A half hour later I was home. I didn’t see Randy and I didn’t see the two boys again. All I could see was red and it burned my brain. I didn’t even make it as far as the garage before Sophie and my mother were outside, their eyes blazing with fire.
Like I said, you couldn’t keep anything secret in my house.
“I’ll kill them,” Sophie growled, her fingers opening and closing and opening again. “Who were they?” Sophie couldn’t see inside my head like my mother could. She had other gifts.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled and started to cry. I was so embarrassed. I should have taken care of them myself. “They were . . . they were big kids.”
My mother’s face was stone. “No one spits on my family,” she hissed like a snake. She held my father’s car keys in her hand. They jingled because she was shaking so much. “Put your sister’s bicycle away and get in the car.”
I knew better than to argue. There was steam practically rolling off the top of her head. I could see it. Sophie was just as mad. Together, they were scary.
Ten minutes later, my mother slowly drove my father’s new Mercury Marquis down Hempstead Road and turned left onto Dunsany. She was searching for the boys but I knew she didn’t have to look for them too hard. Not really. She knew where they were.
Sophie kept babbling away about how she hoped she knew them, because she was popular at school and would love to crush them under the heels of her popularity.
“When I’m done with them, their parents will have to send them to private school because they’ll be ruined here.”
“Amen,” said my mother. The anger still poured out of her and filled up the car to the point that I almost couldn’t breathe.
“There,” said my sister, and pointed. Up ahead of us was the blond boy who had stopped me on Fitzwilliams Street. His friend wasn’t anywhere around, but that was okay. He wasn’t the one who did the unspeakable.
This was the one who spit.
The boy was balancing on the curb as he walked. His arms were out to his sides.
“I don’t know him,” my sister whispered. “Aryan scum.”
“You shut your mouth,” my mother snapped at her. “We don’t talk like that. We’re good people.” Sophie turned sideways and shot daggers at my mother. “This one is Xander’s, just Xander’s,” my mother said. “You understand me?” She even went as far as putting her finger right in Sophie’s face which was really bad, because people who could do what we could do knew never to point our fingers. My sister rolled her eyes before turning away and staring at the boy again.
My mother pulled the car to a stop then turned around and looked at me. “Just this once,” she said to me almost tenderly. “You can scare him, but just this once.”
There were tears in my eyes, but they didn’t stop the rage that bubbled inside.
I opened the car door and stood up. He was about a hundred feet away, maybe even a little more.
“Hey,” I screamed. He didn’t stop. “Hey, ass wipe,” I screamed even louder. It was obviously a language he understood. The boy pulled his arms down and turned around.
“Look who it is,” he called out. “It’s the little Jew boy.”
I took a few steps forward. “What did you say?”
“I said ‘Jew boy’,” he grinned. “You know, Kike, Yid, money grubber. Take your pick.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
With a painfully easy release, all my anger, frustration and embarrassment born from that single wad of phlegm that he flung at me because Randy had a big mouth and I had a yarmulke in my pocket, flowed out of me in a gush.
The boy screamed and grabbed his head. He fell to his knees and screamed even louder. As he clutched his ears, I watched blood pour through his fingers and out his nose, soaking his Lacoste shirt and making the little alligator on his chest swim in a sea of red.
I let the rage fly out of me like a bullet with a single purpose, and it wasn’t until the boy toppled from his knees and plopped to the ground with a thud that I even thought to stop.
“Damnit, Xander,” cried my sister. “What did you do? Get in the car. Christ. Get in the car.”
Seconds later, my mother was palming the wheel of the Mercury Marquis, making a hasty three-point-turn and speeding back the way we had come.
“Why, Xander? Why?” she kept screaming as she used both hands to drive.
I stared out the window, away from the fallen boy and away from my mother’s viscous eyes. I could feel her rummaging inside my head trying to make sense of what just happened. The thing was there were no secrets hiding inside my brain.
None at all.
With my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my windbreaker and my fingers curled around the smooth silk of my yarmulke, I thought about bullies and bigots and bastards like the boy who had spit on me. I thought about them all and what they deserved.
“Why?” my mother demanded again, and Sophie started crying, too.
Finally, I turned and looked directly in the rear-view mirror, matching my mother’s glare with my own.
“Because I could,” I told her in all honesty. “Because I could.”
Y is for Yuri
Who’s Prone to Predation
BY THE TIME THE boy stopped crying, Yuri was beside himself with fear. What was he doing? What if he got caught? Why did the boy pee himself in the first place?
Yuri took the four-year-old from Bliss Park right when the ice cream truck came and everyone was totally engrossed in whether or not to get Dixie cups or Klondike Choco-Tacos. The boy had been shirtless and dotted with white patches of sunscreen so there had to be an older sibling, a baby sitter, or even a parent somewhere near.
Yuri’s heart began pounding out of his chest when he spotted him amidst the crowds at the town swimming pool, jockeying around the Ding Dong cart, clamoring to be the first in line. How could the little boy be alone? Why wasn’t anyone close?
Yuri’s brain yammered away inside his head.
Am I crazy for doing this?
Yes.
Should I do it anyway?
Yes.
What if I get caught?
What if I don’t?
“Hey,” said Yuri to the boy who was deep in a throng of kids all clutching dollar bills for ice cream. “You getting a treat?”
“Uh huh,” the little boy answered. His blond hair was almost white. His pink skin was soft and new.
“Watcha getting?” Yuri asked, and hunkered down beside the boy.
“A lemon ice,” he said. “Or a frozen Snickers.”
Yuri’s heart skipped double-time in his chest. The boy was just inches away. He had to remind himself every other second or so that there was nothing lewd about what he was about to do. That would be gross.
His need to know just how the little boy worked inside was what was driving him forward. He had to know what made him tick.
“I like frozen Snickers,” Yuri heard himself say. Then he leaned in close. “But I like other things better.”
The boy, one arm behind his back, clutching the other arm with his tiny digits, said, “I like chocolate.”
Yuri mirrored his little target—one of many tactics he had studied. “Me, too.”
All around them, girls were screaming and laughing and boys where horsing around, pushing each other in line
“Hey,” Yuri said, moving his plan along because this part was the most dangerous part of all. “Do you think you could help me find my puppy?” He had learned the technique from one of those shows on television about adults who lure little kids away with stupid lines like that.
Sometimes they used the puppy or kitten lie.
Other times it was candy.
The little boy’s eyes grew wide. “You lost your puppy?” he cried, seemingly forgetting about the ice cream.
Yuri made his best sad face. He even managed to squeeze out a tear and let it slowly drip down his peach-fuzz face. “I did,” he said to the boy. “I’m very, very sad
.” He waited a few seconds, just enough for the little boy to make some quick decisions in his head that leaned away from ice cream and towards the promise of wet kisses from a doggie’s mouth.
“I can help you,” he said. “But I have to tell my sister, Jan, first.” The little boy pointed to the pool. There was a knot of high school girls there surrounding one of the life guards who had a mohawk and a ridiculous, patterned tattoo that stretched from his wrist to his elbow.
Yuri’s eyes narrowed. Since he was only thirteen and in eighth grade, he didn’t recognize any of them. They were already in high school. He had to quell any need the little boy had for permission to go on a quest in search of a puppy.
“I told her already,” Yuri said, almost in a stammer. “She’s the one who pointed you out.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “Okay,” then automatically held up his hand for Yuri to take it. “I’m Austin.”
“I know,” Yuri lied. “Jan told me.” He stood up with little Austin’s hand in his and said, “Let’s go find . . . um . . .” He searched his brain for a puppy name. What he came up with was woefully inadequate. “Clifford.”
“Clifford?” cried Austin. “Like the big red dog?”
“Exactly,” said Yuri as stress sweat caused his t-shirt to stick to his side while he steered Austin away from the crowds at the ice cream truck and toward the changing rooms and the wooded path beyond.
Fifteen feet into the woods, with Austin still clutching his hand, Yuri slowed and said, “Hey. I have to tinkle. I’m just going right behind that tree, okay?” He pointed to a thick pine that looked a thousand years old.
“Uh huh,” the little boy nodded, stuck two fingers in his mouth, and automatically began sucking away.
Yuri quickly went behind the tree and reached down for the small pack he had left there. Inside was everything he needed and probably some extra things he didn’t. Yuri wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with the boy—not exactly. Of course he knew his end game, but just how to get there was still up for debate.
One side of his brain was telling him to be delicate and efficient. The other side was telling him that a mess was the only thing that would satisfy the cravings inside that had been squatting there for so long.
Yuri grabbed the pack and went back to Austin who was waiting for him, sucking on his fingers and clutching his crotch.
“I have to make number one,” the little boy said. “Can I use your tree?”
Yuri looked over his shoulder. Through the woods he could still see the back of the changing rooms. He needed to take the boy deeper and he needed to do it fast before someone saw them and everything was ruined.
“Do you think you can hold it? You can stop and take a leak when we find Clifford, okay?”
Little Austin looked pained for a moment. He pulled on his crotch one more time and nodded his head. Once again, he held his hand up for Yuri to take it and together they walked deeper into the trees, away from the changing rooms and away from the town pool.
Ten minutes later, when they were deep in the woods where no one could hear, Austin abruptly stopped.
“What’s the matter?” Yuri asked as the little boy’s hand slipped from his.
Austin stared at the ground which was covered with dead pine needles. “I wet my bathing suit,” he said and began to well up with tears.
Yuri didn’t know how to deal with a crying child. He had never done this before. He hadn’t expected tears. He hadn’t expected tinkle.
The little boy was leaking from both ends. “That’s okay,” managed Yuri, even though it wasn’t okay and his head was spinning and throbbing at the same time because he didn’t know what he was doing. “When we find Clifford we can get you something dry to wear.”
Austin sniffled and a little bit of green snot ran out of his nose, which was just another thing that worked in such a mysterious way that Yuri wanted to cut at it to learn how—but not just yet.
His eyes followed the path. Thankfully, the woods thinned not too far from where they had stopped. Beyond was the dingle, the great swampy area that snaked its way through that part of town.
No one ever went into the dingle. It had been hammered into their heads that the swamp was filled with ticks, and snakes, and poison ivy.
To Yuri, it was the perfect spot.
A few more minutes and they were in the swamp. That’s when Yuri started his end game.
“Clifford?” he cried out into the emptiness. “Clifford?”
Little Austin chimed in, too. “Clifford?” he squeaked. “Come on, boy. Clifford?”
Suddenly up ahead, there was movement in the brush, and Austin pulled away from Yuri’s grasp again. A fawn, tiny and spotted, stepped onto the path followed by another, along with their tawny mother.
“Wow,” said Yuri, because it was rare to see a deer, especially up close, let alone twin fawns. “Would you look at that?”
Austin said nothing. Yuri looked down at the little boy and he wasn’t there anymore. He was simply gone. One second he was holding Yuri’s hand, and the next, the twin fawns and the doe appeared, and the little boy let go of his hand and vanished.
“Crap,” Yuri said, almost too loudly, and the deer family spooked and dissolved into the brush as quickly as Austin had.
Yuri swiftly turned in a circle, looking back the way they had come, then into the thick and swampy foliage on either side of the path. “Austin?” he hissed, his shirt starting to stick to his ribs again and his legs beginning to shake. “Austin? Where are you?”
The little boy couldn’t have gone far. After all, he was just there a second ago. Where could he have disappeared to in the space of a second? He was shirtless with a wet crotch. He was only four. Where could he be?
Yuri forced his heart to slow down, taking deep gulps of warm air and letting it spread into his lungs and calm his body. He closed his eyes and stood with his hands out to his sides, his fingers splayed.
Be calm, he ordered his brain. Be calm.
Seconds later, Yuri heard movement off to his right. It wasn’t close but it wasn’t far either. “Austin? Is that you?”
Nothing.
“Austin, come on, Stop fooling around.”
Still nothing, but Yuri definitely heard little feet disrupting twigs and pine needles. He reached into the pack he was holding, the one he had prepared early in the morning while his parents were still sleeping—the one he filled with excitement, hoping today might finally be the day he had been waiting for.
He pulled out a paring knife, because that’s the first thing his hand found, and held it out in front of him as he gingerly stepped off the path into the thick brush.
There was a trail there. He hadn’t seen it at first but it was definitely there. The trail was probably a deer run, or what rabbits or squirrels use as a forest highway. Yuri ducked under low branches and stepped over rotted trees that had fallen across the trail. At one point, he gingerly stepped around a swampy patch to avoid sinking into the gritty goo.
Off in the distance Yuri heard movement again, then a tiny voice. “Clifford? Where are you? Clifford?”
He immediately honed in on where the voice was coming from and began to walk more quickly through the dense mire, slapping at mosquitoes that buzzed around his head and holding his breath as he passed through a cloud of gnats that hung at face level, busily living out their brief lives.
“Clifford?” he heard the little voice say once more, and it started to make him mad.
This wasn’t what he had planned.
He had planned to take the boy and bring him someplace far away from where anyone could hear. Then, with a sock and duct tape, he planned on rendering him mute so he could discover every inch of him, both inside and out, to see just how he worked.
Yuri burned to find the vessel inside the little boy that held that spark of life that all children had. He wanted to squeeze it while he held his breath, and watch it struggle against his might until it finally weakened and stopped altog
ether.
After, Yuri wanted to cut. He wanted to saw, and wrench, and tear, while thick, warm liquid covered his hands and his forearms. He wanted to paint it on his face like the Indians used to do, and revel in its power.
That’s everything Yuri wanted to do, but this little boy, this Austin, was ruining his plans, and he wanted him to stop right now so he could kill him.
That’s it. He wanted to kill him.
He wanted to kill him good.
“Maybe you’re up here?” he heard Austin say, alarmingly close, and Yuri stopped moving. Up ahead was a tree, as thick as the one he had hid his pack behind when he went to pee but wouldn’t allow Austin the same luxury. There were rough boards nailed to the bark that climbed up the trunk almost twenty feet. They ended at a little tree house—a fort of sorts—that Yuri had never heard anyone at school talk about before.
A tree fort in the dingle would be a choice party spot.
Maybe it was fresh. Maybe it was new.
Austin was three quarters up the rough boards, pulling himself higher and higher with his little hands, calling out for the fictitious Clifford. As the little boy neared the top, he looked back and locked eyes with Yuri, and smiled that same smile that made Yuri notice him back at the ice cream truck in the first place.
Then he disappeared into the fort.
“Now I got you,” Yuri hissed under his breath. He dashed to the base of the tree, put the paring knife back in the pack, slung it over his shoulder, and began to climb. Hand over hand he went, and with each rung he tackled and conquered, his brain became more and more convinced of exactly what he was going to do to the little towheaded boy when he finally got inside that fort.
Maybe it would be messy. Maybe Austin would scream through the sock and duct tape. Maybe he would beg with his eyes for Yuri to stop, but Yuri was never going to stop. He already knew that when he was through with Austin, there would be another Austin, and another and another, enough for him to explore their insides for a lifetime and revel in just what made them breathe life.
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