He’s right on the other side of the fence, so close I can smell him. He’s as big as a car, but his sheer animal presence makes him seem bigger, a building that’s about to fall on us, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. His massive head is eye level with Jake and PJ, who are standing, and he snorts softly as he stares at us with dull eyes that I’m surprised to see have long, beautiful lashes.
Steam rises off his black skin in the moonlight as we all contemplate one another in silence. Now that we’re on the other side of the fence, he doesn’t seem angry at all, and after snorting and staring at us for a couple of intense seconds, he turns around with surprising lightness and trots back into the pasture, disappearing into the darkness.
Once he’s safely and definitely gone, Jake gives him the finger and PJ giggles nervously, a brittle edge of tension under his laugh.
I sit in the mud, my whole body aching, an unpleasant tingling radiating out from the spot on my stomach where the electric fence fried me. I’m wheezing badly. I try to slow down my breathing and relax before the wheeze turns into a full-blown asthma attack. I want to grab the inhaler in my back pocket, but I’m sitting on my butt right now and I still can’t quite feel my legs.
I reach up to PJ. “Can you give me a hand, PJ?”
PJ starts clapping. “Bravo! Bravo!”
“No, I’m serious. My legs are numb.”
“Oh! Sorry.” PJ reaches down, grabs my outstretched hand, and hauls me up. I totter on legs that feel like wooden stilts.
“Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say. “I think so. Just give me a minute to catch my breath.”
Just then the farmhouse’s porch light flicks on, and a man steps out the front door brandishing the distinctive silhouette of a shotgun. “Who’s out there?!” he hollers.
“Shit,” Jake grumbles, and runs for the driveway. PJ grabs my hand and tries to drag me along, but he drops it and breaks into a sprint when I have trouble keeping up. “C’mon, dude!” he yells over his shoulder. “Run!”
“I can’t!” I yell, but then the man steps onto his front lawn and points the shotgun into the air. A shocking BOOM! shatters the night, and suddenly I can.
As I stumble toward the road, I notice with dread that we’ll have to run past the farmhouse to get to the driveway. Jake and PJ both bolt past the farmer, but luckily, he seems reluctant to leave the circle of light on the porch. I think he can’t see us very well. He keeps yelling, “Who’s out there?! Who the hell is out there?!” He cocks the shotgun and fires it into the air again—BOOM!—and I jump and lose my stride, almost tripping.
Another light flicks on upstairs in the house.
Jake and PJ are already out of sight, probably halfway up the driveway by now.
As I pass the farmhouse, two more guys run out the farmhouse’s front door. The first one is taller and stumbles down the porch steps. The second one is shirtless, and he does not stumble at all; he leaps from the top porch step and lands in the yard, carrying a big flashlight whose beam bobs up and down as he pumps his arms. I catch just a glimpse of him over my shoulder as he passes the farmer with the shotgun and leaves the porch’s ring of light.
He’s fast.
I won’t be able to outrun him. It’s the bull all over again, but there’s no electric fence for me to hide behind this time. I aim for the driveway anyhow, knowing it’s my best bet.
The flashlight beam bounces up and down behind me, casting my shadow huge and stretched on the trees overhead.
Behind me the old man yells, “You better run!” and then Mr. Stumbles, talking to the shirtless guy, I guess, hollers, “Don’t you hurt no one, bro!”
I’m at the base of the driveway where it slants up to the road, the last little barn and pigpen to my right. If I can just make it to the road, maybe I can lose him.
But a second later I hear fast breathing behind me, and a strong hand grabs my shoulder and spins me around. The flashlight shines in my face, blinding me. I close my eyes and swipe at the light, surprised when, instead, my fist connects with meat and bone. I yelp in shock as the flashlight goes tumbling, its afterimage dancing in my vision as the shirtless guy stumbles back. His butt hits the wooden fence and he flips backward, feet in the air, falling into the mud of the pigpen with a curse and a splat.
I run up the dirt driveway until I get to the road, where PJ and Jake are waiting for me. I try to tell them, Keep running, there’s a guy chasing me, but I don’t have enough breath to talk, so instead I grab their sleeves and drag them left, down the road.
We jog without saying anything for maybe five minutes, until I physically can’t run anymore. I need my inhaler.
Up ahead, a small covered bridge crosses a creek. I point to it and we slide down the muddy bank and underneath the bridge. I pull my inhaler out of my pocket and collapse heavily onto a large, flat rock. I greedily suck on the inhaler, my breath making a thin, high wheeeeee sound, which is very audible in the quiet under the bridge.
PJ looks at me, concerned. “Are you gonna be all right?”
I nod yes and try to relax. My knuckles throb. Did I just punch someone in the face? The implications start to sink in. I stare at my feet, one blue Converse and one sock that’s so muddy it’s completely brown. Why am I wearing only one shoe? When did that happen? I’m having trouble putting all the pieces together.
The stream trickles under the bridge. Jake looks around until his eyes settle on me.
“Can you stand?” he asks.
“Uh, I think so,” I say. “I think I’m all right.”
“No, no,” Jake says. “I mean stand up right now.”
I stand up shakily, and Jake shifts the big rock I was sitting on. He pulls a half-empty bottle of triple sec out from under the rock and doesn’t bother wiping the dirt off before unscrewing the cap and taking a big slug. He smacks his lips appreciatively, then claps me on the back.
“Man. What a night!”
CHAPTER 5
* * *
LIKE A FIRE AT A paint factory, waking me up in the morning is a three-alarm job.
The first alarm is a little digital clock that sits on the cardboard box beside my laptop. Its insistent beeping sounds like the beat from a tiny dance club: bap, bap, bap, bap, bap! but I barely hear it through the fog of my dream.
“Where’s that beeping coming from?” the other sky riders ask as we pilot our dragons through the volcanic clouds over Mordor.
It feels good to fly. I haven’t done it in so long, I forgot the feeling of lightness. I squint my eyes against the hot wind and look down at the rocky plain below, where a herd of rainbow-colored cattle runs. Ahead, the tower of Barad-dûr rises dark in the distance, but instead of the Eye of Sauron, the numbers “7:45” glow red at its pinnacle.
The beeping stops and I drift back to sleep, pulling my dragon’s reins and doing a lazy wingover into the soft mists of slumber.
But a minute later the second alarm goes off, louder than the first, and I wake up with a jerk that knocks the comforter off my legs.
Alarm number two is an old-timey brass clock, the kind with two bells on top and a little hammer that swings back and forth between them like a maniac. It sits on top of a box all the way across the room, so I can’t turn it off without getting up. Any normal, average sleeper would get up at this point and admit defeat. But I am a pro. I pull my comforter back on and without getting out of the easy chair or opening my eyes, I take the pillow from behind my head and throw it at the clock, knocking it over.
But now I hear the third and final alarm stomping downstairs to my room.
Mom.
I’m pretty sure I can’t stop her by throwing a pillow, although I’m sorely tempted to try it this morning.
I’m so tired, it seems like I fell asleep only a couple of minutes ago. It’s frigid outside my warm blanket cocoon. I can feel it on the tip of my nose. I hunker deeper into the comforting warmth of the easy chair. Die Hard is playing softly. It’s the part where Ellis says, “Hans, bubby,
I’m your white knight.” I put it on loop last night right after I took a scalding shower and collapsed into my easy chair. I actually did a little writing too, even though I didn’t have my notebook. I just wrote on some pieces of paper. It was better than nothing, but I couldn’t really get in the zone, couldn’t disappear the way I usually do. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mom having my real notebook, and the fear kept yanking me back to the present. After writing on the paper, I tore it up and flushed the pieces down the toilet.
I pry my eyes halfway open. Morning light squeezes around the edge of my window blinds. I quickly close my eyes again as Mom strides into the room, because I know what she’s about to do: She yanks the blinds up, and blazing sunlight fills the room. Even through my shut eyes, the light lances straight into my brain.
With the bored showmanship of a magician who has been doing the same trick for years, Mom pulls all the blankets off me in one quick swoop.
Abracadabra!
The bedspread is gone, but the sleeping teenager is still curled up in his easy chair!
Oohs and aahs from the audience. Scattered applause.
Cold crawls up my bare legs. I keep my eyes shut and curl into a ball like an armadillo being attacked by a crocodile. I remember PJ’s ninja skills and think, I am a rock. I am a rock.
Mom closes my laptop, then considers me and sighs, an overworked machine letting off pressure. She must love me an awful lot, because instead of dumping me out of the chair and beating me with a newspaper, she takes another calming breath and pats my head.
“Look, honey,” she says, not unkindly, “I’m sorry if we scared you last night.”
I keep my eyes closed and don’t say anything. I am a rock.
Mom’s tone hardens. “Have you thought at all about what we discussed?”
Have I thought about it? Is she kidding? It’s all I thought about after we got back from cow painting. It’s the reason I filled eleven pages of loose-leaf paper instead of just falling asleep last night.
But I keep my eyes closed and don’t say anything. I am a rock. A sleeping one.
Mom sighs and I think she might actually tip the chair and beat me with a newspaper, but instead she sighs yet again, a long shaky breath like she’s about to start crying. She pats me on the head again, maybe just a little too hard.
“C’mon, honey, you’re going to be late for school.” She sounds even more tired than I am. On her way out I hear her pause as she passes my closet door. “Ugh,” she says. “What is that smell?”
My eyes pop open. That smell is the cow shit all over the clothes that I wore last night. I put them in a trash bag and buried them under the rest of the clothes in my closet, but even a mountain of cotton cannot contain the toe-curling stench of cow shit.
Mom looks at me for an answer, and I peer over the back of the chair and kind of shrug as if to say, I’m a teenage boy. There are a million different things in this room that could be causing that smell.
— — —
After Mom leaves I ooze out of my chair like my bones are made of pudding. My legs are basically useless. Here’s the problem with running for your life: You never have time to stretch beforehand.
Luckily, I don’t have far to walk. I stumble to the little bathroom attached to my room, but as I open the adjoining door, I accidentally bump my right hand on the doorjamb. My bruised knuckles flare with pain, the skin swollen and scraped raw. Oh, that’s right. I punched someone in the face last night. I remember running for the woods. Being blinded by the flashlight. Striking out in fear, trying to hit the light.
I grab my glasses off the back of the toilet tank, sit down on the seat, and flex my fingers experimentally. It hurts. Boy, I must’ve really nailed that guy. I wonder who he was. Some farmer, I guess.
I’ll have to hide my bruised hand from my parents.
The list of things I’m trying to hide continues to grow, but neither the dirty clothes in my closet nor the scraped skin on my knuckles worries me as much as the red notebook hidden somewhere in my parents’ room.
Just the thought of it makes my stomach go light, like I’m falling. I imagine my parents sitting me at the kitchen table as they read my notebook in front of me. The sad, disappointed look Mom will give me; the long, boring lecture Dad will recite earnestly as he leans close to my face and puts his hand on my shoulder.
I’d rather walk barefoot over broken glass.
I turn on the cold water and hold my bruised hand under the tap. As the water runs, I pull my shirt up and look at the spot where the electric fence caught my stomach, expecting to see a scar or something, but there’s nothing there. There is, however, a nasty purple bruise on my hip bone, I guess from when I hit the ground after Jake and PJ dragged me off the fence.
I glance up at myself in the mirror above the sink and then do a double take. I look rough. There are bags under my eyes, and my hair is a tangled bird’s nest. At the end of Die Hard, when John McClane is all beat up, the scars and stubble look cool and rugged.
That is not how I look right now.
I just look like crap. I hate to admit it, but I’m not tough-looking. One time I overheard our pediatrician tell Mom I had “the body of an artist,” which is insulting, accurate, and also a weird thing for a doctor to say. “Well, Mrs. Burns, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that he has the flu. The good news is that your son has the sneeze of a poet!”
I try a rugged smile, the kind John McClane is so good at, but I can’t quite pull it off, mostly because of my gross teeth. Little veins of brown and tan run through them, like my smile is made of fine marble.
I was only three the first time Melanie got leukemia, and the doctors used me as the donor for a bone marrow transplant. But they didn’t realize that the anesthesia for the operation, if used on kids my age, will discolor the enamel on their adult teeth when they come in.
Mom keeps telling me that they’ll pay for veneers, but I always say no. She says she wants me to get them because it will look nicer, but I think she doesn’t want to be reminded of Melanie every time I flash my candy-corn smile. I’ve sort of fixed the problem myself by not smiling anymore.
I don’t like the look I’m giving me, like I’m about to ask myself to dance. I know what I’m about to say, and I wish I could stop because it’s so fucking stupid, but my reflection appears beyond my control.
“Happy anniversary,” the spooky kid in the mirror says.
Oh shit, my hand is freezing! I can barely feel it. I turn the cold water off and examine the damage on my knuckles, which are less swollen, but of course still missing just as much skin.
Mom knocks on the bathroom door, and I jump. “Are you up?”
“Well, I’m in the bathroom. So . . . yes, I’m up.”
“Okay . . .” She sounds doubtful.
“No, Mom, I’m not up. I’m sleepwalking.” I start to snore loudly.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” Mom pauses, then adds, “Breakfast is ready. Don’t let it get cold.” Mom acts like cold food is inedible. If she made ice cream for breakfast, she’d still say, “Hurry up. Don’t let it get cold.”
Even though I took a shower last night, I need another one. Partially because I was marinated in filth last night and partially because it’ll help my muscles feel better. I turn the shower on as hot as it will go and wait for the water to warm up. Since we use well water, it takes a bit. I yawn. I wonder how Jake and PJ feel right now. I bet not half as bad as I do. Jake seems impervious to pain, and PJ just doesn’t mind.
Do I have any tests today?
What day is today?
You know what day it is.
This is going to be a long day.
While the water runs, I take my clothes off and catch a glimpse of my scrawny chest and my dumb face in the mirror. I take off my glasses and everything gets blurry.
Huge improvement.
CHAPTER 6
* * *
MY ACHING LEGS FEEL LESS like stilts after I take a hot shower, an
d I walk upstairs to the kitchen without limping too much. Mom’s washing dishes at the sink, and Dad’s at the table eating breakfast and reading the paper. Everything looks normal, but I feel a weight in the air. A pressure. I don’t know if it’s because of Melanie’s anniversary or my notebook.
Our kitchen is really two rooms, a kitchen and a little dining area divided by a wraparound counter that Mom loves to call an “island,” as though the kitchen is so large that it can only be described in geographic terms.
The dining area has a sliding-glass door on the back wall that looks out into the field behind our house, and the orange glow of sunrise fills the room with warm light. I’d think it was pretty if I wouldn’t rather be flying my dream dragon over the burning mountains of Mordor.
The kitchen is Mom’s domain, and as such, a land of mystery to me, full of wonders I do not understand. For instance, we have a big dining room off the kitchen, but we never use it. Instead we cram around the little table in the second half of the kitchen.
Mom is up to her elbows in suds, another thing I don’t understand. She washes the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. Why? Is she trying to impress the dishwasher? “This is how you clean a bowl, robot!”
A glass cabinet dominating one wall is full of china dishes that we never use because they’re “too nice.”
The laws of logic hold no sway in Upshuck County. Whatever. I just come here for the food.
Dad is sitting at the little table in the corner dining section of the kitchen (the “breakfast nook,” as Mom calls it), eating the only breakfast I’ve ever seen him eat—Grape-Nuts with sliced bananas—and reading the paper with an expression of intense concentration.
Dad is dressed for work, a sharp navy-blue suit, a white shirt with his green striped tie tossed over his shoulder so he won’t get any food on it. His jacket is draped over the chairback and his shirtsleeves are rolled up so he won’t get any food on them, but I can see there’s already a small glob of banana on his shirt.
This Might Hurt a Bit Page 6