Project X

10

He hasn’t given up on Matthew Sfikas. I can see his brain going, trying to figure something out. When I tell him again about my idea about waiting he goes, “I’ll kick his ass now, and we can shoot him later.”

“How are you going to kick anybody’s ass with two fingers like that?” I want to know.

“I’ll use a shovel,” he goes. “I’ll use a rake.”

“You can’t use a shovel,” I go. “You can’t use a rake.”

“What do you care?” he goes. “I’ll use a chain saw if I want.”

He won’t, though.

“So let’s find him then,” I go. “Bring your rake.”

“You think I won’t?” he asks.

But then we end up just sitting in his room, and he’s in a bad mood for the rest of the day.

“Why don’t you put bug powder in his milk?” I go. I’m looking at the booklet that comes with his Great Speeches CD. Something knocks me to the floor on my face, and he’s jumping up and down on my back with his knees.

I scream for him to quit it when I can, but he doesn’t and finally I’m able to twist around and get him on the side of the head with my fist. Once he’s off I keep using my right hand and he blocks it with his arm but not completely because he’s trying to protect his finger. He straight-arms me in the mouth with the heel of his palm. Then we both go nuts.

His mom runs upstairs and separates us. It takes her some time, and she ends up with a scratched face. We’re screaming at each other and she’s screaming at us. One of his fingers is bleeding through the bandage.

“Fucking maggot,” he keeps screaming.

“Suck me,” I scream back.

“Stop it, both of you,” his mom screams. We still won’t stop trying to beat on each other, so finally she drags me downstairs by the collar. “Don’t come back here, you fuck,” he yells down the stairs. “Fuck you,” I yell back up. “Stop it,” his mom yells, shaking me so hard that she almost breaks my neck. She shoves me out onto the driveway and slams the back door.

She calls my parents while I’m walking home.

“I hear you and the Nightrider thought you were in the Thunderdome,” my dad says when I walk in the door.

“I don’t know what that means,” I go.

“Are you all right?” my mom wants to know. I look in the mirror in the bathroom. My teeth are bloody and there’s dried blood on my chin and some on my shirt. My back hurts where he was jumping on it. My lip’s cut up again. Otherwise I’m fine. I feel like I’m going to cry, but that’s out of frustration.

“It’s all right,” my mom says when she sees my face once I finally come back out of the bathroom. I stand there in the middle of the kitchen like I got a load in my pants. My dad knows enough not to say anything.

“Want me to help you with your face?” she goes.

“Yeah,” I go. And start crying.

“It’s okay,” she goes. She comes over and puts her arms around me.

“Fucking asshole,” I go, barely able to understand myself. I hang on to her for a minute.

“Hey,” my dad says, about the language. My mom tells him to shush. Gus is up in their bedroom watching videos and misses the whole thing.

I don’t call Flake or hear from him for a week. He wanders by in the hall a few times at school. I get up in the morning, get my stuff together and head for the bus. I come home, go up to my room and dump my stuff on the floor. I do homework. I do better than the teacher expected on a social studies quiz.

My dad asks a few days into this if I want to play catch. The next night my mom calls up the stairs that there’s a special on about naval firepower.

After I’m supposed to be asleep I walk around the house without turning on the lights. I take the Bible out of their downstairs bookcase and read it in the afternoons. I think about copying down parts but never get around to it. I like Leviticus and Revelations. I look at the pictures in African Predators. There’s one of a leopard that got ahold of a baboon. The baboon’s face is being squeezed shut by the bite.

“So now you’re not eating?” my dad asks after a while.

Gus comes into my room and sits with me sometimes, then goes out again.

“Can I tell you something?” my dad says, another time, at dinner.

“No,” I go.

Finally, after a week and a half, I call Flake’s house. The phone rings and rings and no one picks up.

In the mornings when I look in the mirror to comb my hair it looks like I have two black eyes.

My dad sits there while I have breakfast. He asks how I’m sleeping. I tell him I have no idea.

Hermie starts hanging out with me before the homeroom bell rings in the morning. He doesn’t say anything about Flake. At first he doesn’t say much at all.

“Listen, you gotta help me get back at Budzinski,” he finally goes.

“Who is this kid?” I go.

He points across the playground but there’s like forty kids where he’s pointing.

It’s about the third day he’s been hanging around, and we’re both watching other kids have fun. A bunch of them are seeing how many it takes to clog the tunnel slide for the grammar school. They’re falling out and getting stuck and everybody’s screaming.

He scratches his back through his SCREW THE SYSTEM shirt.

“You ever wash that?” I ask him.

“My mom does,” he goes. “You ever wash those?” he says about my pants.

Near the window where Flake and I broke in I can see the girl who was crying three straight days last week. She’s creeping around trying to sneak up on a pigeon. The pigeon keeps walking just out of her reach.

“You don’t look so good,” he goes. I make a face and he drops the subject.

Two other girls are standing there making fun of the one who’s creeping around after the pigeon. Every so often she looks over when she doesn’t think they’re looking. She’s the kind of girl who follows along with all the conversations and smiles whenever she gets noticed. The sun comes out and the whole playground gets warmer.

“So would you help me?” he goes.

“Help you what?” I go.

“With Budzinski,” he goes.

“I’m not gonna help you beat up some sixth-grader,” I tell him.

“I don’t want you to help beat him up,” he goes. “I just need help with a plan.”

“A plan,” I go. “Just hide behind a bush and hit him with a stick.”

“That’s a plan?” Hermie goes.

“He’s a sixth-grader,” I go. “Take his candy. Push him down in the sandbox.”

This pisses him off so much he shuts up for a while.

“I went after him with a stick,” he finally goes.

“You went after him with a stick?” I ask him.

“He took it away and hit me with it.” He looks ashamed.

This is what my life has come down to. I’m talking to sixth-graders about who beat who with a stick.

Hermie’s tearing up, just thinking about it.

“Hey, it happens,” I tell him.

“No it doesn’t,” he goes. “Not to anyone else.”

“I get my ass kicked all the time,” I tell him. “Are you kidding?”

He wipes his face and looks at his feet. He has an expression like getting compared to me isn’t a help.

The bell rings for homeroom.

“Somebody’s gotta do something,” he goes as we stand up and head inside. We get shoved aside by everybody who’s more anxious than we are to get in.

“I’m gonna get the gun,” he tells me the next day before homeroom. “Let’s see what he does then.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“Let’s see what he does then,” he goes.

“What, you’re gonna get your dad’s gun and shoot him?” I go. I have this whirling in my stomach. I even put my hand on it.

“They’ll know they can’t fuck with me,” he goes.

“Of course they can fuck with you,” I go. “You’re like two feet tall.”

He looks out over the playground like it’d be hard to stop with just Budzinski.

“Don’t talk stupid,” I tell him. I don’t know what else to say.

“I’m not talking stupid,” he goes.

“It sure sounds like it,” I tell him.

“No it doesn’t,” he goes.

Two fat girls are two steps down from us on the front stairs. “Which is better, an A or an A minus?” one goes.

“What’re you talking about?” the other one goes.

“I got this,” Hermie tells me. He shows me a knife inside his backpack. It’s one of those knives you use to clean fish.

“What are you doing?” I go. “Are you fucking nuts?” He puts the knife down at the bottom of his pack and pulls out one of his school folders. “Are you fucking nuts?” I ask him again. “Bringing that to school?”

He starts pulling papers out of the folder, looking for something, spreading everything out so he can see. Some slide down the steps.

I stop one that’s about to blow away. “You can’t just get a gun,” I tell him.

He keeps looking for whatever it is. He’s not making much progress.

“You hear me?” I ask him.

“Leave me alone,” he goes. He’s crying again. Then he slips and the whole folder dumps open. Assignments and worksheets slide down the cement. They’re filled with X’s and red marks. The homeroom bell rings. He’s scrambling around trying to get everything before the stampede reaches the stairs. I help with some papers right around me. A kid who’s running past doesn’t see him bending down and decks him. They both go flying. It’s a big hit with the kids who have a view of it.

I help him up and he shakes loose and gets the rest of his papers and carries them into the building in a mess under his arm.

He doesn’t show up the next day once I’m off the bus and hanging around. That night it occurs to me while I’m patrolling the house that we could be in real trouble if this nimrod takes out a gun and waves it around at school. That could be the end of our plan. Though I don’t even know if our plan is still on. This occurs to me while I’m sitting in the living room in the dark watching cars drive by down the street.

I get like one hour’s sleep. The next morning I circle the playground, but Hermie’s not there and neither is Flake.

In English we all have to sign a poster that covers a whole cabinet wall and says “English 8: In Our Own Words.” The last four sentences at the bottom are

I want to succeed in high school, but I know it will be a challenge.

I am not a loser. (Somebody’s already crossed out the not.)

I will be a nobody to most and a somebody to a few.

In 8th grade, I am a nervous student.

I find a clear spot and sign “F.U. Verymuch” so only I can read it. Bethany, the girl Flake was talking about, comes up to me after class in the hall and hands me a folded piece of pink paper. When she lifts her hand her wristwatch always slides down practically to her elbow. She’s carrying a zebra-skin pencil case.

“What’s this?” I go.

“It’s for you,” she says, and her friends watch and giggle.

I read it on the way to math.

I’m pissed that I was excited there for a minute because a girl was giving me a note. I almost ball the thing up and throw it away, but I don’t.

Bethany and her friends follow me while I’m reading. It makes me paranoid. I spend two periods thinking about what to do with it. Finally, since I’m alone again at lunch, I fill it out. I write “with” after “hot sex” and draw an arrow to “fruit.” I write “with” after “good talks” and draw an arrow to “big gloppy desserts.” I draw an arrow from “girls” to “$$$$$$$,” and just leave “boys” and “good friends” blank.

I give it back to her when I go to bus my tray. In line I can see her and her friends leaning over it like it’s a treasure map.

“You are so weird,” she says to me later in the hall.

In seventh period the teacher’s late and all the guys sitting around me are talking about hard-ons.

After school when I get home I call Flake again. This time he answers the phone.

“We got a problem,” I tell him after he says hello. He hangs up.

I look at the phone and beat on the cradle part of it with the receiver.

“What’s going on down there?” my mom wants to know. She’s up in Gus’s room getting him up from his nap.

I wait another day before calling again. “Don’t hang up, fuckhead,” I say when he says hello. I don’t hear anything after that. “Hello?” I go.

“I’m still here,” he says.

“We got a problem,” I tell him.

“So I hear,” he goes.

“You already know?” I ask.

“You just told me,” he goes.

I’m quiet, thinking about hanging up myself.

“So what’s the problem?” he asks.

I imagine pulling the phone off the wall and beating it flat with the mallet my dad keeps in the basement. Living by myself for the rest of my life, and having no friends. “Our pal Hermie says he’s getting a gun to go after that kid he hates,” I go.

Flake laughs.

“I don’t think he’s just bullshitting,” I tell him. It sounds like I just wanted an excuse to call, which pisses me off more than it should. “He had a knife in his pack on Thursday,” I add.

“What kind of knife?” Flake wants to know.

“A big one,” I go. “The kind you use on fish.”

“On fish?” he says.

“His dad does have a gun,” I tell him. “And Dipstick knows where it is. And he’s a crazy fuck.”

“Well, that’s true,” Flake admits.

“I’m thinking he’d screw it up for us,” I tell him.

Flake’s quiet, thinking about it.

“Hello?” I go.

“Maybe he would,” he goes. “That’s certainly the kind of shit that always happens to us,” he adds after a minute.

“So?” I go.

“So what’d you tell him?” he asks.

“I told him not to talk stupid,” I go.

He sneezes. “What else you tell him?” he asks. I hear him wiping his nose.

“I told him he couldn’t just get a gun,” I go.

My mom comes into my room and sits down. No knock, nothing. I wave her out. She shakes her head. “We have to talk,” she whispers, exaggerating her mouth movements, I guess so I can read her lips.

“What’d he say?” Flake wants to know.

“He didn’t say anything,” I tell him.

“Hmm,” he goes.

“Who’re you talking to?” my mom mouths.

“I think we gotta talk to him,” I go.

“I’ll talk with him, all right,” Flake goes.

“I gotta go,” I tell him.

“Think he’d really do it?” he asks.

“I gotta go,” I tell him again.

“What’s the matter?” he goes.

“Is that Flake?” my mom asks in a regular voice.

“Is that your mother?” Flake goes.

“Yeah,” I go, to both of them.

“She been listening this whole time?” he asks.

“No,” I tell him.

“Jesus Christ,” he goes, like there’s no end to my stupidity. “Call me back, asshole.” He hangs up.

It turns out my mom wants to talk about my dad. She’s worried about him because he’s worried about me.

I listen to her outline the problem for a while. The whole thing depresses me.

“You have anything to contribute?” she finally asks.

I shrug, which is not what she was looking for. She gives me a look and tells me more stuff about how sad he’s been. He hasn’t been sleeping either, or working on his book.

“I’m sorry about that,” I tell her. Because I am.

“I realize it feels like you have a lot to deal with right now,” she goes.

Feels like? I think: I shouldn’t get mad.

She says she has a proposal. The family should go somewhere for Thanksgiving, somewhere cool. Have Thanksgiving somewhere else, for once.

“Does that sound like a good idea?” she wants to know. She pulls her hair back behind her head and holds it tight with both hands. She doesn’t let go.

“It sounds good,” I tell her. She asks where we should go.

I don’t have a lot of ideas right there and then.

“Where would you like to go?” she asks. “Wherever it is, it’d be nice to surprise your dad.” She has this look on her face like she’s carrying something that already spilled.

“The beach,” I tell her. “Somewhere warm.” I have no idea where that came from.

“The beach,” she says, surprised. I can see her already thinking about it. “All right, the beach.”

I’m still amazed by what comes out of my mouth sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. By Thanksgiving, everything’ll have changed.

“We had a good talk,” I hear her tell my dad. They’re downstairs with the TV on, and she keeps her voice low.

“Remember the summer we went to Six Flags?” Flake says, instead of hello, when he calls back. “My parents took us?”

“Yep,” I go. It’s eleven o’clock on a school night, and I’m dripping. I was taking a shower because I was bored. I can’t decide whether to wash the rest of the soap off or consider the shower over.

Toward the end of the day we got stuck on the Ferris wheel about twenty feet off the ground. It just stopped turning. Some guys came to work on it below us. We were up there so long the sun started to go down. We could see some girls from our grade, including Bethany, in the car across from us. Flake had had a shitload to drink and had to piss superbad. He waited as long as he could and then grabbed a big cup on the floor of the car and let go. The cup filled up and he was still pissing. “Take it, take it,” he said to me. “No fucking way,” I said back and finally he had to stand up, still pissing, and throw the cup. It got all over both of us. The people in the car below us screamed. The guys working on the Ferris wheel yelled up at us that they were going to kill us once they got us down. The girls told everybody they ever knew once we got back, and then those people told everybody they ever knew.

“Why you bringing that up now?” I go.

My dad comes up the stairs and looks at me in the hall. He turns around and goes back down. “Your son’s standing around balls naked dripping on the carpet,” I hear him tell my mom.

“What were we, in fifth grade?” Flake asks. “I always think about that day.”

“Why?” I go. I can think of lots of days that were equally bad.

“I don’t know,” he goes. “I don’t know what it is about it.”

My mom comes to the bottom of the stairs and looks at me for a while. “Your brother’s sleeping,” she tells me.

I don’t know why I’m still in the hall. I go into my bedroom and shut the door.

She comes upstairs and opens the door a crack. “Get something on,” she says. “You’re gonna catch pneumonia.”

“Is it because Bethany was there?” I ask Flake.

“Nah,” he goes. It sounds like it hadn’t occurred to him.

“Get something on,” my mom goes.

“Hey, did Bethany give you something today?” I ask. “Like a note?”

“No,” he goes.

“Yesterday?” I go.

“No,” he goes.

He doesn’t ask what I’m talking about.

My mom opens the door wider and comes in and drags a sweatshirt out of my dresser and pulls it over my head. I have to switch hands with the phone when she stuffs my arms in the sleeves. Then she goes downstairs and leaves me there, in a sweatshirt and no underpants.

The next morning Flake finds me before I’m even completely off the bus. “Let’s go talk with Tiny Tot,” he says.

The sixth-graders hanging around the baseball backstop see us coming and keep an eye on us. Hermie’s not around and we don’t feel like asking anybody where he is. Flake heads off to the front of the building and sure enough, we find him there in a tree.

“What’s up, Screw the System?” Flake calls up to him.

“Nothing,” Hermie says. He’s trying for nonchalant but he’s happy and worried that we came looking for him.

This was a bad move, I realize, standing there. Now whenever he wants our attention he’ll go back to the gun thing. I put my hands in my pockets and there’s a hole I never noticed. Two fingers go through to my leg.

Most of the leaves are still on the tree so when he moves his expression’s hard to see. He’s trying to climb but you can hear his sneakers slipping on the bark. Little twigs and dead leaves float down like snowflakes.

“Are those lights on your sneakers?” Flake goes.

Hermie doesn’t answer him.

“Hear you’re still having trouble with that kid,” Flake goes.

“What kid?” Hermie says.

“You want our help or not?” Flake asks him.

“What’re you going to do?” Hermie asks him back.

I look at Flake. I’m a little curious myself.

“We’ll deal with it,” Flake goes.

There’s a big slipping sound and Hermie falls a few feet. A couple heavy branches swing a little. “Ow,” he goes. I can see him rubbing something. “Why’re you guys helping me?” he asks.

“That’s what we do,” Flake goes. He holds up both his bandaged fingers to the school. “We help people.”

Hermie laughs.

“I say something funny?” Flake goes.

“Yeah,” Hermie says.

“So point him out to us,” Flake goes.

“What’re you going to do, poke him in the eye with your bandage?” I ask. He gives me a look.

“I hurt my butt,” Hermie complains.

“That’s the bell,” Flake goes, though I didn’t hear it. “Show us who this kid is after school.”

“I think I broke my butt,” Hermie says.

Flake jogs to the front doors and I follow him. “I know how that feels,” I call back to Hermie.

“Hey, help me get down,” Hermie shouts, right before the doors shut behind us.

Flake and I get a chance to talk between second and third periods.

“We gotta only talk about the kid,” Flake goes. “If we talk about the gun, it’ll make it a big deal.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I tell him. He nods. “But we can’t go beating up sixth-graders,” I tell him. He nods again, like he thought of that, too.

He’s kind of a hero for the rest of the day because word gets out that when they took the class picture for the eighth grade, homeroom by homeroom on the bleachers in the gym, at the last minute he held up both his bandaged fingers. Everybody’s figuring it’ll come out in the photos. Everybody’s coming up to him in the halls and congratulating him, even ninth-graders and assholes like Dickhead and Weensie. After school he’s in a really good mood.

“Hear you gave them the finger in the photos,” Hermie says when he finds us outside. The buses are starting to fill up.

“Yeah, whatever,” Flake goes. “So where is this kid?”

“Over here,” Hermie says, and leads us two buses over. He points to a kid sitting in the back window. He doesn’t try to hide that he’s pointing him out to us.

“Him?” Flake goes. The kid looks smaller than Hermie, if that’s possible. “I can barely see his head in the window.”

“I didn’t say he was a giant,” Hermie says, insulted. “I said he beats me up.”

Flake looks at me like somebody’s asking us to gang up on Gus. “We’re on the job,” he goes to Hermie. “Mr. Hermie’s sleeping well from tomorrow night on.”

“Herman,” Hermie tells him.

“Herman,” Flake tells him back.

“So listen,” Flake says to Budzinski once we get him alone. After we found his house we watched him shoot baskets with some of his tiny friends. They hacked around for an hour and a half and I think they made three baskets. They saw us watching. When the other kids finally left we walked over. Budzinski took one more sad hook shot and then put the basketball away and came out of the garage with a hammer.

“Feel like driving some nails?” Flake goes.

“What do you want?” Budzinski says.

“Can I see that?” I ask him, like I’ve never seen a hammer before. Budzinki hands it over.

So the three of us are standing in his driveway with me holding his hammer. Somebody looks out the window screen near the back door.

I hold up the hammer like that’s the reason we came over. “This is a beaut,” I tell him.

“So listen,” Flake goes.

“I’m listening,” Budzinski tells him.

They look at each other.

Flake makes this grin like he wants to pound the kid’s head in. “You know that kid Herman?” he asks.

Budzinski just looks at him.

“About your size?” Flake asks.

“Yeah,” Budzinski finally goes.

“He’s a friend of ours,” Flake tells him.

“Yeah?” Budzinski says. He sounds interested.

“Well, we watch out for him sometimes,” Flake goes. “He’s such a doofy little shit.”

“You got that right,” Budzinski says. He looks like he’s trying to decide whether or not to laugh at us. If he does Flake’ll take the hammer out of my hand and kill him right in his own driveway.

“He can be a pain in the ass sometimes,” Flake goes.

“You got that right, too,” Budzinski tells him.

“We were hoping you’d cut him some slack for the next few weeks,” Flake says.

“Why should I?” Budzinski goes.

“Because if you don’t we’ll kick your ass,” Flake tells him.

“I’ll kick your ass,” Budzinski tells him back.

The top of the kid’s head comes up to like Flake’s armpit. “Is the whole sixth grade fucking nuts?” Flake asks me.

“Get out of my yard,” Budzinski goes. “Mom!” he calls.

“What’s the matter?” his mother says from behind the screen in the window.

“Get outta my yard,” Budzinski goes again.

“We tried to ask you nice,” Flake tells him.

“I’m calling the police,” Budzinski’s mother says through the screen.

“Call the police,” Flake tells her. “Call the fucking National Guard.”

“Don’t you talk to me like that,” his mother says. She leaves the window and shows up at the back door. “What’s your name?”

“Ed Gein,” Flake tells her. “Tell the police Ed Gein was here and that he wants your son.”

“And what’s your name?” she says to me.

“Richard Speck,” I tell her.

“Gimme my hammer back,” Budzinski tells me.

I throw it into the yard.

“Asshole,” he goes.

“I’m dialing,” his mother says from inside the house.

The garbage cans at the end of the driveway are empty but Flake kicks them over anyway.

“That didn’t work out too well,” I tell him on the way home.

“Now he’s really gonna go after Hermie,” Flake says to himself.

I just keep walking. The hole in my pocket is bigger.

“Fucking cocksucking motherfucking dickbag dildo cuntsuckers,” Flake goes.

I don’t have much to say to that so I let it go. He makes the same point a few more times on the way home.

“We gotta move our thing up,” he finally says, right before I head off for my house.

“I know,” I go.

“We gotta pick a time,” he tells me.

“I know,” I go. My insides are screwed up thinking about it.

“Come over tomorrow night,” he goes.

“Yeah,” I go. And it feels like summer vacation was over just because somebody said so.