I tell this to Alicia over and over again, and finally she believes me. We bury Suki in the lot across from the railroad tracks and tell Alicia’s mom that Suki ran away. Alicia swears never to tell anyone, but she gives me The Look for the first time.
I don’t know why. It really was an accident, just like I told her.
What I never told her is how much I liked it.
Alicia and me are in my room doing our Spanish homework. I have to help her every Tuesday and Thursday after school because for some unknown reason this is the only class where I do better than her. I’m glad she’s here, in my room with me. I like it in my room. I’ve decorated the walls with more than thirty horror-movie posters, like The Thing and Phantom of the Opera and Mutant Nuclear Wasteheads from Hell.
“Tengo, tienes, tiene,” I say.
“I have, you have, he-she-you-have,” she says.
“Quiero, quieres, quiere,” I continue.
“This is boring,” she says and flops down on the bed to stare at the ceiling. Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street leers down at her, five silver knives flashing. “So’s this,” she says, pointing at Freddy. “Do you think you’ll ever outgrow this stuff?”
“Quiero, quieres, quiere,” I say again.
“Really, Will. You’re kind of obsessed with it. I think it’s sick.”
“I already have one madre,” I say. “Do you want to pass this test or not?”
“Fine,” she says, and sits up suddenly, rattling off the words. “Quiero, quieres, quiere, I want, you want, he-she-you wants.”
“Right!” I say. “Now: deseo, deseas, desea.”
“It’s... wait.”
“Okay,” I say.
“I’ll get it. I... no.”
“Keep trying,” I say.
“Look, I give up. What is it?”
“Never say die!” I say, and pose like I saw once in a picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware.
Alicia rolls her eyes and peeks at the workbook. “Hey,” she says, “it’s not even in this chapter!” She glares at me. I say nothing. “So what’s it mean, already?”
She looks so pretty sitting there that before I know it I push her down on the bed, pinning her shoulders with my hands. I am trying to kiss her, but she’s struggling to push me off, twisting her head around on the pillow to avoid my lips.
“Hey!” she says. “Cut it out!” She sounds more surprised than anything else.
I don’t let go. She fights harder. She’s pretty strong, but I’m stronger.
“Stop it!” she says, sounding scared this time. Then she rakes my cheek with her long, polished nails. My hands go up to my face and come away bloody. Alicia wriggles out from under me and stares at me, breathing hard. “What’s the matter with you?” she says. “Are you nuts?”
She grabs her books and runs to the door. Her face is pale, and she’s shaking. She looks madder than I’ve ever seen her.
“You better keep away from me,” she says. “If you ever come near me again, I swear I’ll call the cops. I swear!”
“Deseo is another word for I want” is the only thing I can think of to say. But she’s already down the stairs.
After she leaves, I sit in my room and think about doing this thing I do. I’ve done it so many times now that I don’t even have to think too hard about it. The secret is to cut off their air before they know what’s happening. A scarf is really good for that, or some string, because you can play with them first. They love to chase stuff like that around the room. They don’t even mind when you trail it over their necks, but you have to be able to loop it fast and yank hard. You have to do it fast, before they have a chance to scratch you. That’s really important.
Of course, you also have to be really careful to pick only strays. That way no one ever finds out. Especially Alicia.
I go downstairs to get my jacket.
It seems like all I have in my head lately is pictures of me and Alicia: me and Alicia collecting shells at the beach; me and Alicia with milk mustaches, eating chocolate chip cookies; me and Alicia in last year’s school play, she as Sleeping Beauty, me as the village shoemaker. I tried out for the prince, but Jason Silver got it. When he woke her with a kiss, she gave him this huge smile. I really admired her then. That’s when I first realized that she could be a great actress if she wanted.
Then there are those other pictures that make me feel kind of excited and ashamed at the same time. I try to make them finish fast; sometimes, though, they get stuck and stutter in my brain like those old black and white filmstrips they showed us last year in junior high schooclass="underline" “The Healthy Heart,” or “You’ve Entered Puberty!”
Yeah, right. Like it was some room you could just walk into and be turned into a different person.
I wish I were a different person. Maybe then Alicia would talk to me. She doesn’t call me up to help her do her novel. She walks down the hallways at school like I don’t exist, laughing with her stupid girlfriends and even talking to some of the guys. I want to tell her not to tell anyone, that I know what I did was wrong, and that I’ll never even think about it again, never. But whenever I get near her, she crosses her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes into evil little slits. And she turns away.
Jason Silver comes up to me in the locker room after gym, toweling off after his shower. He’s about six inches taller than me and has muscles. All the girls think he’s a hunk, according to Alicia.
Jason is not at all self-conscious as he flicks me with his towel. “Hey, Billiams,” he says, and grins. He thinks it’s hilarious that my name is William Williams, so the few times that he speaks to me at all he calls me Billiams. I don’t know why everyone thinks he’s so cool.
“Hey,” I say, “what’s up?” I’m suddenly aware of how white and freckled my skin is, and I quickly pull my jeans over my shorts.
He leans against the lockers with his arms crossed over his chest. “Let me ask you something, Billiams,” he says. “What’s going on between you and Alicia?”
I don’t like how he says her name, I don’t know why. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” he says, “you used to hang around together all the time. Now you don’t.”
“Yeah, okay,” I say. “We had a fight. No big deal. She’ll get over it.”
“Uh-huh,” he says, and looks at the scabs on my cheek. Then he looks away, down the row of lockers. Finally he turns back to me. “Listen, she ever say anything about me?”
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way he says it and his grin, like he knows the answer already but he just wants to hear it from someone else, that makes me say it.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “She talks about you a lot.”
“Yeah?” he says. His face brightens up for a second, and then he fights really hard to look unconcerned. “So what does she say?”
“Well...” I say. I act like I don’t want to tell him.
“What?” he says, pushing.
“I don’t think you wanna know,” I say finally.
For a second he looks hurt, but then his eyes get hard and he laughs.
“Oh sure, I get it,” he says. “You’re such a dork. I don’t know why she ever hung around with a loser like you.” And he gives me a look of disgust and walks away, his towel trailing over his stupid musclebound shoulder.
“Dork!” I shout after him. “She thinks you’re a dork!”
I mean, she’s never said anything like that to me about him, but I’m sure she thinks it. I’m positive. How could she ever be interested in a loser like him? And then, without meaning to, I start remembering another bad one.