The Shotgun Rule
Page 23
– That all your bags?
Paul nods.
– Yeah.
– Want them down here or with you?
– We’ll keep ’em with us.
The driver slams the bay door closed and straightens and stretches his lower back.
– All aboard, then.
Hector puts his arms around George.
– Be cool, man. See my mom, tell her I’ll write her a card. Tell her I’m just tired of being in this town. Not gonna die here. Tell her I’m cool. Same for my sister.
– Yeah. Sure.
Paul kicks Hector’s cane.
– You wanna start getting on now, crip? Gonna take you like an hour.
Hector lets go of George and hooks a thumb at Paul.
– Sure you don’t want to come? Just so I got company besides dickhead?
George shrugs.
– Nah. Stay here. Do my thing. Graduate and all that shit.
– Cool.
Paul holds a bag in either hand.
– Don’t think I’m putting these down to hug you, fag.
George puts his hands in his pockets.
– Dude, I’m not hugging your runaway ass.
Paul grins.
– Runaway. Man. Why’d I wait?
Hector pokes him with the cane.
– Dude, let’s jet.
Paul steps up onto the bus.
– Tell Andy he can keep my bike. Tell him not to fuck it up or I’ll come back and kick his ass.
The door sighs closed and the bus pulls away, Paul and Hector sticking their hands out the window and flipping George off as it turns onto North L and disappears.
He rides by the school and watches as classes get out. A chick he knows bums a smoke off him and asks why he hasn’t called since the party last week and he says he’s been busy and tells her he’ll maybe call her this weekend and he rides off.
There’s no cars in the driveway at home, too early for his folks to be back from work. Paul’s old bike is in the garage. He rides in circles out front and looks at Andy’s bedroom window and thinks about going in and telling him about Paul and Hector. But then he’ll have to hang around with him. And that’s not what he wants to do right now.
Right now the sketchy house is in his head.
And he doesn’t want to see his brother.
He rides back toward the school, looking for that chick.
EPILOGUE
Dead Man’s Cap
Andy studies the dungeon, rolls the twenty sided one more time, looks at the number, and fills a trap with boiling acid. Then he puts it away, adding it to a pile of dungeons he’s made since he got out of the hospital. None of them explored.
He looks at his textbooks, flips physics open, reads ten pages and flips it closed. Read it already. Read all of them already. Need some new ones.
Home study is OK. It’s better than the alternative. Things were bad enough when he was just the freaky brain kid skipping grades. Being the freaky brain kid with the Frankenstein scars all over his head isn’t an option. It’s not like people really give him shit or anything. Just stare. Maybe want to ask questions about what it feels like and what it’s like to get beat up like that and what a coma is like. Better to stay at home and take the state tests.
He looks out the window and watches George ride around out front before turning and pedaling away.
His head itches.
He thought it’d stop after the last of the stitches came out, but it didn’t. Wherever the hair is growing back itches. The parts where no hair is growing back don’t feel like anything.
Too bad George didn’t come in. It sucks being alone all day. Well, being alone is OK, but not seeing his friends sucks. But that’s the way it’s been.
They just act kind of weird around him these days. Like they don’t really know him or something. Which is stupid.
He gets up and goes out to the garage and wheels out Paul’s Redline and looks at Jeff’s old Harley cap hanging from the handlebars. It’s the one Paul always used to wear. The one he left in George’s bedroom.
He puts it on, takes it off, puts it on, thinks about Jeff. What a bummer it is that he’s dead. Tries to remember the last time he saw him. Can’t.
He rides.
It’d be good to see George. See anyone after being alone all day. Once their folks head off to work it’s just him. One of them sometimes comes home at lunch, but not nearly as often as they did at first. They’ve gotten used to him being OK now. Used to the idea that he’s alive and not brain damaged after all those doctors kept telling them not to hope for too much. Which is cool. They were way too all over him for the first month. But it’d be nice to see George and hang out. And George is mostly OK with that. He doesn’t care what Andy looks like. Doesn’t care how weird he is, doesn’t think he’s any different now.
At least he tries to act that way.
He rides to the firebreak and goes over the jump. His old bike was so heavy you could barely catch an inch of air. The Redline flies. No wonder Paul loves it so much.
It was weird at first, riding Paul’s bike. Still, Andy wouldn’t have ridden it at all if George hadn’t said Paul told him it was OK.
Some other kids show up at the jump. Andy takes it one more time and heads off. They watch him ride away.
It’s nice and cool. If he takes the cap off the breeze will make his scalp itch less. But he hates the scars.
– Andy!
He glides over to the curb.
– Hey, Alexandra. What’s up?
– You know, school.
– How is it?
– You know, the same.
She shifts her books from her chest to her hip.
– Andy?
– Uh huh.
– Um, can I look at your head?
– Sure.
He takes off the cap.
– Can I see the top?
He lowers his head.
– Gross.
– Yeah, I know.
– Did you really die? I mean, die and then they like brought you back?
He looks at her.
– Who said that?
– Kids.
Andy looks up at the sun until he sees spots and then looks back at her.
– No. I didn’t. I was in a coma. And they thought I might die. But I didn’t.
– Um. Did those Crips really torture you?
Andy tries to blink the spots from his eyes.
– Who said they were Crips?
– Everyone.
– I don’t think they were. I mean, my brother said they were just some black guys. I don’t remember.
– You don’t remember any of it?
Andy thinks about what he remembers.
– No. They hit me really hard.
– Are you going back to school ever?
– No, I don’t think so. I just got caught up with everything I missed. If I work hard I can finish all the requirements for my diploma by January.
– Wow. I wish I could graduate early. I suck at math and science.
Andy bends and scratches his shin.
– I could help.
– Yeah?
– Sure. If that’s cool. I could.
She holds up her books.
– Algebra?
– Yeah. Sure.
– You’d have to…Um. I can’t go to, you know, I can’t go to a boy’s house.
She looks up.
– I mean, not even to study, you know. So. You’d have to come over.
– OK.
– OK.
They look at everything but each other.
She fluffs her hair.
– So, you need a number, or?
– No, I know it.
– OK.
She starts to walk away, backward, looking at him.
– Call me after dinner?
– Sure.
– Cool.
She turns and runs.
Andy pushes off from the curb, the cap in his
hand so he can feel the cool air on his head.
He crosses Murrieta, takes Delaware over to the elementary school and zigzags through the little kids on the blacktop. A teacher yells something at him, but he ignores her and rides off the schoolyard onto Rincon.
Aunt Amy’s car is in her driveway, but he doesn’t stop to say hi. It’s OK for them to go over there now. Now that their dad has made up with her and she’s stopped selling pills. Not that their dad said anything about the pills to them. He probably still doesn’t know what George was doing over there in the first place. But things are cool with her now. As long as their dad doesn’t find out that she stopped selling the pills because she makes so much more money off the meth she’s dealing.
He rides past without stopping. He’ll see her this weekend when she comes over for dinner.
When he turns the corner onto North P it’s like someone has thrown a rock through the surface of the day. The face of it shattering, the pieces falling to the ground, revealing another day behind it.
Weird.
Down the street, Timo is bunny hopping a bike on and off the curb.
Really weird. Like he can almost remember some things.
He looks at the sign on Fernando’s old front lawn, the one telling people the house will be sold at auction by the state. Tries to remember something about that house. Or is it another house?
Then the day puts itself back together and the stuff behind it is gone.
Andy raises an arm.
– Hey, Timo.
At the sound of Andy’s voice Timo flinches. At the sight of Andy he almost dumps the bike. He wrenches the handlebars to the side, rights the bike, and pedals blindly into the intersection at the next corner, almost getting creamed by a beat up ’64 Ford that roars by.
Andy watches his back disappear down the street and imagines the arc Timo’s body might have made if he had been traveling the necessary velocity to have intersected with the Ford, and he flinches when he sees the spray of blood that would have exploded from his head when it hit the ground.
George rides up.
– Hey.
Andy smiles.
– Hey, what’s up?
– Over by the park with some chick, saw you go by.
– Cool.
George nods down the street.
– That Timo?
– Yeah.
– He fuck with you?
– No. Saw me and took off. I was gonna maybe say something about his brothers and stuff. How much that must suck.
George looks at the Arroyos’ old house.
– Yeah. Don’t do that. Don’t talk to him. It sucks his brothers died, but he’s still a dick. Stay away from over here.
– OK. I was just riding around.
– How’s the bike?
– Fucking awesome.
George spits on his thumb and rubs some dry mud from the Redline’s handlebars.
– Take care of it.
– I am.
George stands on his pedals and pumps a couple times and pops a wheelie and starts to ride away.
– Let’s go home. It’s almost dinner time.
Andy looks back at the Arroyo brothers’ house.
George yells.
– Hurry up, I’ll teach you some tricks after we eat.
Andy looks away from the house.
– Cool.
He pulls the dead man’s cap down low over his mutilated head and follows his brother home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHARLIE HUSTON is the author of the Henry Thompson trilogy, which includes the Edgar Award-nominated Six Bad Things, as well as The Joe Pitt casebooks. He is also the writer of the recently relaunched Moon Knight comic book. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Virginia Louise Smith. Visit him at www.pulpnoir.com
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