Boy Toy

by Barry Lyga

  I thought back to how Eve had wanted to give me things: Little notes. A lipstick-pressed card. Her panties. But she'd always take them back before we even left the apartment. I don't know where you could keep it, she would say. I don't know how you could keep it hidden.

  My throat tightened. I closed my eyes. I was doing everything wrong. I didn't know what to do next.

  The detective decided to get some coffee. He left me alone with Mom for a little while and she berated me for not cooperating. I bore it in silence. I would just have to bear everything in silence from now on.

  When the door opened again, it was the female detective. She gave me a nice smile and asked if I wanted something to drink, which I did, but I wasn't going to tell her that. She ruffled my hair before she sat down, just like Eve used to, and I reminded myself not to say anything at all.

  "Josh, I feel terrible about this. I know you care about your teacher, about Evelyn, a lot. Is that what she told you to call her? Evelyn?"

  I said nothing. Eve, I told myself. Eve. Eve. Eve.

  "I know that the two of you have a very special relationship. She treated you like an adult, didn't she?"

  That was the closest I came to breaking then. I almost opened my mouth. I don't know what I would have said, but I came damn close to opening my mouth. Instead, I just pressed my lips together more firmly.

  She noticed, though. "I know, Josh," she said, her voice low and soft. "I know. She told you you were like a grownup, didn't she? She told you that you were special, that what you and she had was special, that she could get in trouble if you told anyone. I know. I know how much that meant to you, Josh.

  "And that's why I hate to do this. I really, really do. But, see...

  "Do you think you're the first kid she's done this to, Josh?"

  She pushed a closed manila folder to me across the table and tapped it with two fingers. "Why do you think she trans ferred out of South Brook High and into your middle school, Josh? There are two sophomores on record stating that she made advances toward them. Sexual advances, Josh."

  She leaned over the table. "Josh, did she tell you she loved you? Because it's not true. She doesn't. She never did."

  I couldn't let this go by without comment. Without lifting my eyes from the table, I said, "I don't believe you."

  She tapped the folder again. "I know you don't. And I don't blame you. This is so hard for you. But it's not me you need to believe, Josh. It's these two guys from South Brook. Go on. Open the folder. Read it. You'll see."

  "They're lying." I was whispering at this point.

  She flipped open the folder. "Read it, Josh." Her voice had gone hard. Cold. "Read the file."

  "No."

  She pushed it closer to me, sliding it into my field of vision. I closed my eyes.

  "Read the damn file." Murmuring, almost. Quiet. But like steel. Quiet steel.

  A chair squeaked and Mom grabbed my wrist. "Mrs. Mendel—"

  "I won't have you forcing him to read that—trash." Her voice. Just as quiet. Just as strong.

  She dragged me out of there and that was it for a little while.

  17

  Mom and Dad took turns bringing me to the police for the next few days, though Mom ended up doing it far more often.

  One day we pulled into our driveway but didn't get out of the car. Mom turned off the engine and just sat there. It was raining, and at first I thought that she was going to see if it would taper off before running through the rain to the front door.

  Instead, she turned to me. "Why are you making this so difficult?"

  It caught me off-guard. I wasn't the one making things difficult! The police were making things difficult. The DA was making things difficult. They were hammering away at me, trying to chip away at my resistance, but I wouldn't give them an inch, no matter how hard they made it.

  "Why, Josh?"

  "I'm not making it more difficult," I told her.

  I expected her to be angry, but she just sighed a sad little sigh as the rain drummed around us. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel.

  A swell of pity burgeoned inside me and

  —lotion on her legs—

  in that moment she was so weak and so distraught that I had to give her something. Disoriented by the flicker, I reached out and tapped her shoulder. She looked over at me.

  "I love her, Mom." I said it quietly, with all the seriousness I could muster. It was the biggest, most important thing I'd ever said in my life.

  And Mom laughed.

  It wasn't an amused laugh. It wasn't the sort of laugh you hear at the movies or in front of TV or during a family reunion. It was harsh, hard-edged, more a snort than actual laughter.

  "Mom?"

  "Don't be stupid," she said with contempt. That contempt shocked me—my mom had been angry at me in the past, but never hateful. "You're a child. You don't know what it means to be in love." And she flung open the car door as if she wished she had the strength to rip it from the hinges, and stalked off to the house through the rain.

  That night, I lay in bed, troubled by what she'd said, blocking out the sounds of argument from my parents' room. Was love what my parents had? Yelling at each other, worrying about money? Never smiling? Never happy? If that was love, then I didn't want it.

  I went back to school a week after Rachel's birthday party. I hadn't spoken to anyone from school the whole time. Not even Zik. He had called the house a few times, but someone was always on the other line or he called when we were out. I wasn't allowed to call back.

  Mom drove me that first day so that I wouldn't have to put up with the bus. "Don't talk to anyone about this," she told me. "I've already talked to the principal. She's going to talk to you this morning, but other than that, you don't talk to anyone, do you understand?"

  I understood.

  The principal, clearly uncomfortable and ill at ease in my presence, told me that she'd spoken to my mother about "the recent issues" and that if anyone bothered me or approached me, I was to let her know immediately. Then, since homeroom had let out by then, she released me to first period.

  And that was the first day of the rest of my life.

  First period was science. The first thing I noticed was that Rachel wasn't there. The second thing I noticed was that everyone's eyes followed me everywhere I went.

  And I wondered: What do they know? How did they find out? What are they thinking?

  But I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone. I wasn't supposed to tell. So I sat in a bubble of invisible silence all day. No one tried to approach me. No teachers called on me. No students came up to me. I was like a bad smell—you know it exists, but you can't look for it or at it. You know it's there, though.

  History was a shock—Eve wasn't there. I guess it clicked for me then; she had said that she could lose her job if the truth about us came out. And here the truth had begun to trickle out and she was gone. We had a substitute, the kind that stays a long time.

  I sat in my seat, not hearing this new teacher as she droned on and on. I stared at my notebook.

  Zik sat behind me.

  History was one of three classes we shared in seventh grade. I hadn't looked around to see him. I hadn't seen him or spoken to him since Mr. Madison dragged me from the closet and up the stairs.

  About halfway through history class, I felt something brush against my shoulder. I jerked up just in time to see a crumpled ball of paper drop over me and into my lap. My heartbeat raced; the sub hadn't seen anything.

  I uncrumpled the paper. It was small and had four words written on it:

  Welcome back, Iron Man.

  Lunch had the potential to be hell, but Zik saved me. I couldn't bring myself to stand in the lunch line, shoulder to shoulder with people who clearly couldn't stand to be around me but also couldn't stop staring at me. I considered going to the principal's office, pretending I was upset so that I could avoid the cafeteria.

  Then Zik came up behind me and whispered in my ear, "Meet me outsi
de."

  I made for the exit door. The lunchroom monitor just glanced at me. She was one of the eighth grade teachers, but she knew. Everyone knew.

  She stepped aside and let me outside without a word.

  I sat on a bench near the basketball net, waiting. A few minutes later, Zik came out, walking in a funny hunched-over way, his arms crossed over his chest.

  He sat down next to me and reached up his shirt and started pulling out juice boxes, ice cream sandwiches, fruit bars in wax paper.

  "Bone appetite," he said.

  "It's bon apetit," I said.

  "Yeah, I know." He unwrapped a fruit bar and started to eat. We ate in silence for a few seconds, and then he said, "You think there's gonna be a players' strike this season?"

  "I don't know."

  "I hope not. That would suck."

  "Yeah."

  "Opening day is only a week away. You think your dad can get us tickets again?"

  The year before, my dad had somehow managed tickets to the first game of the season. "I don't know. My dad's not doing a lot of favors for me right now."

  Zik grunted, taking it in stride. He punched my shoulder. "Well, we'll watch it on TV. This is why God invented ESPN."

  I guess Zik kept me sane. He didn't talk about the birthday party or the closet or anything else. It was as if we'd never gone to Rachel's that day, as if I hadn't missed a week of school, as if there were no whispered conversations held in my wake as I walked through the halls. With Zik, it was just baseball and how much of a dick his dad was and how he couldn't wait, couldn't wait, couldn't wait to get out of that place.

  And me? I had never really cared one way or the other. But now I couldn't wait to get out either.

  18

  The days turned into weeks turned into months. Unlike on TV, trials in real life take a long time to get started, I learned.

  School never felt normal—not with Eve missing—but it settled into a new rhythm at least, similar to the old one in the same way that a new tooth is similar to the old. There's that period of time where it's missing, where there's a hole, and then slowly, over time, something else fills in. And it might be just as good a tooth, but it's not the same as the one before, and you always know that.

  And there's always a part of you that wonders if you'll lose this one, too.

  I kept my head down in the halls and in classes. I hung out with Zik. I shied away from Michelle. I ran like hell from Rachel.

  I thought it was all over. Except for my own guilt and shame. Other than that, I thought it was done with. There were no more trips to the police station, no more calls...

  And then one day the handwriting analysis came back from the lab. The police called Mom and Dad to tell them that between the handwriting match and the phone records, they had gotten a search warrant. They had also questioned Eve on multiple occasions, but she wasn't saying anything. Good. We were both keeping our mouths shut.

  The very next day, I was back in the police station. This time, though, it was Gil Purdy, the prosecutor, who spoke to me, while the two detectives stood off to one side, looking satisfied with themselves.

  Purdy didn't mince words. As soon as I sat down, he started in on me.

  "Did you ever go outside the state, Josh? Maybe to Pennsylvania or West Virginia? Hmm? Did she ever take you for a little getaway? Because if you went over state lines, then this is a federal case, Josh. This is a whole new ball game."

  I didn't feel like playing a whole new ball game. The old one was just fine. I kept my mouth shut. But Purdy had scared the hell out of me because Eve had mentioned going out of state once, something about going to Delaware. I hadn't been paying attention, but he was so close...

  They hammered away at me, taking turns. It was five of them—my parents included, because they sure as hell didn't seem to be on my side—against me. And they had phone call records and handwriting samples and they had testimony from some other teachers who had seen me getting into Eve's car with her and a bunch of other stuff that they hurled at me so fast that I couldn't see any of it whiz past the plate.

  And they broke me.

  Here's how:

  Purdy kept firing questions at me, looking for details, when suddenly, out of the blue, he said, "What kind of birth control did you two use, Josh? Was she on the pill? Did she make you wear a condom? Do you know what a condom is?"

  And I knew, but I wasn't going to say because suddenly it wasn't that I didn't want to speak, it's that I couldn't speak. My stomach and my heart had twisted up and risen to my throat and I thought I was about to puke them both up.

  And Purdy could tell. A crazy light went on in his eyes and he kept asking about birth control, but I didn't even hear him, not really, because all I could think was, Is Eve pregnant? Did I make her pregnant? Because I'd never even thought about birth control and Eve had never brought it up and I was just twelve when it all happened so how was I supposed to think of these things and oh my God what if I was going to be a father—

  And Purdy just wouldn't give up and he wouldn't shut up, going on and on, asking about birth control, while I could only think of Zik telling me how his aunt's boobs had gotten so huge when she was pregnant, picturing Eve's belly round and tight and full, oh God.

  They brought in boxes of condoms and pill packs and tubes of spermicidal jelly and stuff like that. "Just point to anything you saw in her apartment, Josh. Maybe you looked in her medicine cabinet?"

  But I hadn't. I'd never looked. I'd never wondered. I didn't know. And Eve could be pregnant with my baby...

  "What did she use, Josh?" Purdy asked for the millionth time, and that's what did it—that's what did it.

  "I don't know!" I screamed.

  Because I didn't.

  And the rest followed.

  I told them everything. As much as I could remember, at least. Sobbing and near incoherent, I told them all of it, just to shut them up, just to make them go away.

  They gave me a yellow notepad and a pencil and made me write down everything. I mean everything. Every date I could remember. Every thing she said and I said. Every ... thing we did together.

  I hated them. I hated all of them, my parents included, my parents especially. All of them, standing around me, so smug and so pleased with themselves for making me cry, for making me admit...

  I finished the pad and they had to bring me another one. Because I remembered everything.

  It took a few months, but when the trial started in the winter, I missed more school. I sat outside the courtroom on a bench with Mom while Dad testified, then waited with Dad while Mom testified. I had to stay outside because I was going to be a witness, so I couldn't hear any other witnesses.

  And then a bailiff opened the court door and looked out into the hallway and said, "Joshua Mendel."

  My legs shook like string in a breeze. I made myself walk into the courtroom.

  Purdy looked at me expectantly. He had prepped me mercilessly over the past week, forcing me to recount everything in excruciating detail, making me say it all out loud again. I hated the sight of him and I think he knew it.

  I walked to the witness box. The bailiff told me to raise my right hand. "Do you solemnly swear or affirm under the penalties of perjury that the testimony you are about to offer is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

  I had trouble swallowing. "Yes."

  "Be seated."

  I sat down in the chair. Now, for the first time, I could see everyone in the courtroom—the jury off to my left, the prosecution and defense tables ahead of me, the entirety of the gallery, filled only with family and media, at the judge's orders.

  My parents had moved into the front row of the gallery, right behind the prosecutor.

  Eve sat at the defense table with her lawyer. George was nowhere to be seen.

  Eve wasn't looking at me. She was looking down at her hands, folded over each other on the table in front of her.

  Purdy came around in front of
his table and leaned against it. "Good morning, Josh," he said, smiling. It was one of those smiles adults put on at parties when they're bored stiff with the person they're talking to.

  "Morning," I mumbled.

  "I'm going to ask you some questions today. Is that OK?"

  I shrugged. I couldn't really stop him, could I?

  "You need to answer out loud," he said with the air of someone who's talking to a complete moron.

  "Yes," I said, leaning forward into the microphone.

  "We're going to take this slow, Josh. I want to start with a simple question." He walked over to me, holding something familiar in his hand. He held it up so that the jury could see it, then held it out at arm's length in front of me.

  "Do you recognize this, Josh?"

  It was the birthday card Eve had given me. It was still in the plastic bag, only now there was a tag with a C on it. "Yes."

  "What is it?"

  That was a stupid question! Anyone with eyes could tell it was a birthday card. "It's a birthday card," I said with as much annoyance in my voice as possible. You doofus, I left off.

  He smiled tightly. "Thank you. And who gave you this birthday card, Josh?"

  I opened my mouth. But not to speak. I thought I was going to throw up right there in court, maybe hit the bailiff with some of the puke, splash the jury, I don't know. My whole body was ready to collapse into my gut like a black hole and then spew out again.

  "Are you OK, Josh?" Purdy asked, a fake look of concern on his face.

  I didn't trust my voice;