by Barry Lyga
Just then, Flip's cell phone beeps. It's a special ringtone for Fam, the lookout.
"Cops!" Flip hisses, and everyone falls silent. The park isn't well lit; we're all in shadows.
The guys jump down from the pedestal and get behind the statue. The whole place goes quiet except for the crunch of gravel from the parking lot, where a police car minces along the ground. I can see its headlights from here.
I look over at the statue of Susan Ann Marchetti. Over her permanent nurse's outfit, she's now partly clad in a leather bra with spikes sticking out of it and some boots that are strategically slit to wrap around her legs all the way up to her thighs. Officer Sexpot is sort of hanging half off her, upside down.
I yell. Like I'm being gutted.
I don't even know I'm going to do it until I do it. Flip jerks back and looks at me in shock, and believe me—the look on my face must be just as shocked, because I can't believe I just heard that scream come out of my mouth. But there it is, there it goes, there it went—it's past tense now and there's the sound of a police car door opening and closing.
SAMMPark's frozen in a moment in time as we all look at one another through the dark.
And then, as if we've all heard the same silent, telepathic command, we break and run like hell.
I'm fast. Not join-the-track-team fast, but fast enough. I run away from the park entrance and the cop who's no doubt about to come through there. The rest of the Council has the same idea and now there's a pack of kids racing like the devil's on their tails toward the other end of the park.
"Wish..." Flip puffs next to me, "I could see ... the look ... on his face!"
And he starts laughing while he's running until the motion makes him cough.
I put on a burst of speed and outpace him, making it to the wall near the soccer field before anyone else. I've been climbing this wall forever—I know where the handholds are. I launch myself onto the wall and scramble up and over.
My car is waiting for me a hundred yards away in a gas station parking lot. I make for it and hop in. I resist the urge to gun the engine and floor the gas and roar off like a getaway man at a bank robbery; that would just make me look suspicious.
Instead, I force myself to wait until I've caught my breath before I crank the engine. Other Fools are spilling out of the park, running like hell, heading for Flip's car. Like I haven't got a care in the world, I drive home.
Chapter 35
Fear
DAD'S UP FOR WORK WHEN I GET HOME. If he's pissed that I've been out after midnight on my provisional license, he doesn't show it.
"Who's this?" he asks.
He's pointing to Leah's picture. I left it out on the table. Oops.
"A girl."
"Isn't this the girl you saved?"
"Yeah." Of course, it's more complicated than that. I consider asking Dad for advice, but maybe not. He's not the best guy to ask about women, after all, having turned Mom off to penises for the rest of her life. "Hey, Dad?"
"Hmm?"
I almost say to him, "What would you think if I moved to California for the summer? Or forever?" I almost say it. But something stops me. I don't know what. I don't know why.
And now I have to say something, because he's looking at me expectantly and I can tell that "Never mind" just isn't going to cut it.
"Did you ever run away?" I don't even realize I'm going to say it until I actually say it.
"Run away? Like, from home?"
"No. No. I mean, in the war. Did you ever get scared? And run away?"
I feel like I've stepped over an invisible line. Accusing my dad.
"I was scared the whole time. All of us were. That's what war is like. You're afraid. You have to be afraid; otherwise you'll get killed." He shrugs like it's no big deal. "And we ran away, sure. In the army, it's called 'strategic withdrawal.'"
"Really?"
"Sure. The trick isn't not being afraid and not running away. The trick is dealing with your fear and running back."
Fear. God, that's what it all comes down to. Somehow everyone believed I was a hero when they couldn't understand how terrified I was. Somehow people looked to me as some sort of fearless rabble-rouser when they couldn't see the scared, confused kid inside.
Are we ever truly brave? Or do we just adjust our fear for a little while and mistake it for courage? How can fear on the inside look like bravery from the outside?
"Dad, Mom wants me to come visit her this summer and maybe live there permanently."
Oh. Oh, God. There it is. It's out. It's out.
I expect him to be angry. To punch the wall again. Or to go into his weird little trip-over-his-tongue phase.
Instead, he just looks at me. Nothing changes in his face at all. He doesn't move his lips or his jaw. He doesn't wrinkle his nose or widen his eyes or arch his brow. I don't even know if he's breathing—that's how still he is.
But his eyes change. Completely. Totally.
He's sad.
"Well, Kevin," he says at long last. "Well, I guess that makes a lot of sense."
And now I wish it didn't make sense. I wish it was the dumbest idea in the world so that I could say, No, Dad—you're wrong. It's a bad idea. It's a bad idea, and I'm not gonna do it.
I've seen my father angry. I've seen him outraged and confused and stern and in shock.
But I've never seen him so sad.
I hate that I'm the reason.
"Dad, I don't have to go—"
"Your mom's made a good life for herself out there," he says with a little sigh. "She's doing really well. She's happy. And I'm happy for her. You would be with your brother. You'd ... You'd be in a better place."
We both look around the apartment.
"Your mom misses you."
"But if I left..." I can't finish my thought. The words just won't come out.
Dad takes a step toward me. He hesitates, and then he hugs me. It's like before, only better because this time it was his idea.
"I would miss you so much," he whispers. "But you have to do what you think is best, Kevin. What you think is right. That's what I've always taught you, right?"
And it is. It is what he's always taught me. Stopping Flip from defiling Susan Ann Marchetti's memory ... That was my dad.
"I don't know what to do, Dad."
He tightens his grip on me. "Welcome to my world."
Chapter 36
Revelation
I MANAGE TO GET A FEW HOURS' SLEEP after Dad leaves. I toss and turn a lot. No one answer seems better than any other one.
The phone rings just as I wake up for school. I jerk into a frozen sitting position.
OK. It could be...
The cops
Flip, pissed at me
The cops, really
I consider not answering at all. But by the fourth ring, I grab it up. Better to know, I guess.
And the answer is ... none of the above. It's Jesse.
"Hey," he says, and I can almost hear the wind and surf and the grains of hot sand in his voice.
"Hey," I say back. We have deep conversations, my brother and I.
Silence on the line.
"So, what's up?" he asks after a while.
"You called me," I remind him.
"Yeah, I know. I woke up extra early to catch you before you went to school. What's up?"
It's weird. It's like we've switched places and I'm the younger brother all of a sudden.
Used to be that me and Jesse talked all the time, about everything. We were like our own little secret society in the house while Mom and Dad yelled and screamed at each other. Then he was gone and there was this long silence of miles between us.
"What's going on, man?" I ask him. "Is this whole deal legit?"
"What whole deal?" Ever since he moved to California and became Total West Coast Guy, my little brother sounds like everything in the world is both too boring for him to deal with and too annoying for him to care. I don't know how he pulls it off. It's like yawning and
glaring at the same time.
"Me coming to live with you guys."
"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?"
Because Mom disappeared and barely contacted me. Because she's a different person now. You're a different person now. I don't fit in, so why would she want me there?
Or because if it's not legit, then I don't have to make the decision. No matter what I decide, I'm a hero to someone ... and a villain to someone else.
But I don't say any of that to him. Because he's my little brother, yeah, but he's also a stranger. He's not the kid who used to worship me, used to follow me around all the time, annoying me but also, I have to admit, sort of flattering me, too.
And now, well, things have changed. He's younger than I am, but he's more confident. He would never understand how I could be afraid that Mom doesn't really want me.
Then again, he's the one she took.
"I guess I just don't get it," I tell him, which is more honest than I'd intended on being. "Why now?"
"I don't know."
"And does she really want me to live out there?"
"She was talking to Rita and they were going on about stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Like fixing your skin. You really need to do something about that, bro." He says it like he's an indulgent parent gently scolding a child.
"Yeah, I know." It just doesn't seem all that important. There's always something else, and besides, even without the zits, I'm still no prize. So why go through all the effort of polishing crap? It's still crap at the end of the day.
"Hey, Jesse?"
"Yeah?"
"You remember that time when we were little and we wanted Reese's peanut butter cups at the store, but Mom wouldn't buy them, so when we got home we went into the kitchen and we squirted half a bottle of chocolate syrup into the peanut butter and ate it with spoons?"
There's a pause and I wonder if we're still connected, and then he says, "Mom says peanut butter is loaded with fat. And Rita's allergic to peanuts anyway."
"Oh."
We wait in silence. I try not to think about how much it's costing Mom to have Jesse and me sit on the phone and not say anything.
"Hey, Jesse?"
"What?" Like he'd wait forever for me to talk.
"I'm, uh ... I'm sorry. About that time. At the airport."
Long pause. "What?"
"At the airport. When you moved to California. How I yelled at you." It feels good to finally do it.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Come on."
"No, seriously. What are you talking about?"
Isn't that just the way? You stress and kill yourself and guilt yourself and it turns out to be nothing.
"So are you gonna do it?" he asks.
"Are we talking about my skin again?"
"No. About you moving out here."
"Is that really why you called so early?" It's like four in the morning out there.
He waits so long to answer that I think—again—we've been disconnected. Finally: "Kev? Do you remember what it was like when Mom and Dad were married?"
The yelling and screaming? Sure. Who could forget? "Well, yeah."
"Because I don't."
"And that's why you called me this early? Because you don't remember..." And I stop.
Jesse sounds sad that he doesn't remember.
It hits me then—he doesn't know what it was like. He has a good life out there in California, but he doesn't know if his life used to be better. As far as he knows, it's always been this way.
I try to remember back to when I was six or seven. It's tougher than I thought it would be. I remember little bits and pieces, but nothing major. Maybe that's because I don't have anyone to talk to about those memories, so they just fade. Is that how memory works?
"What's wrong, Jesse?"
"I don't know. I just wondered what it was like."
"Do you remember Pandazilla and Aquahorse?"
"Of course." He laughs a little. "I remember you, Kev. I just don't remember them."
Maybe that's for the best. But we talk some more and I try to be fair, try to tell him the good stuff and the bad stuff. We start filling in each other's gaps a little bit and that's cool, even if some of the gaps are painful.
After a while, call waiting beeps, which is probably good. I don't know how much of this remembering we should do at one time.
Jesse hangs up after saying, "I hope I see you in a couple of months," and I click over to the other line.
"Did you see the paper?" Flip asks, his voice bouncing.
I go get the newspaper from the doorstep. It's raining and the paper's a little soggy, but I can still read the headline: VANDALS DESECRATE SAMMPARK. There's a picture of cops milling about the statue, and you can actually see the statue just the way we left it.
"It's even better this way," Flip says, all giddy. "I didn't even have to hack anything this time. They did the work for me. Of course, we lost Officer Sexpot, but that's no big deal. She went out at the top of her game, God bless her."
I tell him I need to go, even though I don't have anything to do before school. I look at the mess of my camcorder, at the picture of Leah, at the newspaper. My life is a mix of some really weird stuff and I don't know what any of it means.
But maybe I don't have to. Maybe I just have to keep running back to it.
If Flip thought that the attempted desecration of the SAMMPark statue would somehow take the heat off me at school, he was wrong. Even the mayor's new stickers on my car don't inoculate me.
There is a slightly different vibe, though. I'm not crazy enough to think that I changed people's minds, but maybe I gave them something to think about, at least. And if Dr. Goethe takes my idea seriously, there will be more opportunities to do that.
One inch at a time. One mind at a time.
I feel ... OK. But I should feel great, tell the truth. I mean, I stomped all over John Riordon, verbally speaking. I got some people to applaud for me. Just this morning, Mr. Wistler, the guy who runs the school paper, asked me if I would write an editorial.
I fought the good fight for Susan Ann Marchetti. I finally told Dad about Mom's offer.
But...
But even though I try to avoid seeing Leah or Riordon in the halls, I end up catching them repeatedly, almost as if God is shoving them in my face. See what you don't get, Kross?
It bothers me up until around lunchtime, when I go hide out on the catwalk and then kick myself for being a complete idiot.
How can I be pissed at Leah for not returning my, y'know, my emotions when she didn't even know about them? Is she supposed to read my mind? Until I saved her life, I hardly ever even talked to her. Even God likes us to remind him we love him—how can people be any different?
It's tough to admit, but Riordon deserves her. He had the courage to talk to her, to go after her. Me? I just ... I never did. I had the courage to save her life, but not to ask her out. I don't have any right to be pissed at either of them.
Man, that sucks. No matter how bad things get, you can make 'em a little bit better by getting angry at someone.
I hear Fam on the ladder before I see her.
"Hey, Kevin."
"Hi, Jules." It just feels right. I don't feel like a Fool right now. "Thanks for letting me borrow your cell the other day."
She plops down next to me. "You're welcome."
"And thanks for, you know, for everything else." She says nothing, so I keep going. "For the research. And for keeping my secret. And for, you know, not telling Flip about me being an idiot. And..."
And we sit in total silence for a little while.
"You OK?" she asks.
"I guess."
"Is this about ... that girl?"
Something in the way she says it ... It's that hesitation. I realize that she knows "that girl" is Leah.
"Yeah. I don't ... I don't know."
"Don't know what?"
I sigh. "Anything."
&n
bsp; She laughs. "Have you tried talking to her?"
Now it's my turn to laugh. "Not a chance."
"Why not?"
"Because..." Because she's perfect. And I'm scum. "There's just no point. She's better than me. She's out of my league, OK?"
Fam snorts. "I don't know what's worse—when guys treat us like sex objects or when they treat us like ... like...goddesses. I mean, we're just people, Kevin. We stink up the bathroom like anyone else. We're not magic."
Not much to say to that, so I just nod and sit there.
"It doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can be friends with girls, you know."
"Like you?"
"I'm a good role model," she says, preening. I laugh.
When the bell rings, Fam gets up and heads to the ladder. "Aren't you coming?"
"Nah. I'm sitting out gym today."
"Take care of yourself, Kevin."
"I will."
So I stay there for the next period. Away from everyone. I just sit there and look at Leah's picture and wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life, with myself, with any of it.
And I think about what Fam said. And about how stupid I am. She's right: Why do I think girls are either goddesses who can't be bothered with me or not good enough for me? Why am I always on the extreme end?
Well, Kross, it's simple: You miss your mommy.
Ugh. That's stupid. Flip's voice in my head. I don't know where that came from.
I do miss my mom, though. I miss feeling like I matter, like I belong.
Gee, Kross, and here you've been moving heaven and earth to get all kinds of attention. Go figure.
My own voice that time. I tell it to shut up anyway because I don't feel like listening.
Back in the real world, I get busted for skipping gym and sent to the office. Figures. I've blown off enough classes that I guess it was inevitable.
Which, really, isn't that bad, since I want to talk to the Doc about more debates anyway.
Today I rate—I get not only Dr. Goethe but also the Spermling.
"This is very disappointing," says Dr. Goethe. The Sperm-ling sighs heavily.