Project X

by Jim Shepard

  “The two in the front,” I go.

  “Right, I counted those as one,” he goes.

  “Two in the back,” I go. He stops talking and gives me his slit-eyed look. “Four the bus side,” I go. “And then the two single doors.”

  “That’s six,” he goes, after I stop. He taps his stick on the drawing.

  “I thought there were more,” I go.

  He looks at me the way he looks at kids who volunteer to be crossing guards.

  “Sorry,” I go.

  “How do you even find the bus in the morning? Can I ask you that?” he goes.

  “Like you never made a mistake,” I go.

  “You’re a mistake,” he goes.

  “Your mother’s a mistake,” I go.

  “God, I wish I could do this by myself,” he goes.

  “Why don’tcha?” I go.

  We both shut up for a few minutes. It’s raining harder and water is leaking in in little streams. I make a dam with my sneaker and keep one from getting to my butt.

  Flake scratches the back of his head and looks at his drawing.

  “So we try to seal up all the doors somehow?” I go.

  “That’s the problem,” he goes. “We gotta get from there to there to there to there.” He bounces his stick around the drawing. “We got to do it pretty fast, and we got to do it so they can’t be opened that fast.”

  We both look at the outline in the dirt: a big box of an L with little slashes for the doors.

  “We could split up,” I go.

  “Yeah, well, even then,” he goes.

  We get discouraged, sitting there. Flake shifts around and stares at the thing with his arms on his knees and his fists on both sides of his face.

  “Where’s the gym?” I go.

  “Over here,” he goes. He leaves the stick on it. He yawns. It makes me yawn. He farts. I make a face and he waves his arm to move the air. “What do you care where the gym is?” he goes.

  “The gym only has two sets of double doors and that little door,” I tell him.

  He’s still got his fists on his face. His head starts moving, up and down. “During assembly,” he goes.

  “Maybe we could do something with the little door ahead of time,” I go.

  He keeps nodding, looking at the dirt.

  “Break the lock or something,” I go.

  “Right before,” he goes. “Then you come in this double door.” He puts his finger in the dirt. “And I come in this one.” He’s still nodding, picturing the whole thing. He looks at me, happy for the first time all day. “This is a good idea,” he goes. “This is a good idea, Edwin.”

  “What’d you teach today?” I ask my dad. Dinner’s late because the sweet potatoes are taking forever. He and Gus are hanging out on his bed watching TV. He’s lying on his back with his head on the headboard, and Gus is sitting on his chest. He has to tilt his head to the side to see.

  “Wanna see my wicked face?” Gus asks. When I tell him sure, he pulls his lower eyelids down and grimaces.

  “Macro,” my dad goes.

  “Was it fun?” I ask him.

  “I like macro,” he says, then looks at me sideways. “You looking for something?”

  I wander into the kitchen.

  “What’s everybody up to?” my mom wants to know.

  They’re watching TV, I tell her. She’s cutting up an avocado for a salad.

  “Are there any other kids at school who don’t watch TV?” she asks.

  “Besides me, you mean,” I go.

  “Besides you and Roddy,” she says.

  “Not that I know of,” I tell her.

  “Don’t kids talk about shows and stuff that’re on all the time?” she asks.

  “All the time,” I go.

  “Don’t you feel left out?” she asks.

  “All the time,” I go.

  She washes her hands and dries them and checks the sweet potatoes in the oven. They must be done because she sticks each of them with a fork and then pulls them out and dumps them in a bowl.

  “I think Gus is going to turn out to be normal,” I go.

  “Oh, Edwin,” she says. She acts like the potato bowl is too heavy to lift. “Don’t say that.”

  “He is,” I tell her.

  “You’re not abnormal,” she says.

  “I’m not?” I go.

  She starts putting stuff on the table.

  “I’m not?” I go.

  “Look, I don’t have the energy to fight about this right now,” she goes.

  “I’m not fighting,” I go. “I’m asking a question.”

  “What’s the question?” she asks, sitting down alone at the dining room table.

  “I’m not abnormal?” I go.

  “Let’s move,” she calls to everybody else. “Dinner!”

  I sit and take a sweet potato and cut it open. It’s like lava inside. “I’m glad to know I’m not abnormal,” I go.

  “Edwin, please,” she goes.

  “Edwin please what?” my dad goes. He’s in charge of drinks, so he hits the fridge and brings over a pitcher of ice water for them and a carton of milk for us.

  “Turns out I’m not abnormal,” I go.

  “Well, let’s not rush to judgment on that one,” he goes.

  “Honey,” my mom goes.

  “What?” he goes. “I can’t kid around with him?”

  She shakes her head and starts dishing out the meat.

  “You’re fine,” my dad says to me. “I grew up with kids who make you and Flake look like Archie and Jughead.”

  Everybody eats for a while. I’m mad I got into this.

  “I got a rash on my butt,” Gus says.

  “Does it still hurt?” my mom asks.

  “Wanna see?” Gus says to me.

  “Maybe later,” I go.

  He gets up on his chair and drops his drawers. The rash doesn’t look so good.

  “Whoa,” I go. It’s just what he wanted to hear.

  “You remember when I was six and there was that huge birthday party, pool party?” I ask my mom and dad. “And I didn’t want to go?”

  Gus pulls up his pants and sits back down. “We remember,” my mom says.

  “How come you made me go to that?” I ask.

  “You told that little boy you were going to go at least a dozen times,” my mom says. “Remember how he kept calling to make sure you were still coming?”

  “I really didn’t want to go,” I tell them. “I really didn’t want to go.”

  “Well, maybe we shouldn’t’ve made you go,” my dad says.

  The kid’s older brothers had all their friends there. They took my bathing suit. They locked me in the pool shed. When I got out I had to run around trying to get my suit back, covering myself with a Frisbee. Two kids took my picture.

  “Poor Edwin had a hard time today,” the kid’s mother told my mom when she came to pick me up. I got a shovel from our garage and tried to go back. My mom had to call my dad.

  “No more pool parties,” my dad goes.

  “You better believe it,” I tell him.

  “All right, we made a mistake,” he tells me. “From now on, whatever happens, it’s because we made that one mistake.”

  “Can we just drop this?” my mom goes.

  Gus is taking all this in without saying a thing.

  “I don’t need to talk about it,” I tell her.

  The phone rings. Nobody answers it. The answering machine clicks on but whoever it is doesn’t leave a message.

  “You just shouldn’t have made me go, that’s all,” I tell her.

  “Oh my God,” my mom says.

  5

  My English teacher is coming down the hall in the morning before homeroom. Of course I’m having trouble with my locker and when I finally rip it open I’m rushing to dump stuff out of my knapsack and pick up other stuff for first and second period. My math book and some papers flop onto the floor, and Dickhead, the kid who beat me with a plank, is going by an
d scuffs them out into the middle of the hall.

  Of course my teacher doesn’t see that. She helps me pick stuff up.

  “Thanks, Ms. Meier,” I tell her.

  “What’s this?” she goes. It’s a drawing of a pot with curvy fumes coming off it. The pot has a skull and crossbones on it and next to the pot it says 200 degrees in Flake’s spaz handwriting.

  The look on my face catches her attention. I’m staring at the thing thinking, I can’t believe I didn’t get rid of this.

  “What is this?” she goes.

  It’s a chemistry experiment, I tell her. The bell rings.

  “You’re not old enough to take chemistry,” she says.

  “No, I don’t mean for school,” I go. “My dad got me one of those sets.”

  She turns the paper over to look at the front again and asks, “What’s supposed to be in the pot?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Chemicals.”

  “Why does it have a skull and crossbones?” she wants to know.

  “I don’t know. Because it looks cool,” I tell her.

  She thinks about it for a while and then hands it back to me. “Can you write me a pass?” I ask her.

  She says okay and before homeroom I go to the bathroom. There’s a boy leaning over the sink to put on Chap-Stick in the bathroom mirror. In a stall I tear the picture into two thousand pieces and flush them down the toilet.

  “Bowel trouble?” the vice principal asks when I pop out into the hall. It’s empty and quiet.

  “I got diarrhea,” I tell him.

  “Mr. Davis, do you think I have problems?” Bethany asks as she goes by with a girlfriend.

  “I reserve the right to not answer that question,” he tells her, and they both laugh.

  “Mighty quiet in there for diarrhea,” he tells me once they’re gone.

  Up yours, I think, on the way to homeroom.

  Step two is figuring out a way of sealing up the little door in the gym. We talk about it either at Flake’s house or in the fort. After what my mom said about our sitting around and talking about getting even with people, my room’s out.

  Step one I get all the credit for, according to Flake. Step one was figuring out we could do it in the gym instead of having to lock up the whole school.

  The door’s not very big but it’s a harder problem than it looks like. It has to be something we can do fast. It has to be something we can do with stuff we can bring to school without anybody noticing. And it has to be something nobody’d notice for at least a few minutes.

  We’re not coming up with anything right off the top of our heads.

  We’ve already figured other stuff out. We’d have the guns in our lockers. We’d go for the all-school assembly before Thanksgiving. They hang big crepe-paper turkeys and shit on the windows and doors, and that might help hide whatever we do to the lock.

  I keep coming back to duct tape, because it’s one of those doors where you hit the bar to open it from the inside. But Flake thinks duct tape’s too easy to see and wouldn’t be strong enough anyway.

  “With enough tape it would be strong enough,” I go. We’re in his bedroom and he’s got the Great Speeches CD going in case his mother or somebody wanders by the door.

  “What’re you, gonna stand there for thirty minutes wrapping duct tape around things?” he goes.

  “I don’t think it would take that long,” I tell him.

  “Who do you think was the best serial killer?” he goes. He knows I have a book about it.

  “It depends,” I go. “Ed Gein was pretty fucked up.”

  He looks grossed out. I told him about Ed Gein.

  “I keep thinking we could get a hammer or chisel and just smash the shit out of the thing that goes into the wall,” he goes. “You know, the thing that sticks out.”

  “Yeah, like that wouldn’t make a gigantic noise,” I go.

  “Well, I’d rather make a gigantic noise than stand there for eight hours,” he goes. “If nobody sees you right when you do it, you could take off by the time people came.”

  Suppose they came and checked out the door, I ask, and he makes a face. What about we bring a lock, I ask. Like a bike lock.

  “There’s nothing on the wall to lock the bar to,” he says.

  We think about it. He’s got a sketch of the door and draws lines from the bar in various directions. “What we need to do is do like a test,” he goes.

  He’s right. That’s the only way we’re going to figure this out. “We can’t be all set to go and get there and find out it’s not gonna work,” I tell him.

  “Who’s got doors like that that we can screw around with?” he wants to know.

  “The mall,” I go.

  “No, those are different,” he goes. “Besides, who’s gonna let us screw around with doors at the mall?”

  I keep thinking.

  “Use your head,” he goes.

  “Use yours,” I tell him.

  We sit there, Flake drawing big X’s on his sketch pad.

  “Who’s this?” I ask him, about who’s talking on the CD.

  “Charles Lindbergh,” he goes. “Some of those doors in the basement near the furnace were the bar kind.”

  “We’re gonna go back there?” I go. “We broke the window. They know someone was there.”

  “We’ll check it out,” he says. “We’ll wait a few weeks. If it doesn’t look easy, we won’t do it.”

  “I don’t know,” I go.

  “Well, then come up with someplace else,” he says, like it’s settled.

  I don’t like it but it’s the best plan we’ve got right now. “What’d Charles Lindbergh do?” I go.

  “Why don’t you read a book and find out?” he goes.

  “I just told you about Ed Gein,” I go.

  “Ever hear of the Spirit of St. Louis?” he goes.

  “Yeah,” I go.

  “So there you go,” he says.

  “So I don’t like sports,” I go.

  “God, help me,” he goes. “Mother of God, help me.”

  “Oh, yeah. Poor you,” I go.

  When his dad drives off to pick up some takeout we head into the garage to investigate his tools.

  We start with his big red toolbox. He keeps it locked, but even I’ve seen where he hides the key. We root around in it. Everything’s big and heavy, so digging around makes an unbelievable amount of noise.

  “What’re you boys doing out there?” his mom calls from the kitchen window.

  “Making trouble,” Flake calls back.

  “You better not be in your father’s things,” she calls.

  He stops rooting for minute, to let her wander into another room.

  “What is this?” I ask. I hold it up.

  “I have no clue,” he goes. “Put it back.”

  There’s nothing it looks like we can use. Needle-nose pliers, regular pliers, a big red wrench I can barely lift, two hammers, two measuring tapes. Little plastic boxes of screws. Rubber gloves.

  He grinds his teeth like he does when he’s starting to get pissed. I barely get my fingers out of there before he slams the top shut.

  “What about up here?” I point at the particleboard his dad hung on the wall. It has holes for hooks and big stuff hanging from the hooks. Oversized scissors, a T square, an old hand drill, electrical tape, duct tape. Bungee cords. I take one down. “What about this?” I go.

  “How long’s it take to take off bungee cords?” he goes. He makes a disgusted noise that sounds like a push on a bicycle pump. “How about Scotch tape?” he goes.

  “Okay. It was just a question,” I go.

  “You could slide like a rake handle across the door and through the bar,” I tell him a minute later.

  “I thought of that,” he tells me. “You can also just slide it right back out again.”

  “Yeah,” I go.

  He sits on the cement, checking for wet spots from oil or antifreeze or whatever else is leaking out of his father’s car. I
squat next to him.

  “Worried about your pants?” he goes.

  “I got like one nonqueer pair of pants,” I go. “I’m not getting shit all over them for no reason.”

  “What’s up with that?” he goes. “Why can’t you buy another pair a pants?”

  “Roddy?” his mom calls. It sounds like she’s farther away than the kitchen.

  “Right here,” Flake calls back.

  We look up at the particleboard and all around the rest of the garage.

  “I was always jealous of kids who could take like two sticks and build something that would catch a raccoon,” he goes.

  I know how he feels. “It sucks that we can’t think of anything,” I tell him. It really does.

  “All we’re trying to do is keep a lot of people in one place while we shoot at them,” he goes. “Why’s it have to be so hard?”

  His dad’s car pulls into the driveway. He accelerates when he sees Flake sitting in the middle of his garage and then he brakes before he reaches us.

  “Suppose your brakes didn’t work?” Flake goes when his dad gets out of the car.

  His dad hefts the takeout bag onto his shoulder like he’s starting a long hike. “My point entirely,” he goes.

  “What’s that mean?” I ask once his dad’s in the house.

  “Who knows, with him?” Flake goes. He gets off the floor and wipes his hands.

  It’s a nice day so his dad and mom come back outside with the takeout and a half-gallon of ginger ale and some plastic cups. They spread out on the picnic table. They don’t ask if we want anything, so we sit in the grass and look over at them. Flake chews on individual blades and then a dandelion stalk. The sun feels good on my back.

  “Your parents ever try and get you interested in sports?” his dad calls over to me.

  I shrug.

  He shakes his head. It looks like they’re having quesadillas. “Music?” he asks.

  My mom got me an acoustic guitar one year for Christmas. Gus used to fill it with dirt and drag it around the yard on a string. “Nah,” I go.

  “We tried to get Roddy excited about music,” his dad goes.

  “You got me one of those pianos for like one-year-olds,” Flake goes.

  “You want a real piano?” his mom asks.

  “No,” Flake goes.

  “We’ll get you a real piano if you want one,” his mom says.