Freeze Frame

by Heidi Ayarbe

  Mom whispered something to Jason. It was a deep chant—humming, murmuring, rocking back and forth.

  The cop came closer. “Kyle Caroll? Kid, you hafta get up now.”

  I had to stay still. I had to stop time. Freeze frame. Pause.

  “You’ve got some lawyer, your PO, and your folks here.”

  The film wasn’t pausing.

  “PO?”

  “Yeah, kid, Mark Grimes, your parole officer. He was here last night with you.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right.”

  “Get up.”

  I couldn’t see my parents. I shook my head.

  He leaned over me. “Get up and get dressed. C’mon, kid.”

  I looked around the cell. They’d told me it was a holding cell—someplace I’d be for only a night or two until they figured out what to do with me.

  I turned to the cop. His nametag said BYERS. “What’s the date?”

  “October ninth.” He scowled. “Let’s go, kid. They’re waiting.”

  I looked at him. How was it possible to keep moving forward when everything had stopped yesterday?

  4

  The same two officers from yesterday were in a cramped room with a smudgy plastic clock hanging crooked on the wall. I looked down at my wrist. They had taken my watch the night before.

  The cops were drinking their coffee black. The fatso cop drank in slurps, steam fogging up his glasses. He had to take them off and wipe them. The glasses, thick and heavy, left red indentations on the bridge of his Silly Putty nose.

  Mom hugged me—too tight. “We’re going to figure this out, Kyle.”

  I shuddered. It didn’t seem like there was a lot of figuring out to do. They pulled out a chair for me.

  “Michael, we need to ask your son some questions,” said the fatso cop. They knew Dad. I don’t know how or why, but they did.

  Dad nodded.

  I sat between Dad and our lawyer—Mr. Allison, who Dad golfed with every Thursday afternoon. I guess Dad had called in a favor.

  Mark held out his hand and introduced himself. “I’m Mark Grimes, the parole officer assigned to Kyle’s case. We have a detention hearing tomorrow during which I will recommend that Kyle be left in custody until all his psych evaluations are complete and I can better assess the situation.”

  Mark crossed his arms. He wore a blindingly white shirt that showed his muscles. His head glistened—the perfect kind of bald and tan that you only see on Harley guys. There was a tattoo on his wrist of some Chinese writing or something.

  Mark had come to the detention center when they processed me the day before. “Everything is just procedure,” he said. “Follow the directions of the detention staff when they’re booking you.”

  They photographed, fingerprinted, and strip-searched me.

  When they finished, Mark was waiting. He looked me up and down. “Basically, kid, you belong to the state of Nevada. I work for the state, so now you belong to me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re going to be spending lots of time together until things get worked out around here, so you might as well call me Mark.”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  They took a mug shot. If Jason had ever had to get a mug shot, Pastor Pretzer would have sent him to hell or something. Maybe I could get him a copy. I was about to ask Mark for my one phone call when I remembered. My stomach lurched and I almost threw up. I leaned my head against a cool brick wall.

  “Kid, you okay?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s late. You’d better get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow. Any questions?”

  “Um, is my mom okay?” The lump returned to my throat when I thought about how Mom had looked in the hospital parking lot.

  “Your family is fine. You’ll see them tomorrow. Get some rest.” Mark clapped me on the back, closing the door to the tiny room.

  I hadn’t realized how tired I was until then. I couldn’t sleep, though. My mind replayed the day over and over again, always getting stuck at that one scene. A black screen faded to forms of gray, as if the shed had been dipped in murky fog. Jason’s body was blurred, lying in a black pool. Then the screen became red.

  “Kyle, are you ready?” Mr. Allison asked. “We need you to focus now.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.” I nodded, looking around the small room.

  The skinny cop stared at me with buggy eyes. He reminded me of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Fatty, on the other hand, looked more like Igor. It was like Clash of the Movie Tools.

  “Igor, bring me the brain.”

  “Yes, master.” Igor rubs his hands together and hobbles down the dark corridor to the deep freeze.

  “My precious. My precious,” Gollum says, limping after him.

  “Rubbish, Smeagol. Bloody fool,” Dr. Frankenstein mutters. “You’d think he could find something appropriate to wear over those putrid rags.” He pinches his nose and sneers down the hall after the receding shadows. He flips through a thick medical book, then looks over his spectacles at the body, prone on the metal slab.

  The sky flashes with streaks of lightning. For a split second light illuminates the corpse’s pasty face.

  I jerked my head sideways and gasped. Everybody in the room stared at me. Dad’s hand was on my shoulder.

  “Do you need me to repeat the question?” Gollum leaned back in his chair. “Can you take me through what happened yesterday, step by step?”

  Both of the officers pulled out their little notebooks at the same time. It looked like one of those choreographed moves in Bollywood. I wondered if one of them would get up on the table and sing. They looked at me in the way adults look at kids on those after-school specials before the kid admits to having tried beer at a party. Do directors tell them to make those faces?

  I looked at Dad.

  Dad nodded.

  I told them everything I knew, up until the blurry scene. Their pencils whirred. They flipped the pages and scratched more.

  “We need to know what happened next. Do you remember pointing the gun? Squeezing the trigger? Anything like that?” Gollum leaned in.

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. Scene Three was gone—a snippet of the film cut and thrown out. I’d seen a movie called The Final Cut where people had these implants in their brains that recorded their entire lives. After people died, cutters would edit their lives and present the recordings to the dead people’s friends and family in the form of a movie. It was like my scenes had already been edited.

  Igor looked up over his glasses. “Hmm…,” he grunted.

  “Okay, let’s skip to what happened next. We’ll go back to that part later. What do you remember after that?”

  October 8, 9:18 A.M., Scene Four, Take One, Continued

  Mel and I watched Mom and Jason.

  I heard Dad’s car drive up. “Dad’s back with the syrup, Mom.” Now we could have our pancakes and go back to our regular day. I remembered I hadn’t eaten yet. I wondered if we’d have time to eat before the game. I felt hungry—starved.

  “Mel, get yourself together and go get Dad.” Mom held Jason’s head in her arms. She still rocked back and forth. “Now, Mel. Go!”

  Mel moved in slow motion. She rested her hand on the doorframe and stepped back out of the shed.

  “Hurry!” Mom shouted.

  Mom changed at that moment—she became a still image. Everything in the shed lost the illusion of motion, as if the film had slipped off the reel.

  Freeze frame.

  Fast-forward…Pause…But there was no rewind.

  Play.

  “Hurry!” Mom hollered again, the film spinning back on the reel.

  Mel jerked into action. Her ponytail bobbed up and down with each step. The kitchen door slammed shut. I heard distant shouts and hollers.

  Jason and I were the only ones left on pause. Stuck. I started to worry we’d never catch up.

  Come on, Jason. Get up, get up, get up, get up, get up.

  Dad got to the shed i
n three strides. Mel ran behind him. Dad wrenched the shed doors open all the way. The rusty metal and hinges moaned. Light streamed in. The gray disappeared and I felt relieved, squinting in the bright October light. Maybe the dream was over.

  “Oh, Jesus, Kyle.” Dad gripped my shoulders and slipped the gun out of my hand. The gun was hot, burning through my palm. When it was gone, I felt like I could step away. Rewind everything and start again. But the rewind button was jammed, and we just moved forward—without direction, without a script.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “God, Maggie, what’s going on?” Dad held his fingers to Jason’s neck. “Jesus Christ, oh Jesus,” he whispered.

  “I’ve called the ambulance. There’s a lot of blood. I, I—” Mom’s chin wrinkled and her voice wavered. “Michael, you need to go get Gail and Jim.”

  Why did Dad have to go get Mr. and Mrs. Bishop?

  I glared at Mom. I knew they’d be pissed. But they never said pissed at the Bishop household. So they’d probably be “totally disappointed.”

  Jason was just messing around. He was gonna get up soon. I waited for him to say something.

  “Kyle, come on.” Dad pulled me out of the shed. Mel stood outside, shivering. “Melanie, get a coat. You need to wait out front for the ambulance. I’m going to get the Bishops.”

  Mel nodded dumbly, and Dad left me standing outside the shed in the wet grass. By then, I couldn’t feel my toes. I couldn’t feel anything.

  5

  Gollum scratched his pointy chin. He looked at Dad, at Igor. “Michael, are you the legal owner of the gun?”

  Dad nodded.

  “Can you tell us why you had the gun?”

  “Yeah. Ray, my brother; he had a pawnshop in Reno.” Dad cleared his throat. “He had some problems, so I bought him the gun.”

  The officers exchanged a look. There’s something about the word pawnshop that makes people get weird, like they’re embarrassed about it.

  “When he closed the shop, he returned it to me.” Dad’s voice got real quiet. “I didn’t even remember. It was so long ago.”

  “We need to get your registration and permit. Can you get that for us?”

  “Of course. Certainly. I brought it with me. Yesterday…” Dad’s voice trailed off. “I couldn’t seem to find anything.”

  The cops wrote furiously. Dad’s hands trembled, handing over the registration and permit. I felt like my sense of time was off again.

  I wanted it all to be over. I wanted the policemen to leave everybody alone. I wanted the sick feeling to leave my stomach. I wanted to stop smelling the burn. I wanted the movie to stop.

  “Kyle.” Gollum leaned in. “I really need you to take us back to yesterday.”

  The rewind didn’t work. Didn’t he know that?

  “Can you do that?” His eyes widened, the lids peeling back.

  I rubbed my eyes. My throat tightened. It was hard to swallow. “But,” I stammered, “but the movie. It’s missing a scene.”

  October 8, 9:24 A.M., Scene Five, Take One

  Mrs. Bishop brushed by me. “Maggie, what happened?” she asked. She dropped to the floor. “No, my baby! Hold on, hold on, hold on.” Her words barely made it through her tears.

  Mr. Bishop came right behind the men with the stretcher. They pushed Mom and Mrs. Bishop out of the way. They talked fast into walkie-talkies, hoisting Jason onto the stretcher.

  “Gunshot wound to the chest.”

  “Fifteen-year-old boy.”

  “Nine millimeter.”

  “Massive blood loss.”

  “How long ago did this happen?” They looked at me. “Kid, can you remember?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” How long ago did what happen?

  Mom stepped forward. “We heard a loud noise around nine fifteen. I ran out, saw what had happened, and called nine-one-one.”

  The blanket dripped black with blood. A crimson pool formed on the floor.

  Jason blinked every once in a while. I could hear him gasping. He made a terrible, wheezing, choking sound, worse than anything I’d ever heard.

  Stop it. Stop making those noises. Say something.

  His eyelids fluttered.

  I reached out to touch his arm, but the EMTs pushed me away.

  The Bishops ran behind the stretcher. Mrs. Bishop heaved herself into the back of the ambulance and sat next to Jason. The paramedics turned on the lights and siren and peeled out of the driveway. Mr. Bishop and Dad followed the ambulance.

  “Mom, you need to change,” Mel said. I looked at Mom’s shirt, then down at my pajamas, stained with the same red-black color. I felt splatters on my face and started to scratch at the dried blood spots.

  “And the pancakes are burning,” Mel said.

  Was that the terrible burning smell?

  Mom pushed me to Mel. “I’ve got the pancakes. You help Kyle.”

  Mel nodded. She steered me through the kitchen door and upstairs. “Christ, Kyle, snap out of it!” Mel looked nervous. She threw some clothes at me. “Get dressed. Wash your face. We have to get to the hospital.”

  My toes were blue—the same blue as Mel’s cheerleading uniform, as Mom’s eyes, as Jason’s lips. Why were his lips so blue? I pulled my socks on and shoved my feet into my orange sneakers.

  “Come on, Kyle. We need to get going.” Mel yanked my sweatshirt over my head. She took a cold washcloth and scrubbed at my face. She jerked back when she touched my hair and gagged. “Put on a baseball cap.” Her voice quaked.

  “I didn’t—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “He isn’t—?”

  Mel wiped her cheeks. “Come on. We’ve gotta go.”

  We rushed downstairs. In the kitchen, Mom held on to an old towel and wiped her hands, over and over again. The pancakes were burned and the kitchen looked as disastrous as the morning I bet Jase he couldn’t eat seventeen pancakes. I never thought he’d actually go through with it. I ended up losing out on an entire semester of Twinkies from my lunch for that bet.

  Jase was the biggest sophomore in all of Carson City. At Carson High School, all the coaches drooled over him. Jase liked sports enough. He just had other shit he wanted to do more. They didn’t get that. I did.

  Mom led me to the garage. “Kyle, get in the car. Mel, go over to the Bishops’ and get Brooke and Chase. We’re going to the hospital.”

  I climbed into the very back of the Suburban. I pulled my knees in tight and tried to squeeze the pain out of my stomach.

  Mel came back with Brooke and Chase. Brooke and Mel cried all the way to the hospital. Chase didn’t say anything.

  He passed his Jack Sack from one hand to the other. Swish, swish, swish, swish. I could tell he was scared. Even though he was only eight, he did everything with Jason and me. He was a great kid. Chase unbuckled his seat belt and turned around. His head popped over the seat back, and he held out his hand.

  I took it in mine.

  “Kyle, is that what you remember?” Gollum smiled.

  “Yeah, those Jack Sacks swish when you pass them back and forth. You know what I mean? All those little pieces of sand—tiny, tiny pieces of sand, trapped in that leather cover. They swish.”

  “I do. I do.” Gollum nodded.

  He was lying. He probably didn’t even know what a Jack Sack was.

  “Can you remember anything else? Besides the sounds of the Jack Sack, of course?” Igor looked nervous. Sweat rings soaked through his gray shirt. He paced back and forth and wiped his forehead with a coffee-stained handkerchief. Maybe he was hungry. I hoped they had more bagels for him in the other room.

  “You know Chase can say every word, line for line, from the X-Men movies?” I shook my head. “Every damn word.”

  Thinking about Chase made everything much worse. I chewed on my lip. I wondered how they’d explain all this to him. Who’d tell him?

  “Okay, Kyle. We need to get back to what happened yesterday.” Gollum and Igor exchanged a look. Igor rolled his shoulder
s back in circles and moved his head side to side. “Let’s talk about what came next.”

  “I don’t know. I guess. The hospital. Yeah, we waited at the hospital.”

  I looked over at Dad. He nodded, like I was doing okay, like I should keep going. He tried to smile, but his eyes looked like the Nevada road map—red lines and dark circles. He hadn’t shaved and his shoulders curved in. Dad shrank that day. And it was all my fault.

  6

  October 8, 9:39 A.M., Scene Six, Take One

  Dad waited for us at the emergency room entrance. He held a cotton ball to the crook in his arm. He threw his heavy coat over his shoulder. “Maggie, we’re donating blood. He needs blood. Melanie and Brooke can go too.”

  “Why can’t we?” Chase stepped forward, holding my hand.

  The emergency room doors opened and shut. People hurried in and out. Doctors and nurses rushed up and down the hallways. Cushioned footsteps echoed on the linoleum floor. I listened to the crinkle of cheap hospital gowns being put on and clothes dropping to the floor with soft thuds.

  It smelled like sterile plastic, a kind of sickly new smell.

  I’d come here two years earlier when Jason bet me the Fourth of July sparklers his grandma brought him from Mexico that I couldn’t jump from the roof onto the porch. I missed the porch and landed in the hedges, breaking my ankle. I had to wear a cast for ten weeks and then do another five of physical therapy. We both got in big trouble for that one. Jase shared his sparklers with me anyway, just because he felt so bad. But I didn’t remember the hospital being so loud.

  “Mr. Caroll, I want to give my blood, too.” Chase looked up at Dad. He pulled on Dad’s sleeve.

  “You’re too young, Chase. You need to be bigger.” Dad took us into the waiting room. “You can help by sitting with your parents.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Bishop sat in the far corner, holding tightly on to each other. Chase tugged on my arm. “C’mon, Kyle.”