning?” Not last night?
Officer Reed nods. “Someone attacked Alex Crusan’s car. They hit it with a baseball bat.”
“I don’t know anything about that, sir.”
And it’s true. My lungs, they feel like helium balloons. It wasn’t me. They don’t know about the rock. They’re looking for some other guy.
“I’d never vandalize a car, sir.”
“I’m afraid there was more to it than that.” I watch the tall cop’s lips moving, stretching, then snapping back like in slow-mo. I realize he’s talking like I already know what he’s going to say. “Alex was driving the car at the time. He was badly cut by flying glass. They’re treating this as a battery.”
I stare at him, realizing. Battery. What does any of this have to do with me? I threw a rock, for God’s sake. A stinking rock at an empty house. I didn’t batter anyone. I wouldn’t… I mean, I’d never actually hurt anyone. I look down at my hands, and they’re shaking. They’re trying to pin this on me. Jeez, they’re trying to pin this on me.
Calm down, stupid. Stupid!
I try to think about what my dad would say to do. I know he’d say keep a cool head. Be respectful. I saw him talk his way out of a ticket once. That’s exactly what he did. Smart, not stupid. I stick my hands between my knees to stop them shaking. I don’t act guilty—he’d say that, too.
I say, “That’s awful, sir. If I hear anyone talking about it, I’ll be sure and let you know.”
Officer Reed looks at the tall cop again. The tall cop looks at me.
“Son, let’s cut the crap. There’s a witness who identified you at the scene.”
Monday, 11:30 a.m., courtyard, Pinedale High School
DARIA
First lunch,
me alone,