by Alex Flinn
My friends finish their lunches in record time and stand. As they pass, they look at me, but like they’re trying not to look, you know?
“See you at football practice,” I say.
“Will you be there?” Brett blurts, then adds, “I mean, I wasn’t sure if you’d be there.”
“Sure, I will be.” But I’m thinking, Oh, God. Will they kick me off the team over this? Being a football player was pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s my life. Losing that would be worse than jail, worse than anything.
They walk away, saying, “See you there,” except Mo, who says nothing.
I watch them, and I get that old sinking feeling I used to get when I had no friends and used to sit alone all the time. But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. I’ve got friends. I hang out in a pack with a bunch of guys, and they’re not just school friends, either. Practically every weekend, I’ve got something going.
Like, this one time, couple months before Mom threw Dad out, we all drove over to Leesburg—Andy, Brett, Mo, and I. Mo had just gotten his new ride, and since there’s nothing much to do around here, we decided to head over to Leesburg.
Problem was, there’s nothing much to do in Leesburg, neither. I mean, once you get done eating at the Pizza Hut.
“What’s next?” Brett said. “Cow tipping?”
“No thank you, sir.” Mo laughed. “Those cows can get mean.”
So we were driving up and down the road, saying how dumb it was to go there, when suddenly Andy points to a Wal-Mart at the next intersection.
“My cousin’s from Leesburg. He says that’s where everyone hangs out on Saturdays.”
“Wal-Mart?” To me, that sounded even sadder than what we do in Pinedale, which is either hanging out at people’s houses or the parking lot of the Gas-n-Sip.
“Like, girls will be there,” Andy said.
“At Wal-Mart?” I was still saying. But everyone else was down with going there, and a minute later we were pulling into the parking lot.
No one much was inside, a bunch of moms with little kids and some guys at the snack bar who looked about as bored as we felt. For sure, no girls. After about ten minutes, looking at steering wheel covers in the automotive section, Mo said, “This is lame. Let’s cut bait.”
“No, wait,” Andy said. “I got an idea.”
Then, he tells us about some cousin of his (“a different cousin”) who’s a real joker. “He went to housewares and set all the alarm clocks to go off, like, one minute apart.”
“What’s the point of that?” I said.
But Mo was grinning. “Don’t you get it?” he said to me. “You set ’em for, like, closing time, then someone has to go turn ’em all off before they can go home.”
I still thought it was a pretty dumb idea. But the other guys were acting like it was hilarious, so I went along. I didn’t want them thinking I was too stupid to get the joke. Really, I sort of wanted to get home. Mom was away at some judges’ convention with the guy she works for, and I wasn’t sure if Dad was with Melody, or if she was sitting home alone, watching too much TV and eating too many Oreos. But I figured I’d do it and get it over with.
There must’ve been thirty alarm clocks, from the big superhero kind to the smallest travel alarm. When we set the last one, I said, “Okay, all done. We can go now, right?”
“No, dumbass,” Brett said.
“Who you calling dumbass?” I said, sort of edging closer. Brett was not one bit smarter than me.
“You, dumbass. We have to stick around so we can watch for when they go off.”
“But it’s like”—I looked at my watch—“almost an hour till closing.”
“Chill, Clint,” Mo said. “You got anything better to do?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell them about Dad or Mel or the Oreos. I kept my mouth shut and tried to think about how funny it would be when all those clocks started screaming.
When the first alarm went off, I started giggling. Mo nudged me to shut up. But really, you could barely hear it over the Wal-Mart noise.
The second wasn’t much more. But a minute later, they were all ringing and this Wal-Mart employee, a geeky guy in a cheesy-looking uniform, comes over and starts turning them off. He’s trying to put them back on the shelves, too. I forgot all about Dad and Mel and wanting to go home ’cause I was about busting a gut, laughing, and so was everyone else.
The guy didn’t really notice at first because of all the clock noise. But then he turned and saw us.
“You!” he screamed. “You four!”
They were still ringing. But the guy didn’t seem to care anymore ’cause he was running toward us, long, nerdy arms flapping. We all got up and ran to the front of the store. The guy’s yelling, “Stop them! Security! Stop them!” and these two big guys try to block the door, but my friends all got out.
The only one they caught was me.
They tackled me. I was yelling, but they dragged me to some kind of store security office. The nerdy guy wanted to call the police, but once the security guys found out what they were chasing me for, they decided to just call my parents. Luckily Dad still had his cell phone back then. After they told him the problem, I asked if I could talk to him.
“What the hell’s this about, Clinton?” he said.
But he sounded sober, so I said, “Will you please get Mel from the house before you come here? Please.”
When he and Mel got there, he acted like it was all some big joke, saying, “Boys will be boys.” Even when the manager got all huffy and told him I was banned from Wal-Mart for life, Dad just laughed and said, “We’ll just shop at Target then.” And when we got out to the car, he looked at me and Mel real serious and said, “This is just going to be our little secret, okay? No reason at all your mama needs to know about this—no reason at all.” That was the thing about my dad. He’d take your side in things. And even when we went to Wal-Mart a few months later for back to school, and I had to wear my baseball cap so the manager wouldn’t recognize me, I never told her.
That Monday, when I saw my friends at lunch, I got on them for leaving without me. Brett was joking, “Hey, survival of the fittest. You gotta leave behind the weak members of the herd.”
But Mo said, “Nah, that ain’t true. You took a fall for us, Clint buddy. We won’t forget.”
I felt real good when Mo said that, like I’d always have good friends. But now, I know Brett was the one telling the truth. I don’t have any.
My so-called friends are still standing ten feet away. Not one of them looks at me.
I think maybe I’ll go to the library.
Isn’t that just sad?
Across the sidewalk, I notice that retard girl who accused me. I’ve seen her sitting by herself other days. But today Kendall Barker and some of the cheerleaders are around her, acting like she’s their little pet or something.
“He’ll be okay.”
I look up, surprised. It’s the first time anyone’s talked to me on purpose all morning.
“What?”
“Alex. I saw him at the hospital.”
I don’t know the girl’s name—Jennifer something, who’s president of National Honor Society. She never talked to me before, and I never cared. Now she looks at me like I’m a fly on a pile of dog crap.
“I thought you should know you haven’t gotten rid of him. He’ll be back in school soon, no thanks to you. He’s not going to die.”
I gape at her. “I didn’t touch him.”
“Save it.” She starts to walk away.
I sit there a second, shocked and mad sort of duking it out for my feelings.
Mad wins. “Hey!” I yell after her. “What have you got to do with it?”
She stops. “I’m a friend of Alex’s.”
“Sure you are.” When she keeps standing there, not answering, I ask, “Ever been to his house?”
“No. We’re friends from school.”
“How ’bout his car?�
� I say. “Ever eat lunch with him?” I know she hasn’t. I’ve seen Crusan sitting alone enough times. He’s got no friends at all, not even fake friends like mine. “Do you choose him for your lab partner in science class?”
“Alex and I don’t have science together.”
“How about the others? He’s in those smart classes. You must have something with him. You ever do a project with him? You ever sit by him, even?”
She starts to turn again. “I don’t have to answer that. I’m not the one who—”
“’Cause the answer’s no, right?” I’m standing now, walking toward her. “Right?”
“Shut up, you … you get away from me.”
“It’s no.” I’m practically singing it. “No. You’re no better than me. You like to think you are. But you’re as afraid of catching something as anyone.”
“Shut up!”
“Or maybe you don’t want your friends seeing you with him.”
“Screw you.” I can see the anger in her eyes. It looks like it could come out and zap me, almost. I don’t care. I hate her.
“Know what I can’t stand?” I say. “People who think they’re up there…” I point at the trees. “When really, you’re as down here as me and everyone else.”
“I don’t have to talk to you.”
She turns and walks away.
“No, you don’t want to talk to me. And it’s ’cause you know I’m right.”
She’s practically running now. People are staring, and I laugh. I laugh.
But then it hits me. If Crusan died, would they be accusing me of murder?
I stop laughing quick.
Fifth period, the kid from the office hands me a note from Mom. Skip football practice, it says. We’re going to see a lawyer.
Tuesday, 11:40 a.m., courtyard, Pinedale High School
DARIA
All the girls,
around me
sit on my bench.
It smells like friends.
All of them
around me,
pretty clothes,
long hair.
All of them,
around me.
Some say names.
Some don’t.
All of them,
around me
say things,
ask questions.
All of them
around me,
wait to see
what
I say.
Tuesday, 3:01 p.m., Memorial Hospital
ALEX
“I saw him at school today.”
It’s Jennifer. It’s barely three, so she must have come the minute school got out. She has her uniform on, and this time the barrettes are white, instead of red. I wonder if she ever wears one white, one red. She holds out two books she brought me. The covers look a little girly, but I know I’ll read them anyway.
“Saw who?” Though I know. Doctors have been in and out all day. They say I seem better, maybe well enough to go home tomorrow, that the cuts were just surface things, and it’s good I drove away when I did. I tell them I don’t feel well enough to talk to the police. I don’t, actually. I’ve spent all day thinking about what to do about Clinton. I still don’t know.
“Clinton. I can’t believe he had the nerve to go to school. I saw him at lunch and told him what I thought of him.”
“You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not? After what he did, he should be in jail, not school.”
I should tell her the truth about Clinton, but I don’t. They’ve been sticking me with needles all morning, and Mom was here, hovering and worrying I’d catch pneumonia or something just by being in this place. I don’t think Mom trusts the doctors here.
Now she went to school to get my sister. She let Carolina go after her principal promised she’d keep an eye out. But Mom’s still scared to let her walk home by herself.
“You just shouldn’t have,” I say.
“I couldn’t help myself. I hate him. And you shouldn’t have to deal with that crap—I was thinking last night that I would hate to be you.”
That makes me mad. She’s all proud of having told Clinton off, like I’m some weakling whose lunch money she got back from a bully. But I remember her shying away from my hand yesterday. Yeah, I remember that.
“Well, gee, thanks. Yeah, I was thinking you might prefer being someone else too. Maybe Kendall Barker.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“What did you mean?”
“I just meant, you have this horrible disease, and it’s not even your fault.”
“Fault?”
“Well, I mean, because of the transfusion.”
I think of what Mom said yesterday, about how it matters to people. “Would it be different, if I got it some other way?”
“You mean if you were—?”
Gay? I almost laugh, considering some of the fantasies I’ve been having about her.
I say, “If I got it shooting drugs or something? Would it matter that much? Would it be okay that I’m sick then?”
I see her eyes dart to my arm, looking for railroad tracks, and back. “No. No, of course it wouldn’t matter. What matters is you’re sick. I just meant it might make a difference to some people around here.”
“People like Clinton?” And you?
“Right.”
I take pity on her. “I don’t shoot smack,” I say. “And I’m not gay. It’s not only a gay disease.”
“I know that.”
“But it shouldn’t matter either way.”
“It doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.”
Except that I can tell by looking at her that it does.
“You have this big, awful thing to deal with. And then, on top of it, you have to deal with people being so mean to you, like Clinton.”
“The problem with the world isn’t Clinton. Screw Clinton. What really sucks is the people who aren’t like Clinton, the people like you.”
The second I say it, I’m sorry. But it’s out there now, and there’s nothing I can do to reel it back in.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I have to keep going. “People like you, you act all nice and say hello to me in the hall or whatever, and then you feel like you did your good deed for the day because you were nice to the sick kid. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to invite me to your house or hang with me. You were never friends with me before this happened, and you won’t be friends with me once it’s over.”
She’s staring, but it’s all coming out of me now, and I keep going and going like that bunny on the TV commercial.
“No one outside my family even touches me anymore, no one hugs me. You tell yourself you can’t get sick from touching me, but you won’t. One of the things they always tell terminals like me is, Be normal. Live for today. Seems like a pretty obvious concept, since I have no tomorrow. But the problem is, I have no today, either. People like you won’t let me be normal. It makes you feel good to feel sorry for me. You can tell yourself you’re not like Clinton, but you are.”
Jennifer’s standing there, her cheeks turning red like I slapped her. I guess I did. I start to say something else, I don’t know what. Something else stupid, probably. She turns and walks out, still holding the books she brought me.
I am Freddy Krueger.
Tuesday, 3:01 p.m., Bernard Eutsey’s office
CLINTON
“Mr. Eutsey will be with you in a moment,” the receptionist says. “He’s on a conference call.”
“Thank you.” Mom looks at her hands.
We’ve been sitting in the lawyer’s office for fifteen minutes now, not saying anything. Mom doesn’t look at me. She hates me. I have a pencil in my hand. I want to bite it. I can’t really explain about pencil biting. It’s just something I did till lately, when my friends started making fag jokes about it. It’s not that it tastes good or anything like that. It’s just that sometimes, I feel like I … have to. But I’ve given that up. I do
n’t do that anymore. So instead I jab my arm with the lead.
It hurts. But you know how, when something hurts, making something else hurt gets your mind off it? That’s what I’m doing now.
“This would be a good time to tell me where you were yesterday,” Mom says.
“I can’t.”
Jab. Jab. Jab.
“Oh, Clinton.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mom called Dad last night. I heard her on the phone, leaving a message on his answering machine. This morning, when I asked whether he called back, she shook her head. I heard her calling again after that.
Part of the reason I don’t want to tell Mom I was out calling Dad yesterday is, I don’t know if he’d even remember it. It’s sort of embarrassing to say that, but there it is.
“Mr. Eutsey will see you now.” The receptionist leads us into a fancy conference room with a big table. We take our seats. Then Mr. Eutsey comes in.
“Adele, how nice to see you,” he says. “How are you?”
“I’ve been better, Bernard.” There’s a tremor in my mother’s voice, and I look at her.
“Well, let’s see if I can help you out.”
Mr. Eutsey is the biggest black guy I’ve ever seen, maybe six-five, with a voice like James Earl Jones, who played Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. If I saw him coming at me on the football field, I’d hide behind the Gatorade. Mom knows him ’cause she works for a judge. This must be the lawyer Dad was so afraid of. I can see why this guy could be scary. He’s scaring me.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” he booms.
“You’ve probably read about it in the paper,” Mom says.
“Of course. But I was interested in hearing Clinton’s story. For example, where he was when all this happened. The best thing we can do is establish an alibi.”
“I was home,” I tell him, and Mom raises an eyebrow. I bet she thinks that since I lied so easy, I could lie about other things. “In bed,” I add. Jab, Jab, Jab.