by Crystal Chan
I was right, though; there were all sorts of vehicles at the 7-Eleven. Fire trucks, county police cars, different government SUVs, and enough floodlights to make that whole area seem like noon in a desert.
We stopped maybe a half block away and looked at the site.
I turned to Jello.
“Don’t say it,” he said as I was opening my mouth. “You were right.”
I smiled smugly. That made for two people saying that in one day.
“So where do we head?” George said. “They just scared that poor panther away.”
“What’s the darkest place closest to here?” Jello asked.
“The fields,” I said. “And ditches.”
“So that’s where we start,” Jello said, pulling his night goggles onto his head.
We drove maybe a mile or two away into the countryside and parked the car along the side of the road. The air was different out here, earthy, smelling of autumn corn and cool breezes and nighttime killer animals. The three of us were loaded down with Jello’s gear and walked as quietly as we could along the gravel shoulder of the road, looking for the panther. I was about to say that we should get into the ditches because we were making too much noise, but then I thought better of it and shut up.
We were walking for about twenty minutes, Jello swinging his head—complete with night goggles—back and forth, scanning, when he said, “It’s kind of hard to find a panther at night.”
“Duh,” I said.
“Shhh,” George said. “We need to be quiet.” She paused. “Maybe we should get into the ditches.”
“Not necessary,” I said, and readjusted Jello’s backpack on my back. I glanced at George. “No offense.”
No one pressed any further.
Word has it that it’s hard to find a panther at night, but if you ever find yourself in that situation, you’ll probably realize that it feels a lot like taking a night walk under a starry sky. With a hot girl. And your best friend. As we walked down that country road, I guess they agreed with me, because we started talking, panther or not.
“You ever wonder what’s up there?” Jello peered up at the sky.
“Eternity,” George said.
“Aliens,” I said, “and government drones.”
“You guys are so boring,” Jello said. “What about different worlds? Like, places that have waterfalls of light and stuff like that?”
“Oooh, that’s pretty,” George said. “Waterfalls of light.”
“Right,” I said, ignoring a jealous pang in my gut. “That’s where the aliens live.”
Jello kicked at a stone on the road. “R-Man, why do you believe in aliens?” Jello asked. “I mean, you really believe in them.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “You believe in panthers waiting in line to have their pictures taken.”
“I think,” George said quickly, “that there has to be something out there, some kind of life-form. The architecture of the universe has to be able to hold more than just us.”
“Architecture of the universe. You’re going to rule the world one day, George,” I said.
“Well, it’s true,” George said uncomfortably.
“Which part?” Jello asked. I could hear the smile in his voice.
We walked along, keeping our eyes and ears peeled for crouching creatures. I started to relax as I hung back a little behind Jello and George. We aren’t going to find the panther, I thought happily. The thing is long gone. Jello’s right. Sometimes I worry too much.
That’s when I saw it.
They were holding hands. Or rather, fingers. George’s index finger was looped around Jello’s index finger. Comfortably, like they’d done that before.
I stopped suddenly, and my shoes made a crunching sound against the gravel in an I’m stopping suddenly kind of way. George yanked her hand from Jello’s, guilty as hell.
My stomach dropped. That something that had been bothering me now made perfect sense. “George, how did you know that Jello and I were going out on a safari? That was pretty great timing,” I said accusingly.
George stuck her hands in her coat pockets. “Jello texted me.”
I looked at Jello. “Really.”
Jello shuffled his feet. “Yeah.”
“You never texted her before,” I said to Jello.
Jello looked away.
“And how often does this happen, all this texting? I had no idea you were so close.”
George threw her shoulders back. “Look, Ronney, you and I are not going out, okay? If Jello and I text each other, what’s it to you?”
“What’s it to me?” My voice pitched higher. “What’s it to me? It’s everything.”
Silence.
In that silence a twig snapped.
“Why didn’t I know about this?” I continued, glaring at Jello. “Huh? How long has this been going on?”
“Not that long,” Jello responded.
“You don’t have to answer him,” George said. “It’s none of his business.” But her voice wobbled.
“It is too my business,” I retorted. “He’s my best friend.”
“A couple weeks,” Jello said glumly.
“What?!” I shouted. I turned and stalked away a good number of steps. Then I stalked back. I looked at George. “So you wanted to go on this stupid safari to be with your beloved Jello.”
“Stop that,” George said. “I told you, it sounded exciting.”
“And you’d get to be with your beloved Jello,” I repeated.
“Ronney,” Jello said.
My chest was ripping up inside. “You know, you’re right,” I said. I turned to George. “It’s none of my business. Neither of you are my business. None of your lives are my business. The only thing that’s my business is me. Go have fun on your fucking safari.”
Another twig snapped.
I started to walk down the road, toward town.
“Ronney, you’re not going to walk all the way back,” George called out.
“Watch me,” I retorted.
George ran after me and grabbed my arm. “Come on. It’s a good couple miles.”
I yanked my arm away. “It’s none of my business sitting in your car,” I said.
“Ronney,” she said tearfully.
Oh God. She was going to cry. I steeled myself and walked faster. “Go have your little fun, and good luck with the pictures. Jello, I hope you become rich and famous off of them and remember how you dicked over your best friend.”
Jello ran after us. “Ronney,” he called.
“What?” I said bitterly. I kept walking.
“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know it was going to happen.”
George started sniffling.
“You didn’t say anything. Nothing,” I said to Jello. “I’m standing here in the middle of cornfields because you wanted me to. Do you think there’d be any other reason why my ass would be out here? And look, you couldn’t help getting all over her, right in front of me. Some friend you are.”
Jello and George kept walking a little ways behind me. Jello’s voice was strained. “I didn’t know how to tell you about—”
I spun around. “Leave me the fuck alone,” I said. I whipped off Jello’s backpack and threw it into the space. “Both of you.”
At that moment a flash of shadow sprinted from the fields and leaped into that same space between us. Its eyes glimmered in the moonlight as it took Jello’s backpack in its mouth.
George screamed.
Jello screamed.
“The meat’s inside,” I said flatly.
The panther made off with the backpack and fled into the fields. George was nearly hyperventilating. Jello wasn’t much better.
I turned to George. “I’ll take that ride home now.”
We inched home in her car, and for the entire way George took loud, annoyingly deep breaths. Jello was in the front seat, looking like he wanted to put his arm around her, but he didn’t.
That ride freaking took forever
.
12
ONE OF THE NICE THINGS about working on a house is that it’s straightforward. Sure, stuff goes wrong when it shouldn’t—like the water heater, or the roof—but there’s always a logical explanation behind why it broke, and an equally logical explanation for how to fix it. The problems might not always be simple, but they’re always objective, and that’s another nice thing about houses. The refrigerator isn’t going to break because it doesn’t like you anymore. The wood floor isn’t going to buckle because you hurt its feelings.
A house does not betray you.
My current project: the mold on the living room wall. Even though Dad hadn’t wanted to pay for the roofers to come back and fix the leak from last year, that leak was causing the mold, and I knew that wall needed to be taken care of. I mean, mold is a big thing. The hard truth was that the whole wall needed to come down, it was so rotten on the inside, but Dad really didn’t want me ripping out a wall. I don’t know why, maybe he was feeling more insecure than usual. Anyway, there I was, taking out the mold on the surface. I used some bleach water and scrubbed down the wall, then painted over the area with a stain blocker, and then covered that over with a couple layers of paint. Presto: an unmoldy wall. Except if there’s rotten stuff beneath.
Anyway, there I was, four days after the Panther Incident, putting on the stain blocker when the doorbell rang. It was Sam. He let himself in.
“Hey, twerp,” I said cheerfully, putting down my brush.
Sam nodded. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Taking out the mold.”
“Can I help?” he asked.
Now, you have to understand that I work alone. That’s how to get things done—you do it yourself. Besides, Dad never offered to help me, and come to think of it, Mom never did either. Of course, Mina always wanted to help, and of course I told her no.
“I don’t need any help,” I said. “But thanks.”
Sam looked at the brush in my hand and the cans of stain blocker. “I can paint the stuff down by the floor,” he said.
Now, that was a thought. I hated bending to get down low. “Well,” I said.
“And I learn fast,” Sam added, playing with the zipper on his hoodie.
My phone buzzed. It was Jello. I deleted his text immediately without reading it. When I looked back at Sam, he was still waiting for me to answer. I took a deep breath: There was no use in me fuming over Jello when I was standing right in front of Sam. And anyway, there was something about Sam that made him look lost. Like a puppy that had wandered too far. Like he would have nowhere to go if I turned him away. My surge of anger melted away, and I realized that I did want some company.
“Aw, hell,” I said. “Come on.”
He was right; he did learn fast. In fact, he was a damn smart kid for someone who decided not to hand in his math homework. He did a good job with that crappy paintbrush he was working with, which was the only other one I had.
We worked mostly in silence, and he got down on the floor and did the low parts while I painted above him. It was pretty slick not having to bend down, and Sam did a nice job blending my strokes and his together after I showed him how to do it.
When we were done with the stain blocker and were waiting for it to dry, Sam said, “Nick and I did a lot of things together too.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah. We painted the question marks on those jeans.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling like an ass for giving him shit over wanting them back.
“We did practical jokes together too. There was this one time that Nick and I got our cousin, bad,” Sam said. He fiddled with the cuffs on his long-sleeve T-shirt. “We were sleeping over at his house, and when he was asleep, Nick and I put shaving cream on his hand.”
“Really?” I said, going to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the both of us. “What for?”
“Well, he sleeps without a shirt on, right?” Sam hopped onto a chair.
“Okay.”
“So we put shaving cream in his hand and then tickled his forehead, so he smacked himself with the shaving cream. Then we put more shaving cream in his hand and tickled his chest and arms.” Sam started swinging his legs.
I grinned and grabbed some lunch meat from the refrigerator. “You didn’t.”
“It was awesome. There was shaving cream all over him before he woke up.”
I snorted. He was tricky, for a runt.
“And then,” Sam added, on a roll, “we knew he’d want to take a shower, so we replaced the liquid soap with pancake syrup.”
“Nice,” I said, chuckling.
“And we unscrewed the shower head and put Kool-Aid powder behind the filter. So when he turned on the water, Kool-Aid came raining down.”
I groaned, but I was still laughing.
“It was great,” Sam said excitedly.
“You and Nick sound like the perfect team,” I said.
Sam got quiet.
I handed him his sandwich. We avoided looking at each other.
“He hasn’t texted once since he left.” Sam’s voice was different. Smaller.
I didn’t know what to say. “Maybe his phone died,” I said lamely.
“He told me he’d text.”
“How long has it been now?” I asked.
“Six months and five days,” Sam said.
I whistled, then regretted it.
Sam didn’t notice. His feet had stopped swinging by now. I took a bite of my sandwich, even though it didn’t taste very good.
Sam looked up at me. “Will he text me?”
I paused. Do I lie and say that he’ll text Sam one day? I really wanted to tell the kid the hard truth: His brother was probably slaughtered somewhere. Or he was in Tahiti partying and had forgotten about Sam.
“I hope Nick texts you,” I said finally. That was still the truth. I took another bite of my sandwich. It was starting to taste better. “Why’d he leave?” I asked.
Sam looked at the kitchen table. “He was drinking, and Dad and Mom found out.”
I was confused. “That’s why he decided to run away from home? That’s a bit steep.”
Sam shook his head. “He was drinking all the time. Sometimes he’d let me drink with him.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Really. A bit young, don’t you think?”
Sam sat up taller. “I’m ten, you know.”
“Like I said, a bit young, don’t you think?”
Sam grew quiet, and we both munched on our sandwiches. I reached for my second one.
“That was when we’d talk about a whole bunch of things.” Sam smiled. “Sometimes I’d get drunk and act all crazy.”
A drunk ten-year-old. It was kind of funny, but for some reason I didn’t laugh.
Sam saw me all serious, and he grew serious too. “When Dad and Mom found out, they were going to send Nick somewhere, and that’s when he ran away.”
“And you don’t know where,” I said.
“He told me he’d come back for me,” Sam said. “He said he’d tell me where he’s going.”
Just then Dad walked into the kitchen. He looked at our paintbrushes and paint gear, and his lips twitched. I knew he wasn’t going to say anything about them. He never talks about my repairs.
“Hey, Sam,” he said, his good arm holding his bad arm.
“Still holding your arm, I see,” I said.
Dad gave a one-shoulder shrug.
“It’s not going to heal,” I said pointedly.
“How’s it going?” Dad asked Sam.
“Fine,” Sam said, taking a bite of his sandwich.
“I’m just trying to help,” I muttered.
“Did you hear they got another one?” Dad asked me. Those days, in Makersville, “another one” always meant one of the exotic animals. They spotted another one. Another one killed Mr. So-and-so’s dog.
“Really?” I asked.
“The panther,” Dad said.
My stomach flip-flopped.
Dad peered at me. “You know anything about it?”
I tried hard to keep a straight face. “No,” I said. “Just thinking of stuff. Who got it?”
“The state warden,” Dad said.
“At least it wasn’t Rockfeller,” I said. “I’m sick of seeing his ugly face everywhere.”
“Word has it he was with the warden at the time,” Dad said.
I groaned. “He’ll take as much credit as they’ll give him.”
“Did they kill it?” Sam chirped.
Dad paused. I looked at Dad. “Yes,” Dad said finally. “They shot it.”
“Why did you shoot yourself?” Sam asked.
Dad started coughing.
Sam waited.
I waited.
“I was going through a hard time,” Dad said.
“I’ll say,” I said.
Dad coughed again. Then he went back to his room.
Not bad, kid. Not bad.
• • •
Another favorite memory of Dad was a couple years ago when I was thirteen and Dad was working on the car. He was in the garage, had the thing jacked up in the front with two jacks, and was lying on his back beneath the car. I remember staring at his legs as they stuck out, feeling kind of proud and kind of jealous, and I asked him what he was doing. He told me what he was fixing, but I had no idea what that was, so I just said, “Oh,” and stood there, like an idiot.
Finally, Dad scrunched his way out from beneath the car. His shirt and skin were greasy, and he looked at me and said, “Want to see?”
Well, of course I did, so there we were, the two of us beneath the car with our legs sticking out. The cement was cool beneath us even though it was wicked hot outside, and there Dad was, pointing out what goes to what, and where the problem was, and where the place is where you change the oil. Let me tell you, that was the coolest thing ever, to lie beneath that car with Dad, our faces just inches from all that metal and power, and him showing me what to do, part by part.
The conversation changed to girls, and how impossible they were, and Dad told me about his first girlfriend, Rita, which felt like a supersecret since I never thought about him with anyone except Mom. Anyway, this Rita kept making him stupid cards with love poetry on them and all that mushy stuff. Dad wanted to throw them away but he couldn’t, because his parents might find them in the trash, and he wasn’t supposed to be having girlfriends. So he kept all those cards in the safest place he could think of, which was in his math book, because God knows his parents would never look there. But then one day in math class, his teacher was walking by and saw all these cards sticking out of the book, and she thought he was passing notes or something, and she reached for the book and Dad tried to snatch it away from her, which only made the book go flying, and all these gross love cards with bad poetry came fluttering out, right in front of everyone. Dad spent the next while telling me about how he lived all that shit down—but he was laughing as he told me that story, as we were on our backs, beneath the car. He was laughing so hard I could tell he wanted to bring his hand up to wipe away the tears, but his hands were even grimier than mine, so he just lay there next to me and laughed and sniffled.