Stick

by Andrew Smith

  I shook my head and swallowed.

  Willie started chopping the coke, finer and finer, with his razor blade. It made an interesting sound, the crispness of the granules, the high-pitched whine of the blade against the glass as Willie scraped the powder into a perfect pile.

  I sat down on the carpet with my hands behind me and my knees bent.

  “You want to try some, kid?” Willie asked.

  I felt my eyes get wide. I shook my head. I thought that stuff killed people, and here were these two grown men doing it right in front of me like they were sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows or something.

  “What’s it do to you?”

  Brock said, “It makes you feel new. Give it a shot, punk.”

  I didn’t want to feel new.

  At fourteen, I was tired of feeling new.

  “No thanks. I really don’t do anything.”

  “I bet you do a few things.” Brock said, “Especially when no one’s looking.” Then he and Willie both laughed, like they knew something about me that I didn’t. It made me feel a little creepy.

  Willie ran the blade out across the glass and separated a wide white line of coke from the pile. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out the twenty I’d just given him. He rolled the bill up into a tube and offered it to Brock.

  I guess cocaine manners prescribed that Brock was obliged to say a silent “after you” to Willie, just by waving his hand graciously, almost with a religious weight to the motion. Willie didn’t protest, anyway. I had never seen anything like it. It fascinated me and terrified me, all at the same time. But here I was, floating on the water.

  Helpless.

  So what else could I do?

  I watched.

  Willie put one end of my twenty into his nostril, plugged the other side with a straightened index finger, and snorted half the line right up into his nose. He closed his eyes, sniffed in again, and looked at me with a strange and pleased expression on his face. Then he finished it off through the other nostril.

  They took turns.

  Brock and Willie did the same thing, over and over, through two packets of Brock’s coke. They kept staring at me, too, which made me feel like I was in the wrong place, because all I did was watch them as though it was some kind of movie.

  By the time they had emptied the first six-pack of beer, Willie licked his finger and ran it over the surface of the table. He was sweating. So was Brock. I thought it was cold in the houseboat.

  I got up and turned the record over.

  I watched as Willie rubbed his finger all around on his gums, the way you’d brush your teeth if you didn’t have a toothbrush.

  I realized I didn’t bring my toothbrush with me when I left home.

  Willie made his fingertip white with the cocaine again. Just when I turned around from his record player, he stood up and came over to me. Willie put one hand behind my head, the way you’d hold a girl if you were going to make out with her, and before I could do anything about it, he began pushing his finger into my mouth.

  Brock sat on the couch, laughing. “Oh yeah! Kid’s first coke!”

  I twisted away from Willie, but it was too late. His finger swiped all around inside my mouth. I thought about biting him, but I was too scared.

  It tasted like poison.

  It tasted like something you’d use to clean up spilled paint.

  I shoved Willie back.

  “What the fuck, Willie? What the fuck are you doing?”

  And already my mouth felt like it was detaching from my face.

  Willie laughed. “That’s good shit, isn’t it, kid?”

  Brock laughed. “Make him do a line! Let’s hold him down and make him do it!”

  I didn’t know what to do. My heart was racing, and I honestly thought I was going to die. But part of my head was telling me that I’d just watched these two idiots snort up a sandbox full of this stuff and they weren’t dead yet.

  “Leave me the fuck alone! Why the fuck did you do that?”

  I spit on Willie’s floor, tried to get all that crap out of my mouth, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  As Willie and Brock laughed uncontrollably, I stormed past them into Willie’s room and slammed the door behind me.

  * * *

  I heard them laughing at me in the other room.

  I sat on the edge of Willie’s bed

  with my face in my hands.

  My head was on fire with words.

  I had to slow myself down.

  I had to slow

  myself

  down.

  * * *

  They kept laughing.

  Someone changed the music.

  I heard Brock calling me a pussy faggot.

  He told Willie

  to make me come out there and suck their dicks.

  Willie said no.

  Brock said he was going to

  come in the room then and force me to do it.

  He said the kid should pay us for letting him stay here.

  Willie said leave the kid alone, he’s messed up.

  Then there was pounding on the houseboat’s door.

  I heard more voices.

  More men outside in Willie’s living room.

  This was Willie’s party.

  Laughing.

  Music.

  I just sat there.

  My heart was beating so hard I thought it would

  break my ribs.

  I wanted to leave, but there was no way out.

  I wanted to leave.

  I didn’t move.

  The noise of the party grew and grew.

  Maybe an hour later

  maybe it was just a minute

  a minute when my heart beat an hour of life away

  they began fighting about something.

  The old man opened my door.

  Smoke followed him in.

  Then he closed the door and it was dark.

  He said, boy, take off your shirt.

  I said no.

  He said you got to pay for staying here.

  I said Willie told me I didn’t have to.

  Brock said fuck Willie.

  He grabbed me and threw me down on the floor.

  He pulled Bosten’s wallet out of my pocket.

  He took everything I had in there.

  The old man said one way or another you’re paying.

  I said I need that money to get to California.

  He said when you run out of money

  you can start giving five-dollar blowjobs, I guess.

  Want to make some money, kid?

  I was crying.

  I said fuck you

  and he left.

  Not long after that, someone started shooting

  in the living room.

  There were five gunshots.

  I did the math.

  Then it was as quiet as death.

  SUTTON

  I had to leave.

  I waited until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  I was shaking so hard it made me sick.

  And sometime during the wait, I desperately needed to pee, so I just did it in the corner of Willie’s bedroom. It made a thick sound in the carpet where it pooled up, and I could feel its warmth and smell it. It smelled like the locker room after Mr. Lloyd’s gym class.

  I took a deep breath and turned the doorknob. It didn’t make a sound, but how would I know, anyway? My pulse was a roaring tornado trapped inside my head. I pulled open the door.

  The first thing that hit me was the cold. The front door of the houseboat stood open.

  The glass table where Willie and Brock had done their coke was broken at one end. It looked like crystal teeth. There was a bullet hole in the center of it, too. Willie’s turntable spun around, but the arm had been flipped up. It pointed directly at the ceiling, like it was saying, “Look up there, kid.”

  And the room smelled like blood. Everyone knows what blood smells like; and when there’s a lot of it, it kind o
f makes you want to throw up.

  The old man who’d stolen my money was stretched out on the couch. It looked like he was sitting in a puddle of blood, and his eyes were frozen open, looking across the room, just watching the mute record that spun and spun on Willie’s turntable. I couldn’t see any mark on him, but there was this odd color under his skin; and even standing away, on the other side of the room where I was, I could almost feel how cold he was.

  If he still had my money, it would be in his back pocket, down somewhere in that pool of blood on the sofa cushion. I didn’t care how much money it was. I wasn’t going to touch that old man again.

  Willie was in the rental room, the one where I’d slept without paying the night before. I saw only his feet through the open doorway. He was facedown on the floor, missing a shoe, and had obviously stepped in blood with his white sock.

  It didn’t matter.

  I could tell by how still he was that Willie wasn’t going anywhere, either.

  I picked up my suitcase and left.

  * * *

  Outside, the air was wet and inescapably cold.

  Willie’s truck was gone.

  The houseboat and the river were perfectly quiet, perfectly dark.

  I followed the mud tracks back toward the highway, careful to keep my feet in the grass. I didn’t want to leave any footprints.

  Whoever did that must not have known I was in Willie’s room.

  Or maybe they knew it was just a little kid in there.

  That’s the only way I could explain why I was still breathing.

  Before I got to the highway, I hid beneath the pines and waited for a while. I thought, maybe the ones who did this were going to come back. As quietly as I could, I opened my suitcase. There was no way I’d be able to carry it all the way back to the gas station, but I knew there were ten dollars inside it. Ten dollars the old man didn’t steal from me. I took the money out and shoved it down into my front pocket. It made me think about Emily.

  I believed I would never be able to see her or Bosten again.

  Still, I couldn’t leave my suitcase behind. Someone would find it, and I’d get caught. I decided to carry it as far as I could, and then I’d come back for it after I got my Toyota from Willie’s gas station.

  I thought anyone in the world who knew I was staying there would think I had something to do with killing those men. Or Bosten did.

  All I knew for sure was that I never wanted to set eyes on that houseboat again.

  * * *

  By the time the sun came up and I’d turned off the headlights, I was passing through a place called Sutherlin. I was too tired to keep driving, and too scared to sleep. I scripted out with certainty the nightmares I’d have, even if I knew I was making them worse in my own mind: Willie, Brock, waiting in that room after the gunshots went off—another Saint Fillan’s room—and wondering if my brother was out here, anywhere; if he was even alive.

  When I’d gotten behind the wheel of my stolen car and started the engine, that’s when I felt like I was no longer Bosten. But I didn’t know who I was anymore, because everything about Stark McClellan was changed now.

  I reasoned that Willie saved my life. He may not have intended to, but if I hadn’t gotten as mad at him as I did, and then slammed myself inside that room, I most likely would have been out there with them when the shooting started. I guess, sometimes, things that seem like such a big deal take on a whole new shape when you turn around and look at them from a couple hundred miles away.

  Sutherlin was about a hundred and forty miles.

  There was still gas in the car, and California was getting closer.

  But I had to rest.

  I stopped at a small grocery store and bought one loaf of white bread and a jar of peanut butter. That was all I could live on for now, I decided. I had to use every cent of what was left to buy gas. I knew the money would not get me anywhere near where I wanted to be.

  Sitting in the parking lot, eating a sandwich the morning after I’d been on a boat where people were murdered, I tried to imagine where it was going to be that I would finally have to abandon the car and start walking.

  I climbed into the back of the Toyota and kicked off my shoes. I stretched my legs out over the front passenger seat.

  When I went to sleep, I didn’t have any dreams at all.

  * * *

  It happened just south of Fresno, California, the following morning.

  For maybe the last fifty miles, I kept my eyes more on the gas gauge than the road ahead of me. I knew it was coming.

  I had one dime in my pocket. It was my last safety net, I figured. I knew the Lohmans or Aunt Dahlia would accept a collect phone call from me if I ever gave in and decided to let that dime drop.

  But I was too scared to talk to them, too.

  After running out of gas up in Scappoose, I knew what would happen once the motor started to hiccup. I pushed in the clutch and let the car coast as far as it could. It made it into a gravel parking lot at a roadside rest stop that was divided into separate areas: one for cars and, across a grass median with restrooms and some sick-looking trees, another for long-haul trucks.

  That was it.

  Just like that.

  I can’t say that I was too disappointed. In some ways, I was relieved. Since I left Point No Point, running out of gas was the first thing I truly expected to happen to me that actually did happen. And looking back at things now, I think I was numb, or maybe in shock, after what I’d seen two nights before on the river outside of Scappoose. Every time my mind flashed back on images of the old man and Willie, lying in their own blood, I would shake my head quickly. I had been doing that so much the last two days, I was beginning to think I was going to develop an involuntary twitch.

  There was just one other car, parked nearer to the restrooms, with a family that stood outside and watched while their cocker spaniel made shit in the grass. Across the way was an idling black Kenworth eighteen-wheeler, hooked up to a trailer, painted all over with bouncing, smiling vegetables, that said TEIXIERA FARMS down the side.

  By Washington standards, it was ungodly hot here. I rolled down both windows and sat in the car, just thinking about things, watching the little stub-tailed dog spin in a tight circle while he dropped off his turds.

  Maybe five minutes later, the family packed up their cocker spaniel and pulled back out onto the highway. I watched them without making it look like I was watching them. Then I got out of the car and took my suitcase out from the trunk. I changed into the shorts and Sex Wax T-shirt Aunt Dahlia bought for me. I wore the cap Emily gave me. I emptied just about everything I had out of the suitcase, leaving only enough room to take one complete change of clothes for me, one for Bosten, my peanut butter and white bread, and our wetsuits.

  I thought, maybe I was the only guy in the entire state of California who packed a wetsuit in his suitcase.

  I put the case down next to the bumper, then I sat behind the wheel and penciled a note on the paper grocery sack my food came in.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  My name is Stark McClellan. I am from Point No Point in Kitsap County, Washington. I have run away from home and am traveling using my brother’s identification. His name is Bosten McClellan. Two days ago, I was in a houseboat on the bay in Scappoose, Oregon, when two men were murdered. One of them was named Willie Purcell, and the other I only knew by his first name, which was Brock. I was hiding in a room when it happened, and I did not see who did the shooting. But when I came out, Willie’s truck had been stolen, too. My brother, Bosten, didn’t have anything to do with it.

  Stark McClellan

  I folded the sack carefully and put it inside the glove box. Then I took a deep breath, pulled the note back out, balled it up, and walked over to a garbage can. I dropped the wadded sack into the trash.

  I went back to the Toyota for the last time. I rolled up the windows and locked the doors. Then I grabbed my suitcase and started walking.

  Everything
seems bigger, farther away, slowed down, when you walk alongside a road. It felt like it took me fifteen minutes just to get halfway down the ramp onto the main highway. By then, the big truck was leaving the rest stop, too. It shuddered as it rolled over the gravel ramp.

  The truck stopped. The driver dangled his arm from the window and leaned his face out.

  “Is that your car back there?”

  I looked up at him, squinting. He was black. There were only two black kids at my school in Washington. I don’t think that I’d ever talked to a black grown-up in my life.

  “Not anymore.”

  He hitched a thumb at my suitcase. “Plan on catching a bus or something?”

  I didn’t have a plan at all.

  “I am out of gas and out of money.”

  “Not going to win any girlfriends like that,” he said. The driver looked down the road, checked his mirrors. I watched him. He had perfectly rounded black hair and a mustache that curled down toward his chin. “So. Where are you going?”

  “Cal—” I caught myself being stupid again. “I’m trying to get to a place called Oxnard.”

  “That’s a good walk. I’m heading to Long Beach. If you want, you can ride with me to Los Angeles. It’s maybe another four or five hours. Maybe your folks from Oxnard can come pick you up in L.A.”

  I looked down the road.

  Then I glanced up at the driver one more time.

  I walked around the nose of his truck and he pushed open the passenger-side door.

  I had a hard time fitting my legs into the truck. The floor in front of the passenger seat was cluttered with cans of soda, some extra shoes, and sacks of food and magazines. I noticed there wasn’t a Penthouse, though.

  Well, at least not one I could see.

  When I climbed up into the cab, the driver began grabbing what he could reach from where he sat, throwing it back into the small room behind the seats. There was a cot back there and even a television set strapped against the wall.

  I had never seen the inside of a truck before. I thought you could probably live here forever if you needed to.

  “Here.” He grabbed my suitcase and slid it inside an open plastic locker in back of my seat.

  I sat down.

  The man revved the motor and slammed the gear shifter upward.

  “You want a Coke or something? Just help yourself.”