Spencer gets up and starts running. Alek’s voice comes to him as encouragement from another universe, cheering him on: “Spencer, go!” and Spencer locks eyes with the terrorist; then his vision narrows, his more extraneous senses leave him. He does not register sound at all, his peripheral vision collapses, and he can see nothing but a small part of the man he is charging, a square of fabric, and he aims for that.
He realizes that he is totally exposed.
There is no cover.
There is no other distraction for the shooter because everyone else is crouching.
He is a big, easy target. He is exposed for one second, two seconds, Here is where I die, three seconds, four seconds—the terrorist cocks the gun back again, lowers it at Spencer, and as Spencer pumps his legs, he hears with total, focused clarity the shooter pulling the trigger and the firing pin striking a bullet.
Then everything goes dark.
* * *
2.
GUNS WERE PERHAPS the only difference between Heidi and Joyce. Spencer had free rein to play with whatever kind of toy he wanted, and his mother had given in to the fact that her boys loved guns, because—well, boys love guns. She had to laugh at Heidi who, bless her, still grasped on to her misplaced hope that Alek and his siblings would grow up in a gun-free household. Good luck, Joyce thought. The two new surrogate sisters established boundaries to deal with the one part of parenting that caused friction. The trash cans between their two houses marked the demilitarized zone: no guns on Heidi’s side.
It was just a few years later that Joyce walked out to see Heidi, waiting in the driver’s seat of her SUV, while a commando team of camouflaged teenage paintballers piled into the back. She was overrun; she’d given up. Joyce couldn’t help herself. “Man, Heidi,” she yelled, “looking good with all that camo!”
Heidi looked out the window, and tried to suppress a smile. Then they both exploded with laughter.
By then Alek and Spencer had formed a kind of impromptu league of war games. They tipped over trash cans in the street and dove behind cars, they gathered neighborhood kids to serve as comrades, lined up on opposite ends of Woodknoll Way, and charged, pelting each other with so many airsoft pellets that the gutters ran neon yellow and green, as if the roads of northeast Sacramento had been drenched by psychedelic rain. Other kids wanted in. Soon there were five to a side, then ten, running kamikaze charges at each other from opposite ends of the street.
There was no strategy at first, then it was just that if you got hit you were out, but how could you prove someone got hit? Arguments broke out, so it grew more intense, then became refereed by a set of unwritten and eagerly disputed rules, veritable conventions at the summit of Woodknoll Way, where two dozen arguing kids hammered out the finer points of make-believe warfare, all in an attempt to even the scales and maintain some sense of fairness. This became especially necessary because Alek began bringing firepower other kids couldn’t compete with. One day he came out to fight with what Spencer figured must be a $150 replica Colt 1911 gas-blowback CO2-powered pistol. Alek could fire rounds at 350 feet per second, so the other kids were diving behind cars and tumbling into hedges while Alek strafed the neighborhood like a pint-sized Tony Montana. Order had to be restored. So they started dividing up teams according to quality of equipment. Alek would be paired with whomever the new kid was who wanted to play but only had some pissant little peashooter.
Down a few streets from the Stone-Skarlatos Forward Operating Base, there was a kind of nature reserve behind the Schweitzer school, where the teachers used to teach things like Albert Schweitzer’s philosophy of reverence for life and peace, but that the boys colonized for the purpose of intensifying their philosophy of reverence for imaginary war. Behind BMX bike platforms and half pipes recast as antitank obstacles blocking imaginary tanks from amphibious landings on an imaginary Omaha Beach, they put on masks and fired off paintballs by the bushel. Paintballs were expensive on an allowance, but better than airsoft because you couldn’t cheat as easily. You could spend less time arguing and more time fighting.
Spencer never got tired of it, and Alek didn’t either; they’d started a little insurgency in their leafy Sacramento suburb; they fought into the night. And Spencer tried to make those days stand still, because even then he had the sense that other forces were coming along to change their lives; powerful forces beyond their ability to control. Something big and hard to see and almost impossible to confront, stronger than just him, which he and Alek would try to weather together, but that would eventually drive them apart. At least for a time.
3.
SPENCER CHARGED.
He’d had enough; Everett was driving him crazy. Jerkface Everett, dumb idiot butthole Everett. Spencer’s brother was in his own uneven way trying to fill the man-sized hole in the family left by their father, but had no way of knowing what that should look like. Joyce saw her oldest son driven to torment Spencer and Kelly by what was fundamentally a good, pure instinct: to be a strong man in the house, an authority figure. It was just that it came out all wrong. He lorded over Spencer and Kelly, exercising authority by showing he could control them, not just physically but also emotionally. He knew what buttons to push, how to stoke the flames of rage in Spencer just right. Everett needled and needled, and then when Spencer was near exploding, Everett put on an impassive look like he hadn’t the slightest idea what poor little Spencer was so upset about. So one day when the kids were home alone and Everett was goading, Spencer finally exploded, running past the kitchen, putting his shoulder into Everett’s chest, and then to his own surprise, driving Everett back four steps, off his feet and into the wall—the wall cracked and they went tumbling right through it, the two boys collapsing into a giant water tank they hadn’t even known was back there.
A moment of confusion.
Oh, crap.
They scrambled to their feet and surveyed the damage to the wall: a hole approximately the size of two adolescent boys. A water tank peering back out at them.
They snapped to action. First Spencer called Alek. “Crap, Alek, put your stepdad on, we’re in so much trouble”
“He’s not here, Spence. He went to the station. He’s working.”
Spencer called the fire station. “Is Tom there?” An impossibly long time for Tom to pick up. “Tom! Sorry to bother you, sir, but please come right over. We need your help—we really screwed up.”
“Calm down, Spence. What’s the problem?”
“We . . . um . . . we broke the house.”
“You did what now?”
“Well, Everett mostly, he broke the house. “He . . .” Everett was speaking over him, trying to litigate Spencer’s assignation of blame, while Spencer waved at Everett’s face with his hand. “Please, Tom, you gotta come help us! We gotta fix the wall before Mom comes home!”
“Gosh, Spence! I’m sorry, bud, I’m still at work! Anyway the stores are all closed, we wouldn’t be able to get supplies.”
“No, no!”
“Don’t worry, just fess up to it. I’m sure it won’t be that big of a deal. Just be honest.”
Joyce arrived home two hours later. Everett met her out front, helped her out of her car, diverted her from the front door, and escorted her instead through the garage, into the laundry room, showing her the house like a peppy real estate agent. “And here we have the newly cleaned floor!” He showed her the whole house vacuumed, spit-polished, candles burning on the mantelpiece, ending the tour by the front door, where Spencer and his cousin were standing sentry, stately as palace guards. Chivalrous as you like . . . if a little awkwardly close to the wall.
“Well, will you just look at this house! To what do I owe this wonderful surprise?”
The candles flickered; Spencer looked at his big brother. Slowly, sheepishly, he stepped forward and revealed the hole.
The glow on her face disappeared. “Are you fricking serious?” She threw her hands in the air and started yelling, stormed around the house booming threats, ca
me back—“You’re gonna fix this!”—and then went to her room to calm down, leaving Spencer to wallow in the worst feeling possible: having disappointed his mom.
AS EVERETT LEFT SPENCER in elementary school and moved on to junior high, his nose for trouble began to concern Joyce. She heard about him getting pushed around at school, and more frightening still, about him pushing back. It wasn’t just boys being boys anymore; the boys were becoming men. Other kids were menacing Everett in the halls, drawing their thumbs across their throats when he walked by because he’d dared to shove one of them back. A gang of them came by her house one day before she got home, threatening Everett and goading Kelly, who came out of the house screaming in defense of her older brother, which only emasculated Everett and riled him up even more, pushing him closer to that place where boys do stupid things out of pride. Joyce started to worry about brawls happening at her house as much as in the halls of the school. Everett wasn’t backing down.
This school was doing bad things to Everett; it was not a safe place for a kid to learn. And even if Everett could handle himself, what about Spencer? Spencer was still small, still sensitive. Joyce was sick with worry about what would happen to her youngest when he moved on to junior high.
And bullying aside, the public school wasn’t handling Spencer right. Because Spencer was behind on reading, the teacher wanted to dose him up on drugs for ADD. Joyce confabbed with Heidi about it. It turned out the school was saying the same thing about Alek, because—and this was rich—Alek liked to look out the window in class. Joyce and Heidi agreed over coffee that it was unconscionable for teachers to try and medicate their kids.
When Joyce went to a parent-teacher conference and said she wasn’t about to put her kid on meds ( Just because you’re not very good at your job, she’d wanted to say), Spencer’s teacher told her, “Well if you don’t medicate him now, he’ll self-medicate later.”
That just about put her through the roof.
“You know, boys with single moms,” the teacher went on, “it’s just statistics, Ms. Eskel. Statistically they’re more likely to develop problems.”
Statistics? Joyce seethed. How dare this woman look down on her just because she was a single mom and her kid was a little behind? She lit up with a million things she wanted to say to this woman. You know what, she thought, my God is bigger than the world’s statistics, so I don’t really care what any of you say. You don’t get to talk to me like that. When she composed herself, she stood up and pronounced, matter-of-factly, “If you think I’m going to drug my child to make your job easier, you’re sorely mistaken.” The teacher rolled her eyes, and Joyce stormed out.
And that had been the last straw. Spencer needed a better place. He needed a place where there weren’t kids in the halls who might beat him to a pulp, no teachers who wanted to fill him up with chemicals. She needed a place where the adults had more control of their kids, and where he’d be protected, looked out for, maybe a place that provided some of the mentoring Spencer and Alek missed out on from being separated most of the time from their fathers. But private school was expensive. So she prayed. And when a close friend told her about a small Christian school, she knew she’d been given another miracle. The school was nearby, a five-minute drive, not even two miles from her house. How had she not known of it before? It was like it just appeared in her backyard. The school was inexpensive enough by private school standards that she might actually be able to afford it. Best of all, they had activities all the time. Evenings after school the kids would have constructive things to do and some supervision, and weekends too. The school would be like extra parents.
So it was agreed. Spencer and Alek would go to a new school. Their prayers had been answered.
It was almost too good to be true.
4.
AT FIRST, SPENCER TRIED to get along. He ran for school president. Alek served as his de facto campaign manager. They put their heads together and came up with a progressive platform of free burritos.
They designed a campaign poster that consisted of Spencer holding an M16 replica paintball gun in front of an American flag, wearing full camouflage and an Uncle Sam–style “I want you” frown.
Then, to make sure they remained true to their message, the two boys went to school in full camouflage. It was important to take the campaign seriously, because Spencer had big plans to change the world. “I will switch the Coke machines to Pepsi machines,” he said, “because Pepsi is more American!” But on the day the candidates were to address all the voters, his opponent read flawlessly from a beautifully written speech, and Spencer, rattled and nervous, mumbled through his campaign promises so quietly nobody heard a single thing he said. His big plans for more patriotic vending machines went unheard, whispered into his own chest, and the vote was not close. Spencer did not win.
His political ambitions crushed, Spencer’s hatred for the school grew. The place rubbed him the wrong way. They were too involved. The way they enveloped every part of his life was too much; he had gone from a fatherless home to a place with a dozen new fathers and mothers. It didn’t feel right, even though he didn’t quite know how to explain why it felt wrong. Spencer was small and unconfident, and the teachers felt off to him; they were unlike the teachers at his old school. He didn’t like going to church and school with the same people, under the same authority; it was the mixing of two worlds for which some separation felt natural. People were always watching. They were too interested in him, but seemed to be looking past him, through him, like he had some rotten thing inside he hadn’t known about but they were certain was there. When he bristled and pushed back they punished him, pulled him into the principal’s office and kept him there for hours, which felt like days, insulting his character, invoking God to reduce him to tears and assure him he was shaming the Lord, that he needed to conform because he was walking down a path toward sure damnation.
“They’re crazy, Mom. I’m telling you, they’re crazy, and you don’t care!” Spencer screamed, but Joyce didn’t believe it, or at least at first she didn’t want to believe it. She knew Spencer needed structure, and she didn’t exactly have a wealth of options. She was pinching pennies to make ends meet and keep the kids in private school; there was only one she could afford, and she couldn’t stomach sending Spencer back to be eaten up and spat out by the bigger kids in public school, while teachers pumped him full of prescription pills. She chalked it up to character building and hoped his attitude would change. Surely he’d soon see the value in it, finally begin to apply himself.
But all that happened was that he hated it more, and the bond between him and Alek, his one coconspirator, grew stronger. They both bucked under the authority of this strange place to whose faults both their mothers were blind. That was the only saving grace for Spencer: that Alek saw it too.
Alek was stalwart and dedicated in his apathy toward schoolwork. Alek made Spencer certain it wasn’t just him. It was those people at the school; they didn’t deserve to judge him, and it definitely didn’t have any right to tell him whether God was on his side or not. It felt like the two of them, Spencer and Alek, were together in the trenches of some strange kind of psychological warfare. And since it was just the two them who didn’t buy into it, the two latecomers, interlopers in this world that all the other students had attended since kindergarten, it was Spencer and Alek more than anyone who earned the ire of the school administration.
Alek responded in the way that was becoming his style. He checked out. He ignored them. He did what he wanted and didn’t let what they said affect him, which seemed to arouse their anger even more; but Spencer saw the way they treated Alek and seethed.
Battle lines were drawn.
5.
IF THE NEW SCHOOL WAS BECOMING a nightmare for Spencer, there was at least one silver lining. A black kid who came on a minority scholarship, brought in to pump up an anemic athletic program, because you could barely mount a team with only fifteen kids per class, unless you brought in a ringer.
Anthony Sadler would be the starting point guard on the basketball team as a freshman and the starting wide receiver on the (flag) football team, but he was the kind of kid who didn’t hide his frustration on the field. He cussed, he yelled at teammates, he found himself frequenting the principal’s office, which by then was a daily way station for Spencer and Alek. If the two boys from Woodknoll Way didn’t have much in common with the new kid from Rancho Cordova, they were at least familiar with frequent delinquency. That, they had in common. They went home at night to different parts of the city, but during the day they spent most of their time in the same office.
And there was something else about Anthony that made it seem like destiny that he would be brought into their friendship: his last name. Sadler, which came just before Skarlatos, which came just before Stone, all of which meant that every time the students had to line up in alphabetical order, Spencer was next to both of them. Their friendship was fortified by alphabetical happenstance.
It could not have been a worse coincidence for the school administration: the three most mischievous kids always assembled together.
For Spencer, it was exciting to have another outsider around. It was like a vestige of a bygone era, the glory days of public school. Spencer and Alek had been forced to hang out with a bunch of kids who’d fully bought into this system and knew nothing else. In Anthony, there was finally another normal person. And he knew cool stuff. He knew how to dress, what kind of sneakers to wear. How to sag your pants, how to wear your T-shirt two sizes too big. The boys from Woodknoll Way were still going to school in camouflage because they thought that was cool. From Anthony they learned that it (emphatically) was not. And Anthony cussed all the time. That’s what you did in public school, he told Spencer, did you forget? He did it in sports; he did it for no reason. He said he was trying to scale back, but it was like unlearning a language, and that was refreshing as well; Spencer and Alek cussed too, and whenever an f-bomb slipped out their classmates looked like they’d been slapped in the face. With Anthony, Spencer could talk about normal stuff, in his normal way. It was a bond forged in four-letter words.
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