Stick

by Andrew Smith

  “They’re going to be closed.”

  I was so hungry.

  “Then we’ll go somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “California. It doesn’t fucking matter, does it?”

  I shrugged. Then Bosten said, “And if you tuck your shirt in, I’m kicking your ass.”

  I’d started slipping my arms into the sleeves of my flannel, but then just let it drop limply onto the floor at my feet.

  “Screw it,” I said. “I won’t even wear a shirt.”

  “Punch your first asshole, and you’re ready to break every rule in the goddamned house.”

  “Heck yeah.”

  I loved my brother so much.

  * * *

  We knew what to do.

  Bosten and I unlocked the storm doors and stole out through our secret way into the night. It was cold, and I shivered, but I wasn’t about to admit to my brother that I should have put on more than just my Steelers beanie and a thin T-shirt.

  We made no sound. We even held the doors of the Toyota open, just a crack, knowing the clicking of their latch mechanisms could be just enough sound to alert Mom and Dad; and Bosten pressed the clutch in, so we could coast backwards all the way down to the drive by the mailboxes before he even started the motor.

  “What about the odometer?” I said.

  “Fuck it. He doesn’t even know what’s going on. And maybe we’re not coming back.”

  “You’re just kidding, right?”

  Bosten smiled.

  We headed south on the road, away from the Point, and I said, “Do you want to sneak over and see if Buck wants to come?”

  “No. It’s just me and my little brother tonight.”

  That made me feel good.

  * * *

  The hamburger place called Crazy Eric’s was closed. I knew it would be.

  We were both hungry for something else; something other than food.

  Bosten drove.

  In Bremerton, we found a diner called Nico’s that stayed open all night.

  “I only have three dollars,” Bosten said when we sat down.

  “I have two.”

  So much for running away, I thought.

  We ordered hamburgers and Cokes.

  It was one of the best nights ever.

  It felt so free to be out of the house with Bosten, like we were hiding in a place where nobody could find us. Bosten fed a quarter into the diner’s jukebox. We weren’t the only ones there. A group of sailors sat and smoked in their white bell-bottoms, drinking Olympia beer, eyeing us with stubbled faces masked by glazed expressions.

  The music blared.

  David Essex sang, “Rock On,” and as Bosten came back to our booth, he lipped the lyrics and popped his hips side to side. He sat right beside me.

  “You know the only reason why I don’t leave?” Bosten said,

  “You know, like Dad told me to the other day?”

  Of course I knew why.

  But I didn’t answer him. I didn’t want to say it.

  So he did.

  “The only reason I don’t leave is because I’m afraid of what he’d do to you.”

  “Let’s not talk about this,” I said.

  Bosten had this look in his eyes. It said he wanted to tell me things. But I already learned them. My brother didn’t need to make those words take up space in the air between us.

  Not tonight.

  Bosten shrugged and sang, “Still lookin’ for that blue jean baby queen…”

  Then he casually squeezed out a circle of ketchup onto the wax paper at the bottom of our basket of fries.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay.” I slurped at my Coke. Mom and Dad would never let us have Coke after ten o’clock at night. “Bosten?”

  “What?”

  “Um. Nothing.”

  He watched me, then took a bite of a french fry. “I always knew you were stronger than me, Stick.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Okay. If you say so.”

  I liked that song, too.

  “So.”

  Bosten smiled and winked at me.

  * * *

  At midnight, we were on the road, heading north, back toward the Point.

  “I’m not tired,” I said.

  “Good. Let’s go to the beach, then.”

  “Okay.”

  Bosten pulled the car into the same spot where we’d parked the night Paul lit off the UFO flare.

  “And anyway,” I said, “you’d miss Paul Buckley too much.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, if you ran away from home.”

  “I’d take him with me.”

  “But don’t go, okay?”

  Bosten opened his door and stepped out of the car. I followed him, and we both walked along the beach, right where the water lapped up onto the shore.

  “I’m not going to go anywhere, Stick. Not yet.”

  “Good.”

  When we were under the pier, Bosten said, “Show me how you punched that dickwad Corey Barr.”

  NEXT:

  california

  Everything changed.

  But, somehow, things managed to quiet down at our house after that weekend.

  And Bosten and I avoided the Saint Fillan room for the next seven days, which was a rare long stretch of calm.

  Bosten went back to school, and we visited the Buckleys the following Sunday, like we always did, except this time I let Bosten and Paul go off by themselves, without me tagging along.

  It felt lonely.

  But I could see in Bosten’s eyes how much he loved Paul.

  Mom smoked more. Dad spoke less.

  Both of us pretended like we didn’t remember or believe what he did in that room.

  At night with my ear against the pipe, I imagined ways to kill him if he ever hurt Bosten again.

  * * *

  Beginning with the last week of March, Bosten and I were free of school for our two-week Easter vacation. Mrs. Lohman had followed through with her promise to ask if I could stay at Emily’s house for a few days that first week; and Bosten was supposed to sleep over at Paul’s. The thought of Bosten staying with him made me a little nervous that they’d end up getting into trouble.

  I began worrying about everything.

  * * *

  Bosten followed the Pontiac. We drove home together from our visit with the Buckleys. Paul and Bosten acted different at dinner. I noticed they avoided looking at one another. There was no joking around, no talk at all, except from the grown-ups, who didn’t appear to think anything was out of the ordinary with the boys.

  But I could tell.

  I watched his hands, how they wrung forward and back around the grip of the Toyota’s steering wheel, while Bosten kept his eyes fixed ahead, motionless, as though we were being invisibly towed behind Mom and Dad’s car.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “With you and Buck?”

  “Yeah.”

  He still wouldn’t look at me.

  “You know, I like Buck, even if he doesn’t talk to me anymore,” I said. “I hope things are okay with you and him.”

  Bosten rubbed his eyes.

  I could see Mom smoking in the car ahead of us.

  “You’re still going to stay with him tomorrow, right?”

  Bosten nodded.

  “I can’t wait to go to Emily’s, too.”

  I wanted him to ask me about her.

  I wanted to tell him about what we did. I knew it wouldn’t matter now, because Bosten and I had to make a kind of shell around us that would keep things in, and keep things out, too. But he didn’t ask.

  “But I’ll miss you this week.”

  Bosten said, “I’ll miss you, too, Sticker. Maybe you could just come and stay over at Buckley’s house with me.”

  I smiled. “I don’t think you want me there.”

  “Shut up.” Bosten wrung his hands
on the wheel again. He inhaled. “Paul told me he has a girlfriend. He said he isn’t really—that he can’t be anything but just my friend anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  Bosten bit the inside of his bottom lip.

  I guess there was nobody else in the world he could say things like this to.

  I felt bad. Not just for Bosten, but I felt bad because I wanted it to happen.

  It was like I had been hoping, or believing, that Bosten would somehow snap out of it and get better, and stop being the way he was. But that was stupid. I knew it. So thinking about it made me feel guilty.

  “But you’re still going to go there?” I said.

  He nodded. It was careful, measured. “If I stay home this week, I’m going to kill myself.”

  What could I say to that?

  “Kill me first, okay?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Bosten?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. About you. And Buck.”

  * * *

  When we got home, Bosten and I said our dutiful good-nights, but Mom held us up in the living room, saying she and Dad had something they wanted to tell us.

  In our house, surprises were never what they were in other homes.

  But Mom had been especially energized that day. She seemed relieved about something, but I didn’t have any idea what could give her a feeling like that. I knew something was up, or that maybe she’d drunk as much as Dad. Her cheeks had color in them, like she was breathing fresh air. She stood in the center of the floor, alternating her gaze from me to Bosten; both of us with our backs turned to our respective routes of escape.

  Dad sat quietly in his chair. Staring at us. Expressionless.

  Mom exhaled smoke. “Your aunt Dahlia called this morning. She is bringing you both to California this week.”

  I looked at my brother, horrified. It was like Corey Barr slapped my nuts again. I didn’t even know Aunt Dahlia outside the fact that she was my grandmother’s sister; and we were being sent to her like five-cent postcards you mail to people you don’t really like, just so they can dislike you even more.

  Bosten swallowed. “Why?”

  Mom’s smile melted. “What do you mean, why? She’s your great-aunt and she wants you both to visit. That’s why. She’s paying for your plane tickets and everything. She lives in California.”

  “So what? Lots of people live in California. I don’t even know who Aunt Dahlia is,” Bosten argued.

  Dad leaned forward in his chair.

  I thought there was going to be a fight, for sure.

  And, somehow, I couldn’t stop my mouth. “I’m supposed to stay over at the Lohmans’ tomorrow. And Bosten’s going to Buck’s house. I don’t fucking want to go to California.”

  I never cussed around my parents. I rarely cussed at all. So I knew what to expect, even though I just couldn’t keep the word inside my head.

  Dad’s hand grabbed my shoulder.

  I didn’t want him to touch me. I twisted away. This time, he didn’t fight me. He didn’t do anything. It was like he was afraid of me, or something.

  Then Mom slapped me so hard spit came out of my mouth.

  “It’s not open to discussion,” Dad said. “You can march your goddamned ass down to bed. Now.”

  I put my hand on my face.

  Bosten was smart. He knew when to quit. He said good night again and disappeared down his hallway.

  I went down to the basement.

  And I hardly had the chance to explain things to Emily, that at least we’d be back for the second week of vacation and, please, could I stay over at her house then; because by Tuesday afternoon, Bosten and I were at Aunt Dahlia’s house, a thousand miles away on a wide sandy beach, in a place called Oxnard.

  AUNT DAHLIA

  We didn’t even know who we were supposed to be looking for when we got off our plane in Los Angeles, but Aunt Dahlia apparently knew us.

  I wondered how.

  When I looked at her long enough, though, she looked like an older, happier version of Mom. One who didn’t smoke.

  She came right up to us and hugged Bosten first. Then she hugged me. And, as I expected and dreaded, she held me back at arm’s length and said, “What happened there?”

  Just like Emily would say, if she was about eighty years older and had never seen me before.

  Dahlia, not the least bit timid or reserved, lifted up my beanie and turned me so she could look at—no, examine—the right side of my head. All at once, I felt myself going pale.

  I believed Dahlia was probably a woman who’d taken plenty of baths with boys in her life.

  I saw Bosten beginning to tense up, look defensive. Neither one of us was happy to be there, anyway.

  As I swiped at my hat to pull it back down, Dahlia said, “Did you get into a fight with a grizzly bear or something?”

  She smiled at me, and her fingers stroked the side of my head like there was nothing at all wrong with her doing that.

  Finally, I squirmed myself away from Aunt Dahlia’s grasp.

  “I was born that way.”

  I felt dirty and embarrassed.

  Ugly.

  I pulled the hat back down as low as it could go, so it completely covered my ear.

  “I never knew that,” she said, and her voice was filled with a kind of joy and wonder. I looked at my brother. I was mad enough to walk back to Washington, and I wanted to leave right then.

  “He doesn’t like for people to touch him,” Bosten said.

  Aunt Dahlia looked hurt. “I apologize, Stark. That was rude of me. Can you hear all right?”

  She craned her head around to my normal side. I wanted to die.

  “I can hear things,” I said. “And they call me Stick, by the way.”

  “Oh.”

  I wanted to let her know, clearly, that I was not planning on making anything easy for her after the greeting she’d just given me.

  I wished I were back at Point No Point, at Emily’s house.

  Aunt Dahlia put her hand on my shoulder, soothingly. “There’s so many things I didn’t know.”

  “We’re all real good at keeping secrets,” I said.

  * * *

  She drove us, in a 1968 Dodge Dart, north to her home on the beach. Bosten and I both wanted to sit in the backseat, but Dahlia said she thought that was creepy, and made us stay up front, next to her. I sat in the middle, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to hear Bosten very well.

  I had the feeling he wasn’t in a talkative mood, anyway. He’d hardly said anything at all to me on the flight down, and I knew he was still hurting and worried about Paul Buckley.

  “Do you know,” she said, “that I met your brother when he was, oh, two years old, I think? But I’ve only ever seen you in a photograph, Stark.”

  “Stick.”

  “Do you mind if I call you Stark? It’s a handsome name. There is something cruel, I think, in calling you the other one.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t care what you call me.”

  “Good then!” Dahlia slapped my knee playfully. “Stark it shall be!”

  * * *

  Dahlia’s house was a white and green, flat-roofed bungalow built right on the sand, with single-sided walls and no attic. It looked like it could blow away in a storm, and I wondered how she ever kept warm in it during wintertime.

  We dropped our bags inside the door, and Dahlia pointed to a room at the back of the house. “That’s you boys’ bedroom. Here. Let me show you the place.”

  There were only two bedrooms with a single bathroom between them; a living room with windows that faced out onto the ocean and a rock jetty in front of the house; and a long, wide kitchen with a clay-tiled floor in the back. Her property was fenced, all the way around, with rotten, gapped cedar that tilted and leaned in the wind, and the yards were nothing more than sand hills and tufts of native grasses.

  It was the exact opposite of Washington.

  We put our stuff into our room. It was sunny an
d light, and I realized that every window in the house was wide-open, still the place wasn’t cold at all.

  Dahlia stood behind us, watching.

  There was only one queen-size bed in our room.

  Bosten still hadn’t said anything.

  “If it bothers you to share a bed, one of you can sleep on the couch in the living room,” Dahlia said. “The place is small, as you can see.”

  “I don’t care,” I said.

  Dahlia sighed. I knew I wasn’t being very nice to her.

  Bosten sat on the bed.

  “Do you have any trunks?” she asked. “Boys in California don’t dress all tucked-in and buttoned-up like you boys do.”

  “It’s how we dress at our house,” Bosten said.

  “Well. Then I have an idea. Let’s go to Ventura and pick you out some beach clothes, so you look like you belong here.”

  I looked at Bosten.

  He shrugged.

  I guessed it was okay.

  And, on the way out the door, Dahlia said, “And you really should take off that wool cap, Stark. This is the beach, after all.”

  Something about her made me begin to feel it was okay.

  I left my Steelers cap sitting on the bed, and Aunt Dahlia drove us up the beach to a city called Ventura.

  * * *

  She bought us some new clothes and took Bosten and me out to a place called Sal’s for Mexican food, which neither of us had ever tasted before. It was really good. And I didn’t want to, but by the time we came back to her house that evening, I was starting to like Aunt Dahlia.

  Bosten was, too.

  We’d stuffed our Washington clothes into shopping bags and wore our new stuff—baggy shorts, Adidas sneakers, and colored T-shirts (actually colored, and not white, which we could wear without putting on anything else over them or under them)—for the rest of the day. And I felt particularly tough because Aunt Dahlia insisted on buying me a “Mr. Zogs Sex Wax” tee, explaining that all the boys on the beach wore them.

  It was like an unofficial uniform for teenage boys in the State of California, she said.

  I didn’t know what Sex Wax was, so I felt extremely uncomfortable when Dahlia waved the shirt like a flag in front of my eyes, in public, in a store where people could see us.

  Dahlia explained that Sex Wax was used to keep you from slipping off a surf board.

  So when she paid for the clothes, the guy at the counter of the surf shop gave me a plastic-wrapped chunk of Sex Wax for free, since I didn’t know what it was. I felt myself turning completely red, but that stuff smelled better, I think, than anything I’d ever smelled before in my life.