Sons of the 613

by Michael Rubens

  Whenever I want, I can put my gaze on Lesley. That in and of itself is nice. What’s better is that as soon as she notices, as soon as our eyes meet, I get our Look. We’re still part of the same secret club. At school I might be a friendless loser, but I have Lesley.

  “Hey, I’ve got another story,” says Terri, who I think has had a bit too much wine. “Remember that time that Trish—”

  As soon as she says that name, Josh shifts in his seat, taking a sharp breath in through his nose. It’s the first time he has betrayed any real annoyance at all.

  “Hey,” he says quietly, and Terri says, “What?”

  “Terri,” says Patrick, looking at her.

  “What, we can’t talk about Trish?”

  “Yeah, why can’t we talk about Trish?” says Lesley, who I think maybe has also had a bit more wine than she should.

  “I’m gonna head in and clean up,” says Josh.

  There are glances exchanged when Josh goes in, and Terri says, “What? What’s the big deal?” Then we all sit and talk for a while until it gets dark, and I say, “Why don’t I build a fire?”

  We sit around the fire pit, Lesley next to me, sometimes putting her arm around me. We sing campfire songs, or the fractions of campfire songs that everyone remembers. We talk and laugh and tell jokes. The air above the fire shimmers, sparks rising up, and I follow their drifting spirals with my eyes. They’re like this magical evening, I think, floating and dancing weightlessly into the sky, taking my cares away with them.

  After a while Josh comes back out again and tells Lisa to go to bed, and off she goes. He sits down with no explanation or apology. He puts himself on the other side of Lesley, but she mostly ignores him, keeping her arm around me. The Force Field is still in effect.

  After a little while longer Terri says, “Let’s go in,” and we do. Now we’re in the TV room. Patrick is kind of spread over my dad’s easy chair, Terri in his lap, taking a break now and then from her fortieth cup of wine to trade sloppy, wet kisses with Patrick. I try not to look.

  Josh and Lesley and I are on the sofa, Lesley still between us. I’m slouched down, feeling warm and relaxed and contented, included in the circle of big kids. The conversation has been waxing and waning, topics surfacing, discussed, fading away to periods of silence. I know that when Lesley goes home, the Force Field will go home with her, and I’m planning a very rapid retreat to the tent when that happens.

  “Okay, y’all,” says Patrick, standing and stretching, Terri with her arms around him for support, “we’re gonna hit the hay.”

  They weave out of the room, a tipsy four-legged creature.

  It’s silent now. I feel almost hypnotized, slouched so low that my body is parallel with the floor, hands folded over my stomach, looking up at the ceiling. Lesley is next to me, our sides touching. When was the last time I felt this at peace, this happy? The other night when I was in her bed, I guess. Other than that, never.

  “Isaac,” says Josh.

  “What?”

  He doesn’t answer, finally forcing me to struggle up into a sitting position and look at him. He gives me a look: head inclined toward me, eyebrows up, then a jerk of the eyes in the direction of the backyard.

  “What?”

  “Bedtime.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” says Josh.

  “No, I think I’ll hang out,” I say, and glance to Lesley so we can share our Look.

  But it’s not there.

  I’m alone.

  She smiles at me, an apologetic twitch of the lips, and she looks away. Then I see her hand. It’s resting on Josh’s hand, their fingers intertwined. Josh’s eyes are boring into mine, and suddenly I understand what his gaze has been saying this whole time, understand why he never bothered to react, understand what the game really is and that I’m the one who lost.

  I get up without a word, without looking at them, feeling a numbness, the kind that comes right after you’ve hurt yourself and before the pain really kicks in.

  “Good night, Isaac,” says Lesley, but I don’t answer, just keep going down the hall, out the door, into the night.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  PAIN

  MERIT BADGE: BROKEN HEART

  They should tell you.

  They should sit you down and warn you that it’s real, that it really happens and how desperately horrific it is, so that you can be ready, so you can know that when they talk about a broken heart it’s not some abstract metaphor, that it’s the worst thing you can ever experience. Like molten rock like razorblades like broken glass like a beast clawing into my chest, stealing my breath, suffocating me. Like the end of all hope.

  Middle of the night. I’m skip-staggering in circles on the lawn, wringing my hands like I’m trying to tear my fingers off, gasping for air and making little moaning noises, now collapsing down to crouch into a ball, rocking myself, arms and hands piled on my head, now up again for more circles, desperate, desperate to escape this agony, but it won’t let me be.

  I don’t know what time it is or how long I’ve been doing this. It doesn’t matter. Let the night go on forever and the moon crack apart and the stars burn out. She’s in there with him. She’s with Josh, and I know what they’re doing, and there’s nothing else that has meaning or can have meaning or will ever have meaning. She’s taken everything that she gave me, all that soaring joy, and she’s torn it out of me and taken everything else with it.

  She’s in there with Josh.

  Lover, she called me, but what she was doing was mocking me. Lover. One letter away from loser. She was just using me to get to Josh, and I’m the only one who was stupid enough not to understand that. And the way Josh was looking at me today—he wasn’t thinking about how he was going to get back at me. He was thinking, You poor, stupid child.

  I don’t remember lying down, but I’m on my back now, sobbing, hands covering my face, elbows pointing up at the black sky. I will never get up. I will never stop feeling like this. This is my new state of existence, and it will last forever.

  Forever.

  And then I’m up again. I’m up and I’m at the fire pit, squatting to pick up a softball-size stone in two hands, walking toward the house, the stone hard against my stomach, walking faster, thinking, What are you doing, what are you doing? and then I’m jogging and then running, then barely breaking stride to spin in an abrupt circle like an Olympic hammer thrower, arms straight, leaning back against the eager weight of the stone, twice around and then releasing it with a grunt to let it sail in an arc toward Josh’s window.

  BOOOM. That’s the sound it makes as it hits the wood siding instead, a timpani drum reverberating through the dark neighborhood. It’s still echoing in my head as I’m running back to the fire pit, finding another rock, running back to the house, twirling, letting it loose, BOOOOM, running back, another rock, the spin, the throw, BOOOOM, again, run rock spin throw BOOOM, a light going on in Josh’s window, sprint back, rock, run spin release SMASH! Success as the rock finds its mark and I stand there, panting.

  Good, then. Good. It’s done.

  “Good,” I say out loud.

  I turn my back to the house and sit down on the lawn, knees up, calmer now. Listening to my own breathing, the fingers of my right hand absently twisting and burrowing their way into the intertwined roots of grass and the cool, damp earth. It’s not okay, but it’s okay, I think, as my gaze traces the complicated line where the charcoal silhouette of the trees meets the deeper black of the sky beyond. I’m just empty now. There’s nothing left inside me to hurt. I could go out there, cross the creek, into the heart of the trees, deeper and deeper, become another shadow, the me dissolving away until it no longer exists and I’m just a part of the darkness.

  I don’t say anything when I feel Josh standing next to me, or struggle when he clamps his hand on my arm and yanks me to my feet, don’t even glance at him as he marches me down the slope of the yard, past the garden, past the fire pit, past the tent, don’t protest
as he lifts me up above his head, and I don’t cry out when throws me into the frigid creek.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  TWO CONFRONTATIONS

  MERIT BADGE: SUCKER PUNCH

  I stayed in the creek until I was numb, until I couldn’t feel the muck and sand beneath me. When I finally dragged myself out onto the lawn I was shivering so violently that I could hardly breathe, my muscles clenching and locking into place so hard I thought my bones would break.

  I don’t know how I made it to the house. The back door was unlocked and not shut entirely, which was good because I couldn’t close my hand around the doorknob. I went to my parents’ bathroom and somehow bludgeoned the shower on and collapsed onto the tile and lay in the fetal position, still shivering, the transition back to sensation even more agonizing than the knifelike intensity of the creek. I stayed there, going in and out of consciousness, until the hot water ran out. Then I went into my parents’ room and got into their bed, and that’s all I remember.

  The house was deserted when I finally woke up. Or I think it was. Josh’s door was closed, and I didn’t knock. It was past ten.

  I went to school because I didn’t know what else to do. I dressed in my old jeans, my old shoes, an old T-shirt. I didn’t put any product in my hair. I rode my bike but felt so weak and winded that I could only pedal for short bursts before I had to rest, the bike slowing to a near stop each time.

  I’m zombieing my way along the school halls now, hollow eyed, exhausted. A negative space of me, a silhouette cutout of me. Maybe people are looking at me and whispering. I don’t know. I don’t care.

  Sarah Blumgartner sees me. She’s in the hallway, walking toward me. Her eyes widen as she registers my condition. Go away, I think. Go away.

  “Hi, Isaac. Are you—”

  “Go away,” I say, and keep walking.

  Lunch, and I sit alone in the corner diametrically opposite from Eric’s solitary table. Danny and Paul and Steve are not in the lunchroom. I passed Eric once in the hall, and he didn’t even glance at me. I’m even lower now than I was after getting beat up on Friday, off-the-scale low, beneath whatever is there at the bottom. Not a friend left, and no Lesley.

  I have no appetite for my food. I feel hot. I’m holding my hand to my forehead as I’m leaving the lunchroom and pass by door seven, which opens to the grassy area behind the school, just as Tim Phillips comes inside.

  It’s just the two of us there in the ten-by-ten vestibule.

  He sees me at the same time I see him, and his eyes widen and I don’t even realize what I’m doing until I’m hurtling toward him and ramming my shoulder low in his gut while I grab both his legs. It’s a double-leg takedown, just like Josh has made me practice every day, except Tim weighs less than half what Josh does and I lift him easily as he curls over my shoulder, then slam him down on the hard floor and climb on top of him. It’s oddly silent, no shouting or swearing or anything, not a word from either of us. He’s not even resisting. I’m sitting on his chest like he did to me, and our eyes meet and I then see his expression: helpless, traumatized, terrorized. Not by me, I know, but by Josh, looming behind and through me. In that instant I’m overwhelmed by a powerful surge of misery and disgust and lethargy.

  I stand up and stagger away without looking back. It’s not supposed to feel like this. I’ve just defeated Tim Phillips. I’m supposed to feel some sort of triumph, like I’ve overcome an impossible obstacle, but all I feel is futility, like I can see an endless series of assaults and counterassaults, stretching off into infinity, no resolution ever. It’s never fair, said Patrick, and he’s right. It’s just meaningless.

  I drag myself up the stairs, heading to the second floor, and there is Danny coming toward me. There’s nowhere for us to go without passing each other. And, seeing him, part of me forgets everything that has happened, as if we’re still best friends, and as we both reach the landing I say, “Hey, dude.”

  He stops.

  “Hey,” he says, guarded.

  I just want to be friends. Desperately. I just want to be able to hit reset, like on the Xbox, and get a new life and start over right now.

  “Danny,” I start to say, but he interrupts.

  “Where’s your fancy clothes?” he says bitterly.

  Which is how I end up punching him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  INTO THE WOODS

  MERIT BADGE: VISION QUEST

  Nystrom’s dogs are in a frenzy, insane with rage and ferocity. They snap and snarl and bark, climbing over each other to hurl themselves at the barrier of the fence, the chicken wire creaking and squeaking and bowing under their weight. I’m just inches from the diamond interweaving of its surface, inches from them, their teeth, their thick paws, my face so close to theirs that I can feel the heat and moisture of their breath and smell it.

  I barely remember how I got here. It must be way after midnight. There’s a storm brewing, the air charged and tight with it, hot as a fever. I feel feverish too.

  I left the school after I punched Danny, walking away like Josh did after hitting Tim. No one stopped me. The sound was surprising, I thought, the splat of my fist hitting his face. Then the amount of blood streaming from his nostrils. He staggered back and crumpled into a ball, holding his nose, crying. I stood there, watching him, trying to figure out why I didn’t feel anything. Then I turned and walked away. Walked out of the school, kept going, walked dizzy and sweating on sidewalks and across yards, aimless. Walked in squared-off circles around blocks, walked and walked, walked until it was getting dark. Then walked home and walked to the back and picked the tent up and threw it into the creek and walked across the bridge and into the woods and into the night.

  Above me the clouds thickened like a clenched fist, blotting out the stars, the wind swirling violently through the branches. I pictured a Chinese dragon flying in sinuous circles, bashing his way through the treetops while I followed some mysterious pathway below. Like it wasn’t my mind that was controlling me. A spirit quest, Josh had talked about, a spirit quest, and I wondered if that’s what was happening, if the spirits were guiding me through the forest, guiding me here to face the dogs.

  The dogs want to kill me. They want to seize me in those terrible jaws and tear me to pieces, rend my flesh from my bones. Their eyes are wide and savage, and I’ve got my gaze locked on theirs, staring them down, driving them even crazier. It’s raining now. The fence is deforming, bulging outward a bit more each time a dog propels himself against it. I’m aware that the only thing holding it to the fence poles are thin twists of wire that could give way at any moment, and if they do, I’m dead. I should be afraid, but I’m not. I should run, but I don’t. Instead I start laughing.

  I laugh at the dogs, laugh at their impotent fury and the insanity of what I’m doing and the insanity of the Quest and the insanity of everything, and then I start barking back at them—ARF ARF ARF! ARF ARF ARF ARF!!!!—kicking at the fence as they catapult themselves at me, desperate to get to me, ARF ARF ARF!!! The rain is falling harder, fat drops splattering, and I punch an open palm at a dog, the sensation of his wet nose and fur and the chicken wire imprinted on my hand. ARF ARF ARF!!! YOU FUCKING DOGS!!! I start kicking and punching at the fence, barking, deranged, my fury matching theirs. ARF ARF ARFF!!! ARF ARF!!! I slam my hands against the fence, back up, throw my body against it in a flying crosscheck over and over again. Then the back door opens and there’s Nystrom, squinting into the darkness: “Hey! Shaddup! Shaddup!” and I laugh harder and turn tail and run back up the slope, weak-kneed with hysterical merriment as the rain starts to pour down.

  I run through the trees, still laughing. The rain feels wonderful. I squash and stumble across the marshy area, falling into puddles, tripping over unseen roots, the grass slicing my hands. When I reach the trees I run as fast as I dare, bolts of lightning illuminating the path, and then I trip and fall again and try to get up, but this time something is different. Like someone has pulled a plug, all my energy and fer
al joy gone in an instant, nothing left but utter exhaustion. I lie there, the rainwater pooling around me.

  Push myself to a sitting position, confused. Did I come from there? I’m shivering now, almost as bad as when I came out of the creek.

  Up to my feet, reeling, panicked, wanting to run but surrounded by trunks and branches and vines and the whole forest pulling at me, weighing on me, the rain pouring down, lightning, thunder, the dragon writhing through the trees above my head. Stagger forward, moving just to move, bounce off the rough surface of an invisible tree, then another, move ahead, waving hands in front of me, my body hot and cold all at once. I don’t remember where I am. Did I walk here? Is this the woods behind our house? It feels like it goes on forever in every direction, endless. I can see Tim’s frightened expression, and Danny’s face as he folded, bleeding, and see Lesley, and Josh, all of them talking at me at once, and Terri’s dog barking and snapping at me. Are the other dogs following me? Is Nystrom? Did I really do that?

  Wait. What happened? I’m not walking anymore. I’m not moving forward, because now I’m on the ground again, the world twirling around me, my heart racing. I have to get up and keep going, but I can’t. I think, I’m going to die here like this. And it doesn’t bother me so much. Everyone is still talking to me all at once, now calling my name, not leaving me in peace. Isaac, Josh is saying. Isaac.

  Leave me alone, I think.

  Isaac, he says, shouting it at me. Leave me alone, I say, and this time I think I say it out loud, but he won’t leave me alone. He keeps shouting it, he won’t just let me be.

  “Leave me alone,” I say again. “Leave me alone.” Screaming it this time: “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”