by Jim Shepard
“Do you have it on defrost?” my dad asks. He’s sitting at the table with his hands together on his plate.
My mom poses alongside the control panel like she’s demonstrating it.
Gus is on his stomach under my chair with his hands around my ankle. He’s squeezing and making hissing noises. One of his recent things is playing boa.
My mom pops the door and checks the pizza. It’s a pile of four or five pieces, so she checks the middle. She thwaps the door shut again and loads in another thirty seconds. The pizza’s two days old, so that may have something to do with it.
“Is there some other way to check it besides putting your thumb in it?” my dad asks.
“Not that I know of,” she says.
Gus is still squeezing. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” I tell him. He laughs. There’s a tug when he bites my pant leg.
“So that was some story you told about Mr. Pengue,” my dad says to my mom. The guy wants us to pronounce it “Pengway,” but we say it like it’s spelled. He’s not a big favorite of ours.
“Yeah, so he came by,” my mom goes. “Said he found the most interesting thing on his picnic table.”
The bell dings on the microwave, and when she looks at me instead of doing something about it, I open it myself and pull out the pizza.
She’s got a sitcom-mom look on, hand on her hip.
“It’s ready,” I go. Gus lets loose of my ankle and climbs out from under the chair. He hits his head on the table.
“You don’t know anything about this?” she goes.
“I’m not an expert on pizza,” I tell her.
“You know that’s not what I mean,” she says.
“Get me a beer?” my dad asks.
I stick the dish with the pizza on the table and go to the fridge.
“Listen to him sigh,” he goes. “All he does is work to serve us.” When I give him his beer and Gus his juice, he says, “So what’s your mother talking about?”
My mom goes, “Tell your father what Mr. Pengue found on his picnic table.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” my dad says. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know what anybody found on their picnic table,” I say.
“You don’t,” my mom goes.
“Oh my God,” my dad goes.
“I want him to say it,” my mom explains.
“A severed head,” I go. “A dying weasel. Four tickets to the Super Bowl.”
“A pile of human—poop,” she finally says.
My dad laughs.
“Encourage him,” my mom goes.
“What do you, think I did it?” I go.
“You or your friend,” she says.
“Because I didn’t do anything,” I go.
“Did you or did you not have some words with Mr. Pengue when you were playing out there?” she asks.
“We didn’t have words with anybody,” I go. Meanwhile the pizza’s cold again.
“I don’t need you all sullen. I’m asking you a question, is all,” she says.
“It’s cold again,” my dad goes, dropping the pizza back onto the dish we warmed it up in, like that’s the perfect end of a perfect day.
My mom stands up. She wasn’t annoyed before, but she’s getting there. “Give me your pizza, hon,” she says to Gus. “I’ll warm it up.”
“It’s warm,” he says. He’s still holding his head where he hit it.
“No it isn’t.” She puts her finger in it. “See?”
“There she goes again with the finger,” my dad says.
“It’s warm,” Gus says. His other hand’s got his sippy cup in his mouth, and he’s talking around it.
“No it isn’t,” she says.
“I want noodles,” he says.
“We’re not having noodles,” she says. “We’re having pizza.”
“Pizza?” he says.
“Pizza,” she says. “This. Right here. With the cheese and the sauce.” She takes the dish over and slides it into the microwave. There’s a big clatter. She cranks the thing.
“I think we’re gonna have soup when that’s finished,” my dad says to me.
She looks at him like if she had a fork, she’d pin his hand to the table.
Gus is watching us, still sipping away.
“You take a dump on Pengue’s table?” my dad asks. He doesn’t seem amused.
“No,” I go.
“Your friend the Nightrider?”
“No,” I go.
“Don’t lie,” my mom says.
“He may have,” I go.
Gus’s cup makes little noises.
“What do you want from me?” I finally go.
“Relax,” my dad says, and Gus starts to cry.
“Stop it,” my mom tells me. “What’s the matter with you?”
My head feels like the main parts of it are blowing in different directions.
Gus wipes his eyes with the side of his sippy cup. He can stop crying like on a dime.
They’re both just looking at me, because that’s how it is: everything’s my fault. If anything goes wrong anywhere, I’m to blame. Keep that in mind. My dad’s giving me his I-maybe-a-cool-dad-but-that-doesn’t-mean-I’m-a-pushover face. My mom’s giving me her I-try-to-understand-can’t-you-meet-me-halfway face. I have to book. I have to get out of there. I have to get out of my chair and up the stairs at a high rate of speed. At least I don’t break anything on the way out. “Come back here!” my dad yells.
“What’s the matter with him?” I hear my mom ask again, scared. I slip taking the turn in the upstairs hallway and end up in my room on my hands and knees.
“He doesn’t even like music,” I hear her say, after a minute. “What kid his age doesn’t like music?”
Gus says something. I get off my hands and knees.
“He’s not mad,” my dad tells him.
“Do you know anybody his age who doesn’t like music?” my mom asks.
I can’t hear what he answers.
I shut the door and get in bed with my clothes on. Now I’m sweating. I’m sweating through my pants. My body’s all haywire. I pull the covers over my head. It’s daylight out and I’ve got the covers over my head. What is wrong with me?
“You’re fucked up,” Flake says when I ask him. “You’re fucked in the head. You’re never gonna be normal.”
“I’d settle for paranormal,” I go.
He laughs a little. “You think it’s a joking matter,” he goes.
We’re in his room, the next day after school. His room’s a box on the second floor. His dad let him paint one wall black, but only one. He’s got a sticker on the window of a cartoon duck with no head and Magic Marker blood gushing out of the neck.
He’s got something from his Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century boxed set going. It’s the only thing we play.
“Put on the one with the guy who’s always talking about the Reds,” I tell him.
“I will if you tell me the guy’s name,” he says.
I throw his dresser knob at him. His furniture’s always falling apart. There’s a bottom desk drawer he hasn’t opened in a year and a half. I didn’t really wing the knob. “Ask Bethany,” I go.
“You’re not interested in anything constructive,” he tells me. “You just sit around and piss your time away.”
“You don’t give a shit about anything,” I tell him back. “You don’t have the slightest regard for private property.”
We’re doing our parents.
“You shit in your nest,” he goes. “And then the mess is supposed to be our problem.”
We laugh. Sometimes he makes us both laugh.
“They’re so worried about us but they do whatever they want,” I go.
“I’m tired of talking about them,” he goes.
“So let’s talk about Bethany,” I go.
“You are such a dildo,” he goes. He says it like it surprises him every time.
“Let’s talk about extracurriculars,” I go. �
�So: you running for Student Government?” I go.
He laughs a little. He lies back and looks at the ceiling. There are marks up there from his throwing something. He bends his fingers until there are cracking noises and I can’t look anymore. “So I had this idea,” he goes.
Outside there’s a banging noise. His dad’s beating on something. He’s a mediator for married couples who want to split up and a part-time hockey coach at the high school. He’s always building something in his garage workshop and then getting pissed off when it comes out wrong.
Flake’s pinching his eyelid like he found something strange there. He’s still lying on his back but seems like he lost interest in what he was going to say. “Know how in cartoons,” he finally says, “the coyote or whoever can run out over a cliff and hang there a second and realize what’s going on before he falls?”
“Yeah?” I go when he doesn’t say anything else.
“That’s not that funny,” he goes. “That can really happen.”
We both think about that while his dad bangs away outside. There’s the noise of tools being thrown onto the driveway outside the garage.
“So what’s Grant up to?” I ask him. I call his dad by his first name, and for some reason this always pisses him off. This time it doesn’t work.
“I feel like jerking off,” he says, like it’s like going away to a beautiful island.
“I’m not stopping you,” I tell him. He makes a face.
“God damn it,” his dad says outside. There’s one more bang and a ringing sound.
“Whoops,” Flake goes. “My hands smell like something,” he goes. “Do your hands smell like anything?”
“So what was your idea?” I finally ask.
“I lifted some shit from Pengway’s garage when I took that dump on his picnic table,” he goes.
“Nice move, by the way, with the table,” I complain.
“Why? You get in trouble?” He sounds interested.
“Course I got in trouble,” I tell him. “What’d you think?” But it doesn’t really bother me, and he knows it.
“I got this bug powder,” he goes. “Roten-something. Supposed to be like supertoxic.”
“So now I’m gonna get shit for that,” I go.
“You’re not gonna get shit for anything, Mr. Fearless,” he goes. “I took like a pound from a twenty-pound bag.”
“What’d you carry it in?” I go.
“What do you give a shit?” he goes. “What’re you, an environmentalist?”
“You’ll probably get sick now,” I go.
“That’s right. I’ll get sick now. Weenie,” he says. “You want to hear this or not?”
“I want to hear this,” I tell him.
“Roddy, get down here,” his dad yells from the garage.
“What do you want?” Flake calls back. There’s no answer.
“Roddy!” his dad finally yells.
“What do you want?” Flake yells back.
“I want you to get down here!” his dad yells.
Flake gets off the bed and stomps downstairs. I can’t hear what they’re arguing about once he gets to the garage.
I think about how there’s always somebody worse off than you are. A movie about a guy who’s a brain in a jar: that guy’s going, Man, those guys who can’t move their legs, they got it made.
Flake comes stomping back upstairs.
“What’d your father want?” his mother calls from somewhere in the house.
“He wanted to put his dick inside me,” he says, hauling himself up the banister.
“What?” his mom calls.
“He wanted to know where one of his tools was,” he calls in a louder voice.
“You tell him?” his mom asks.
“I told him you had it,” he says.
“What?” his mom says.
“I told him you had it,” he yells.
“I don’t have it,” she says.
“I’m kidding,” he says.
“What?” she says.
He shuts the door. “I’m here all alone,” he goes. “It’s like I’m living alone.”
“So what’s Grant building?” I ask him.
He ignores me.
“So what’s your idea?” I go.
His idea is that we take this Roten stuff and mix it with water and put it into the hot air vents so it spreads around in the morning during homeroom.
“You want to be like those kids at that school?” I go. “In Colorado?”
“No,” he says. “They were fuckups. I don’t wanna be like anybody.”
“How do we get it into the vents?” I go.
“I been doing some exploring in the basement down there,” he goes.
“And how do we keep from getting sick?” I go.
We do it the day before, it turns out. We mix the stuff up in like a big saucepan and park that in the right spot, and when the furnace kicks on early the next morning, bingo.
“We have to buy a saucepan, so it can’t be traced,” he goes.
“Think people would really get sick?” I ask him.
Turns out he’s more psyched about when they find the saucepan and everybody freaks. He’s like, “The FBI, everybody, shit, the Navy Seals, everybody’ll be crawling all over this place.”
“People’ll be like, ‘Is this homegrown, or international?’ ” I go.
“Finally something’ll happen in this fucking town,” he goes. It’s like he always says: natural disasters mean days off.
“Where is the stuff?” I go.
“I put it in the roof of Behan’s doghouse,” he goes.
“God. Suppose the dog like eats it or something?” I go, before I can stop myself.
“Gosh, I hope that doesn’t happen,” he goes. Behan’s the German shepherd next door. He’s on a chain and is always barking and jumping at Flake like he wants to tear his throat out. Flake gets in trouble for doing things like having picnics right outside the dog’s reach.
“Is that the way it works?” I go. “You put it in water and it fizzes?”
“Yeah. It’s Alka-Seltzer,” he says.
“We have to know if it’s gonna work,” I tell him. He rolls his eyes like there’s someone else in the room.
“I read the directions on the bag,” he goes.
He takes out a few pieces of paper from his desk and starts sketching, like I went home. From the chair I can see an upside-down pot with curvy fumes coming off it and a number below: 200 degrees. He’s not a very good artist.
“We have to get rid of stuff like that, too,” I go. “That’s just the kind of stuff somebody’ll find.”
He adds a long pipe going up to a big square of a room. He adds a few more pipes. He folds the paper up, holds it up to show me, and then sticks it in my knapsack.
“That’s gonna fall out when I take my books out, you know,” I tell him.
On the next piece of paper he draws a stick figure inside a box with bars on it. The stick figure has its hands on the bars. He gives it a big nose and glasses.
“It looks like me, except it has no dick, so it must be you,” I go.
Over its head he draws a big circle and then makes the circle a smiley face. He draws a word balloon next to it, and writes HI, FLAKE. WILL YOU ANSWER ALL MY QUESTIONS? inside. Then he takes the pencil in his fist and punches the point through the face over and over again.
“So when you wanna do it?” I go.
“The heat went on yesterday,” he reminds me. It’s true: in the morning it was cold, and you could smell the radiators in homeroom.
“I wish you could direct it at like specific rooms,” I tell him.
He thinks about how cool that would be.
“This is just step one,” he finally goes.
“Not even,” I go.
“Do you have homework?” his mother calls from downstairs.
“I’m working on it,” he calls back.
“With your friend in the room?” she wants to know.
“He
’s helping me,” Flake explains.
“Is that kosher?” she asks.
Flake looks stumped. “I don’t know,” he finally calls. “What’s ‘kosher’?”
“Is that okay?” his mom calls.
“It’s a group project,” Flake calls.
“Why are we always shouting?” his mom calls. “Come to the top of the stairs.”
He hauls himself off the bed, gritting his teeth. “I’m gonna use the stuff here,” he says to himself. “Swear to God.”
“What?” he says when he gets out in the hall.
“Don’t yell at me like that,” his mom warns him.
He bends over backward, holding on to the walls, and then straightens up again. “Can I help you?” he says, completely nice.
She lowers her voice. “Are you jerking me around again about this homework?”
“I am totally not jerking you around about it,” he goes.
“Don’t use that word,” she tells him.
“You just used it,” he goes.
It’s quiet. I’m still in the chair, looking at the black wall over his bed. He doesn’t have a single thing stuck up besides the headless duck on the window. For a while there was a picture from the newspaper of kids who’d died from a famine, but he tore it down.
“What?” Flake finally goes. “Ask Edwin. Edwin.”
I get up and go out into the hall. They’re both staring at each other.
“Edwin, do the two of you have a group project to work on?” his mom finally asks me.
“We sure do,” I tell her.
We’re both standing there, hands in our pockets, looking down at her. I know I’m gonna smile or something and blow it.
“What is your group project?” she asks me.
“Photosynthesis,” I go.
Flake makes a snorty noise, too soft for her to hear.
She keeps looking at us, both of her hands on the banisters. “You guys are so smart.” She taps a finger on the wood and walks away.
We go back to Flake’s room and shut the door. He puts a finger against one nostril and blows boogers into his desk garbage can.
“We have to be totally careful,” I tell him. “They can figure out who did it in so many ways now. They can use like DNA and stuff.”
“DNA,” he goes, like I’ve finally said the stupidest thing of all.
“What?” I go. “They could.”
“Go like this,” he tells me, then puts both hands over his mouth.