Untouchable

by Scott O'Connor

  Yes.

  “Her boyfriend came in while I was getting the rest of it. He went completely fucking crazy. Threw me all around the room. He’s lucky my sisters were there, or I would have fucking killed him. But I didn’t want them to see that. Better I just get out of there.” She stuffed the rest of the sandwich into her mouth, took a long drink of juice. “You happy now? That a good enough explanation for you?”

  The Kid nodded. He wasn’t happy, but he nodded anyway.

  “How many times have you gone to that house and drawn on the walls?”

  A few.

  “You ever get scared in there?”

  Sometimes a little.

  “Well, you’re sort of a pussy, Kid.” She drained the juice, pulling on the straw until the box crumpled in on itself. “After school, get some food from your house, bring it to the library. Whatever you got. No carrots, no apples. Anything else. More juice. Can you do that?”

  I can do that.

  “Good. Good boy.” She looked across the table at The Kid’s face. “What happened to your lip? You get punched or something?”

  The Kid was surprised she noticed. No one else had noticed. He thought he’d done a good job of covering it up.

  “Who did it? Your dad?”

  The Kid shook his head. Brian B. and Razz.

  Michelle brushed the sandwich wrapper and the empty juice box off the table. “I’m telling you, Kid,” she said. “A badass scar would keep those fuckers away. A badass scar would change everything.”

  The Kid crouched behind a bush in the Crump’s backyard, looking up at Matthew’s bedroom window, wondering how to do this. On TV, people were always throwing rocks at windows to get the attention of whoever was inside. But The Kid thought that throwing a rock would probably break the window. Then again, he didn’t have a very good throwing arm, so he probably couldn’t even hit the window from this distance. It was what his dad always called a moot point.

  He couldn’t even be sure that Matthew was home. Matthew’s mother’s car was in the driveway, but his father’s was gone. Who knew what Matthew had told his parents? The entire Crump family could be at their church right now, praying to break The Kid’s Covenant.

  Shiny white pebbles were arranged around the bottoms of the bushes and trees in the backyard. The Kid scooped up a few, stayed in a crouch, ran over behind the garbage cans beneath the kitchen window. No sign of anyone inside. He leaned back and threw one of the pebbles up at Matthew’s window. The pebble reached the height of the window, but stayed about three feet out from the house. It hung in the air for a second, then fell back to earth. The Kid had to duck to avoid catching it in the eye. Still in the crouch, he ran back out into the yard, about halfway between the bush and the house, then he turned and threw another of the pebbles at the window. He watched it fly, arcing too high but then dropping in a slow, smooth curve, striking the glass of the window with a loud crack. The Kid ducked back behind the bush, sat on the ground, breathing heavily. Maybe he’d broken the window. He didn’t even think he could throw that high or that hard and now maybe he’d broken the window. A dog started to bark a few houses away. He waited for the sound of the back door opening, Matthew’s mother coming out of the house to look for the culprit. Or the sound of sirens, even, if Matthew’s mother had called the police.

  The dog stopped barking. The Kid peered around the bush, looked up at the window. It wasn’t broken from what he could see. But Matthew’s face was there, looking out into the yard, searching for the source of the noise. The Kid stood from behind the bush, waved his arms. Matthew looked down, saw The Kid, motioned for him to duck back down. The Kid sat on the ground, waited. He heard the back door open, then the padded sound of running footsteps across the lawn. Matthew jumped the last few feet to the bush, landed in a heap beside The Kid.

  “What are you doing here?”

  What happened? Why weren’t you in school?

  “I’m sick. I had an asthma attack last night after I got home. My mother kept me out of school.”

  You got caught?

  “Why do you think I got caught?”

  You weren’t at school.

  “I just told you I had an asthma attack. Why would I get caught? Did you get caught?”

  Did you tell your dad anything?

  “About what?”

  About anything?

  Matthew sat against the bush, looked out into the back half of the yard.

  “I’m sick of keeping these secrets,” he said. “You ask me to keep too many secrets.”

  That wasn’t an answer. The Kid wanted an answer.

  Did you tell?

  “No.”

  Are you going to tell?

  “I don’t know.”

  You promised not to tell.

  Matthew said nothing.

  Loose lips sink ships.

  Matthew didn’t smile at The Kid’s joke, the familiar phrase. He was holding the pebble that The Kid had thrown. He must have picked it up on his mad dash out to the bush. The white of the rock was bright against his skin.

  “I don’t think we should be friends for a while,” Matthew said. “I don’t like having all these secrets.” He put the pebble back in its spot under the bush. He didn’t look at The Kid. After a few seconds, he stood and ran back inside.

  The house was empty when The Kid got home. He went out to the garage, lifted the door as high as he could manage, crawled underneath. Golden light inside from the high grubby windows. The last few minutes of the day. Dust jumped and stirred from the floor as he made his way back, squeezing between boxes, crates, old bikes, long-ago chairs and tables. He saw his wooden crib in a far corner. He saw his metal rocking horse in another corner. Toward the back of the garage he found what he was looking for, a box labeled Extraordinary in his mom’s handwriting. More unsold issues of the comic book. He thought Michelle might like these, something to read if she couldn’t get to sleep outside the library.

  The sunlight faded slowly through the windows. He stood between the boxes and could feel it pulling away. Day almost done. Back at his dad’s old workbench he looked for extra batteries, another flashlight. He opened a drawer and found a small stack of Country & Western cassettes. He opened a drawer and found nothing but yellow blocks of sticky notes. He opened a drawer and found a snow globe, a wooden rabbit, a gold ring, an envelope that was sealed shut. A piece of newspaper with a picture of a football player.

  He took the rabbit out of the drawer. It looked hand-carved, like someone had whittled the shape and features out of a small piece of dark wood. A good-luck charm of some kind, maybe. One of the rabbit’s ears was higher than the other. One of its feet was chipped off. He rubbed his thumb across the smooth wood, the little dips and pits. He put the rabbit in the pocket of his slacks.

  There was a cassette on the workbench. It was one of his old tapes. He recognized the brand on the unmarked label. His old tape recorder was out, too. He hadn’t thought about his recorder in a long time. All of the things he used to tape, the talk show, the sounds around him on the street, voices and noises. He could barely remember all the things he’d recorded.

  It was getting dark. If his dad hadn’t gone to work, then he might be home soon. The Kid took the comics and the recorder and the cassette and made his way back through the garage, into the house, back upstairs into his bedroom. He hid the cassette and recorder under his bed next to the calendar, put the comic books into his backpack. He took the wooden rabbit out of his pocket and put that into his backpack, too, way down at the bottom where it wouldn’t be found.

  He stood in the bathroom doorway, holding her bottle of pills.

  He said, What are you doing?

  I don’t know what you mean.

  He said, You haven’t been taking these.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  He said, You’re not taking these. His voice rising. It was early morning, after another sleepless night. She stood in the short hallway, the space between the bathr
oom and The Kid’s room. Only halfway into her shirt, one arm through the sleeve, the other dangling across her bare belly. The Kid was down at the kitchen table, eating his cereal.

  He said, Why aren’t you taking these?

  I’m late, she said. I’m running late for school.

  Then you’re going to be late. I want to know why you’re not taking these.

  Do you count them? She took a step toward him, her voice ringing off the tile in the small room. Do you keep track?

  I do, he said. I keep track. I count. Every morning after you’re gone, after The Kid’s gone. I pour them out on the edge of the sink and I count.

  This is your job now?

  This is my job. It’s my job to make sure you’re okay. To make sure you do what you’re supposed to do.

  What am I supposed to do, David?

  You’re supposed to take your pills.

  The pills don’t work.

  They don’t work if you don’t take them.

  The pills don’t work.

  How long has it been? he said.

  Count them.

  How long?

  You tell me, she said. Pour them out and count them.

  Darby stood in the motel parking lot, watching the orange doors. Late afternoon, traffic tight on the street behind him, the air ripe with exhaust. He checked the pager again. The second time, the third time. There had been no call.

  “Are you watching TV?” Bob had left a message on the cell phone. “Turn on your TV. There’s a line of cars backed up on the access road to the Tehachapi compound. Cars, trucks, RVs. I’m looking at a line maybe a mile long. People who saw it on the news. They want in. This woman in an RV said she thinks the compound is probably the safest place on earth. The feds are turning them back, but more just keep coming.”

  The pickup with Texas plates was gone. There was an older station wagon in one parking spot, a rusted hatchback in another. He stood with one hand pressed to the side of the Everclean van. He cleared his throat. Taking the rabbit, saving the rabbit, putting it in the drawer with the other things where it could be safe, hadn’t helped. The speck was still there. It was surfacing; it was up in his mouth now. He needed to open his mouth to spit, but he was afraid to open his mouth.

  He stood in the parking lot and looked at the orange doors. He clenched his teeth, bit the insides of his lips, his tongue, afraid to open his mouth, afraid of what would come out if he did.

  The Kid remembered.

  A year ago, about. His dad was standing in the living room, waiting for his mom to come home from school. She was late again, and his dad was upset, looking out the front window and checking the clock on the microwave. An hour late, over an hour. The Kid was waiting to watch the end of the talk show they’d begun that morning, but his dad told him just to start watching the show and she could catch up when she got home. The Kid’s dad checked out the window, checked the clock on the microwave. The Kid finished the show, started playing around with the tape recorder Bob had gotten him for his birthday. Practicing some jokes from the show, some jokes of his own. He was working on his singing, part of a song they played between innings at Dodger games when his mom came through the front door.

  She walked by his dad into the kitchen, started fixing dinner. Didn’t say a word. His dad wanted to know where she had been. She said that she had stopped for a drink after work and his dad asked if it was just one and then they were arguing, starting to raise their voices, so The Kid sang even louder, trying to block it out.

  His mom pulled a bottle of olive oil out of the cupboard. It slipped from her hands, fell to the floor. His mom’s movements a little clunky, a little inexact. The cap popped off, spilling oil across the linoleum in a shimmery pool.

  “Goddamnit,” his mom said.

  “Lucy,” his dad said, that low warning voice.

  “Goddamnit.” His mom just about yelling now, so The Kid had to sing even louder to block it out.

  “Kid,” his dad said. “Take it outside, okay?”

  But The Kid didn’t want to take it outside. He wanted to be even louder, to blot this out, get it to stop. He kept singing, all the parts of the song that he knew.

  His mom knelt in the kitchen, wiping at the oil with a dishrag, but really just spreading the oil even further across the floor.

  “Kid,” his dad said, but The Kid kept singing as loud as he could and then his mom dropped the dishrag and grabbed the bottle and banged it on the floor, once, twice, three times. Trying to get it to break, it seemed like, and when it wouldn’t break she started banging it even harder.

  “Shut up,” she said. “Whitley, goddamnit, will you please shut up.”

  The Kid stopped, standing between the living room and the kitchen, not sure what to look at, who to look at.

  His mom banging the bottle again. “Godammnit just please shut up.”

  “Enough,” his dad said. Grabbing her hand, grabbing the bottle. “Lucy, that’s enough.”

  His mom stayed kneeling on the kitchen floor, staring at the microphone hanging from The Kid’s hand. Shaking her head. Not crying, just shaking her head.

  “Please,” she said. “Please.”

  The phone rang and for a second The Kid didn’t know where he was, what was happening. He tried to focus on the glowing hands of his alarm clock. Just after one in the morning. The phone rang again. He got out of bed, went to his window. The driveway was empty. His dad still hadn’t come home. He went down into the dark kitchen, picked up the phone, waited. There was noise on the other end of the line, air-hiss. The Kid thought he could hear cars in the distance, traffic sounds.

  “Kid?” It was Michelle’s muffled voice. She sounded far away. “Kid?”

  The Kid waited, the phone cool to his ear.

  “Kid, someone took my bag.” Michelle’s voice sounded strange. Scared. Like when they’d run from her mom’s boyfriend, maybe worse.

  “They took my bag and so I just ran. I found your last name in this phone book. I remembered your last name and street and found it.” There was a rush of air in the receiver as she turned her head, looking around to see if she was being followed, maybe. “I’m going to the house,” she said. “I’m going to sleep at the house.”

  For a second The Kid thought she was coming to his house, but then he figured out what she meant. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t go there, that was one time only. He wanted to tell her that place was his, but there was nothing he could do.

  “Come meet me at the house if you can,” she said. “I need another flashlight, anything else you can bring.” Her voice shaking like she was going to cry.

  “They took my bag,” she said. “I couldn’t stop them. They just took it.”

  The Kid came up onto the porch of the burned house. He heard breathing in the darkness. Michelle sat in the corner, arms at her sides, legs splayed out in front of her. She was trying to catch her breath. She had run there from wherever she’d been. The library, wherever. There was a hole in the knee of her jeans that The Kid didn’t think had been there before. He wondered why she hadn’t gone inside the burned house, but then he realized that she was afraid to go in without him. She was brave but she wasn’t that brave.

  She didn’t want to talk about her bag, what had happened to it. She was angry and scared in equal parts. The Kid was a little afraid of her in this state. It seemed like she might snap at any second, take it all out on him.

  He’d brought sandwiches, the last of the juice boxes. He couldn’t find another flashlight, but he’d found a book of his dad’s matches in one of the kitchen cabinets. He knew that he wasn’t supposed to touch matches, that it was possibly dangerous to give them to Michelle, but then he figured, what was the worst she could do to the house? Burn it down?

  “Did Matthew get caught?” she said.

  The Kid shook his head.

  “So nobody knows about this place still?”

  The Kid shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about Matthew, didn’t want to tal
k about secrets. He opened the security door. The air inside the house didn’t seem so bad anymore. The Kid didn’t think they needed the goggles or masks. He led her inside, through the front room, down the hall. It was almost completely dark. Only the light from the street through the window-holes, the holes in the roof, but he knew the place well, could make his way through. Michelle held onto the back of his jacket the whole time.

  Moonlight shone through the hole in the living room roof, illuminating parts of the red-haired woman, the white glints on her boots, the glow of her skin. She looked ghostly for the first time, looked like an actual ghost. The Kid needed to finish the drawing, complete the signal, but he didn’t want to rush without knowing how to draw a good hand. He needed more time to practice. Better to get it right than to rush and screw it up completely.

  The Kid set down his backpack, unloaded the cookies and sandwiches and juice. He took out the issues of Extraordinary Adventures he’d found in the garage.

  “Now what?” Michelle said.

  The Kid didn’t know. He didn’t want her to stay there, but he couldn’t think of a better place. He took out the book of matches, thought for a second, motioned for Michelle to stay put. He made his way back through the house, out onto the porch. The small ring of candles was still there. Maybe he shouldn’t touch the candles. Maybe taking a candle would be a real blasphemy, like knocking over a gravestone. But what was Michelle going to do, sit back there in the dark all night? He took the largest candle from the ring, a red candle in a tall glass holder. The Kid didn’t like this at all, but what was one more blasphemy at this point, really?

  They sat on the living room floor. Michelle ate the sandwiches, drank the juice. The candlelight flickered on the walls, making different parts of the mural jump and move.

  “Sorry about your books,” Michelle said. “Your Captain America comics. They were in my bag.”

  The Kid hadn’t thought about that. Those comics were gone now, too. He was a little angry with her, being so careless with things that weren’t hers. Those were good comics.

  Michelle finished the juice and The Kid stood, brushed off the back of his pants.